Poems that you love

[ellajam]

^^What fun to read. Thanks for posting it.

[Leanne]

We had haggis, clapshot and rumbledethumps -- it was glorious. All our whisky seems to have evaporated in the heat.

Because today is Australia Day, we have Scotstralia Day in our house and make it a joint celebration of Burns' poetry and that of my own favourite, Banjo Paterson.

The Old Australian Ways by Banjo Paterson

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind --
The good old land of `never mind',
And old Australian ways.


The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.


The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and sweet
Of wild birds making melodies,
Nor catch the little laughing breeze
That whispers in the wheat.


Our fathers came of roving stock
That could not fixed abide:
And we have followed field and flock
Since e'er we learnt to ride;
By miner's camp and shearing shed,
In land of heat and drought,
We followed where our fortunes led,
With fortune always on ahead
And always further out.


The wind is in the barley-grass,
The wattles are in bloom;
The breezes greet us as they pass
With honey-sweet perfume;
The parakeets go screaming by
With flash of golden wing,
And from the swamp the wild-ducks cry
Their long-drawn note of revelry,
Rejoicing at the Spring.


So throw the weary pen aside
And let the papers rest,
For we must saddle up and ride
Towards the blue hill's breast;
And we must travel far and fast
Across their rugged maze,
To find the Spring of Youth at last,
And call back from the buried past
The old Australian ways.


When Clancy took the drover's track
In years of long ago,
He drifted to the outer back
Beyond the Overflow;
By rolling plain and rocky shelf,
With stockwhip in his hand,
He reached at last, oh lucky elf,
The Town of Come-and-help-yourself
In Rough-and-ready Land.


And if it be that you would know
The tracks he used to ride,
Then you must saddle up and go
Beyond the Queensland side --
Beyond the reach of rule or law,
To ride the long day through,
In Nature's homestead -- filled with awe
You then might see what Clancy saw
And know what Clancy knew.

[Magpie]

We had haggis, clapshot and rumbledethumps -- 

Such a show off Leanne 
I merely had haggis, neeps and tatties.

Thanks for culinary education and the introduction to Banjo Paterson.

Happy Scotstralia Day

[RiverNotch]

wow, tha piece is a comfort! it widened my breath -- kinda like listening to Stan Rogers's Northwest Passage. you colonials always make the most expansive pieces, when celebrating your nation -- americans, brits, they're much too cosmopolitan.
our colonial history is spanish american, and really the only english piece i remember deali g with that is the white man's burden, oh joy (xD). i really need to keep reading through that book i have of filipino poetry in english, i'm so out of touch ----

We had haggis, clapshot and rumbledethumps -- it was glorious.  All our whisky seems to have evaporated in the heat.

Because today is Australia Day, we have Scotstralia Day in our house and make it a joint celebration of Burns' poetry and that of my own favourite, Banjo Paterson.  

The Old Australian Ways by Banjo Paterson

The London lights are far abeam
  Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
  The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
  We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind --
The good old land of `never mind',
  And old Australian ways.


The narrow ways of English folk
  Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
  Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
  And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
  And westward of the suns.


The city folk go to and fro
  Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
  And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
  The music low and sweet
Of wild birds making melodies,
Nor catch the little laughing breeze
  That whispers in the wheat.


Our fathers came of roving stock
  That could not fixed abide:
And we have followed field and flock
  Since e'er we learnt to ride;
By miner's camp and shearing shed,
  In land of heat and drought,
We followed where our fortunes led,
With fortune always on ahead
  And always further out.


The wind is in the barley-grass,
  The wattles are in bloom;
The breezes greet us as they pass
  With honey-sweet perfume;
The parakeets go screaming by
  With flash of golden wing,
And from the swamp the wild-ducks cry
Their long-drawn note of revelry,
  Rejoicing at the Spring.


So throw the weary pen aside
  And let the papers rest,
For we must saddle up and ride
  Towards the blue hill's breast;
And we must travel far and fast
  Across their rugged maze,
To find the Spring of Youth at last,
And call back from the buried past
  The old Australian ways.


When Clancy took the drover's track
  In years of long ago,
He drifted to the outer back
  Beyond the Overflow;
By rolling plain and rocky shelf,
  With stockwhip in his hand,
He reached at last, oh lucky elf,
The Town of Come-and-help-yourself
  In Rough-and-ready Land.


