[cassie]

Fantasy

I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night
Where you were the dusk-eyed queen,
And there in the pallor of moon-veiled light
The loveliest things were seen ...

A slim-necked peacock sauntered there
In a garden of lavender hues,
And you were strange with your purple hair
As you sat in your amethyst chair
With you feet in your hyacinth shoes.
Oh, the moon gave a bluish light
Through the trees in the land of dreams and night.
I stood behind a bush of yellow-green
And whistled a song to the dark-haired queen ...


Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981)

[Sven2]

Pulse

In Jerusalem I saw a soldier buying
a children's book,
a mailman who evaded the dogs along his route
only to be bitten by a little boy.
In Athens a woman threw herself
in front of a train
as people were rushing to the Olympics
and all shouted, "No, no!
Couldn't she find a better time?"
In China a housewife
borrowing a large kettle from her neighbor
promises to return it
in another life.
These people and many others stretch behind me in a line:
I'm like Darius' army gathering troops
wherever he went—
carts and cattle like dust clouds on both sides of the road
(otherwise how would we feed ourselves?),
the smells of animals, incense and spice,
camels, coins and dust.
And yet the war hasn't taken place.
There's no proof that death exists.
I remove my glove, the shell that covers me,
the sheath with my sword, I hold out my bare hand.
The caravan is ever farther behind.

--Grete Tartler

[Sven2]

A Walk to Sope Creek

Sometimes when I've made the mistake of anger, which sometimes
breeds the mistake of cruelty, I walk

down the rocky slope above the ruined mill on Sope Creek
where sweet gum and hickory weave sunlight

into gauzy screens. And sometimes when I've made the mistake
of cruelty, which always breeds grief,

I remember how, years ago, my uncle led me, a boy,
into a thicket of pines and taught me to pray

beside a white stone, the way a man had taught him, a boy,
to pray behind a clapboard church.

Sometimes when I'm as mean as a stone, I weave
between trees above that crumbling mill

and stumble through those threaded screens of light,
the way anger must fall

through many stages of remorse.
Any rock, he allowed, can be an altar.

--David Bottoms

[Sven2]

Relax

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter's age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she's a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat—
the one you never really liked—will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours, for a month.
Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you'll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn't plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you'll come home to find your son has emptied
your refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money.
There's a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs halfway down. But there's also a tiger below.
And two mice—one white, one black—scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You'll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

--Ellen Bass

[Sven2]

Poverty


              la cólera de pobre
              tiene dos rios contra muchos mares.
                                            — César Vallejo

Vallejo wrote that with God we are all orphans.
I send $22 a month to a kid in Ecuador
so starvation keeps moving on its bony burro
past his door—no cars, computers,
basketball shoes—not a bottle cap
of hope for the life ahead . . . just enough
to keep hunger shuffling by in a low cloud
of flies. It's the least I can do,
and so I do it.
                       I have followed the dry length
of Mission Creek to the sea and forgotten to pray
for the creosote, the blue salvia, let alone
for pork bellies, soy bean futures.
                                                      Listen.
There are 900 thousand Avon Ladies in Brazil.
Billions are spent each year on beauty products
world-wide—28 billion on hair care, 14 on skin
conditioners, despite children digging on the dumps,
selling their kidneys, anything that is briefly theirs.
9 billion a month for war in Iraq, a chicken bone
for foreign aid.
                        I am the prince of small potatoes,
I deny them nothing who come to me beseeching
the crusts I have to give. I have no grounds for complaint,
though deep down, where it's anyone's guess,
I covet everything that goes along with the illustrious—
creased pants as I stroll down the glittering boulevard,
a little aperitif beneath Italian pines. But who cares
what I wear, or drink? The rain? No, the rain is something
we share—it devours the beginning and the end.
The old stars tumble out of their bleak rooms like dice—
Box Cars, Snake Eyes, And-The-Horse-You-Rode-In-On . . .
not one metaphorical bread crumb in tow.
Not a single Saludo! from the patronizers
of the working class—Pharaoh Oil, Congress,
or The Commissioner of Baseball—all who will eventually
take the same trolley car to hell, or a slag heap
on the outskirts of Cleveland.
                                                I have an ATM card,
AAA Plus card. I can get cash from machines, be towed
20 miles to a service station. Where do I get off penciling in
disillusionment? My bones are as worthless as the next guy's
against the stars, against the time it takes light to expend
its currency across the cosmic vault. I have what everyone has—
the over-drawn statement of the air, my blood newly rich
with oxygen before the inescapable proscenium of the dark,
my breath going out equally with any atom of weariness
or joy, each one of which is closer to God than I.

