misc/poetry
Leonard Cohen,
Philip Larkin,
Fernando Pessoa,
Pablo Neruda,
Mark Doty,
Alex Gallo-Brown,
Maggie Smith,
Robert Hass,
Matthew Zapruder
poems i like
12/18/63
The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.
Each day I live means one day less to live.
That’s evident!
Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,
Just living.
Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,
The too fresh mind incapable
Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.
Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,
And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.
Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,
I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.
I work for a future I can no longer see.
That’s my life.
Will I in five years, two years, one,
Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)
And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?
Or should I call it my stupidity?
Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?
Or shall I in five years or one,
Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.
Happiness having swollen in me, become me,
Because of the devotion which she swears?
This I argue with myself on paper.
That is what I feel like sometimes,
Paper.
[...] And, friends
It is rotten, to have had history pull you up and spit you
Out again, for a few good moments, for nothing more
Than debt and waged servitude, all the hours stolen for gas bills,
Their world not built for you, its monstrous incursions
Of spectacular boredom, the sheer misery of getting by,
The mob's grief with a pang, ad now without a mob.
And the pangs ring harder as our bones chill, waiting,
We drink 'til dawn and hope to find something in it,
This city is full of wolves where nothing is plenty for them to eat,
They pull apart the sinews of matter, on which we expend
Ourselves paid down in rent and double rent. It is
The exhaustion, a cloth pressed firmly round the escape pipe,
Troubled air smothering and poisonous, nausea & inertia,
As smoke fills your tear ducts and the tongue dusts,
Two twins holding each of your hands and nailing you
To the floor. And what way to get out when the escape is full
Of rats and the hatches are being smoked out
With putrescent black smoke, all the exits bolted shut.
their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.
poem by Ben Okri on Grenfell
When the ice will creak
Between green shoes, and from the pale
Blue bitter airs
Barbarous globes of spring
Will break through.
We will be far away.
We would like to return and look,
Caress the clover of the heaths
The doorposts of the new home
Cry in pity
Where our mother passed.
Instead we will be far away.
Instead we prisoners
Will laugh without respite
And hate as far as the knife
Blades are gripped.
Damned those who lead us.
Far, always far away.
And when we have returned
wild grass will cover the courtyards
and the breath of the dead in the air.
The creases on the hands,
the rust on the shovels.
And still we will be far.
We will still be far
From the face that welcomes us in our sleep
here, tired of hate and love.
But new hands will come
As new leaves do.
Now to our distant camps.
But the bud will open
And the water spring speak, as it once did.
You will shine, buried stone,
Our ancient human heart,
Raw shard, bare law.
In the gaze of the distant sky.
whole poem. translated by alberto toscano.
Helen says heaven, for her,
would be complete immersion
in physical process,
without self-consciousness —
to be the respiration of the grass,
or ionized agitation
just above the break of a wave,
traffic in a sunflower’s thousand golden rooms.
Images of exchange,
and of untrammeled nature.
But if we’re to become part of it all,
won’t our paradise also involve
participation in being, say,
diesel fuel, the impatience of trucks
on August pavement,
weird glow of service areas
along the interstate at night?
We’ll be shiny pink egg cartons,
and the thick treads of burst tires
along the highways in Pennsylvania:
a hell we’ve made to accompany
the given: we will join
our tiresome productions,
things that want to be useless forever.
But that’s me talking. Helen
would take the greatest pleasure
in being a scrap of paper,
if that’s what there were to experience.
Perhaps that’s why she’s a painter,
finally: to practice disappearing
into her scrupulous attention,
an exacting rehearsal for the larger
world of things it won’t be easy to love.
Helen I think will master it, though I may not.
She has practiced a long time learning to see.
I have devoted myself to affirmation,
when I should have kept my eyes on the ground
ah i like this
Blackboard covered with a dust
of living chalk, live chaos-cloud
wormed by turbulence: the rod glides
and the vet narrates shadows
I can’t quite force into shape:
His kidneys might . . . the spleen appears . . .
