[Sven2]

The Sky Over Berlin

Don't ask me how or why. Now and then
pigeons go astray, they go through
a window, a curtain, a mirror left half
open, and nothing can prevent their scattering
through the transparent sky of the soul, the way
watercolors disperse under the serendipity of water
drops. Don't ask me how or why
these mistakes happen, or if they even are
mistakes. How could I know whose hand
opens mirrors, whose hand precipitates
water? Sometimes, life chooses the wrong
piece, white moves for black, and then
an eagle appears under a coat, a word
on a bee's lips, a sad angel
sitting in a laundromat. They say
it happens to everyone, not only
those with wings. Comforting to know.
Comforting to know error is a part
of us, sustains us like air or blood,
that the best encounters are really
losses or confusions, accidents happening
three thousand feet above sea level over forgotten
cities, there where words ascend
like effervescent globules, and disappear.

--Gemma Gorga

[Sven2]

Memory Is Sleeping                 

        Sometimes remembering refuses us. Sometimes I'm
             a shoreline the water of memory drags its palm across.
                                                               —Billy-Ray Belcourt
                                                         

In a daisy field. In a garden. In a graveyard, in the sun, its valley.
In the sound of nothing. Your mother and father, two trees
in the distance. In the distance. In the sound of the whistle,
someone banishing you again. A hand in the distance, a greeting.

In a greeting, a question. How old are you? Six? Seventeen?
In your body, aging, an immediacy. A flower, a new arm.
Eat the apple. Your lips redden. The person you were,
you are always becoming. Their breath spilling over

your neck. A breath, a shore, a whistle, a knife. Where is the wind?
In love, the wounds you tend. A wound, a door, a lake, a fence.
Whatever is perpendicular to your becoming. Time is a terrible statue.
The tide will eat its skin. To prevent heartbreak, practice disappearing.

All the eels are missing. You are an expert in missing. A mouth,
a lock, a gate, a key. Open your mouth and throw the word yet
into the river. Into the river, your face leaking glass. A face,
a flood, a crystal, a dove. Someday, you will be in love again.

The sun, a wound on your windowsill. Light falls
on your dreams. It sounds like someone knocking.

--Sanna Wani       

[Sven2]

Midnights: La Jetee

Will the fires yes the
fires will consume us.

We will scatter our own
ashes, scatter them in a spiral

between lake and sky,
cadmium yellow sky.

The lovers, intertwined,
will speak of this

at lakeside, will say nothing
of this by water's edge.

They will taste the salt
on each other's lips

and discover the pain
of the salt light,

salt where the sculptor
once signaled with his hands

a little to the left,
a little to the right,

amid the tides.
Is it he or I

who would say,
Out of salt we are made?

Only a fool
like myself

would write of this
at midnight

among the fires
when all

should be left
in silence.

--Michael Palmer

[Sven2]

Return for an Instant

What was it like, God of mine, what was it like?
—Oh unfaithful heart, indecisive intelligence!
Was it like the going by of the wind?
Like the disappearance of the spring?

As nimble, as changeable, as weightless
as milkweed seeds in summer . . . Yes! Indefinite
as a smile which is lost forever in a laugh . . .
Arrogant in the air, just like a flag!

   Flag, smile, milkweed pod, swift
spring in June, clear wind! . . .
Your celebration was so wild, so sad!

   All of your changes ended up in nothing—
remembrance, a blind bee of bitter things!—

I don't know what you were like, but you were!



--Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Robert Bly

[Sven2]

Incantation of the First Order

Listen, no one signed up for this lullaby.
No bleeped sheep or rosebuds or twitching stars
will diminish the fear or save you from waking

into the same day you dreamed of leaving—
mockingbird on back order, morning bells
stuck on snooze—so you might as well 

get up and at it, pestilence be damned.
Peril and risk having become relative,
I'll try to couch this in positive terms:

Never! is the word of last resorts,
Always! the fanatic's rallying cry.
To those inclined toward kindness, I say

Come out of your houses drumming. All others,
beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.

