Ubine Scho

what a flooring,
that linoleum on which the wet
dog is best friend to the boot and pant leg
before it dries out in the u bahn
only on wet days
only as a print, only as fur,
where the watercolour itself
does not dry
on these clammy
days before a springtime
that hides itself
from animals

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

Gil Galad


~

Gil-galad was an Elven-king,

Of him the harpers sadly sing:

The last whose realm was fair and free

Between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,

His shining helm afar was seen;

The countless stars of heaven’s field

Were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,

And where he dwelleth none can say;

For into darkness fell his star

In Mordor where the shadows are.

Hugo Ball (1886-1927)

My demon

My demon has no brothers, no sisters, no kin.
My demon thinks time’s just a waste and a sin.
When God had made the worlds good enough,
My demon sat down in the grass for a laugh.
Cut his toenails in two in a dance,
And saw the whole world glide by in a glance.

Han Shan (c.750)

You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

Leonard Cohen

"Hallelujah"


I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

19

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Paul Celan (1920-1970)

Corona


Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.


Translated by Michael Hamburger

Paul Celan :

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

All That is Gold


~

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

W H Auden (1907-1973)

Epitaph on a Tyrant
by W. H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)

Under One Small Star


~

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from
the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep
today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful
of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional
thread from your train.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and
each man.
I know I won’t be justfied as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

- Wislawa Symborska

Bob Dylan

http://youtu.be/Lwi56fZpn6w

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"


Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you meet my blue-eyed son ?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singing
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (1963-04-25 Chicago)

Tomas Transtromer

The Couple


They switch off the light and its white shade

glimmers for a moment before dissolving

like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.

The hotel walls rise into the black sky.

The movements of love have settled, and they sleep

but their most secret thoughts meet as when

two colors meet and flow into each other

on the wet paper of a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer

tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have approached.

They stand close up in a throng, waiting,

a crowd whose faces have no expressions.


Translation by Robin Fulton

Tomas Tranströmer :

Jaan Kaplinski

"Õhtu toob tagasi kõik" (Evening brings everything back)

The snow's melting. The water's dripping.
The wind's blowing (gently).
The boughs are swaying. There's a fire in the stove.
The radiators are warm.
Anu is doing exercises on the piano.
Ott and Tambet are making a snowman.
Maarja is preparing a lunch.
The wooden horse is looking in from the window.
I am looking out of the window.
I am writing a poem.
I am writing that today is Sunday.
That the snow's melting. That the water's dripping.
That the wind's blowing, etc., etc.

Nate Klug

Milton’s God
By Nate Klug b. 1985

Where i-95 meets the Pike,
a ponderous thunderhead flowered;


stewed a minute, then flipped
like a flash card, tattered
edges crinkling in, linings so dark
with excessive bright


that, standing, waiting, at the overpass edge,
the onlooker couldn’t decide


until the end, or even then,
what was revealed and what had been hidden.

Source: Poetry (September 2013).

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

A Smile To Remember


we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Charles Bukowski :

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

A widow in black



A widow in black -- the crying fall
Covers all hearts with a depressing cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations loud.
It will be so, until the snow puff
Will give a mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love --
Though paid by life -- what more could be desired?


Anna Akhmatova

Anna Swir (1909-1984)

I Knocked My Head against the Wall

By Anna Swir 1909–1984

As a child
I put my finger in the fire
to become
a saint.


As a teenager
every day I would knock my head against the wall.


As a young girl
I went out through a window of a garret
to the roof
in order to jump.


As a woman
I had lice all over my body.
They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.


I waited sixty minutes
to be executed.
I was hungry for six years.


Then I bore a child,
they were carving me
without putting me to sleep.


Then a thunderbolt killed me
three times and I had to rise from the dead three times
without anyone’s help.


Now I am resting
after three resurrections.

Alice Oswald

Time Poem by Alice Oswald



now the sound of the trees is
worldwide

and I'm still here
staring when I should be bathing
children.

it's late, the bike's asleep on its feet.

the fields hang to the sun by
slackened lines...
when the grass breathes, things fall.
I saw
the luminous underneath of a moth.
and a blackbird
mouth to the glow of the hour in
hieroglyphics.

who left the light on the step?
pause

what is the pace of a glance?

the man at the wheel signs his speed
on the ringroad

right here in my reach, time is as
thick as stone
and as thin as a flying strand

it's night and somebody's
pushing his mower home
to the moon

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

A Dirge
A Dirge
By Thomas James Merton 1915–1968
Some one who hears the bugle neigh will know
How cold it is when sentries die by starlight.


But none who love to hear the hammering drum
Will look, when the betrayer
Laughs in the desert like a broken monument,
Ringing his tongue in the red bell of his head,
Gesturing like a flag.


