[Sven2]

Meaning


If a life needn't be useful to be meaningful,
Then maybe a life of sunbathing on a beach
Can be thought of as meaningful for at least a few,
The few, say, who view the sun as a god
And consider basking a form of worship.

As for those devoted to partnership with a surfboard
Or a pair of ice skates or a bag of golf clubs,
Though I can't argue their lives are useful,
I'd be reluctant to claim they have no meaning
Even if no one observes their display of mastery.

No one is listening to the librarian
I can call to mind as she practices, after work,
In her flat on Hoover Street, the viola da gamba
In the one hour of day that for her is golden.
So what if she'll never be good enough
To give a concert people will pay to hear?

When I need to think of her with an audience,
I can imagine the ghosts of composers dead for centuries,
Pleased to hear her doing her best with their music.

And isn't it pleasing, as we walk at dusk to our cars
Parked on Hoover Street, after a meeting
On saving a shuttered hotel from the wrecking ball,
To catch the sound of someone filling a room
We won't be visiting with a haunting solo?

--Carl Dennis

[Sven2]

The Meeting


After so long an absence
       At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
       Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
       And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet's two or three berries
       In the top of the uttermost bough.

We cordially greet each other
       In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
       How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas
       And many a Happy New Year
But each in his heart is thinking
       Of those that are not here.

We speak of friends and their fortunes,
       And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
       And the living alone seem dead.

And at last we hardly distinguish
       Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
       Steals over our merriest jests.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Sven2]

Nothing to Hold Onto

When it's time to enter the great waters,
you, who've been properly loved since birth,
will likely feel on top of the world,
lacking the useful defenses the unloved have.

Try to remember that on top of the world
is only an expression, nothing to hold onto,
and if there were such a place,
no doubt there'd be a host of angels

who might think it their territory.
You would need to be careful
of the jealous, bitter ones
who haven't gotten the best assignments.

It might be the right time to cultivate
disbelief, which can make certain angels
disappear. Actually, disbelief is always useful,
helps the discriminate discriminate.

Those of you properly loved will believe
your biggest mistakes can be overcome.
You will have learned laughter
is a floatation device, and uproarious laughter

the password to moments of fine feeling.
It means the angel assigned to you at birth,
the only one you believe in, has already wrapped
his wings around you, is doing his job.

Still, there'll be turbulence as you enter
the great waters. Love alone can't save you,
and disbelief only frees you long enough
to see clearly where you're going.

But the loved have a history of shifting
as the world shifts, and a vague sense
how good and bad blend, become one.
Don't worry if you can't tell the angelic

from the hellbent, or the exact meaning of guidance.
Confusion won't hurt you. This is your chance
to row as hard as the unloved, whose task
from the beginning was to exceed all expectations.

--Stephen Dunn

[Sven2]

Clair De Lune

Your soul is a chosen landscape
charmed by masquers and revellers
playing the lute and dancing and almost
sad beneath their fanciful disguises!

Even while singing, in a minor key,
of victorious love and fortunate living
they do not seem to believe in their happiness,
and their song mingles with the moonlight,

the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,
which sets the birds in the trees dreaming,
and makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,
the tall slender fountains among the marble statues!



--Paul Verlaine
translated by Peter Low

[Sven2]

Ephemeral Stream


This is the way water
thinks about the desert.
The way the thought of water
gives you something
to stumble on. A ghost river.
A sentence trailing off
toward lower ground.
A finger pointing
at the rest of the show.

I wanted to read it.
I wanted to write a poem
and call it "Ephemeral Stream"
and dedicate it to you
because you made of this
imaginary creek
a hole so deep
it looked like a green eye
taking in the storm,
a poem interrupted
by forgiveness.

It's not over yet.
A dream can spend
all night fighting off
the morning. Let me
start again. A stream
may be a branch or a beck,
a crick or kill or lick,
a syke, a runnel. It pours
through a corridor. The door
is open. The keys
are on the dashboard.

--Elizabeth Willis   

[Sven2]

Getting Up Early


Just as the night was fading
Into the dusk of morning
When the air was cool as water
When the town was quiet
And I could hear the sea

I caught sight of the moon
No higher than the roof-tops
Our neighbor the moon

An hour before the sunrise
She glowed with her own sunrise
Gold in the grey of morning

World without town or forest
Without wars or sorrows
She paused between two trees

And it was as if in secret
Not wanting to be seen
She chose to visit us
So early in the morning.


