25 August 2013

where the plum wallpaper was kind

                                  
                                  STRANGE CINEMA

                                  by Adam Fitzgerald


My ode to failure begins like a girl who awakens in a dream
and realizes the surface of her sleep over ungroomed clouds,
suspected in a vague pleasure of doubt. It continues on then
like a train departing from its track, sluicing invisible foam

and realizes the surface of . . . Her sleep over ungroomed clouds
troubled me. She failed too, the pungent musk of her hair
like a train departing from its track, sluicing invisible foam.
I don't care about any of this. I miss the person inside who

troubled me (she failed too). The pungent musk of her hair
is all that matters in the lobby where I slept, vacantly foraging.
I don't care about any of this. I miss the person inside who
hears nothing but the tracing of loss, some minor addenda.

Is all that matters in the lobby where I slept, vacantly foraging,
your shadow? Like cut pink fruit? A sudden shaft of sun?
Hear nothing but  the tracing of loss, some minor addenda.
Or hear something, if you want, casually, a crevice in a name.

Your shadow like a cut of pink fruit, a sudden shaft of sun.
But that was before, when we could share our fumbled sex,
hearing something we wanted, casually, a crevice in a name,
in a room of lost boots, where the plum wallpaper was kind.

But that was before, when we could share our fumbled sex.
My ode to failure begins like a girl who awakens in a dream,
in a room of lost boots, where the plum wallpaper was kind.
Suspended in a vague pleasure of doubt, it continues on then.




from Adam Fitzgerald, The Late Parade,, 2013.






18 August 2013

A coming and going music

                             by Ted Hughes



IN THE DARK VIOLIN OF THE VALLEY

All night a music
Like a needle sewing body
And soul together, and sewing soul
And sky together and sky and earth
Together and sewing the river to the sea.

In the dark skull of the valley
A lancing, fathoming music
Searching the bones, engraving
On the draughty limits of ghost
In an entanglement of stars.

In the dark belly of the valley
A coming and going music
Cutting the bed-rock deeper

To earth-nerve, a scalpel of music

The valley dark rapt
Hunched over its river, the night attentive
Bowed over its valley, the river

Crying a violin in a grave
All the dead singing in the river

The river throbbing, the river the aorta

And the hills unconscious with listening.




WHITENESS


Walks the river at dawn.

The thorn-tree hiding its thorns
With too much and too fleshy perfume.

Thin water. Uneasy ghost.
Whorls clotted with petals.

Trout, like a hidden man's cough,
Slash under dripping roots.

Heron. Clang
Coiling its snake in heavy hurry
Hoists away, yanked away

Ceases to ponder the cuneiform
Under glass

Huge owl-lump of dawn
With wrong fittings, a parasol broken
Tumbles up into strong sky

Banks precariously, risks a look
A writhing unmade bedstead

Sets the blade between its shoulders
and hang-falls
Down a long aim

Dangles its reed

Till it can seen its own pale eyes
Suddenly shakes off cumbersome cloud
To anchor, tall,
An open question.

Now only the river nags to be elsewhere.



from Ted Hughes, River: New Poems, 1983.





11 August 2013

The day they carried you off

                        THE COATS

                    by Tess Gallagher

                                             for Mary Kepler (1884-1966)


They made you complicated,
a new one each year
and underneath, the same
old print dress. Outside
under the maples you were smart
and garrulous on my grandfather's arm
walking down Valley Street
to the shops, talking into his silence
as into some idea of yourself
grown to your side.

Yet you loved telling how
you were engaged to another
the night he took you off 
in his buckboard.  Marriage too
came like an impulse
to turn against yourself.  Life
caught you up in its clumsy arms
and danced you out of your Oklahoma
youth into the milltown
of my birth, you in your new coat,
leading me into the dimestore
to buy silk ribbons.

Shut in the closet, your coats
were a family of witnesses
who could not remember you.
They were waiting for the one
to send them all again
into the weather.  Standing
before your mirror once
in the dark of the bedroom
I put myself into a heavy tweed
with its cold silk lining.  The wide arms
were a hiding place; the hem
brushed my patent leather shoes.
It was a bargaining
that I should turn into the room,
you age about me like a sack.

I wanted to throw something over you
the day they carried you off
like a trophy in your silk lining
Rosy and familiar you received each of us
in a housedress that denied you
were going anywhere.  That year
the winter came over the ground
like a rich white pelt.
I thought of you accepting it,
something chosen, a comfort
that had sought you out
in the cold of the land.



from Tess Gallagher, Amplitude: New and Selected Poems, 1987.







04 August 2013

Pan

                       
                                            PAN
                               by Angelos Sikelianos



Over rocks on the deserted shore, over the burning heat
          of harsh pebbles,
beside the emerald waves, noon, like a fountain,
          rose shimmering.

Salamis a blue trireme deep in the sea,
          in spring's spindrift;
the pines and mastic trees of Kineta a deep breath
          I drew inside me.

The sea burst into foam and, beaten by the wind,
          shattered white,
and a flock of goats, countless, iron-gray, plummeted headlong
          down the hill.

With two harsh whistles, fingers pressing
          his curled tongue,
the goatherd huddled them on the shore,
          the whole five hundred.

They gathered in close, crowding the brush
          and wild thyme,
and as they gathered, a drowsiness seized
          both goats and man.

And then, over the shore's stones and the goats' swelter,
          dead silence;
and between their horns, as from a tripod, the sun's quick heat
          shimmered upward.

Then we saw the herd's lord and master, the he-goat,
          rise alone
and mover off, he tread slow and heavy,
          toward a rock

wedged into the sea to shape a perfect lookout point'
          there he stopped,
on the very edge where spray dissolves,
          and leaning motionless,

upper lip pulled back so that his teeth shone,
          he stood
huge, erect, smelling the white-crested sea
          until sunset.   





from Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems.  Trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. 1979.