And if it be that you would know
  The tracks he used to ride,
Then you must saddle up and go
  Beyond the Queensland side --
Beyond the reach of rule or law,
  To ride the long day through,
In Nature's homestead -- filled with awe
You then might see what Clancy saw
  And know what Clancy knew.

[just mercedes]

Thanks for the piece of Banjo, Leanne. I read Australian poems at the open mic last night and I'm feeling very homesick. Yet I am at home. The Numeralla Folk Festival, usually held on the Australia Day long weekend, was held last week - lots of Banjo Patterson put to music there.

[Leanne]

I miss the Snowy too. It's bloody hot here. I might listen to Slim Dusty singing Banjo later on.

[Donald Q.]

Charles Simic


My Secret Identity Is  

The room is empty,
And the window is open

[ellajam]

Charles Simic


My Secret Identity Is  

The room is empty,
And the window is open

[RiverNotch]

I got a book of Louise Gluck's collected stuff from "Firstborn" to "A Village Life" -- at some point, I stopped at the end of "Vita Nova", but now I've continued, and so far I'm digging "The Seven Ages", perhaps a bit more than "Vita Nova" (but not anymore than from "The House on Marshland" to "Meadowlands" -- "The Wild Iris" was fucking awesome). 


STARS


I'm awake; I am in the world---
I expect
no further assurance.
No protection, no promise.

Solace of the night sky,
the hardly moving
face of the clock.

I'm alone---all
my riches surround me.
I have a bed, a room.
I have a bed, a vase
of flowers beside it.
And a nightlight, a book.

I'm awake; I am safe.
The darkness like a shield, the dreams
put off, maybe
vanished forever.

And the day---
the unsatisfying morning that says
I am your future,
here is your cargo of sorrow:

Do you reject me? Do you mean
to send me away because I am not
full, in your word,
because you see
the black shape already implicit?
I will never be banished. I am the light,
your personal anguish and humiliation.
Do you dare
send me away as though
you were waiting for something better?

There is no better.
Only (for a short space)
the night sky like
a quarantine that sets you
apart from your task.

Only (softly, fiercely)
the stars shining. Here,
in the room, the bedroom.
Saying I was brave, I resisted,
I set myself on fire.


YOUTH


My sister and I at two ends of the sofa,
reading (I suppose) English novels.
The television on, various schoolbooks open,
or places marked with sheets of lined paper.
Euclid, Pythagoras. As though we had looked into
the origin of thought and preferred novels.

Sad sounds of our growing up---
twilight of cellos. No trace
of a flute, a piccolo. And it seemed at the time
almost impossible to conceive of any of it
as evolving or malleable.

Sad sounds. Anecdotes
that were really still lives.
The pages of the novels turning;
the two dogs snoring quietly.

And from the kitchen,
sounds of our mother,
smells of rosary, of lamb roasting.

A world in process
of shifting, of being made or dissolved,
and yet we didn't live that way;
all of us lived out lives
as the simultaneous ritualized enactment
of a great principle, something
felt but not understood.
And the remarks we made were like lines in a play,
spoken with conviction but not from choice.

A principle, a terrifying familial will
that implied opposition to change, to variation,
a refusal even to ask questions---
Now that world begins
to shift and eddy around us, only now
when it no longer exists.
It has become the present: unending and without form.


I hope to get "Faithful and Virtuous Night" soon -- now what I've read from that, "An Adventure" plus a few prose poems, that was absolutely stunning.

---

Someone from the critical forums also recommended Lucille Clifton's Shapeshifter poems. I looked them up, and they were riveting, but I hope the copy I found was complete.


Shapeshifter Poems -- by Lucille Clifton

1

the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them

2

who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl
laments into the evening who
will protect her this prettylittlegirl

3

if the little girl lies
still enough
shut enough
hard enough
shapeshifter may not
walk tonight
the full moon may not
find him here
the hair on him
bristling
rising
up

4

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

[Donald Q.]

[Luke Kennard]


THE MURDERER


I take the murderer for coffee.
‘Make sure you don’t murder your coffee!’
I joke. He likes my jokes.

Later I swing a plank into his face:
This is to stop him enjoying himself –
Which is integral to the rehabilitation process.

His mouth trickles blood like a tap quarter-turned.
He likes my analogies. ‘Hey, Murderer!’
I yell, ‘Murdered anyone recently?’