I can’t see what he sees, and so
resort to simile: cloudbank, galaxy
blurred with slow comings
and goings, that far away. The doctor
makes appreciative noises,
to encourage me;
he praises Beau’s stillness.
I stroke the slope beneath
those open, abstracted eyes,
patient, willing to endure whatever
we deem necessary, while the vet
runs along the shaved blonde
Today I’m herding the two old dogs
into the back of the car,
after the early walk, wet woods:
Beau’s generous attention must be
brought into focus, gaze pointed
to the tailgate so he’ll be ready to leap,
and Arden, arthritic in his hind legs,
needs me to lift first his forepaws
and then, placing my hands
under his haunches, hoist the moist
black bulk of him into the wagon,
and he growls a little
before he turns to face me,
glad to have been lifted—
And as I go to praise them,
as I like to do, the words
that come from my mouth,
from nowhere, are Time’s children,
as though that were the dearest thing
a person could say.
Why did I call them by that name?
They race this quick parabola
faster than we do, as though
it were a run in the best of woods,
run in their dreams, paws twitching
—even asleep they’re hurrying.
Doesn’t the world go fast enough?
We’re caught in this morning’s
last-of-April rain, the three of us
bound and fired by duration
—rhythm too swift for even them
to hear, though perhaps we catch
a little of that rush and ardor
—furious poetry!—
the sound time makes,
seeing us through.
Big blocks of ice
—clear cornerstones—
chug down a turning belt
toward the blades of a wicked,
spinning fan; scraping din
of a thousand skates and then
powder flies out in a roaring
firehose spray of diamond dust,
and the film crew obscures
the well-used Manhattan snow
with a replica of snow.
Trailers along the edge of the Square,
arc lamps, the tangled cables
of a technical art, and our park’s
a version of itself. We walk here
daily, the old dogs and I glad
for the open rectangle of air
held in its frame of towers,
their heads held still and high
to catch the dog run’s rich,
acidic atmosphere, whitened faces
—theirs and mine—lifted toward gray
branches veining the variable sky.
Today we’re stopped at the rim:
one guy’s assigned the task
of protecting the pristine field
a woman will traverse
—after countless details are worried
into place—at a careful angle,
headed toward West Fourth.
They’re filming The Hours,
Michael’s novel, a sort of refraction
of Mrs. Dalloway. Both books
transpire on a single June day;
that’s the verb; these books do
breathe an air all attention,
as if their substance were a gaze
entirely open to experience, eager
to know—They believe
the deepest pleasure is seeing
and saying how we see,
even when we’re floored
by spring’s sharp grief, or a steady
approaching wave of darkness.
In the movie version, it’s winter;
they’re aiming for a holiday release,
and so must hasten onward.
Someone calls out Background!
and hired New Yorkers begin
to pass behind the perfect field,
a bit self-conscious, skaters
and shoppers too slow to convince,
so they try it again, Clarissa passing
the sandblasted arch
bound in its ring of chain-link,
monument glowing gray against the gray
A little less now in the world to love.
Taxi on Bleecker, dim afternoon, after
a bright one’s passing, after the hours
in stations and trains, blur of the meadows
through dull windows, fitful sleep,
heading home, and now the darkness inside
the cab deeper than anything a winter afternoon
could tender. Nothing stays, the self
has no power over time, we’re stuck
in a clot of traffic, then this: a florist shop,
where something else stood yesterday,
what was it? Do things give way that fast?
PARADISE FLOWERS, arced in gold
on the window glass, racks and rows
of blooms, and an odd openness on the sidewalk,
and—look, the telltale script of cables
inking the street, trailers near, and Martian lamps,
and a lone figure in a khaki coat poised
with a clutch of blooms while they check her aspect
through the lens: Clarissa, of course,
buying the flowers herself.
