The Last Poem To Be Written
The Last Poem To Be Written, James Laughlin
“When, when & whenever
death closes our eyes”
still shall I behold her
smiling such brightness
lady of brightness &
the illumined heart
soft walker in my blood
snow color sea sound
track of the ermine
delicate in the snow
line of the sea wave
delicate on the sand
lady of all brightness
donna del mio cuor.
Como aquel que en soñar gusto recibe - Juan Boscán Almogáver
Like one receiving pleasure from a dream
His pleasure thus proceeding from delusion
So does imagination with illusions conceive in vain its happiness in me.
No other good is inscribed on my sad heart
Except what in my thoughts I might procure
Of all the good I ever have endured
What lives is only the imagined part
My heart is frightened to proceed ahead
Seeing that its pain in ambush lies
And so after a moment it turns back
To contemplate those glories that have fled.
Oh, shadow of relief, that fickle flies,
To make what's best in me be what I lack!
Oh, shadow of relief, that fickle flies,
To make what's best in me be what I lack!
Rain in the Pinewoods
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
Be silent. At the edge
of the woods I do not hear
the human words you say;
I hear new words
spoken by droplets and leaves
far away.
Listen. It rains
from the scattered clouds.
It rains on the briny, burned
tamarisk,
it rains on the pine trees
scaly and rough,
it rains on the divine
myrtle,
on the bright ginestra flowers
gathered together,
on the junipers full of
fragrant berries,
it rains on our sylvan
faces,
it rains on our
bare hands
on our light
clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled you
yesterday, that beguiles me today,
oh Hermione.
Can you hear? The rain falls
on the solitary
vegetation
with a crackling noise that lasts
and varies in the air
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage.
Listen. With their singing, the cicadas
are answering this weeping,
this southern wind weeping
that does not frighten them,
and nor does the grey sky.
And the pine tree
has a sound, the myrtle
another one, the juniper
yet another, different
instruments
under countless fingers.
And we are immersed
in the sylvan spirit,
living the same
sylvan life;
and your inebriated face
is soft from the rain,
like a leaf,
and your hair is
is fragrant like the light
ginestra flowers,
oh terrestrial creature
called Hermione.
Listen, listen. The song
of the flying cicadas
becomes fainter
and fainter
as the weeping
grows stronger;
but a rougher song
rises from afar,
and flows in
from the humid remote shadow.
Softer and softer
gets weaker, fades away.
One lonely note
still trembles, fades away.
No one can hear the voice of the sea.
Now you can hear the silver rain
pouring in
on the foliage,
rain that purifies,
its roar that varies
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage.
Listen.
The child of the air
is silent; but the child
of the miry swamp, the frog,
far away,
sings in the deepest of shadows
who knows where, who knows where!
And it rains on your lashes,
Hermione.
It rains on your black lashes
as if you were weeping,
weeping from joy; not white
but almost green,
you seem to come out of the bark.
And life is in us fresh
and fragrant,
the heart in our chests is like a peach
untouched
under the eyelids our eyes
are like springs in the grass
and the teeth in our mouths
green almonds.
And we go from thicket to thicket,
at a time together, at a time apart
(the vegetation, thick and vigorous,
entwines our ankles
entangles our knees)
who knows where, who knows where!
And it rains on our sylvan
faces,
it rains on our
bare hands
on our light
clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled me
yesterday, that beguiles you today,
oh Hermione.
From The Walls do Not Fall
H. D.
[8]
I am so happy,
I am the first or the last
of a flock or a swarm;
I am full of new wine;
I am branded with a word,
I am burnt with wood,
drawn from glowing ember,
not cut, not marked with steel;
I am the first or the last to renounce
iron, steel, metal;
I have gone forward,
I have gone backward,
I have gone onward from bronze and iron,
into the Golden Age.
