A bouquet
by Bei Dao (tr.?)
Between me and the world
You are a day, a sail
The faithful ends of a rope
You are a fountain, a wind
A shrill childhood cry
Between me and the world
You are a picture frame, a window
A field covered with wild flowers
You are a breath, a bed
A night that keeps the stars company
Between me and the world
You are a calendar, a compass
A ray of light that slips through the gloom
You are a biographical sketch, a bookmark
A preface that comes at the end
Between me and the world
You are a gauze curtain, a mist
A lamp shining into my dreams
You are a bamboo flute, a song without words
A closed eyelid carved in stone
Between me and the world
You are a chasm, a pool
An abyss plunging down
You are a balustrade, a wall
A shield’s eternal pattern.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Mehr Licht by Tim Dlugos
Mehr Licht
were the last words
of Goethe on his
deathbed as the darkness
closed around him.
But Mayor Licht
was also the chief
executive of Providence,
Rhode Island in the early
Eighties. I’m dreaming
of the best political
commercial of all time—
Weimar in the 1830s,
Goethe gasping “Mehr licht,
mehr licht”—and suddenly
Mayor Harry Licht of Providence
appears to pump the paw
of the poet, and save the day.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Seventh Avenue - Mark Halliday
SEVENTH AVENUE
by, Mark Halliday
Late Tuesday afternoon the romantic self weaves
up Seventh Avenue amid too many lookers, too many
feelers: romance hates democracy;
how can you be so great and golden inside
if your trunk is shouldered among other trunks
block after block, block after block--
you can't help glimpsing an otherness in others
that is not just surface: they ache,
their aches ache away north and south all Tuesday
in murmurous torsos like yours . . .
What apprehension blossoms even now in Manuel
shifting steaks at the ten-foot grill of Charley O's
beneath the towering chef's hat they make him wear?
When I was twenty I'd have written
that he was only thinking of Cadillacs and sex;
now I'm afraid he's just as worried as I am
about love vs. lesser things and the point of it all.
Manuel, stay there at the sizzling grill till midnight
and then just drink or sleep, man,
don't write poems--
do me that favor. It's loud enough already
out here on Seventh Avenue with that cat's boom box
and these three giggle girls being Madonna together
and that guy hawking wind-up titans wielding laser lances.
Who's Wordsworth for any extended period on Seventh Ave?
In this pre-dusk traffic you catch the hint
that Manuel and thou if seers at all are seers only
for seconds--now the steak, taxi, buttocks, headline
and wallet resume their charismatic claim to be what counts.
Soul on Seventh is a sometime on-off quick-flip thing . . .
What I want is a poem long as Seventh Avenue
to sprinkle gold on every oppressed minority,
every young woman's subtly female hips,
every sad and suspicious American face
every sad and suspicious American face
and the quiddity of every mud-tracked pizza shop;
proving, block after block, stanza by stanza
that I'm not just one skinny nervous pedestrian
that I'm not just one skinny nervous pedestrian
but the one who matters because he sees and says.
I want that. The Avenue grins and says
"You want, that? How does it feel to want?"
"You want, that? How does it feel to want?"
A Brief for the Defense - Jack Gilbert
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-Jack Gilbert
Envoy by, Maurice Manning
Envoy
by, Maurice Manning
Man who believes television
is the mouthpiece of the devil,
seeks female with similar views.
Attention all ladies who like
biscuits: man has gristmill
and two or three acres of wheat.
Are you a woman cast out from society?
Man with thirty-seven acres
and big muscles can provide refuge.
Would like to find sober woman (beer okay),
interested in pick-up trucks, old-time
Gospel music, buffalo trails.
Grown man who likes red dogs
and skipping rocks, hoping against
hope some woman likes same.
Man who lives several hundred
years in the past would like to find
woman zealous for spinning wheels.
Eccentric (?) gentleman (negotiable)—
tinker/farmer searching the heavens
for the true spark of love (breast-size unimportant). Please.
by, Maurice Manning
Man who believes television
is the mouthpiece of the devil,
seeks female with similar views.
Attention all ladies who like
biscuits: man has gristmill
and two or three acres of wheat.