The murderer likes to play badminton.
When he loses, I say, ‘That’s what you get for being a murderer.’
When he wins, I say,

‘I guess you got yourself in pretty good shape
Murdering all those people.’
I’m not about to let the murderer forget he’s a murderer.

When I dance with the murderer I let him lead
Because he is the more proficient dancer –
‘Just be careful not to murder me!’ I tease.

The prison sits on the horizon like a great ash-tray –
When we travel I give him the window seat.
‘Hey, murderer, would you like a sandwich?’ I say,

‘Or would you rather murder someone?’
The murderer eats his cheese and ham sandwich.
‘The forecast is for snow,’ I tell him.

[RiverNotch]

Requiem - Poem by Anna Akhmatova

Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'. On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that something like a smile slid across what had previously been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]

VII
THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]

VIII
TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.

However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms

Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

X
CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.

1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]

2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]

EPILOGUE

1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.

(Poster's note: unfortunately, I cannot find who translated. There are a few other versions out there -- this, in my opinion, is the most readable.
Also, I'd love to hear about your feedback on this, since it reads super, super, super topical. Probably why, after having it on my reading list for so long, it got bumped up pretty quickly. If this was expository then, now it feels sorta prophetic....)

[RiverNotch]

Dickinson -- 662.

   Embarrassment of one another
   And God
   Is Revelation's limit,
   Aloud
   Is nothing that is chief,
   But still,
   Divinity dwells under seal.

Dickinson -- 561.

   I measure every Grief I meet
   With narrow, probing Eyes -
   I wonder if It weighs like mine -
   Or has an Easier size.

   I wonder if They bore it long-
   Or did it just begin -
   I could not tell the Date of Mine -
   It feels so old a pain -

   I wonder if it hurts to live -
   And if They have to try -
   And whether - could They choose between -
   It would not be - to die-

   I note that Some - gone patient long -
   At length renew their smile -
   An imitation of a Light -
   That has so little Oil -

   I wonder if when Years have piled -
   Some Thousands - on the Harm -
   That hurt them early - such a lapse
   Could give them any Balm -

   Or would they go on aching still
   Through Centuries of Nerve -
   Enlightened to a larger Pain -
   In contrast with the Love -

   The grieved- are many - I am told -
   There is the various Cause -
   Death - is but one -and comes but once
   And only nails the eyes -

   There's Grief of Want - and Grief of Cold -
   A sort they call "Despair" -
   There's Banishment from native Eyes =
   In sight of Native Air -

   And though I may not guess the kind-
   Correctly - yet to me
   A piercing comfort it affords -
   In passing Calvary -

   To note the fashions - of the Cross -
   And how they're mostly worn -
   Still fascinated to presume
   That Some - are like my Own -

Copied from http://www.arduity.com/poets/dickinson/index.html, an interesting yet in my opinion flawed analysis (of course, the author does indicate that his or her analyses are tentative, and to be fair I fall into the same traps he or she does all the time).

[Wjames]

[milo]

Brash, Over written and obscure, written by a friend and never published as an attempt at a triple sestina this will always be one of my favorite poems:

Orpheus and Thelxepeia
or
The Song of the Silent Siren

rape:
-n. rapine, plunder, seizure (obs.):
carnal knowledge of a woman without her legal consent.
-vt. to seize and carry off (obs.):
to commit rape upon:
to ravish or transport, as with delight (obs.).
-ns. ra´per; ra´pist.-adj. ra´ping, tearing prey (her.):
ravishing, delighting (obs.).
-n. a division of Sussex.

wild rape:
Charlock or Field-Mustard.


1.Prologue


This is not about feeble-wombed attempts to scrape
A few sunlit zephyrs from their perch on the cloud-break
Of rainbow-buoyed cumuli. These cries are silenter than the eyes
Of Philomela, unlidding from the darkling sycamore boughs that bow
To Celia's sorry wane. Pleasure has become dread's rose
And I can only hear the dog-wan
Whines of Weber's burning edifices; Hate
Is the cuckoo nested in crumbled infrastructures: it lays
Its head parallel to the traffic lining the full
Motorways, Freud's twenty-first century mind gapping in the slip-shone
Crimson cracks of cat's eyes, a prophecy of the slip-road light
Of men resting their heads perpendicular to the sea
Of a headlight's anti-umbra. Ruin is didacted in Red
Sea central reservations; the X-sing
Of two auto routes; the collapsing of the free way; wax
Melting its taper into a self-annihilating anti-smile.
And when the fat has tremulously set
Into the brittle plaster of the past, escape becomes the kiss