[13]
In any case, she struck an uncanny bargain
(or so some say) with an Arab,
a stranger in the market-place;
actually, he had a little booth of a house
set to the left, back of the market
as you pass through the lower-gate;
what he had, was not for sale; he was on his way
to a coronation and a funeral--a double affair--
what he had, his priceless, unobtainable-elsewhere
myrrhwas for the double ceremony, a funeral and a
throning;
his was not ordinary myrrh and incense
and anyway, it is not for sale, he said;
he drew aside his robe in a noble manner
but the un-maidenly woman did not take the hint;
she had seen nobility herself at first hand;
nothing impressed her, it was easy to see;
she simply didn't care whether he acclaimed
or snubbed her--or worse; what are insults?
she knew how to detach herself,
another unforgivable sin,
and when stones were hurled,
she simply wasn't there;
she wasn't there and then she appeared,
not a beautiful woman really--would you say?
certainly not pretty;
what struck the Arab was that she was unpredictable;
this had never happened before--a woman--
well yes--if anyone did, he knew the world--a lady
had not taken a hint, had not sidled gracefully
at a gesture of implied dismissal
and with no apparent offense really
out of the door.
[15]
She said, I have heard of you;
he bowed ironically and ironically murmured,
I have not had the pleasure,
his eyes now fixed on the half-open door;
she understood; this was his second rebuff
but deliberately, she shut the door;
she stood with her back against it;
planted there, she flung out her arms,
a further barrier,
and her scarf slipped to the floor;
her face was very pale,
her eyes darker and larger
than many whose luminous depth
had inspired some not-inconsiderable poets;
but eyes? he had known many women--
it was her hair--un-maidenly--
It was hardly decent of her to stand there,
unveiled, in the house of a stranger.
Last edited by golden; 10-17-2014 at 04:07 PM.
- Percy Shelley
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
But they are still immortal
Who, through birth's orient portal
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight
In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New gods, new laws receive,
Bright or dim are they as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.
A power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror, came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light;
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set:
While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon
The cross leads generations on.
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep
From one whose dreams are Paradise
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The Powers of earth and air
Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:
Apollo, Pan, and Love,
And even Olympian Jove
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;
Our hills and seas and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years.
Originally Posted by Kore
- Charles BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)
A une passante
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet ;
Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.
Un éclair... puis la nuit ! - Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !
To a Passer-By
The street about me roared with a deafening sound.
Tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief,
A woman passed, with a glittering hand
Raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;
Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's.
Tense as in a delirium, I drank
From her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate,
The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.
A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Will I see you no more before eternity?
Elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
For I know not where you fled, you know not where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
this reminds me of something very similar...I think maybe by D.H. Lawrence?
You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.
Come with me, then,
And we'll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)
You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.
But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.
Ah, come with me!
I'll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I'll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.
e.e. cummings
I Have a Terrible Cold
---Fernando Pessoa
I have a terrible cold,
And everyone knows how terrible colds
Alter the whole system of the universe,
Set us against life,
And make even metaphysics sneeze.
I have wasted the whole day blowing my nose.
My head is aching vaguely.
Sad condition for a minor poet!
Today I am really and truly a minor poet.
What I was in old days was a wish; it's gone.
Goodbye for ever, queen of fairies!
Your wings were made of sun, and I am walking here.
I shan't get well unless I go and lie down on my bed.
I never was well except lying down on the Universe.
Excusez un peu… What a terrible cold!… it's
physical!
I need truth and aspirin.
Sonnet VIII
---Fernando Pessoa
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,
Upon our countenance of soul, and when,
If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,
Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?
The true mask feels no inside to the mask
But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.
Whatever consciousness begins the task
The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.
Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,
Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing,
Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces
And get a whole world on their forgot causing;
And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking,
Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.
Invictus
William Earnest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Is My Team Ploughing - A. E. Housman
"Is my team ploughing
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
"Is football playing
Along the river-shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?"
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market
Pablo Neruda
Here,
among the market vegetables,
this torpedo
from the ocean
depths,
a missile
that swam,
now
lying in front of me
dead.
Surrounded
by the earth's green froth
—these lettuces,
bunches of carrots—
only you
lived through
the sea's truth, survived
the unknown, the
unfathomable
darkness, the depths
of the sea,
the great
abyss,
le grand abîme,
only you:
varnished
black-pitched
witness
to that deepest night.
