[Sven2]

Utopia

--Wislawa Szymborska

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzling staight and simple.
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

[Sven2]

Windows is Shutting Down

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,
Proving the only one in step are you.

Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.

The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
But evolution do not stop for that.
A mutant languages rise from the dead
And all them rules is suddenly old hat.

Too bad for we, us what has had so long
The best seat from the only game in town.
But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.

-- Clive James

[Sven2]

Barbie Joins 12 Steps Program

Barbie is bottoming out,
she's sitting on the pity pot.  She hasn't the know-how to express

any of her emotions.  Before she even gets

to her first meeting, she takes the first step, admits

her life has become unmanageable.
She's been kidnapped by boys

and tortured with pins.  She's been left

for months at a time between scratchy couch cushions

with cracker crumbs, pens, and loose change.

She can't help herself from being a fashion doll.

she is the ultimate victim.

She humbly sits on a folding chair

in a damp church basement.  The cigarette smoke

clouds the faces around her, the smell of bad coffee

permeates the air.  The group booms the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom
to know the difference. Poor Barbie is lost

in a philosophical quandary.  Her God must be Mattel.

How can she turn her life and will over to a toy company?

must she accept her primary form of locomotion

being the fists of young careless humans?

Ans what can she change?  The only reason Barbie

is at the meeting at all is because she wound up in the tote bag

of a busy mother.  She toppled out when the woman,

putting on lipstick at the bathroom mirror, spilled the contents

of her bag onto the floor.  The mother didn't see Barbie skid under a stall door

where a confused drunk, at the meeting for warmth,

was peeing.  Never thought Barbie had problems,

she said, picking up the doll.  She thought it would be funny

to prop Barbie in the last row.  No one else noticed the doll

as she fidgeted in her seat.  The hungry drunk

went on to spoon a cupful of sugar into her coffee.

Barbie sat through the meeting, wondering:

What is wisdom?  What is letting go?
She wished she could clap like the others

when there was a good story recovery.  She accepted

her higher power, Mattel, would finally let her move.

miracles don't happen overnight, said a speaker.

Take the action and leave the rest to God,said another.

Barbie's prayer that she would be at the next meeting was answered.

A member of the clean-up committee squished her between the seat

and the back of the folding chair and stacked her, with the others, against the wall.


                                                                                          --Denise Duhamel

[Sven2]

Any Prince To Any Princess


August is coming

and the goose, I'm afraid,

is getting fat.

There have been

no golden eggs for some months now.

Straw has fallen well below market price

despite my frantic spinning

and the sedge is,

as you rightly point out,

withered.


I can't imagine how the pea

got under your mattress. I apologize

humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,

been sacked. As has the frog footman.

I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the

Golden River,

despite your nightly unavailing efforts,

he remained obstinately

froggish.


I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General

Assembly

will go some way towards redressing

this unfortunate recent sequence of events.

The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:

no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule

by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact

that the court has been fast asleep

for the last six and a half years.


The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up

by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you

the incident will not be

repeated.


I can quite understand, in the circumstances,

your reluctance to let down

your golden tresses. However

I feel I must point out

that the weather isn't getting any better

and I already have a nasty chill

from waiting at the base

of the White Tower. You must see

the absurdity of the

situation.

Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,

not to mention the humble villagers.

It's been three weeks now, and not even

a word.


Princess,

a cold, black wind

howls through our empty palace.

Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;

the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing

since you left. I can only ask,

bearing all this in mind,

that you think again,



let down your hair,



reconsider

                                                                       --Adrian Henri

[Sven2]

Weary Rings      

     There are desires to return, to love, to not disappear,
and there are desires to die, fought by two
opposing waters that have never isthmused.

     There are desires for a great kiss that would shroud Life,
one that ends in the Africa of a fiery agony,
a suicide!

     There are desires to. . . have no desires, Lord;
I point my deicidal finger at you:
there are desires to not have had a heart.