I take it personally. As if,
no matter what, this emblem persists:
a woman went to buy flowers, years ago,
in a novel, and was entered
by the world. Then in another novel,
her double chose blooms of her own
while the blessed indifferent life
of the street pierced her, and now
here she is, blazing in a dim trench
of February, the present an image
reduced through a lens, a smaller version
of a room in which love resided.
Though they continue, shadow and replica,
copy and replay, adapted, reduced,
reframed: beautiful versions—a paper cone of asters,
golden dog nipping at a glove—fleeting,
and no more false than they are true.
Your old kitchen, dear, on Bleecker: sugar, dates, black tea.
Your house, then ours. Anyone’s now. Memory’s furious land.
Von den Großen dieser Erde
melden uns die Heldenlieder:
Steigend auf so wie Gestirne
gehn sie wie Gestirne nieder.
Das klingt tröstlich, und man muss es wissen.
Nur: für uns, die sie ernähren müssen
ist das leider immer ziemlich gleich gewesen.
Aufstieg oder Fall: Wer trägt die Spesen?
Freilich dreht das Rad sich immer weiter
dass, was oben ist, nicht oben bleibt.
Aber für das Wasser unten heißt das leider
nur: Dass es das Rad halt ewig treibt.
Ach, wir hatten viele Herren
hatten Tiger und Hyänen
hatten Adler, hatten Schweine
doch wir nährten den und jenen.
Ob sie besser waren oder schlimmer:
Ach, der Stiefel glich dem Stiefel immer
und uns trat er. Ihr versteht: Ich meine
dass wir keine andern Herren brauchen, sondern keine!
Freilich dreht das Rad sich immer weiter
dass, was oben ist, nicht oben bleibt.
Aber für das Wasser unten heißt das leider
nur: Dass es das Rad halt ewig treibt.
Und sie schlagen sich die Köpfe
blutig, raufend um die Beute
nennen andre gierige Tröpfe
und sich selber gute Leute.
Unaufhörlich sehn wir sie einander grollen
und bekämpfen. Einzig und alleinig
wenn wir sie nicht mehr ernähren wollen
sind sie sich auf einmal völlig einig.
Denn dann dreht das Rad sich nicht mehr weiter
und das heitre Spiel, es unterbleibt
wenn das Wasser endlich mit befreiter
Stärke seine eigne Sach betreibt.
translation: The Song of the Waterwheel
Ancient tale and epic story
Tell of heroes' lives untarnished:
Like the stars they rose in glory,
Like the stars they set when vanquished.
This is comforting and we should know it.
We, alas, who plant the wheat and grow it
Have but little share in triumph or disasters,
Rise to fame or fall: Who feeds our masters?
Yes, the wheel is always turning madly,
Neither side stays up or down,
But the water underneath fares badly,
For it has to make the wheel go 'round.
Ah, we've had so many masters,
Swine or eagle, lean or fat one:
Some were tigers, some hyenas,
Still we fed this one and that one.
Whether one is better than the other:
Ah, one boot is always like another
When it treads upon you. What I say about them
Is we need no masters: we can do without them!
Yes, the wheel is always turning madly,
Neither side stays up or down,
But the water underneath fares badly,
For it has to make the wheel go 'round.
And they beat each other's heads all bloody
Scuffling over booty,
Call the other fellows greedy wretches,
They, themselves, but do their duty.
Ceaselessly we watch their wars grow ever grimmer,
Would I knew a way for them to be united.
If we will no more provide the fodder
Maybe that's the way all would be righted.
For at last the wheel shall turn no longer,
And shall ride the stream no more,
When the water joins to water as it gaily
Drives itself, freed of the load it bore.
Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?
[...]
Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Dass der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.
second and last stanzas only. Translation:
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
[...]
But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do not judge us
Too harshly.
better translation from https://harpers.org/blog/2008/01/brecht-to-those-who-follow-in-our-wake/:
What times are these, in which
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!
And he who walks quietly across the street,
Passes out of the reach of his friends
Who are in danger?[...]
But you, when at last the time comes
That man can aid his fellow man,
Should think upon us
With leniency.