HELENA KAMINSKI

"Face"

____________________

Eye is late.

Got stopped in the a.m.

Got roughed up.

Had its camera smashed.

Rumored shot.

Rumored released.

Ear taped downtown, today.

But it’s due back.

Just press “jungle” rewind and play.

Lip lies back on its unmade bed.

Don’t shrug at me.

Where are they?

Eye took much shit.

Often, reporting back,

Got cut off before getting to the

Crux of what it saw.

Ear talented. Talented. Maybe bionic.

Dogs lined up for lessons.

The day eye played it its video

Of mouth yapping about “Life”

As a School for the

Deaf, ear burst, and underwent

A slow, shocked healing.

Neighbours say

Things went on

That can’t go on

Within a skull.

Why the waste

God why?

Mouth won

Because eye watched

Ear watch mouth

Bulldoze them both.

A writer wrote,

“This is where war turned civil.”

Did the bush, grey with road dust

Kneel in near-defeat?

Did the sky mutter

Its crisis?

Don’t remember.

Was mouth good or pretty

Bad? Was it

Don’t remember.

Mouth, like Fidel

Spoke for five hours.

It’s late.

It’s very late.

Damn it. 

Who’s in charge?

Lip lies back

Along the face,

Dazed body at the beach

On its pale towel.

Why aren’t they

Where could

Ask mouth.

Mouth is boss.

LANGSTON HUGHES

"Democracy"

____________________

Democracy will not come

Today, this year

Nor ever

Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right

As the other fellow has

To stand

On my two feet

And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course.

Tomorrow is another day.

I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom

Is a strong seed

Planted

In a great need.

I live here, too.

I want freedom

Just as you.

FENTON JOHNSON

"Revery"

____________________

              1.

I was the starlight

I was the moonlight

I was the sunset,

Before the dawning

          Of my life;

I was the river

Forever winding

To purple dreaming,

I was the glowing

Of youthful Springtime,

I was the singing

Of golden songbirds,—

        I was love.

            2.

I was the sunlight,

I was the twilight, 

I was the humming

Of winged creatures

    Ere my birth;

I was the blushing

Of lily maiden,

I was the vision

Of youthful striving,

I was the summer,

I was the autumn,

I was the All-time—

      I was love.

TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER

"The Half-Finished Heaven"

____________________

Despondency breaks off its course.

Anguish breaks off its course.

The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,

even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,

our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.

We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door

leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

PAUL CELAN

"Love Crown"

____________________

Now autumn nibbles its leaf from my hand: we are friends.

We take time out of a nutshell and teach it how to go:

time turns and goes back into its shell.

Now in the mirror it is Sunday,

in the dream there is a place for the calm of sleep,

in the mouth, the taste of truth.

My eye moves down the belly of my love:

we see one another,

we speak the darkness to ourselves,

we love one another like poppy and remembrance,

we sleep like the liquor in seashells,

like the ocean in the bloodbeams of the moon.

We stand at the window embracing, they see us from the street,

it is time they knew!

It is time that the stone let itself break into flower,

that the unresting heart beat.

It is time there was time.

It is time.

Translated by Robert Pinsky

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON

"Thought"

____________________

A swift, successive chain of things,

That flash, kaleidoscope-like, now in, now out,

Now straight, now eddying in wild rings,

No order, neither law, compels their moves,

But endless, constant, always swiftly roves.

E. E. CUMMINGS

[since feeling is first]

____________________

since feeling is first

who pays any attention 

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate 

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

MARGARET ATWOOD

"Variation On The Word Sleep"

____________________

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and as you enter

it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

"To Say For Going To Sleep"

____________________

I would like to sing someone to sleep,

by someone to sit and be,

I would like to rock you and croon you to sleep

and attend you in slumber and out.

I would like to be the only one in the house

who would know: The night was cold.

And you would like to hearken within and without

to you, to the world, to the woods,—

The clocks call striking to each other,

and one sees to the bottom of time.

And below a strange man passes yet

and rouses a strange dog.

Behind that comes stillness. I have laid

my eyes upon you wide;

they hold you gently and let you go

when something stirs in the dark.

Translated by M.D. Hester Norton

LUCILLE CLIFTON

"Quotations from Aunt Margaret Brown"

____________________

Abraham Lincoln 

just like my Daddy; 

dead.