The air that quivered after the earthquake
(When God died like a thief)
Still plays the ancient forums like pianos;
The treacherous wind, lover of the demented,
Will harp forever in the haunted temples.


What speeches do the birds make
With their beaks, to the desolate dead?
And yet we love those carsick amphitheaters,
Nor hear our Messenger come home from hell
With hands shot full of blood.


No one who loves the fleering fife will feel
The light of morning stab his flesh,
But some who hear the trumpet’s raving, in the ruined sky,
Will dread the burnished helmet of the sun,
Whose anger goes before the King.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Bowery Blues


The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don't know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don't know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out

For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the cafeteria
We hear
The saxophone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thirty Two,
Sounding like old times
And de bombed
Empty decapitated
Murder by the clock.

And I see Shadows
Dancing into Doom
In love, holding
TIght the lovely asses
Of the little girls
In love with sex
Showing themselves
In white undergarments
At elevated windows
Hoping for the Worst.

I can't take it
Anymore
If I can't hold
My little behind
To me in my room

Then it's goodbye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren't as good
As they look
And Samadhi
Is better
Than you think
When it starts in
Hitting your head
In with Buzz
Of glittergold
Heaven's Angels
Wailing

Saying

We've been waiting for you
Since Morning, Jack
Why were you so long
Dallying in the sooty room?
This transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part
(of Nothingness
I sing)

Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop.

Jack Kerouac :

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

A Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock



The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.


Wallace Stevens

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Simplicity



It opens, the gate to the garden

with the docility of a page

that frequent devotion questions

and inside, my gaze

has no need to fix on objects

that already exist, exact, in memory.

I know the customs and souls

and that dialect of allusions

that every human gathering goes weaving.

I’ve no need to speak

nor claim false privilege;

they know me well who surround me here,

know well my afflictions and weakness.

This is to reach the highest thing,

that Heaven perhaps will grant us:

not admiration or victory

but simply to be accepted

as part of an undeniable Reality,

like stones and trees.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Autumn



The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.


Rainer Maria Rilke

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)

On Death, Without Exaggeration


It can’t take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn’t strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won’t help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d’etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies’ skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not.

There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.

Gerald Stern

Swan Song


A bunch of old snakeheads down by the pond
carrying on the swan tradition -- hissing
inside their white bodies, raising and lowering their heads
like ostriches, regretting only the sad ritual
that forced them to waddle back into the water
after their life under the rocks, wishing they could lie again
in the sun

and dream of spreading their terrifying wings;
wishing, this time, they could sail through the sky like
horses,
their tails rigid, their white manes fluttering,
their mouths open, their sharp teeth flashing,
drops of mercy pouring from their eyes,
bolts of wisdom from their foreheads.

Gerald Stern :

Geoffrey Nutter

Busman’s Holiday

by GEOFFREY NUTTER
The grail, machined to sate
the common thirst of the common
man. The common man, grail
for geraniums. Under the stone

bridge of lions sultant past
the swans we floated in this
small boat. Even the new leaves
are steeped in cold dew,

cold and sweet as new day.
I’m sorry, but we distrust
your talk of a future: we live
now, and live as brothers, as

lovers. We don’t understand
our impulse, nor the cloud,
nor the color of the leaf,
nor the grail, nor the cloud,

nor the cloud. Nor do we thirst
for the wine of rebellion
or give them the vinegar
of comfort, nor begrudge them

their privileges, the busman’s
holiday, the pop opera. We are strong
as longshoremen, and as simple,
and as awful, and as brave, and as fearful.

W.S. Merwin

The Nomad Flute

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
oh breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again

Lisa Olstein

The Hypnotist's Daughter
The Hypnotist's Daughter
By Lisa Olstein b. 1972 Lisa Olstein
At the London Zoo a toddler falls over the rail
of the Primate World only if you close your eyes


and a female gorilla comes to sit by, to circle
her long dark arm around him only this one time


while the others stay away. The zookeeper says
she lost a baby earlier this year only just barely


and they’ve been waiting months for her tits to dry.
The boy’s mother watches from above


only when I say so the thirty minutes it takes
the right person to lower the right ladder down


only as a last resort. In the interim a newscaster
whose station carries it live only if you promise


not to let go reports that dolphins and sometimes
certain whales rescue people stranded at sea


only when I close my eyes lift them to the air
when they need breathing or swim them close enough


to land. In the interim I imagine the span of time
from when the smooth hard snout finds me


and begins to push only if you promise not to tell
to when we come into view of a shore only this once


any shore. In the interim I pray for what should come
to come. I pray for the cat to come out from under


the floorboards only every once in a while to come
down from the tall maple, to come back alive


only if you say so in one piece, still in her collar.
I pray to be saved, to be sent far away, to be


allowed to just stay home only another month or two
just stay home and erase the objects in each room


with my mind while holding them in my hands
only a matter of time now. I do want to hold them


in my hands, to hold them to my lungs by way
of deep breath only since July and a deeper sense


of inhalation. I pray for you only just this once
to press out from the small veins at the back of my eyes


only you back out into the world. I pray for you
to come and sit by me only a few more minutes now.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

A Lemon


Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Pablo Neruda :

Tomas Transtromer

Allegro

After a black day, I play Haydn,

and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.

