Xavier Villaurrutia (1903-1950)

Rose Nocturne                            To José Gorostiza
I, too, speak of the rose.
But my rose is not the cold rose
nor the rose of a child’s skin,
nor the rose that winds
so slowly that its motion
is a mysterious stillness.
It is not the thirsty rose,
nor the gory wound,
nor the rose crowned with thorns,
nor the rose of resurrection.
It is not the nose of naked petals,
not the waxen rose,
nor the flame of silk
not the blazing rose.
Nor is it the weathervane rose,
the secret ulcer,
nor the punctual rose that gives the hour
not the marine compass rose.
No, it is not the rose rose,
but the uncreated rose,
the sunken rose,
the night rose
the immaterial rose,
the empty rose
It is the rose of touch in the dark,
it is the rose that comes on inflamed,
the rose of rosy finger-nails,
the rosebud of eager fingers,
the digital rose,
the blind rose.
It is the rose molding of the ear,
the rose ear,
the spiral of sound,
the rose shell ever abandoned
on the highest froth of the pillow.
It is the flesh rose of the mouth,
the rose that speaks awake
as if it were asleep.
It is the half-opened rose
from which shadow rises,
the intimate rose
that folds up and expands
evoked, invoked, seized in the mouth,
it is the labial rose,
the wounded rose.
It is the rose that opens the eyelids,
the vigilant, sleepless rose,
the strained-eyed rose of insomnia.
It is the rose of smoke,
the rose of ash,
the black rose of diamond coal
that silently pierces the dark
and occupies no place in space.

Februrary 24, 1937

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

The Blue Angel - Poem by Allen Ginsberg

Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament
for mechanical love.
She leans against a mortarboard tree
on a plateau by the seashore.

She's a life-sized toy,
the doll of eternity;
her hair is shaped like an abstract hat
made out of white steel.

Her face is powdered, whitewashed and
immobile like a robot.
Jutting out of her temple, by an eye,
is a little white key.

She gazes through dull blue pupils
set in the whites of her eyes.
She closes them, and the key
turns by itself.

She opens her eyes, and they're blank
like a statue's in a museum.
Her machine begins to move, the key turns
again, her eyes change, she sings.

—you'd think I would have thought a plan
to end the inner grind,
but not till I have found a man
to occupy my mind.

Allen Ginsberg

Kacper Bartczak (b.1972)

Beyond the Helplessness Principle

 

Something will occur and at once it will be found

among other occurrences I know

that the heaviest dreams are only an illusion

I know it from experience I see my own

experience now that it is over

Of course it is still alive statistical

and divine

 

Later on the poem

does not ask me any questions

about my wife kids work and photography

I just let it drink

from the well Your water

is hard clear with a note of iron

it says and it drinks greedily

like some kind of refugee

heretic

 
Translated by the author and Marit MacArthur

Marie Ponsot (b.1921)

Springing

Marie Ponsot, 1921

In a skiff on a sunrisen lake we are watchers.

Swimming aimlessly is luxury just as walking 
loudly up a shallow stream is.

As we lean over the deep well, we whisper.

Friends at hearths are drawn to the one warm air; 
strangers meet on beaches drawn to the one wet sea.

What wd it be to be water, one body of water 
(what water is is another mystery) (We are 
water divided.) It wd be a self without walls, 
with surface tension, specific gravity a local
exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising, 
rising to fall, falling to rise.

(1962)

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.

 

Jorge Luis Borges :

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Pastoral

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

The little sparrows
Hop ingenuously
About the pavement
Quarreling
With sharp voices
Over those things
That interest them.
But we who are wiser
Shut ourselves in
On either hand
And no one knows
Whether we think good
Or evil.
                  Then again,
The old man who goes about
Gathering dog lime
Walks in the gutter
Without looking up
And his tread
Is more majestic than
That of the Episcopal minister
Approaching the pulpit
Of a Sunday.
These things
Astonish me beyond words.

This poem is in the public domain. 

This poem is in the public

Chris Andrews

Strange Perfecter
Who was that strange perfecter occasionally
stepping in to give my life a sideways nudge?
Or was it just a series of accidents?
Despite the multiplying data there’s not
necessarily anyone on your case
in a world where biometric differences
can cover up the gulf that is fixed between
darlings of Morpheus and insomniacs
strapped into the home theatre of their thought,
or between people who feel that the real life
is intimated by bare, windswept uplands
and those who want to live where rhinoplasty
is already as normal as filling teeth.

I was the perfect stranger continually
stumbling by chance back into my life to find
it was getting on pretty well without me
in a world where what people wear correlates
poorly with what they’re capable of doing
to someone who’ll never be useful to them,
where some can sing an ache to sleep and others
are quite sure they know what intelligence is.