--Christopher Buckley

[Sven2]

The Precision of Pain

The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I'm thinking
how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor's office.
Even those who haven't learned to read and write are precise:
"This one's a throbbing pain, that one's a wrenching pain,
this one gnaws, that one burns, this is a sharp pain
and that––a dull one. Right here. Precisely here,
yes, yes." Joy blurs everything. I've heard people say
after nights of love and feasting, "It was great,
I was in seventh heaven." Even the spaceman who floated
in outer space, tethered to a spaceship, could say only, "Great,
wonderful, I have no words."
The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain —
I want to describe, with a sharp pain's precision, happiness
and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.

--Yehuda Amichai

Translated by Chana Bloch

[Sven2]

The Second Trying

If I could only get hold of the whole of you,   
How could I ever get hold of the whole of you,   
Even more than the most beloved idols,   
More than mountains quarried whole,   
          More than mines   
          Of burning coal,   
Let's say mines of extinguished coal   
And the breath of day like a fiery furnace.   

If one could get hold of you for all the years,   
How could one get hold of you from all the years,   
How could one lengthen a single arm,   
Like a single branch of an African river,   
As one sees in a dream the Bay of Storms,   
As one sees in a dream a ship that went down,   
The way one imagines a cushion of clouds,   
Lily-clouds as the body's cushion,   
But though you will it, they will not convey you,   
Do not believe that they will convey you.   

If one could get hold of all-of-the-whole-of-you,   
If one could get hold of you like metal,   
Say like pillars of copper,   
Say like a pillar of purple copper   
(That pillar I remembered last summer)—
And the bottom of the ocean I have never seen,   
And the bottom of the ocean that I can see   
With its thousand heavy thickets of air,   
A thousand and one laden breaths.   

If one could only get hold of the-whole-of-you-now,   
How could you ever be for me what I myself am? 

--Dahlia Ravikovitch

Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

[Sven2]

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

--Theodore Roethke

[Sven2]

A Night at the Opera

"The tenor's too fat," the beautiful young
woman complains, "and the soprano
dowdy and old." But what if Othello's
not black, if Rigoletto's hump lists,
if airy Gilda and her entourage
of flesh outweigh the cello section?

In fairy tales, the prince has a good heart,
and so as an outward and visible
sign of an inward, invisible grace,
his face is not creased, nor are his limbs gnarled.
Our tenor holds in his liver-spotted
hands the soprano's broad, burgeoning face.

Their combined age is ninety-seven; there's
spittle in both pinches of her mouth;
a vein in his temple twitches like a worm.
Their faces are a foot apart. His eyes
widen with fear as he climbs to the high
B-flat he'll have to hit and hold for five

dire seconds. And then they'll stay in their stalled
hug for as long as we applaud. Franco
Corelli once bit Birgit Nilsson's ear
in just such a command embrace because
he felt she'd upstaged him. Their costumes weigh
fifteen pounds apiece; they're poached in sweat

and smell like fermenting pigs; their voices rise
and twine not from beauty, nor from the lack
of it, but from the hope for accuracy
and passion, both. They have to hit the note
and the emotion, both, with the one poor
arrow of the voice. Beauty's for amateurs.