Are you a woman cast out from society?
Man with thirty-seven acres
and big muscles can provide refuge.
Would like to find sober woman (beer okay),
interested in pick-up trucks, old-time
Gospel music, buffalo trails.
Grown man who likes red dogs
and skipping rocks, hoping against
hope some woman likes same.
Man who lives several hundred
years in the past would like to find
woman zealous for spinning wheels.
Eccentric (?) gentleman (negotiable)—
tinker/farmer searching the heavens
for the true spark of love (breast-size unimportant). Please.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
from the previous blog
Resolutions In A Parked Car02/24/2010 After I’m done pleading with the steering wheel, after I’m done screaming at the white doors of the Friendship Inn, no, even while I’m spitting and howling, I know, yes, this is the way we find out about ourselves: crying in rental cars in parking lots in strange cities that are already too familiar. The huge ship in front of you, don’t you hope it will soon disembark? Don’t you hate hotels? Don’t you hate to travel just to see the same old pockmarks and limps, the weight carried below the waist and above? Just look at what we have done to ourselves, and topped it off with a club sandwich, a scribble of neon. I’m wailing like some foreigner in a foreign country we don’t give a shit about because how could we understand something as subtle as the mutilation of ears and lips? Please, I beg you, perform some crazy rite over me so things can either finally dissolve or finally become solid. Please, I need something primitive and complex to relieve me of this world subdivided into better and better ways to avoid life. Sicker and sicker ways. Death cruising down 90. Laughing. Sweetheart, Death is the least of it. I’m in a parking lot in Spokane reintroducing myself to myself. I’m feeling like throwing up. In a parking lot in Spokane I am resolving to read Nietzsche, to pierce and tattoo myself, in a parking lot I’m determining things about my labia and nose and heart. - Olena Kalytiak Davis Post Title.02/20/2010 MAYAKOVSKY 1 My heart's aflutter! I am standing in the bath tub crying. Mother, mother who am I? If he will just come back once and kiss me on the face his coarse hair brush my temple, it's throbbing! then I can put on my clothes I guess, and walk the streets. 2 I love you. I love you, but I'm turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist. Words! be sick as I am sick, swoon, roll back your eyes, a pool, and I'll stare down at my wounded beauty which at best is only a talent for poetry. Cannot please, cannot charm or win what a poet! and the clear water is thick with bloody blows on its head. I embraced a cloud, but when I soared it rained. 3 That's funny! there's blood on my chest oh yes, I've been carrying bricks what a funny place to rupture! and now it is raining on the ailanthus as I step out onto the window ledge the tracks below me are smoky and glistening with a passion for running I leap into the leaves, green like the sea 4 Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again. FRANK O'HARA SHE WHO TURNS HER HEAD01/28/2010 SHE WHO TURNS HER HEAD She turns her head to breathe the morning air bright April on her pale face and yellow hair Hey look! they turn from their horseplay Look! reminiscent of the night striking by day As one who has come from dancing half naked under lights she plucks her clothes about her and fights to seem indifferent before the overpowering mastery of this garish dream -William Carlos Williams North American Sequence THE LONGING 1 On things asleep, no balm: A kingdom of stinks and sighs, Fetor of cockroaches, dead fish, petroleum, Worse than castoreum of mink or weasels, Saliva dripping from warm microphones, Agony of crucifixion on barstools. Less and less the illuminated lips, Hands active, eyes cherished; Happiness left to dogs and children-- (Matters only a saint mentions!) Lust fatigues the soul. How to transcend this sensual emptiness? (Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.) In a bleak time, when a week of rain is a year, The slag-heaps fume at the edge of the raw cities: The gulls wheel over their singular garbage; The great trees no longer shimmer; Not even the soot dances. And the spirit fails to move forward, But shrinks into a half-life, less than itself, Falls back, a slug, a loose worm Ready for any crevice, An eyeless starer. 