The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists

and someone pays no tax to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets

and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:

“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;

rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house

but every pane of glass is still whole.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

10th Chorus Mexico City Blues



The great hanging weak teat of India
on the map
The Fingernail of Malaya
The Wall of China
The Korea Ti-Pousse Thumb
The Salamander Japan
the Okinawa Moon Spot
The Pacific
The Back of Hawaiian Mountains
coconuts
Kines, balconies, Ah Tarzan-
And D W Griffith
the great American Director
Strolling down disgruntled
Hollywood Lane
- to toot Nebraska,
Indian Village New York,
Atlantis, Rome,
Peleus and Melisander,
And

swans of Balls

Spots of foam on the ocean


Jack Kerouac

Lou Reed - Dirty Boulevard (live)

Lou Reed (1942-2013)

"Dirty Blvd."


Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
He looks out a window without glass
And the walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
And his father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg

He's got 9 brothers and sisters
They're brought up on their knees
It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
But that's a slim chance
He's going to the boulevard

He's gonna end up on the dirty boulevard
He's going out to the dirty boulevard
He's going down to the dirty boulevard

This room cost $2,000 a month
You can believe it, man, it's true
Somewhere there's a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants
No one dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses
Let's club 'em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

Get 'em out on the dirty boulevard
Goin' out to the dirty boulevard
They're going down on the dirty boulevard
Goin' out

Outside it's a bright night
There's an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the mean streets

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He's selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic's backed up to 39th Street
The TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
He's found a book on Magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures
And stares up at the cracked ceiling
"At the count of 3," he says,
"I hope I can disappear."

And fly, fly away from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly-fly-fly-fly from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly away
I want to fly
Fly, fly away
I want to fly
Fly, fly away
Fly, fly away
Fly, fly away
Fly, fly away
I want to fly

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

A Winter's Tale



Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.

I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

Why does she come so promptly, when she must know
That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow—
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?


David Herbert Lawrence

Linda Maria Baros

IN THE SNARE OF THE NOSTRILS

Dawn is a woman
who breaks your windows with her breasts
– reddened are the nipples
suckled on by tramps . . .

And there goes the tocsin for the hunt . . .
(Damned be Vlachka and her Teleorman!)

Prepare the drop, the raid!
The oubliette for the guests!
Set your snares!
Spatter your face with blood,
as if African masks from the sleepless nights
were flowing from your arteries!
Trap the red foxes in the snare of your nostrils!

But above all
prepare the drop, the raid.
Even if nobody comes.
Dawn – when solitude
seems to you like a brain curdled on the walls.

Margaret Atwood

In the Secular Night



In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.


Margaret Atwood

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

The Bull of Bendylaw
The black bull bellowed before the sea.
The sea, till that day orderly,
Hove up against Bendylaw.
The queen in the mulberry arbor stared
Stiff as a queen on a playing card.
The king fingered his beard.

A blue sea, four horny bull-feet,
A bull-snouted sea that wouldn't stay put,
Bucked at the garden gate.

Along box-lined walks in the florid sun
Toward the rowdy bellow and back again
The lords and ladies ran.

The great bronze gate began to crack,
The sea broke in at every crack,
Pellmell, blueblack.

The bull surged up, the bull surged down,
Not to be stayed by a daisy chain
Nor by any learned man.

O the king's tidy acre is under the sea,
And the royal rose in the bull's belly,
And the bull on the king's highway.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.


Ezra Pound

Allen Ginsburg (1926-1997)

An Asphodel


O dear sweet rosy
unattainable desire
...how sad, no way
to change the mad
cultivated asphodel, the
visible reality...

and skin's appalling
petals--how inspired
to be so Iying in the living
room drunk naked
and dreaming, in the absence
of electricity...
over and over eating the low root
of the asphodel,
gray fate...

rolling in generation
on the flowery couch
as on a bank in Arden--
my only rose tonite's the treat
of my own nudity.

Allen Ginsberg :

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989)

Psalm

What I do is poorly done,
what I sing is badly sung,
therefore you have a right
to my hands
and to my voice.
I will work with all my strength.
The harvest shall be yours.
I will sing the song of peoples long gone.
I will sing my people.
I will love.
Even criminals!
Together with the criminals and the unprotected
I will found a new homeland –
Despite all this, what I do is poorly done,
what I sing is badly sung.
Therefore you have a right
to my hands
and to my voice.