Of history's pillaged hills. The capital hands reach action
Bloody into inheritance's reserves, trying to collate
Natural safety, gathering from the stores of certainty's mile.
Tarmac claws reach out and rend the beautiful
Truth, once a pastoral Arcadia, now upset
By wheedling service stations, smogging factories, the burst grape
Under the cemented tongue-crush of civilization. Daybreak
Cannot kiss away the tears of morning, when it wakes
A deeper dimness in the heart of humanity's blight.
This is about how the Orphean Lyre can sing
Of tranquility in the fastening waves of the sea;
Of positive capability in the rejected white-swan
Purity that was once held in the harboured
Hands of poetry. I have charted capitalist glory's rise
In a ravel of wretched memories and I bow
Under the roll of its Stygian brouillard, which plays
Mutiny with our bones. This is a prayer that Psyche's dark is
Not a violated husk lashing nakedly in irrecoverable throws.

2.Brighton


London was becoming a blur of twilight
Zone high-rise office blocks. I decided a break
Was the gem of decision, the billowing easy
Of the ocean's massage, a reach for the dextrose
Revitality of Brighton. The monastery of the uncloistered
Channel would unfetter the claustrophobia of polluted skies.
Taking the M23 south, meadows soon made a laze
Of the memory of gray monotony, with a traipse
Of mustard-yellow charlock, in the careful
Leas quilting Surrey. The mega-road cut an incision
Ominously through the hills, shadowed in the rising
Walls of a cliff-cut swell, but the sunshine won
A battle and restored the temporary blackish-
Ness to forgetful interment. The ashy elbow
Curves swathed gently downwards, as if the sea could deflate
Terrain into its lapping arms. Soon the wind's mill
Of salt breeze coasted the solemn quacks
Of gulls to my ears, wrapping me in a slackened saline corset.

Apollo was sending his final arrows shooting from his bow
As I stepped onto the pebble-caltropped beach. The floozy
Caresses of white Nereids tried soothingly to placate
The stones into sand; the stones in turn rumbled derision
At her strokes, not knowing their eroding plight
Was in the future of her persistence. The sudden whacks
Of rock on bone drew my doe ears to its fretful
Sound and then I saw her: the horse-break
Poseidon met her feet for fin in the ambrose
End of day; she lay in the sun's last glaze,
Sulkily stacking sailor's skulls in the guise
Of a miniature Golgotha. The last daughter of Phorkys,
Thelxepeia, silkily in black-dyed clothing creped,
Immodestly divine and hybrid in her deceasing
Attire. As starlight began to glimmer in her roan
Hair, she caught my stare with a cat-suited smile
And gazed with the nebulous pockets of the Mariana Trench, carmine-fevered
And sorrowful, as if they were Hades' sole earthly faucets.

"Long time," I began feebly, the words buzzing like flies
In the moon-spilling air. My words shattered
In the crack of a flinted blow upon the sleazy,
Vacant stare of a faceless mariner. "This one, did he hate
Me when the rocks ripped a ragged hole, the waves' flays
And lashes rushed in and penetrated his vessel's unbreak-
Able flanks?" Without pause for reply, even one
Apologetic whisper, my cavern mouth was bouldered: "And this, crow's
Nest watcher, when he dropped like Hermes from a Zeus-thrown flight
Into the cracking timbers of the Armada? And when I beset
The Lusitania with a barrage of missiling cants? The icy missing
Dead of the Titanic? All my playthings, they all bow
And nod to the bitter swannish music, a simile
For the oscillations of the eternal tides, waned and waxed
In the pitch of my storm-filled aria. Undying attention,
Undying lovers, unquestioning in where their wreck is
Done lying." Her mounds of manacled Troiluses, graceful
In the necrological moonshine, tilted to her barnacled melodies, enrapt.

