Ravi Shankar

Buzzards

By Ravi Shankar b. 1975 Ravi Shankar      

 

Gregarious in hunger, a flock of twenty

turn circles like whorls of barbed wire,

no spot below flown over uncanvassed.

The closer to death the closer they come,

waiting on wings with keen impatient

perseverance, dark blades lying in wake

until age or wound has turned canter

into carcass or near enough for them

to swoop scrupulous in benediction,

land hissing, hopping, tearing, gorging.

no portion, save bone, too durable

to digest. What matters cannot remain.

Marilyn Chin

Get Rid of the X

By Marilyn Chin b. 1955 Marilyn Chin

My shadow followed me to San Diego

   silently, she never complained.

No green card, no identity pass,

   she is wedded to my fate.

The moon is a drunk and anorectic,

   constantly reeling, changing weight.

My shadow dances grotesquely,

   resentful she can't leave me.

The moon mourns his unwritten novels,

   cries naked into the trees and fades.

Tomorrow, he'll return to beat me

   blue—again, again and again.

Goodbye Moon, goodbye Shadow.

   My husband, my lover, I'm late.

The sun will plunge through the window.

   I must make my leap of faith.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

By Pablo Neruda 1904–1973 Pablo Neruda    

Translated By Robin Robertson Read the translator's notes

Here,   

among the market vegetables,

this torpedo

from the ocean   

depths,   

a missile   

that swam,

now   

lying in front of me

dead.

Surrounded

by the earth's green froth   

—these lettuces,

bunches of carrots—

only you   

lived through

the sea's truth, survived

the unknown, the

unfathomable

darkness, the depths   

of the sea,

the great   

abyss,

le grand abîme,

only you:   

varnished

black-pitched   

witness

to that deepest night.

Only you:

dark bullet

barreled   

from the depths,

carrying   

only   

your   

one wound,

but resurgent,

always renewed,

locked into the current,

fins fletched

like wings

in the torrent,

in the coursing

of

the

underwater

dark,

like a grieving arrow,

sea-javelin, a nerveless   

oiled harpoon.

Dead

in front of me,

catafalqued king

of my own ocean;

once   

sappy as a sprung fir

in the green turmoil,

once seed

to sea-quake,

tidal wave, now

simply

dead remains;

in the whole market

yours   

was the only shape left

with purpose or direction

in this   

jumbled ruin

of nature;

you are   

a solitary man of war

among these frail vegetables,

your flanks and prow

black   

and slippery

as if you were still

a well-oiled ship of the wind,

the only

true

machine

of the sea: unflawed,

undefiled,   

navigating now

the waters of death.

Harold Pinter

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Harold Pinter

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

Horst Judith

John Brockington

Alice Major

The moon of magpies quarrelling

Alice Major
From:   Tales for an Urban Sky. Fredricton: Broken Jaw Press, 2001.

shimmers in the pale sky of early morning
like a court reporter's screen. It records
the magpies' proceedings - litigious birds
with ermine draped across their glossy shoulders,
their bellies drooped in prosperous curves.
They introduce their offspring to the court's
attention in harsh, good-natured voices.
They teach their fledglings legalese, the value
of bright shiny objects and their importance
in the scheme of branches.
                                   They do not mean to be
so handsome, so much bigger than the other
birds, or to have such clever eyes. It's just
the way things are, they tell
judiciously brightening skies.

Al Purdy (1918-2000)

Married Man's Song

Al Purdy
From:   Beyond Remembering - The collected poems of Al Purdy. 2000.

When he makes love to the young girl
what does the middle-aged long-married
man say to himself and the girl?
— that lovers live and desk clerks perish?

When neons flash the girl into light and shadow
the room vanishes and all those others
guests who checked out long ago
are smiling
and only the darkness of her may be touched
only the whiteness looked at
she stands above him as a stone goddess
weeping tears and honey
she is half his age and far older
and how can a man tell his wife this?

Later they'll meet in all politeness
not quite strangers but never friends
and hands touched elsewhere may shake together
with brush of fingers and casual eyes
and the cleanser cleans to magic whiteness
and love survives in the worst cologne
(but not girls' bodies that turn black leather)
for all believe in the admen's lies

In rare cases among the legions of married men
such moments of shining have never happened
and whether to praise such men for their steadfast virtue
or condemn them as fools for living without magic
answer can hardly be given

There are rooms for rent in the outer planets
and neons blaze in Floral Sask
we live with death but it's life we die with
in the blossoming earth where springs the rose
In house and highway in town and country
what's given is paid for blood gifts are sold
that stars' white fingers unscrew the light bulbs
the bill is due and the desk clerk wakes
outside our door the steps are quiet
light comes and goes from a ghostly sun
where only the darkness may be remembered
and the rest is gone

Ron English

Charlie Parker (1920-1955)

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you that music has boundaries. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.”
― Charlie Parker

Nicanor Para

Acacias

Strolling many years ago

Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom

I found out from a friend who knows everything

That you had just gotten married.

I told him that I really

Had nothing to do with it.

I never loved you

— You know that better than I do —

Yet each time the acacias bloom

— Can you believe it? —

I get the very same feeling I had

When they hit me point-blank

With the heartbreaking news

That you had married someone else.

Tristan Eaton

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The Rolling Saint

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for
            four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for
            world peace and eternal salvation.                                                   
                                                                —Reuters

He started small: fasting here and there,

days, then weeks. Once, he stood under

a banyan tree for a full seven years, sitting

            for nothing—not even to sleep. It came

            to him in a dream: You must roll

            on this earth, spin your heart in rain,

                        desert, dust. At sunrise he’d stretch, swab

                        any cuts from the day before, and lay prone

                        on the road while his twelve men swept

            the ground in front of him with sisal brooms.