--Anne Porter

[Sven2]

A Hundred Years from Now


I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to
see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.
What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know
if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your
children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have
you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your
bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?
A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The
doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a
horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?

--David Shumate

[Sven2]

Heaven

When we are reunited after death,
The owls will call among the eucalyptus,
The white tailed kite will arc across the mesa,
And sunset cast orange light from the Pacific
Against the golden bush and eucalyptus
Where flowers and fruit and seeds appear all seasons
And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us.

--Mark Jarman

[Sven2]

Mind-Body Problem


When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
but for my body. It was so direct
and simple, so rational in its desires,
wanting to be touched the way an otter
loves water, the way a giraffe
wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
the tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
that made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife—
Her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels. Perhaps
my body would have liked to make some of our dates,
to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
with "None of your business!" Perhaps
it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
If we had had a more democratic arrangement
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog. How eagerly
it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
as though it knows exactly where we are going.

--Katha Pollitt

[Sven2]

I Looked Up


I looked up and there it was
among the green branches of the pitch pines—

thick bird,
a ruffle of fire trailing over the shoulders and down the back—

color of copper, iron, bronze—
lighting up the dark branches of the pine.

What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

When I made a little sound
it looked at me, then it looked past me.

Then it rose, the wings enormous and opulent,
and, as I said, wreathed in fire.


--Mary Oliver

[Sven2]

To You

(A. Josef's Theme)

I love You so. I love You when
I feel Your back, Your voice, Your shoulder,
You shroud me with Your whole body
like waterfall or pouring rain!


I love to be inside Your fate,
Your doubts and Your perturbation,
I wish Your faint blood circulation
were open, like a green garden gate.


Blessed be the fruit of good intent,
Your drowning bosom, and your lenience!
I've chosen You out of millions
just for that reason, dear friend.


Like leaves of bushes, thin and fine,
I feel Your lungs pulsate and shiver.
I hear Your entrails, Your liver,
You are all pure and divine!


Why has life taken such a course?
I only want when days break out
to see a glass, a hand stretched out
marked with a blue vein of Yours.


--Andrey Voznesensky
Translated by Alec Vagapov

[Sven2]

Abandonment Under the Walnut Tree


        "Your gang's done gone away."
                —The 119th Calypso, Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.


Something seems to have gnawed that walnut leaf.

You face your wrinkles, daily, in the mirror.
But the wrinkles are so slimming, they rather flatter.

Revel in the squat luck of that unhappy tree,
who can't take a mate from among the oaks or gums.

Ah, but if I could I would, the mirror version says,
because he speaks to you. He is your truer self
all dopey in the glass. He wouldn't stand alone
for hours, without at least a feel for the gall of oaks,
the gum tree bud caps, the sweet gum's prickly balls.

Oh, he's a caution, that reflection man.
He's made himself a study in the trees.
You is a strewn shattered leaf I'd step on, he says.
Do whatever it is you'd like to do. Be quick.

--D. A. Powell   

[Sven2]

What I'm Looking For

What I'm looking for
is an unmarked door
we'll walk through
and there: whatever
we'd wished for
beyond the door.

What I'm looking for
is a golden bowl
carefully repaired
a complete world sealed
along cracked lines.

What I'm looking for
may not be there.
What you're looking for
may or may not
be me. I'm listening for

the return of that sound
I heard in the woods
just now, that silvery sound
that seemed to call
not only to me.


--Maureen N. McLane

[Sven2]

Something Else

There's the lush grass again,
the white pines green and mysterious.
And the barn, too, in the distance,
fading red, the color of longing.
The afternoon light is gilding the hillside,
the clouds are moving together,
huge, incipient thoughts,
and you're swooning with desire
wanting the beautiful to lie down with you,
gold-leaf your fingertips and tongue,
green you with fragrance
though you don't know exactly
what you're after, whether it's beauty itself
or whatever lives inside it,
elusive, entire,
peripheral to your wanting—
shadow of wings
you catch obliquely
along the woods' edge,
river that you hear
without listening.

--Gregory Djanikian

[Sven2]

why i feed the birds


once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god


--Richard Vargas