     Spring returns, returns and will depart. And God,
bent in time, repeats himself, and passes, passes
with the spinal column of the Universe on his back.

     When my temples beat their lugubrious drum,
when the dream engraved on a dagger aches me,
there are desires to be left standing in this verse!

--César Vallejo

translated by Clayton Eshleman

[Sven2]

A Hymn to Childhood


Childhood? Which childhood?

The one that didn't last?

The one in which you learned to be afraid

of the boarded-up well in the backyard

and the ladder to the attic?


The one presided over by armed men

in ill-fitting uniforms

strolling the streets and alleys,

while loudspeakers declared a new era,

and the house around you grew bigger,

the rooms farther apart, with more and more

people missing?


The photographs whispered to each other

from their frames in the hallway.

The cooking pots said your name

each time you walked past the kitchen.


And you pretended to be dead with your sister

in games of rescue and abandonment.

You learned to lie still so long

the world seemed a play you viewed from the muffled

safety of a wing. Look! In

run the servants screaming, the soldiers shouting,

turning over the furniture,

smashing your mother's china.


Don't fall asleep.

Each act opens with your mother

reading a letter that makes her weep.

Each act closes with your father fallen

into the hands of Pharaoh.


Which childhood? The one that never ends? O you,

still a child, and slow to grow.

Still talking to God and thinking the snow

falling is the sound of God listening,

and winter is the high-ceilinged house

where God measures with one eye

an ocean wave in octaves and minutes,

and counts on many fingers

all the ways a child learns to say Me.


Which childhood?

The one from which you'll never escape? You,

so slow to know

what you know and don't know.

Still thinking you hear low song

in the wind in the eaves,

story in your breathing,

grief in the heard dove at evening,

and plentitude in the unseen bird

tolling at morning. Still slow to tell

memory from imagination, heaven

from here and now,

hell from here and now,

death from childhood, and both of them

from dreaming.

--Li-Young Lee

[Sven2]

Crow's Fall


When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.


He got his strength flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.


At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened-
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.


"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

--Ted Hughes

[Sven2]

So Be It, Amen

There are people who don't want Kierkegaard to be
A humpback, and they're looking for a wife for Cézanne.
It's hard for them to say, "So be it. Amen."

When a dead dog turned up on the road, the disciples
Held their noses. Jesus walked over and said:
"What beautiful teeth!" It's a way to say "Amen."

If a young boy leaps over seven hurdles in a row,
And an instant later is an old man reaching for his cane,
To the swiftness of it all we have to say "Amen."

We always want to intervene when we hear
That the badger is marrying the wrong person,
But the best thing to say at a wedding is "Amen."

The grapes of our ruin were planted centuries
Before Caedmon ever praised the Milky Way.
"Praise God," "Damn God" are all synonyms for "Amen."

Women in Crete loved the young men, but when
"The Son of the Deep Waters" dies in the bath,
And they show the rose-colored water, Mary says "Amen."

--Robert Bly

[Sven2]

Five Ways to Kill a Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.

You can make him carry a plank of wood
To the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this
Properly you require a crowd of people
Wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
To dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
Man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
Shaped and chased in a traditional way,
And attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,

At least two flags, a prince and a
Castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
Allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
A mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
Not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
More mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
And some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
Miles above your victim and dispose of him by
Pressing one small switch. All you then
Require is an ocean to separate you, two

Systems of government, a nation's scientists,
Several factories, a psychopath and
Land that no one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
To kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
Is to see that he lives somewhere in the middle
Of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

-- Edwin Brock

[Sven2]

Villanelle

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away?
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

-- W H Auden

[Sven2]

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

[Sven2]

Deep Sorriness Atonement Song

(for missed appointment, BBC North, Manchester) 

The man who sold Manhattan for a halfway decent bangle,
He had talks with Adolf Hitler and could see it from his angle,
And he could have signed the Quarrymen but didn't think they'd make it
So he bought a cake on Pudding Lane and thought "Oh well I'll bake it"

    But his chances they were slim
    And his brothers they were Grimm,
    And he's sorry, very sorry,
    But I'm sorrier than him.