            Even monkeys stopped and stared at this man

            rolling through puddles, past storefronts

where children would throw him pieces

of butter candy he’d try and catch

in his mouth at each rotation. His men

            swept and sang, swept and sang

            of jasmine-throated angels

            and pineapple slices in kulfi cream.

                        He rolled and rolled. Sometimes

                        in his dizzying spins, he thought

                        he heard God. A whisper, but still.

Margaret Atwood

Flying Inside Your Own Body

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
down on the think pink rind of your skull.
It’s always the moment just before gunshot.
You try & try to rise but you cannot.

Margaret Atwood :

Jan Van Kessell

Elisabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnet 14 - If thou must love me, let it be for nought

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning :

St Teresa (1515-1582)

LAUGHTER CAME FROM EVERY BRICK

Just these two words He spoke
changed my life,
“Enjoy Me.”
What a burden I thought I was to carry -
a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me, “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore
in the sky.
After a night of prayer, He
changed my life when
He sang,
“Enjoy Me.”

Natasha Bieniek

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)

I Have Folded My Sorrows
I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its alloted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingles hippo becomes the gay unicorn.
No, my traffic is not addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters. Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.

Charles Simic

The School Of Metaphysics

Executioner happy to explain
How his wristwatch works
As he shadows me on the street.
I call him that because he is grim and officious
And wears black.

The clock on the church tower
Had stopped at five to eleven.
The morning newspapers had no date.
The gray building on the corner
Could've been a state pen,

And then he showed up with his watch,
Whose Gothic numerals
And the absence of hands
He wanted me to understand
Right then and there.

Charles Simic :

John John Jesse

Stephane Blanquet

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

A Bridal Song

I.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down,--
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,--
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;--
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

II.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,—ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

Percy Bysshe Shelley :

Evelyn De Morgan

Lorraine Schechter

Gifts

by

Lorraine Schechter

a Sung landscape, mountains
extending into stillness
broken by the light tremolo
of a lark on a branch
drawn with a single stroke,

a house filled with roses
yellow dipped in the same sunset
as the Sangre de Cristos,

mums so opulent, their spidery reach
makes nests for hovering butterflies,
bees painted yellow with nectar,

pansies, the color of cream
the orange of dried blood ready to plant
inviting the garden into full bloom,

a celadon cup, the throaty
music of Nina Simone, ripe
strawberries hand dipped in white,
then dark chocolate, its drip
caught in the drying.

Tu Fu said a good rain knows its season—
a photograph of the first buds
of Spring wet with rain.

Jay Ruzesky

Sergei Krikalev on the Space Station Mir

Jay Ruzesky
From:   Painting The Yellow House Blue. Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi Press, 1994.

                                this is for those people
                                that hover and hover
                                and die in the ether peripheries
                                --Michael Ondaatje, "White Dwarfs"

My name is Sergei and
my body is a balloon.
I want to come down. I
tie myself to things.

My eyes try to describe your
face, they have forgotten.
My ears echo your voice.

I am a star, you can
see me skating on
the dome of night. My blades
catch sun from
the other side of earth.

Days last an hour and a half.
No one else lives here.
My country has disappeared,
I do not know where home is.

I am a painter standing back.
I watch clouds heave like cream
spilled in tea, I see
the burning parrot feathers
of the Amazon forests,
ranges of mountains are
scales along the hide
of the planet, the oceans
are my only sky.

This is my refuge. There is
no one else near me.
Do you understand what that means?

Elena, I am
cold up here.
I hang over Moscow and
imagine you in our flat
feeding little Olga
in a messy chair.
When I drift out of signal range
I do things you
don't want to hear about.

These feet do not know
my weight. A slow
balloon bounces off the walls.
I do not feel like I am flying.

I want to come back and
swim in your hair.
I want to smell you.
I want to arrive in the world
and know my place.
Think of me. I am yours adrift.

Let me describe
my universe: I can see for years.

Innokenty Annensky (1855-1909)

On the Water

Meadows, clouds, water say
Say they're bewitched by a yellow moon;
Silver surface, silver distance
Above me, before me....

To regret nothing, desire nothing....
If only the witch's mask glowed
And her fable glided to silver
Distance on silver surface....

Lorraine Shecter

 Mid-morning. The hummingbirds
out before the sun rose
singing ruby throated songs
flitting from tree to tree
with the unmistakable humm
have disappeared and the cicadas at center stage, their hearts
ignited by the sun's heat
rub their feet together
so vigorously all other sounds fade,
even the chain saws have stopped.
In this non-silence cicada-song
amplifies into a single white note
a hallucination in the blinding light.

Yesterday I complained of the saws
and compressors, all that energy
bouncing off the bare mountain
bare beneath the dead trees
towering in their charred splendor
remnants of a forest burned
in a tidal wave of fire.
The cicadas hover above the new growth
a river of oaks, oh so many
even the old paths are washed away.
The counterpoint of lush green growth
and stiletto black stalks of Ponderosas
is a cacophony of life and death
broken by a butterfly, a monarch,
yellow and black with her elegant flutter
floating in between,
the dead branches of the pinons
a white calligraphy against the mountain's curve.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

-   Thomas Merton

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)

“I hope that when machines finally take over, they won't build men that break down, as soon as they're paid for.”
― Bob Kaufman, Golden Sardine    

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

Hymn to Lucifer

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden's imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

 

Aleister Crowley :