Only you:
dark bullet
barreled
from the depths,
carrying
only
your
one wound,
but resurgent,
always renewed,
locked into the current,
fins fletched
like wings
in the torrent,
in the coursing
of
the
underwater
dark,
like a grieving arrow,
sea-javelin, a nerveless
oiled harpoon.
Dead
in front of me,
catafalqued king
of my own ocean;
once
sappy as a sprung fir
in the green turmoil,
once seed
to sea-quake,
tidal wave, now
simply
dead remains;
in the whole market
yours
was the only shape left
with purpose or direction
in this
jumbled ruin
of nature;
you are
a solitary man of war
among these frail vegetables,
your flanks and prow
black
and slippery
as if you were still
a well-oiled ship of the wind,
the only
true
machine
of the sea: unflawed,
undefiled,
navigating now
the waters of death.
Vortextique
__K.S. Ernst
(visual poetry)
Ecce Homo
Friedrich Nietzche
Ja! Ich weiss, woher ich stamme!
Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme
Glühe und verzehr' ich mich.
Licht wird alles, was ich fasse,
Kohle alles, was ich lasse.
Flamme bin ich sicherlich!
Last edited by golden; 10-20-2014 at 03:05 PM.
From Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself"
Walt Whitman
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet,
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table . . . . my firelock leaned in the corner.
- Omar Khayyám
Ah, Moon of my Delight who know’st no wane,
The Moon of Heav’n is rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me — in vain!
Stray Birds 51 - 60
51
YOUR idol is shattered in the dust
to prove that God's dust is greater than
your idol.
52
MAN does not reveal himself in his history,
he struggles up through it.
53
WHILE the glass lamp rebukes the earthen for calling it cousin,
the moon rises, and the glass lamp,
with a bland smile, calls her,
"My dear, dear sister."
54
LIKE the meeting of the seagulls
and the waves we meet and come near.
The seagulls fly off,
the waves roll away and we depart.
55
MY day is done,
and I am like a boat drawn on the beach,
listening to the dance-music of t
he tide in the evening.
56
LIFE is given to us,
we earn it by giving it.
57
WE come nearest to the great
when we are great in humility.
58
THE sparrow is sorry for the peacock
at the burden of its tail.
59
NEVER be afraid of the moments--
thus sings the voice of the everlasting.
60
THE hurricane seeks the shortest road
by the no-road,
and suddenly ends its search in the Nowhere.
___ Rabindranath Tagore
Last edited by Amber; 10-21-2014 at 01:27 PM.
A Mysterious Love - Hafez
I have borne the anguish of love, which ask me not to describe:
I have tasted the poison of absence, which ask me not to relate.
Far through the world have I roved, and at length I have chosen
A sweet creature (a ravisher of hearts), whose name ask me not to disclose.
The flowing of my tears bedews her footsteps
In such a manner as ask me not to utter.
On yesternight from her own mouth with my own ears I heard
Such words as pray ask me not to repeat.
Why dost thou bite thy lip at me? What dost thou not hint (that I may have told?)
I have devoured a lip like a ruby: but whose, ask me not to mention.
Absent from thee, and the sole tenant of my cottage,
I have endured such tortures, as ask me not to enumerate.
Thus am I, HAFEZ, arrived at extremity in the ways of Love,
Which, alas! ask me not to explain.
Fire and Ice
--Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Variations on the Word Love
Margaret Atwood
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.
Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
Is About
--- Allen Ginsberg
Dylan is about the Individual against the whole creation
Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds
The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead...
Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things
America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes & Americans
Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don't forget
Russia is about Czars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow
But that's not really Russia it's a concept
A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon without ever getting there. The moon is about love & Werewolves, also Poe
Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun
or else the graveyard
Everything is about something if you're a thin movie producer chain-smoking muggles
The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury & murder, high technology
Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation Compassion Buddha, Alchemy
Communication is about monopoly telivision radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.
Universe is about Universe.
Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars--
The audience is about salvation, the listeners are aBOUT SEX, Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony Express
****** Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic & Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory--
Who cares what it's all about?
I do! Edgar Allen Poe cares! Shelly cares! Beethoven & Dylan care.
Do you care? What are you about
or are you a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?
I like how Ginsberg used asterisks for Hittler's name. He was way ahead of his time!