I heard a scream in every murmur of her voice, the cries,
Dreadful screams in a thickly-painted soundscape, of murdered
Men in a forest of falling masts. "Only the seraph
Of sunflowers and sun can wield the brush that daubs me undone
And slave to the emptiness of enchantment. You think your unlight
Verse can bring an early dusk to my morning transcendency?"
"I hate the filthy cloudy evening, I hate
The night, more hate the morning and you. Your words are loathful
To me, Apollic pawn; and how fares your wife's condition?"
Vine-strangled gloss greened my throat, offset
By the piston-tempest of her insult's bone-break.
Petty, though, I retorted: "The Muses must laugh and smile
To see how low your feather-plucked song has warbled in cussing."
But crystal tears of dried sea spray caught my blaze
In a pillared flashback of Eurydice. "Your words lilt me more than prose,
Orpheus, but suffering?" she spat, "In that you are not as acidly verbose.
Oh, all your anguished, bleeding angels look like cigarettes, as they kiss
The devils that cut their heads off, with a poet's ink-feathered axe."

"So tell me, which tree birthed the unholy sighs
Of your lilt; which forbidden fruit's mark is
On your tongue's bladeless hilt?" Now on
Her visage her heart left a passing template
And I feared she would turn on me with a new axe
Of felling rhythms. "You know nothing of sorrows,
Nothing, nothing." The syncopated delays
Of her crocus-forced words left me uneasy;
I could see the comma dotted on her lips, which pared
Like butterfly wings, nestling on a stanza break
For breath. "You ask why I turn to the russet
Tones of thorns, why my voice is the scrape
Of broken oars on half-sunken jags? Will your soulful
Lyre taunt me again since Jason found salvation
In that messianic fugue?" Life had cycled its mill,
Ground full circle now; her voice set alight
My silent submergence; her shoulders drooped willow boughs
As I sat. "This time I am listening. Please, sing."

3.London


"After: History only marred its pages with heroes, only remembered
The vanquisher. After the Argo passed and the satrap
Jason sailed on to destroy other women, the fretful
Laments of my sisters keened in miseried plosion.
Though we took one of your number, the coursing
Agony of Parthenope's suicide took delight
From the cascade of blood we lacerated from Zelion's wan,
Drowned squid, Butes. There seemed no cure for her demise,
But vengeance. No more Greek sailors waxed
The boast: "Aristen men hydor!" to their land's mile
Distance; we caught up Scylla in our swirl, set
Charybdis and our sister Gorgons on the crazy
Path of venom, till only black-sailed vessels braved the breaks,
In tribute to our family of funerary genii. The bowl
Of Poseidon's See was a bath for vampire prelates,
The blue-bloodless bodies were infinitely beached with stained inlays
Of the ocean's suckling teeth in them. Unbound verse arose,
In a hymn to homicide, a psalm to slaughter; a cacophonic hiss.

"I remember when he, Odysseus, appeared, surfing the slate
Rocks on a bitterly boarded trireme. The crew axed
Their duties like motor-energized echinoids, only messy
In the mouth-spat threats that scouted their sail's mile
To our Sicily. Then promises made true; the anchor set
And the disembarked intent swarmed and scoured
Our sonnetry into a broken prison. Destruction
Took undiscovered forms; what more can flies
Say to the pantheon's wantonness? We have been cursing
Them since Hades stole Persephone; we could not brake
That juggernaut of patriarchy then, why now? Just one
Voice survives; and that lacks, but longs to account for the rape
That repeats in the undertow wrapped about
The unstoppable engine of men. The wrecked reckless flight
I allied myself to has no record, the wrack is
Only in my mind, like an undocumented holocaust; it lays
An ovic nightmare in my sparsely stolen slumber, ever doubtful
In my weathered, naked, irrecoverable throws.

"I dove into disappearance, but my feature's striking barb owes
Too much to the ensuing pursuit. By daylight
And dark Odysseus forced his hounds on, the scrape
Of his hooves in the hunt of a bushy trophy, the cracks
Of rigging rope whipping my vixen gauntlet. In full
Cry they curdled the screaming waves, tossing the white equine eyes
Into mad sweat and a suicide spray of daggered
Rain. Storms and stealth I cast behind, crossing
The deadliest vortexes with the discord of broken odes, till I knew an
Answer lay only in seeking the horizon's fractured sunset
And by scenting the sanguine horror of another daybreak,
All a salvation-stalking prayer, pleading to the gods to black his
Eyes with permanent charcoaled sleep. Those great heroes,
Honoured for avidity to blood, hostile to a peasants' smile,
Loyal only to the flower-strewn fields they sow corpses in, the weight
Of a sword-strike on a red-sweet jugular, or the curvation
Of their oars' thrust into the hearts of a blue salt water. They blaze,
Those men that died for Odysseus, as he did. They lust for frenzy;