2 A wretch needs his wretchedness. Yes. O pride, thou art a plume upon whose head? How comprehensive that felicity! . . . A body with the motion of a soul. What dream's enough to breathe in? A dark dream. The rose exceeds, the rose exceeds us all. Who'd think the moon could pare itself so thin? A great flame rises from the sunless sea; The light cries out, and I am there to hear-- I'd be beyond; I'd be beyond the moon, Bare as a bud, and naked as a worm. To this extent I'm a stalk. --How free; how all alone. Out of these nothings --All beginnings come. 3 I would with the fish, the blackening salmon, and the mad lemmings, The children dancing, the flowers widening. Who sighs from far away? I would unlearn the lingo of exasperation, all the distortions of malice and hatred; I would believe my pain: and the eye quiet on the growing rose; I would delight in my hands, the branch singing, altering the excessive bird; I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form; I would be a stem, winding between great striated rocks in the late summer; A leaf, I would love the leaves, delighting in the redolent disorder of this mortal life, This ambush, this silence, Where shadow can change into flame, And the dark be forgotten. I have left the body of the whale, but the mouth of the night is still wide; On the bullhead, in the Dakotas, where the eagles eat well, In the country of few lakes, in the tall buffalo grass at the base of the clay buttes. In the summer heat, I can smell the dead buffalo, The stench of their damp fur drying in the sun, The buffalo chips drying. Old men should be explorers? I'll be an Indian. Ogalala? Iroquois. MEDITATION AT OYSTER RIVER 1 Over the low, barnacled, elephant-colored rocks, Come the first tide-ripples, moving almost without sound, toward me, Running along the narrow furrows of the shore, the rows of dead clam shells; Then a runnel behind me, creeping closer, Alive with tiny striped fish, and young crabs climbing in and out of the water. No sound from the bay. No violence. Even the gulls quiet on the far rocks, Silent, in the deepening light, Their cat-mewing over, Their child-whimpering. At last one long undulant ripple, Blue-black from where I am sitting, Makes almost a wave over a barrier of small stones, Slapping lightly against a sunken log. I dabble my toes in the brackish foam sliding forward, Then retire to a rock higher up on the cliff-side. The wind slackens, light as a moth fanning a stone: A twilight wind, light as a child's breath Turning not a leaf, not a ripple. The dew revives on the beach-grass; A fish raven turns on its perch (a dead tree in the rivermouth), Its wings catching a last glint of the reflected sunlight. 2 The self persists like a dying star, In sleep, afraid. Death's face rises afresh, Among the shy beasts, the deer at the salt-lick, The doe with its sloped shoulders loping across the highway, The young snake, poised in green leaves, waiting for its fly, The hummingbird, whirring from quince-blossom to morning-glory-- With these I would be. And with water: the waves coming forward, without cessation, The waves, altered by sand-bars, beds of kelp, miscellaneous driftwood, Topped by cross-winds, tugged at by sinuous undercurrents The tide rustling in, sliding between the ridges of stone, The tongues of water, creeping in, quietly. 3 In this hour, In this first hour of knowing, The flesh takes on the pure poise of spirit, Acquires, for a time, the sandpiper's insouciance, The hummingbird's surety, the kingfisher's cunning-- I shift on my rock, and I think: Of the first trembling of a Michigan brook in April, Over a lip of stone, the tiny rivulet; And that wrist-thick cascade tumbling from a cleft rock, Its spray holding a double rain-bow in early morning, Small enough to be taken in, embraced by two arms,-- Or the Tittebawasee, in the time between winter and spring, When the ice melts along the edges in early afternoon. And the midchannel begins cracking and heaving from the pressure beneath, The ice piling high against the iron-bound spikes, Gleaming, freezing hard again, creaking at midnight-- And I long for the blast of dynamite, The sudden sucking roar as the culvert loosens its debris of branches and sticks, Welter of tin cans, pails, old bird nests, a child's shoe riding a log, As the piled ice breaks away from the battered spiles, And the whole river begins to move forward, its bridges shaking. 4 Now, in this waning of light, I rock with the motion of morning; In the cradle of all that is, I'm lulled into half-sleep By the lapping of water, Cries of the sandpiper. Water's my will, and my way, And the spirit runs, intermittently, In and out of the small waves, Runs with the intrepid shorebirds-- How graceful the small before danger! In the first of the moon, All's a scattering, A shining. |
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