White men

just walking all on the moon, 

he go where he want to go.

Talk about Columbus,

I tell you who discovered America;

Martin Luther King

that’s who.

DOROTHY PARKER

"Verse For a Certain Dog"

____________________

Such glorious faith as fills your limpid eyes,

Dear little friend of mine, I never knew.

All-innocent are you, and yet all-wise.

(For Heaven's sake, stop worrying that shoe!)

You look about, and all you see is fair;

This mighty globe was made for you alone.

Of all the thunderous ages, you're the heir.

(Get off the pillow with that dirty bone!)

A skeptic world you face with steady gaze;

High in young pride you hold your noble head,

Gayly you meet the rush of roaring days.

(Must you eat puppy biscuit on the bed?)

Lancelike your courage, gleaming swift and strong,

Yours the white rapture of a winged soul,

Yours is a spirit like a Mayday song.

(God help you, if you break the goldfish bowl!)

"Whatever is, is good"; your gracious creed.

You wear your joy of living like a crown.

Love lights your simplest act, your every deed.

(Drop it, I tell you- put that kitten down!)

You are God's kindliest gift of all; a friend.

Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt,

You ask but leave to follow to the end.

(Couldn't you wait until I took you out?)

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LUCILLE CLIFTON  1965-2010

____________________

Lucille Clifton

JOHN ASHBERY

"O Fortuna"

____________________

Good luck! Best wishes! The best of luck! 

The very best! Godspeed! God bless you! 

Peace be with you!

May your shadow never be less!

We can see through to the other side,

you see. It’s your problem, we know,

but I can’t help feeling a little envious.

What if darkness became unhinged right now? 

Boomingly, swimmingly one remounts the current. 

Here is where the shade was, the suggestion of flowers, 

and peace, in another place.

Our competition is like tools of a certain order.

No one would have found them useful at first.

It wasn’t until a real emergency arose, that someone 

had the sense to recognize for what it was.

All hell didn’t break loose, it was like a rising psalm 

materializing like snow on an unseen mountain.

All that was underfoot was good, but lost.

MATSUO BASHŌ

"Taking a nap"

____________________

Taking a nap,

feet planted

against a cool wall.

LI PO

"On Ascending the Sin-Ping Tower"

____________________

An exile, I ascend this tower.

Thinking of home, and with the anguish of the waning year

The sun has set far beyond heaven's immensity;

The unsullied waters flow on in bleak undulation.

I see a stray cloud of Chin above the mountain trees,

And the wild geese of Tartary flying over the river dunes. 

Alas! for ten thousand miles under the dark blue sky

As far as my eyes can reach, there is but one vast gloom for me.

JOHN GARDNER

From Jason and Medeia

____________________

            He moons out the

     window, sad

     as a priest, and she’s impressed by it. — Oh my but

     that boy

     can be pretty, when he likes! He kisses her hand and

     tells her, “Do not

     be afraid, Mother. I’m doing what the gods demand.

     The omens

     show it. We used to be rich, Mother. Now that

     we’re poor,

     we ought to have learned that nothing counts but the

     gods’ friendship.

     Let me serve them; then when you die, you’ll die in

     peace,

     whether I’m near or not. You’ve told me yourself,

     Mother,

     that all there is in the world, at last, is the war or peace of dying men

and the old undying gods. The omens favor the trip. I must go.” And he 

kisses her cheeks.

     Ah, Jason!

     Cunning burled so deep he can’t see it himself! Omens! Did he ask his

friends the augurers what omens they see for his mother? Or Pelias? Or the

city? Would that the

     birdsongs sang

     his death!’

     And then she was gone; her black shawl

     vanished in the crowd.

     My throat was dry with shame. I was numb. I stood 

     too stunned

     to think. If I could have summoned speech that instant,

     I might

     have called it off on the spot, to hell with the

     consequences.

     But then, from nowhere, a man appeared at my side,

     a man—

     or god, who knows? — hooded till only his beard

     peeked out.

EHSAN SEHGAL

"I Am the Mystery"

____________________

I am the mystery

I feel, I see

Invisible from visible,

Visible from invisible

I let that happen

I hear

The meaningless voices

My power of thoughts

My strength of spirit

Dress up the voices

My heart inspires

And discloses

The secrets

The hidden subjects

My prayers do

Disable to work

And oust

The awkward objects,

People become surprised

I am the mystery

I feel, I see.