"Pangs for fire, famine, flood: tied to the red
Fog of their own masts, begging to unleash madness miles
Into our shared world, claiming all with no need for a brake
On the surge of manic expression. Detestation grows,
As Odysseus knew; and when a man dies,
Someone is to blame. Someone will drop the final kiss
On a cold cheek and raise their head, the sequential
Of sadness to spite. He was carved in wood and set
His men to the same direction; the elements were truthful
To me in whittling their multitude, but my swan-
Song coarsened into a screech-owl howl as their delight
In vengeance bloomed barren of all fruit but the wracks
Of torture they could reward themselves with. The bow
Of his ship bent crooked in speed, sprouting scrabbling claws, the sea
Trailing the scars of the ruining harvest being reaped.
Soon he mounted each roiling crest alone, the sharp serrate
Of the prow gashing opaque foam, the leagues unlacing
Infinitely in exhaustion, his filthy desire ignoring my pleading lays.

"The mouth of the Thames gulleted me, the page-break
From salt to fresh, soon stale. The sands of Margate were trampled,
submission-
Stamped by broiling whirlpool hooves; Moorgate acted thunder-voiced plays
Above, till, a fortnight dead from chase, the static-cascading, full
Clouds overturned, spilling onto the liquid mountains, valleys and ridges
unsmiled
In the bowl of Richmond's breached womb. Highbury excreted me into the
blight
Of Sin's spawn, barking death from the cribbed innards of the London dock's
Sprawl. Stalactitic scratches retina-plummeted to meet the stalagmite
Crests growling from the psychotic screeching of the Thames Daughters,
rising,
Meshing as a grotesquely barred cave. In the dim cavern of Westminster
Bridge, captured
In the barrel-burning flicker of a plastic-smoked rubbish fire, I could see
Him, presupposing, cunning. Smuttily gulping Scotch and moly in the
undisguised
Garb of a vagabond, he was deaf to my enervated tereuing; clogging earwax
Protruded like a stench down his stubble-spattered cheeks. Odysseus grabbed,
scraped
My tired scales on the glass-gouted ground, lurched me stomach-wards, elbow-
Propped on piss-covered tiles. That man on my back; the cyclopean fire that
set
A random rive of kraken-eyed incidences: the overabundance of history's rows
Of repeated cycles; a million to my one broken body left insanely scarred
and wan."

4.Brighton


The hand that writes this is a badly made bivouac
For sheltering the shiver-splintered voice of that tale. No gusset
In her armour was left unpierced; she tried to thread
Together a Circaean-assembled smile
That saw me transformed to tears. The glazed clays
Of her eyes were as chipped as the iguana-spiked plate
Armour she had slipped with such difficulties
To the unsoftened pebbles. My verse was a bow
Firing silence in the dark of midnight, the sea
The only angry ripple of her kindred suffering. Fed by slight
Breaths short in her chest, she remained beautiful
In a broken survival, wretched as the heartbreak
I felt when Cerberus was at my back again. Losing
Pace for the sunlight, life can always return to life, even to one
Like this. Just as my arms became a wrap
To soften her shuddering woes, so I use this pen; it throws
Its words around the form of a damaged timbre; its mission
Of comfort the only offering with which her tears to kiss.

"Philosophy suffers in reality; if there is ever an easy
Escape from a razed existence, then find me someone
Who can release that noun, that object, the one that undiscovers the set
Of atrocities seared in a ravaged mind. Those theoretical voices glaze
The clay of life into gaudy angles, so the colour flies
Off the fragility encasing your anima, in draped
Associations of another man's wit, not your own shaped condition.
I cannot give you my verse, my own melody, as a way to break,
Shatter, then mend the jigsaw mentus from pained panic into a smile,
Abstracted from your soul-penetrated despair. Could I sing
Of joy in stone? - Then of water on stone and the alight of sunshine's kiss
Played on that trickled tune, that runs its freight
On the stony rhythmic bass of a solid promise - but a fretful
Sonic twist will hear the dark-boled whine of twilight
Traveled on the slaughter-stained river, that throws
A torrent along a war drum beat of bone. Your ears bow
To your emotion, your eyes to the gray-shaded perspex of a shuttered
Blindfold, sealing innocent vision from afflicted memory stacks."