From "A Woman’s Sorrow"
["Kyuwon ka"]
Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn
Yesterday I fancied I was young;
But today, alas, I am aging.
What use is there in recalling
The joyful days of my youth?
Now I am old, recollections are vain.
Sorrow chokes me; words fail me.
When Father begot me, Mother reared me,
When they took pains to bring me up,
They dreamed, not of a duchess or marchioness,
But at least of a bride fit for a gentleman.
The turning of destiny of the three lives
And the tie chanced by a matchmaker
Brought me a romantic knight,
And careful as in a dream I trod on ice.
O was it a dream, those innocent days?
When I reached fifteen, counted sixteen,
The inborn beautify in me blossomed, and
With this face and this body
I vowed a union of a hundred years.
The flow of time and tide was sudden;
The gods too were jealous of my beauty.
Spring breezes and autumn moon,
Alas, they flew like a shuttle.
And my face, that once was beautiful,
Where did it go? Who disgraced it so?
It seems I'm the only lover of modern and postmodern poetry around here ...but I'm trying to be open to other forms.
Do Not Think Words
---- Jessica B. Weisenfels
they are only little cushions
of air
of nothing
of diffusing
the late awareness
do not love the word
because
when it is just a word
it vibrates in the mouth
it does not make anything
it is the narrator
it is the act
of being
who translates
in transitives
intransitives
intrinsic contradictions
contraindications
for the moment of spin
to find the child
in the slant of light
it is in the knowing
the child
is not good
is not correct
is only child
it is not the magic
of sliding syllabication
of predicates in pixels
of levitated participles
it is not in the chemicals
it is in the thinking of things
it is the translation
made over again
to speak the failures
of itself
to make the hand
of breaking necks
to make the intrusions
to crush the bones
to bleed the knuckles
to speak shackles
to shackle
to dance the water
in drowning
to make the air
to make the aid
to say
it was never right how it was
it is in knowing
the fracture
is The Sight
it is not declarative
it is only nomenclature
it is the unnaming
of the holy things
the terror in two syllables
the woodshed of bad stories
how your great uncle laughed
as his mother kicked from rafters
how it is not
mother of god
it is god-bearer
how it does not require
a womb to bear with gods
how your father was murdered
if you are lucky
how your father left town
if you are ordinary
how your father only drank
if you are spectacular
how the ones who made you
sucked nectar from your bones
how you stood bloody
before the mirror
how everyone divorced themselves
and you were born in two
how the limbs of the concubine
become the message of your obedience
how the cricket died of the luck
of someone’s brother’s tearing
how his wife was a prostitute
who hung his skin on branches
how the myths
become your narrative
how your mother was a pure product
of chemical and flesh
how the body
remembers the moment
how your rapists
are all husbands now
how you knew your difference
your differance
how you were alone
or lonely
how you only beat
what you love
it is not rhetorical
you are only angry
you are only adjectives
it does not make the difference
it does not speak the other
it becomes the axe
if it is very good
do not hook the oxen
the affect is the labored beast
the bad ones speak the best
because they are the freest
they are all first drafts
until they can be known
until they smooth
in the hand
until they are not the head
but the hair behind it
do not spare
the voice
the image
the fragment
but do not make a body
it belongs to no one
and no one can live in it
it is not oxygen
but oxytocin
that makes you this way
if you are lucky
it is epinephrine
it is your uninhibited reuptake
it is the contradictions
it is not a personhood
it has no blood or breath
unless it has been bled on
it is only a collection
of steady failures
of beating wings in chest
it will never live
the way you want it to
they are never wrong
until you die of them
Jessica B. Weisenfels lives in rural Arkansas where she accumulates chronic diseases and steals language from her children. Her work has been published in numerous local publications and may also be found at 9th Street Laboratories and in Sink Review. She has work forthcoming inFence and MadHat Lit.
Nah. The thread seemed to be going in the modern direction, so I'm providing counterpoint. Also, the longer I search for the modern, the more I find it's a chimera. Everything that feels good to me also feels modern to me in its way.