--Rita Dove

[Sven2]

Second Nature, Bon Iver

Is this our first? Or second nature?
When's that rapture? Will there be merch?
Where is mother? She was a stunner, can we page her?
What my eyes have seen could really take the purse
Are we charged now? Or are we fakers?
Parade around or get in work? Or just desert?

We will see you next time
There'll be water in the rain
Territories pay fines
All long day (Say it will be! Say it will be!)
All may not be just fine! (All long day!)
There is another fate away
To not be too late and obfuscate

Is this our fault? And are we just too damn used to it
The cypher too elusive, that tale, it just won't stop
You could be vaguely on top, strike the key, lay down the mop
As if endings ain't endings and feet they just won't drop
Ain't this real-time? And aren't we takers?
You want what's more and don't excuse
And just refuse

We will see you next time (Is this mercy?)
They'll be water in the rain
Territories pay fines
All long day (Say it with me! Say it with me!)
All may not be just fine! (All long day!)
There is another fate away
To not be too late

We will see you next time
There'll be water in the rain
Territories pay fines
All long day (Say it with me! Say it with me!)
All may not be just fine! (All long day!)
There is another fate away
To not be too late and obfuscate

-- Songwriters Justin Vernon / Nicholas Britell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrVxcQp0SR0

[Sven2]

Weather Forecast

The spirit of rebellion

also called hopelessness                                                               

has begun another sinister round.   

His dark and cold come straight from hell.

I was expecting happy days from May,

but so far the only sunny thing was Albertina's news

that she was chosen to sing "Jesus is the bread of heaven."

That's bread without butter, Albertina,                                             

just so you know.

We eat it with bitter herbs.



--Adelia Prado

translated by Ellen Dore Watson

[Sven2]

 "A bridge used to be there, someone recalled"

A bridge used to be there, someone recalled,
before the war:
an old pedestrian bridge.
The patrol passes every five hours.
Evening will be dry and pleasant.

Two older guys, and a young one.
He read twilight like a book,
rejoice, he repeated to himself, be joyful:
you'll still sleep
in your bed today.

Today you'll still wake up in a room
listening carefully to your body.
Today you'll still be looking at the steel mill
standing idle all summer.

Home that is always with you like a sin.
Parents that will never grow older.
Today you'll still see one of your people,
whomever you call your people.

He recalled the city he'd escaped from,
the scorched terrain he searched by hand.
He recalled a weeping man
saved by the squad.

Life will be quiet, not terrifying.
He should have returned a while ago.
What could happen to him, exactly?
What could happen?

The patrol will let him through,
and god will forgive.
God's got other things to do.

They all were killed at once—both older guys,
and the young one.
Silence between the riverbanks.
You won't explain anything to anyone.

The bomb landed right between them—
on that riverbank
closer to home.

The moon appeared between clouds,
listened to the melody of insects.
A quiet, sleepy medic
loaded the bodies into a military truck.

He quarreled with his stick shift.
Sought the leftover poison in a first-aid kit.
And an English-speaking observer
expertly looked at the corpses.

Even tan.
Nervous mouth.
He closed the eyes of the young one.
He thought to himself: a strange people,
the locals.

      2019

--Serhiy Zhadan
Translated by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin

[Sven2]

Transformation

I haven't written a single poem

in months.

I've lived humbly, reading the paper,

pondering the riddle of power

and the reasons for obedience.

I've watched sunsets

(crimson, anxious),

I've heard the birds grow quiet

and night's mutenness.

I've seen sunflowers dangling

their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman

had gone strolling through the gardens.

September's sweet dust gathered

on the windowsills and lizards

hid in the bends of walls,

craving one thing only:

lightning,

transformation,

you.

--Adam Zagajewski

[Sven2]

Living

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.


A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily


moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.


Each minute the last minute.


--Denise Levertov

[Sven2]

Hearing an Oriole at the Palace

In spring trees shrouding palace windows,

a spring oriole sings dawn light into song.


It sets out to startle the world, stops short,

flutters here, there. Return impossibly far,


it hides deep among dew-drenched leaves,

darts into blossoms and out, never settled.


We wander life, never back. Even a simple

birdcall starts us dreaming of home again.


--Wang Wei (701-761 CE)

translated by David Hinton