"But I have moved through time, petrified like water in an oxbow
Lake; and yet the turgid rumblings of fear unset-
Tled me. Curled, knees to breast, in the sulphured
Baths of Etna, a razor blade edge-balanced to fall its miles
To oblivion either way, I watched man, how he rose;
And even Kepler, Cornelius, they couldn't change natural discord, placate
Him from his ever-twirling in Ptolemaic circles of awful
Selfishness. In bloody crimson the sun and moon each waxed
Their tapering gloom till they burned to a phosphorescing
Abscess, shed on the gathered evidence of my prosecuting twilight
Chronicles. The sea ran its eddies, falling from each hell-kissed
Iris down my cheeks, as if they would restate gravity's
Case." The layered clouds were breaking
Dawn in their shadow-cast vapours, shelving the cinemation
Of the stars behind their racks. The day was climbing untrapped
From the hands of Hades and the dissentient sea
Flicked assegai waves, needle-crested, as one
At the pebbled rug of the beach, become a martyr it had to slay.

"For twelve hours of a day, the world spins you quizzing
And questing for noon. Life brightens to life, as a scion
Sunflower will bend from shade to sustenance, its calyx curving to light.
And then twelve single peals of a bell will brake
Our progress, like strangers voices whispering tones of hate,
Revolving us into unhallowed midnight. But the moment where we can smile,
Where mortality pines for stasis, is the time-spliced drowse
Of a phantom between, the wish of iced parallels to the sun, a grasped
Eternity in a pivoted midday, or a witching hour, when motion
Gives to paralysis. You can stay trapped in the umbra-sea
Of night's high noon, earth's diametrous abyss blocking the bow
Of Apollo's warming arrows; or you can turn to axe
Your own sanctioning mast into its illusory splintered
Trivia. Lift from the limbo floor to the horizoning dawn sky and set
Your future in the impetus of the chameleon veil over your eyes.
When you cannot see, then smell the salubrious sun-kiss
Of embroidered fate, threaded through your own masterful
Fingers, until the tapestry of colours you weave is ablaze."

"Your hands are unsanguined, bard, you have won
By example. The veil lifts in alleviation
And ventricled harmony valves my life's mill
Again. But the battle, not the war, is in its final throws.
Words; the mask the page wears to disguise its slate
Disfigurement. No matter the tree sacrificed so easy
By man's tools - Proserpine cypress, balsa-light
Ash, or Amazonian tropic - the poem is still as the axe
That cut the tree down: the cup of your mind, when full,
Empties itself to shroud the pulped lumber, the uncared
Liquid discarded uncaringly; so as black is
The Medean venom of Crowley's spring storms, bridal drapes
Of godful showers are scattered by Miltonic pieties.
Poetry is a tool, as good or as bad as the falset-
To voice that forges it. And when a Lydian lyre bows
To a high-picked tenor of unfelt danger, ignorance breaks
The unkept pitch in pieces. Sympathy, that tunes your lays,
But experience pales your song to nothing when I sing."

A misted oubliette seemed exorcised in the rise
Of the burning chariot of day, in the scrape
Of zephyrs against the blue-gapping cloud-break.
Her eyes, squinting mirrors of the ocean, gleamed from the bow-
Slit of her eyelids to gather the prism-split rose
Of optimism. A faint humming, like a lark satiate
In the morning, escaped the butterfly lips on her wan
Skin and her cheeks blushed as our eyes collided. The full
Ecstasy of the present had jilted her onyx lays
Into crumbled anaesthesia, taking cautious flight
Into the salt breeze. A moment of epiphany shone
In a microsecond, of clear sky and pure sea
Matched in equal tint, while the slivered red
Edge of the sun obliterated the last fizzing
Stars of pessimism back into Celia's bosom. The wax
Of discourse burned down and true light rose with her smile,
As our heads turned to meet and the keys
Of motion unlocked us from the frieze that time had set.

