Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

Reading Hamlet

To the right, wasteland by the cemetery,
beyond it the river’s dull blue.
You said: ‘Go, get thee, to a nunnery
or get a fool to marry you…’

Though that’s always how Princes speak,
still, I’ve remembered the words.
As an ermine mantle let them stream,
behind him, through endless years.

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

A Song On The End Of The World
.
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.


And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.


Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Czeslaw Milosz

Michael Crummey

Rivers/Roads

Michael Crummey
From: Arguments With Gravity. Kingston, Ont.: Quarry Press, 1996.


I thought I was following a track of freedom
and for awhile it was
Adrienne Rich

Consider the earnestness of pavement
its dark elegant sheen after rain,
its insistence on leading you somewhere

A highway wants to own the landscape,
it sections prairie into neat squares
swallows mile after mile of countryside
to connect the dots of cities and towns,
to make sense of things

A river is less opinionated
less predictable
it never argues with gravity
its history is a series of delicate negotiations with
time and geography

Wet your feet all you want
Hericlitus says,
it's never the river you remember;
a road repeats itself incessantly
obsessed with its own small truth,
it wants you to believe in something particular

The destination you have in mind when you set out
is nowhere you have ever been;
where you arrive finally depends on
how you get there,
by river or by road

Wislawa Symborska

The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

San Juan de la Cruz

Spiritual Verses


Seeking love always
with hope that cannot falter
I flew ever higher
till I overtook my prey.



So I might seize the prey
in this divine venture
I flew ever higher
from sight was forced to stray,

yet love so far did fly
that though in my flight
I faltered in the height
I caught the prey on high.



II

As higher I ascended
so the hardest conquest
came about in darkness,
all my sight was dazzled:

yet since love was my prey
from blind dark a leaper
I flew on ever higher
till I overtook the prey.



III
In this highest game,
the further I ascended
the humbler, more subdued
more abased I became.

‘None attains it’, I did say.
I sank down lower, lower,
yet I rose higher, higher
and so I took the prey.



IV
My one flight in strange manner
surpassed a hundred thousand
for the hope of highest heaven
attains the end it hopes for:

there hope alone did fly
unfaltering in the height:
hope, seeking in its flight,
I caught the prey on high.

Miquel Hernadez (1910-1942)

‘Because Of Your Feet, Where Your Beauty Ends’
(VIII: From ‘El Rayo Que No Cesa’)



Because of your feet, where your beauty ends
in ten fragments of whiteness, more a dance,

a dove ascends to your waist,

an unending balm falls to earth.



Along with your feet goes the wonder

of nacre, in a ridiculous narrowness,

and where your feet go whiteness goes,

a dog sowing anklets of jasmine.



At your feet, as much foam as shore,

sand and sea reach me, and ebb from me,

and I try to enter the sheepfold of your sole.



I enter and let myself pass to your soul itself,

with the loving voice of the grapes:

trample my heart, now it’s ripe.

Lisa Zaran

Girl by Lisa Zaran
.
She said she collects pieces of sky,
cuts holes out of it with silver scissors,
bits of heaven she calls them.
Every day a bevy of birds flies rings
around her fingers, my chorus of wives,
she calls them. Every day she reads poetry
from dusty books she borrows from the library,
sitting in the park, she smiles at passing strangers,
yet can not seem to shake her own sad feelings.
She said that night reminds her of a cool hand
placed gently across her fevered brow, said
she likes to fall asleep beneath the stars,
that their streaks of light make her believe
that she too is going somewhere. Infinity,
she whispers as she closes her eyes,
descending into thin air, where no arms
outstretch to catch her.