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

Bogland



for T. P. Flanagan

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.


Seamus Heaney

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Alone With Everybody



the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.



Charles Bukowski

Robert Service (1874-1958)

Comfort
Say! You’ve struck a heap of trouble –
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don’t care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you die –
Why, you’ve still the sunshine left you
And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it’s heaven shining through,
Earth is smiling ‘way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows –
Don’t you mope, you’ve still got these.

These, and none can take this from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! You’re tired and broke and beaten? –
Why, you’re rich – you’re got the earth!
Yes, if you’re a tramp in tatters,
While the blue sky bends above
You’ve got nearly all that matters –
You’ve got God, and God is love.

Seo Jeong-ju (1815-2000)

—
Painted by Kang Jang-won (Mudeung Mountain in Gwangju, Korea)

Gazing at Mudeung Mountain by Seo Jeong-ju

Poverty is no more than tattered rags.
Can it cloak our inborn flesh, our natural heart
like the summer mountain
that stands baring its dark green back to the dazzling sun?

As the green mountain tends to orchids under its knees,
all we can do is nurture our offspring.

Husbands and wives,
as you meet the afternoon
when life retreats and gets swept up in rough waves,
once in a while sit down,
once in a while lie next to each other.

Wives, gaze silently at your husbands.
Husbands, touch also your wives’ foreheads

Even when we lie in the pit of a thorn bush,
we should always remember that we are just gems, buried alone,
thickly covered with green moss.

Charles Simic

Hotel Insomnia



I liked my little hole,
Its window facing a brick wall.
Next door there was a piano.
A few evenings a month
a crippled old man came to play
"My Blue Heaven."

Mostly, though, it was quiet.
Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat
Catching his fly with a web
Of cigarette smoke and revery.
So dark,
I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.

At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.
The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,
Whose storefront is on the corner,
Going to pee after a night of love.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself.


Charles Simic

Leonard Cohen

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye


I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

Leonard Cohen :

David Ignatow (1914-1997)

An Ecology


We drop in the evening like dew
upon the ground and the living
feel it on their faces. Death
soft, moist everywhere upon us,
soon to cover the living
as they drop. This explains
the ocean and the sun.

David Ignatow :

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

A DEEP-SWORN VOW

OTHERS because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

26

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;
To thee I send this written embassage
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

J. Patrick Lewis

You Learn By Living

By J. Patrick Lewis b. 1942
for Eleanor Roosevelt

Who showed the world the world itself
Was awkward, shy and plain.
A high-born leader in a long,
Low decade full of pain.


Poor farmers, blacks, homeless, the least
Advantaged hoped to see,
Magnificently unarrayed,
Pure human dignity.


A lady first, the great first lady
Looked fear in the face,
And said, There is no room for fear
When courage take its place.

Joan Logghe

from "The Rice Sonnets"


You gave me a love bite the week
I turned fifty, and I became like
all other women. The woman at Thrift-
way Gas. The woman who works
at Walgreen's whose mother works at
Walgreen's also. The women named for stars
and those named for hope. Women who love God
and worship inside and outside churches.

Those women who stand outside the house
and weep, and those whose body has failed
them and those who have failed their bodies.
All of these, bitten by love, as I
have been unbeknownst to me on the week
I turned fifty.


Copyright © 1998 Joan Logghe.

Marina Tsvetaeva 1892-1941)

x x x


The street awakens. She looks, exhausted
With the mute windows' sullen eyes,
On sleepy faces, red from the cold,
That with thoughts chase the stubborn sleep away.
The blackened trees with rime are covered -
With trace mysterious of the night's fun,
In gleaming brocade sad ones are standing,
Just like the dead the alive among.
The gray coat mingles, trampled upon,
The forage-cup with a wreathe, a bored look,
And the red arms, pressed to the ears,
And the black apron with the tied books.
The street awakens. She looks, unpleasant
With mute windows' sullen eyes, it would seem.
To sleep, in a happy thought be forgotten,
What life seems to us, this is a dream!

James Joyce (1882-1941)

Tutto è Sciolto
Tutto è Sciolto
By James Joyce 1882–1941 James Joyce
A birdless heaven, sea-dusk and a star
Sad in the west;
And thou, poor heart, love’s image, fond and far,
Rememberest:


Her silent eyes and her soft foam-white brow
And fragrant hair,
Falling as in the silence falleth now
Dusk from the air.


Ah, why wilt thou remember these, or why,
Poor heart, repine,
If the sweet love she yielded with a sigh
Was never thine?

Originally published in Poetry, May 1917.