MARGARET ATWOOD

"Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing"

____________________

The world is full of women

who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself

if they had the chance. Quit dancing.

Get some self-respect

and a day job.

Right. And minimum wage,

and varicose veins, just standing

in one place for eight hours

behind a glass counter

bundled up to the neck, instead of

naked as a meat sandwich.

Selling gloves, or something.

Instead of what I do sell.

You have to have talent

to peddle a thing so nebulous

and without material form.

Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way

you cut it, but I've a choice

of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.

Like preachers, I sell vision,

like perfume ads, desire

or its facsimile. Like jokes

or war, it's all in the timing.

I sell men back their worse suspicions:

that everything's for sale,

and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see

a chain-saw murder just before it happens,

when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple

are still connected.

Such hatred leaps in them,

my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary

hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads

and upturned eyes, imploring

but ready to snap at my ankles,

I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge

to step on ants. I keep the beat,

and dance for them because

they can't. The music smells like foxes,

crisp as heated metal

searing the nostrils

or humid as August, hazy and languorous

as a looted city the day after,

when all the rape's been done

already, and the killing,

and the survivors wander around

looking for garbage

to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it's the smiling

tires me out the most.

This, and the pretence

that I can't hear them.

And I can't, because I'm after all

a foreigner to them.

The speech here is all warty gutturals,

obvious as a slab of ham,

but I come from the province of the gods

where meanings are lilting and oblique.

I don't let on to everyone,

but lean close, and I'll whisper:

My mother was raped by a holy swan.

You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.

That's what we tell all the husbands.

There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here

but you would understand.

The rest of them would like to watch me

and feel nothing. Reduce me to components

as in a clock factory or abattoir.

Crush out the mystery.

Wall me up alive

in my own body.

They'd like to see through me,

but nothing is more opaque

than absolute transparency.

Look--my feet don't hit the marble!

Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,

I hover six inches in the air

in my blazing swan-egg of light.

You think I'm not a goddess?

Try me.

This is a torch song.

Touch me and you'll burn.

E. PAULINE JOHNSON

"Through Time and Bitter Distance"

____________________

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore. 

   The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine, 

May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war, 

   Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine, 

That I have sought, reflected in the blue 

    Of these sea depths, some shadow of your eyes; 

Have hoped the laughing waves would sing of you, 

   But this is all my starving sight descries—

I.

Far out at sea a sail 

    Bends to the freshening breeze, 

Yields to the rising gale, 

    That sweeps the seas; 

II. 

Yields, as a bird wind-tossed, 

    To saltish waves that fling 

Their spray, whose rime and frost

    Like crystals cling

III. 

To canvas, mast and spar, 

   Till, gleaming like a gem, 

She sinks beyond the far

   Horizon’s hem. 

IV. 

Lost to my longing sight, 

    And nothing left to me

Save an oncoming night,—

    An empty sea.

HEDD WYN (Ellis Evans)

"Rhyfel [War]"

____________________

Original Welsh:

Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,

   A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;

O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,

   Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw

   Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;

Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,

   A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt

   Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,

A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,

   A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.

  

A literal English translation by Wade Dowdell:

Woe is me that I live in an age so boorish,

   And God at ebb on a distant horizon;

After him, man, (both) lord and commoner,

    Raising his ugly authority.

When he felt God's going away

   He raised a sword to kill his brother;

The sound of battle is on our ear,

   And its shadow on poor cottages.

The old harps that were played before are

   Suspended on the branches of yonder willows,

And the scream of the boys filling the wind,

   And their blood mixed with the rain.

JAMES OPPENHEIM

"Self"

____________________

Once I freed myself of my duties to tasks and people and went down to the cleansing sea...

The air was like wine to my spirit,

The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,

The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,

And the ocean—masses of molten surfaces, faintly

      gray-blue—sang to my heart...

Then I found myself, all here in the body and brain, and all there on the shore:

Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged:

Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of space.

And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers and sisters)

And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, street-cars and greetings,

I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and people,

And entering in and possessing them, more than a brother,

The surge of all life in them and in me...

So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)

And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but would take myself as my mate,

Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be:

Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of talk,

Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till death.