And the drunken plastic surgeon who said "I know, let's enlarge 'em!"
And the bloke who told the Light Brigade "Oh what the hell, let's charge'em",
The magician with an early evening gig on the Titanic
And the Mayor who told the people of Atlantis not to panic,

    And the Dong about his nose
    And the Pobble re his toes,
    They're all sorry very sorry
    But I'm sorrier than those.

And don't forget the Bible, with the Sodomites and Judas,
And Onan who discovered something nothing was as rude as,
And anyone who reckoned it was City's year for Wembley.
And the kid who called Napoleon a shortarse in assembly,

    And the man who always smiles
    Cause he knows I have his files,
    They're all sorry, really sorry,
    But I'm sorrier by miles.

And Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to the Norwegian,
And anyone who's ever split a pint with a Glaswegian,
Or told a Finn a joke or spent an hour with a Swiss-German,
Or got a mermaid in the sack and found it was a merman,

    Or him who smelt a rat,
    And got curious as a cat,
    They're all sorry, deeply sorry,
    But I'm sorrier than that.

All the people who were rubbish when we needed them to do it,
Whose wires crossed, whose spirit failed, who ballsed it up or blew it,
All notches of nul points and all who have a problem Houston,
At least they weren't in Kensington when they should have been at Euston.

    For I didn't build the Wall
    And I didn't cause the Fall
    But I'm sorry, Lord, I'm sorry,
    I'm the sorriest of all.



-- Glyn Maxwell

[skordamou]

Be Music, Night
- Kenneth Patchen

     Be music, night,
That her sleep may go
Where angels have their pale tall choirs

Be a hand, sea,
That her dreams may watch
Thy guidesman touching the green flesh of the world

Be a voice, sky,
That her beauties may be counted
And the stars will tilt their quiet faces
Into the mirror of her loveliness

Be a road, earth,
That her walking may take thee
Where the towns of heaven lift their breathing spires

O be a world and a throne, God,
That her living may find its weather
And the souls of ancient bells in a child's book
Shall lead her into Thy wondrous house

[Sven2]

Thanks, Skor, not much Patchen is on the Net, I didn't know this particular poem. It is lovely.
I wish you and Ray would post more poetry here, introducing different voices, intermingling styles. I just recently found a site devoted exclusively to bitniks.

[Sven2]

A Singular Metamorphosis

We all were watching the quiz on television
Last night, combining leisure with pleasure,
When Uncle Harry's antique escritoire,
Where he used to sit making up his accounts,
Began to shudder and rock like a crying woman,
Then burst into flower from every cubbyhole
(For all the world like a seventy-four of the line
Riding the swell and firing off Finisterre).

Extraordinary sight! Its delicate legs
Thickened and gnarled, writhing, they started to root
The feet deep in a carpet of briony
Star-pointed with primula. Small animals
Began to mooch around and climb up this
Reversionary desk and dustable heirloom
Left in the gloomiest corner of the room
Far from the television.

                                   I alone,
To my belief, remarked the remarkable
Transaction above remarked. The flowers were blue,
The fiery blue of iris, and there was
A smell of warm, wet grass and new horse-dung.

The screen, meanwhile, communicated to us
With some fidelity the image and voice
Of Narcisse, the cultivated policewoman
From San Francisco, who had already
Taken the sponsors for ten thousand greens
By knowing her Montalets from Capegues,
Cordilleras from Gonorrheas, in
The plays of Shapesmoke Swoon of Avalon,
A tygers hart in a players painted hide
If ever you saw one.

                              When all this was over,
And everyone went home to bed, not one
Mentioned the escritoire, which was by now
Bowed over with a weight of fruit and nuts
And birds and squirrels in its upper limbs.
Stars tangled with its mistletoe and ivy.

-- Howard Nemerov