摸魚兒 The Tune of The Wild Geese’s Tomb 《雁邱词》 by Yuan Haowen
Yuan Hao Wen (Jin Dynasty)
First part(more popular, my preferred translation by a heroic soul named Noodles)
元好问
问世间，情为何物， 直教生死相许？
天南地北双飞客， 老翅几回寒暑？
欢乐趣， 离别苦，就中更有痴儿女。
君应有语，渺万里层云，千山暮雪，只影向谁去？
O mortals, what is love? That binds beyond life on earth?
To all corners, in pair we fly... braving summer and winter, by and by...
Union is bliss, parting is woe, agony is boundless, for a lovelorn soul, sweetheart...
Give me words, trail of clouds drifting forward...
And mountains capped with snow, whither shall my lonesome shadow go?
Full poem and translation
元好问
问世间，情为何物， 直教生死相许？
天南地北双飞客， 老翅几回寒暑？
欢乐趣， 离别苦，就中更有痴儿女。
君应有语，渺万里层云，千山暮雪，只影向谁去？
有兴趣的朋友可译一下好问兄的另一首：
问莲根、有丝多少。莲心知为谁苦。
双花脉脉娇相向，只是旧家儿女。
天已许，甚不教、白头生死鸳鸯浦。
夕阳无语，算谢客烟中。湘妃江上，未是断肠处。
Among the earthly mortals, I ask: what is Love
That engages couples through life and death?
This flying pair, travelling from south to north,
Had old wings, which survived several summers and winters.
Staying paired is happy,
But to sever, bitter: a trap in itself where devoted lovers
Still long to be trapped. He must have had a thought:
For whom shall I trail a forlorn shadow flying over
Ten thousand miles of grey clouds
And mountains of night snow?
On this road by Fen River, the old pipes and drums
Are gone. Only bleak smoke and vast woods are left.
Vain to evoke the ancient ghosts. The Mountain Spirit
Also wails in vain. Heaven envies the geese,
Not believing they’ll return to dust like orioles
And swallows. There they’ll remain, for a thousand
Autumns, awaiting the poets of later generations
Who are coming, rhapsodizing and quaffing
Just for a view of the wild geese’s tomb.
on going out to get the mail
--- charles bukovski
the droll noon
where squadrons of worms creep up like
stripteasers
to be raped by blackbirds
I go outside
and all up and down the street
the green armies shoot color
like an everlasting 4th. of July,
and I too seem to swell inside,
a kind of unknown bursting, a
feeling, perhaps, that there isn't any
enemy
anywhere
and I reach down into the box
and there is
nothing not even a
letter from the gas co. saying they will
shut it off
again.
not even a short note from my x-wife
bragging upon her present
happiness.
my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of
disbelief long after the mind has
given up.
there's not even a dead fly
down in there.
I am a fool, I think, I should have known it
works like this.
I go inside as all the flowers leap to
please me.
anything? the woman
asks.
nothing, I answer, what's for
breakfast?
“You walked away & I punched down a phoenix, cut the God from my flesh, prayed you’d wake up with a note on the pillow where her head used to pretend you were a better man. I used to pretend you were a better man. Your ghost is a spider killing the other spiders. There’s one web & I’m still caught in it. There’s one web, but the spider is a ghost & I’m waiting to get devoured by something that doesn’t have a mouth anymore. I’m stuck here screaming at nothing.
I set fires, try to catch your shadow & pin it down with my own.”
— Moriah Pearson, weeks have passed since I wrote this
Who ever desired each other as we do? Let us look
for the ancient ashes of hearts that burned,
and let our kisses touch there, one by one,
till the flower, disembodied, rises again.
Let us love that Desire that consumed its own fruit
and went down, aspect and power, into the earth:
We are its continuing light,
its indestructible, fragile seed.
---Pablo Neruda
From "Heart's Needle"
W. D. Snodgrass
7
Here in the scuffled dust
is our ground of play.
I lift you on your swing and must
shove you away,
see you return again,
drive you off again, then
stand quiet till you come.
You, though you climb
higher, farther from me, longer,
will fall back to me stronger.
Bad penny, pendulum,
you keep my constant time
to bob in blue July
where fat goldfinches fly
over the glittering, fecund
reach of our growing lands.
Once more now, this second,
I hold you in my hands.