5.Envoi


The Sussex Sea slowed, slower, then ceased to drape
The once hard stones with its breakers. The expression
Of the pebbles was now one fine smoothed crescent bow
Of bay-stretched sand. The ripples froze in dipped smiles
And laughs, which carpeted red-orange sunlight
In a water-walked pathway, set in a warm, wax-
Soft texture. Two pairs of eyes took visionary skates
Across the immutable blaze. Together we found lips to sing
Of the dawn in hushful sigils, as we leaned together in a kiss.

George Tolis

[billy]

the prologue is bloody excellent. only had a once over of the rest due to time and length. will be back to read it properly

[Donald Q.]

Mark Doty



No


The children have brought their wood turtle
into the dining hall
because they want us to feel

the power they have
when they hold a house
in their own hands, want us to feel

alien lacquer and the little thrill
that he might, like God, show his face.
He's the color of ruined wallpaper,

of cognac, and he's closed,
pulled in as though he'll never come out;
nothing shows but the plummy leather

of the legs, his claws resembling clusters
of diminutive raspberries.
They know he makes night

anytime he wants, so perhaps
he feels at the center of everything,
as they do. His age,

greater than that of anyone
around the table, is a room
from which they are excluded,

though they don't mind,
since they can carry this perfect
building anywhere. They love

that he might poke out
his old, old face, but doesn't.
I think the children smell unopened,

like unlit candles, as they heft him
around the table, praise his secrecy,
holding to each adult face

his prayer,
the single word of the shell,
which is no.

[ellajam]

ah, that's gorgeous, I'm eternally grateful for it right now. diminutive raspberries and They know he makes night/ anytime he wants. Thanks, Don Q

[ellajam]

One consequence of critiquing is sometimes you have that filter on when you read anything. I just read a poem recently that slipped by the filter by being IMO so damn good. It's unlike anything I write. I figured I'd post it and ask if anyone else had a poem that they came across that they fell in love with.


How To Like It

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

By Stephen Dobyns

This is fabulous, Todd, thank you.

[rayheinrich]

    In the Village       -     Derek Walcott, 1930 - 2017

I

I came up out of the subway and there were
people standing on the steps as if they knew
something I didn’t. This was in the Cold War,
and nuclear fallout. I looked and the whole avenue
was empty, I mean utterly, and I thought,
The birds have abandoned our cities and the plague
of silence multiplies through their arteries, they fought
the war and they lost and there’s nothing subtle or vague
in this horrifying vacuum that is New York. I caught
the blare of a loudspeaker repeatedly warning
the last few people, maybe strolling lovers in their walk,
that the world was about to end that morning
on Sixth or Seventh Avenue with no people going to work
in that uncontradicted, horrifying perspective.
It was no way to die, but it’s also no way to live.
Well, if we burnt, it was at least New York.

II

Everybody in New York is in a sitcom.
I’m in a Latin American novel, one
in which an egret-haired viejo shakes with some
invisible sorrow, some obscene affliction,
and chronicles it secretly, till it shows in his face,
the parenthetical wrinkles confirming his fiction
to his deep embarrassment. Look, it’s
just the old story of a heart that won’t call it quits
whatever the odds, quixotic. It’s just one that’ll
break nobody’s heart, even if the grizzled colonel
pitches from his steed in a cavalry charge, in a battle
that won’t make him a statue. It is the hell
of ordinary, unrequited love. Watch these egrets
trudging the lawn in a dishevelled troop, white banners
trailing forlornly; they are the bleached regrets
of an old man’s memoirs, printed stanzas.
showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets.

III

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow molting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

IV

The Sweet Life Café

If I fall into a grizzled stillness
sometimes, over the red-chequered tablecloth
outdoors of the Sweet Life Café, when the noise
of Sunday traffic in the Village is soft as a moth
working in storage, it is because of age
which I rarely admit to, or, honestly, even think of.
I have kept the same furies, though my domestic rage
is illogical, diabetic, with no lessening of love
though my hand trembles wildly, but not over this page.
My lust is in great health, but, if it happens
that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand,
joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pen’s
elation on the road to Vieuxfort with fever-grass
white in the sun, and, as for the sea breaking
in the gap at Praslin, they add up to the grace
I have known and which death will be taking
from my hand on this checkered tablecloth in this good place.

                - - -

[ellajam]

In the Village - Derek Walcott, 1930 - 2017
Ooh, Ray, quite a gift, knockout, so much so good, unhinged. thank you.