I try to write a poem per day currently. I wrote this one yesterday. I might delete it later.
On Their Wing
He smacked me on the shoulder
with a coiled fat newspaper
from the row behind in a prayer
meeting. I couldn’t fully turn at first, feared
facing him. And then I stared. White hair, unwavering
lip. I saw, and remember, how
he goaded me, growled something about was I gonna
report on this, meaning godliness
on their wing. The right.
I was nineteen, I could barely write
anything. I wore a pale green silk
suit, bought by my mother, was an intern, a ribbon
of a grown girl, hungry
often, without money.
That was Texas. I was told
that blue hair and pearls
had formerly ruled
the convention. Now Rovian
Republicans ushered busloads
of believers packing peanut butter
sandwiches in paper bags. Something new.
Something borrowed by strategic empty men,
courting and mating religious crowds to win
elections. One of these empties, gray-
suited, handsome, slim, smirked
with purpose, and butted
my same
thin
shoulder as I passed him
in an empty space
with my flimsy
Pentax.
Small violences then. George W. Bush posed
at the podium, confused, vacant
as Vicodin, his eyes asking, how
did I get here?
I’ve wondered, what threat
was I to them, frail and open,
popping Zoloft from an Austin public
agency to survive? Did they think I’d win
with words? Could I? How do we parse
the aggression for women in a wide state
of few laws in favor of freedom?
Apostate, I praise the holy-bright sky, near-fluorescent
grass, sacred steadiness of oak.
Couture --- Mark Doty
1.
Peony silks,
in wax-light:
that petal-sheen,
gold or apricot or rose
candled into-
what to call it,
lumina, aurora, aureole?
About gowns,
the Old Masters,
were they ever wrong?
This penitent Magdalen’s
wrapped in a yellow
so voluptuous
she seems to wear
all she’s renounced;
this boy angel
isn’t touching the ground,
but his billow
of yardage refers
not to heaven
but to pleasure’s
textures,the tactile
sheers and voiles
and tulles
which weren’t made
to adorn the soul.
Eternity’s plainly nude;
the naked here and now
longs for a little
dressing up.
And though
they seem to prefer
the invisible,
every saint
in the gallery
flaunts an improbable
tumble of drapery,
a nearly audible
liquidity(bright brass
embroidery,
satin’s violin-sheen)
raveled around the body’s
plain prose; exquisite
(dis?)guises; poetry,
music, clothes.
2.
Nothing needs to be this lavish.
Even the words I’d choose
for these leaves;
intricate, stippled, foxed,
tortoise, mottled, splotched
-jeweled adjectives
for a forest by Fabergé,
all cloisonné and enamel,
a yellow grove golden
in its gleaming couture,
brass buttons
tumbling to the floor.
Who’s it for?
Who’s the audience
for this bravura?
Maybe the world’s
just trompe l’oeil,
appearances laid out
to dazzle the eye;
who could see through this
to any world beyond forms?
Maybe the costume’s
the whole show,
all of revelation
we’ll be offered.
So? Show me what’s not
a world of appearances.
Autumn’s a grand old drag
in torched and tumbled chiffon
striking her weary pose.
Talk about your mellow
fruitfulness! Smoky alto,
thou hast thy music,
too; unforgettable,
those October damasks,
the dazzling kimono
worn, dishabille,
uncountable curtain calls
in these footlights’dusky,
flattering rose.
The world’s made fabulous
by fabulous clothes.
To His Coy Mistress
--- ANDREW MARVELL
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
did the fatso tap dat or wat
My favorite poem by Marvell is this one. The last two lines in particular:
The Mower to the Glow-Worms
Andrew Marvell
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;
Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude
Frederico Garcia Lorca
The fat lady came out first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.
There were murmuring from the jungle of vomit
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.
There's no other way, my son, vomit! There's no other way.
It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,
nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.
The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.
Vomit was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.
Who could imagine my sadness?
The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go,
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.
The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.
To Mrs Reynolds’s Cat - John Keats
Cat! who hast passed thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroyed? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears — but prithee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me, and up-raise
Thy gentle mew, and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists —
For all thy wheezy asthma, and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off, and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