--William Matthews

[Sven2]

The Hereafter

Some people as they die grow fierce, afraid.
They see a bright light, offer frantic prayers,
and try to climb them, like Jacob's ladder, up
to heaven. Others, never wavering,
inhabit heaven years before they die,
so certain of their grace they can describe,
down to the gingerbread around the eaves,
the cottage God has saved for them. For hours
they'll talk of how the willow will not weep,
the flowering Judas not betray. They'll talk
of how they'll finally learn to play the flute
and speak good French.
                                    Still others know they'll rot
and their flesh turn to earth, which will become
live oaks, spreading their leaves in August light.
The green cathedral glow that shines through them
will light grandchildren playing hide-and-seek
inside the grove. My next-door neighbor says
he's glad the buzzards will at last give wings
to those of us who've envied swifts as they
swoop, twist, and race through tight mosquito runs.
And some—my brother's one—anticipate
the grave as if it were a chair pulled up
before a fire on winter nights. His ghost,
he thinks, will slouch into the velvet cushion,
a bourbon and branch water in its hand.
I've even met a man who says the soul
will come back in another skin—the way
a renter moves from house to house. Myself,
I'd like to come back as my father's hound.
Or something fast: a deer, a rust-red fox.
For so long I have thought of us as nails
God drives into the oak floor of this world,
it's hard to comprehend the hammer turned
to claw me out. I'm joking, mostly. I love
the possibilities—not one or two
but all of them. So if I had to choose,
pick only one and let the others go,
my death would be less strange, less rich, less like
a dizzying swig of fine rotgut. I roll
the busthead, slow, across my tongue and taste
the copper coils, the mockingbird that died
from fumes and plunged, wings spread, into the mash.
And underneath it all, just barely there,
I find the scorched-nut hint of corn that grew
in fields I walked, flourished beneath a sun
that warmed my skin, swaying in a changing wind
that tousled, stung, caressed, and toppled me.

--Andrew Hudgins

[Sven2]

Amherst Massachusetts

Boulder Colorado drinks a margarita outside on the patio. He walks to
Pearl Street and finds a spot on the pavement to watch a street performer.
People in dreadlocks, playing guitars, ask him if he can spare a smile as
he passes them by. Baskets with notes that say, "For music school," sit
in front of young girls who are playing the violin.

Boulder Colorado checks his watch as he realizes that Tucson Arizona
probably won't show up. he waits outside the pizza joint before going
to a phone booth. Tucson Arizona answers the phone out of breath. She
talks closely into the telephone and Boulder Colorado imagines her
pale skin and the way her shirt thins to her body, and says, it would have
been nice if you had called.

She slips the phone off her fingers and wraps her body in a towel before
getting dressed to meet New York City. New York City is always up late,
they shop on Fourth Ave, and even when the stores are closed the streets
are open. It's Downtown Saturday Night and New York City is dancing.

He pulls Tucson Arizona to his chest, his arms are on her lower back, his
hands feeling the slender of her hips. Amherst Massachusetts is reading the
newspaper when she looks out and notices Tucson Arizona's slim body
dancing between the trees. She thinks about New York City's cinnamon
breath and raw cologne.

Amherst Massachusetts wraps her brown thick hair up in a wool hat, her
neck in a scarf. She lets the roads take her home, following the leaves as
they fall to the silence of the street. She places her hands on her hips and
feels the roundness the year has brought them.

Amherst Massachusetts thinks about New York City and the charm he has
with women, she thinks about Tucson Arizona and the way she lets men
play on her body like sunlight. She knows they are dancing the
night away and won't be home anytime soon.

--Jaimee Kuperman

[Sven2]

Engagement

The young man knows he's going to die today, but he's wrong.
The other young man figures the army is the best way to improve his life,
    but he's wrong.
They both think their weapons will protect them, but they're wrong.
They both believe their prayers will help.

Their commanders have intentions and intelligence, but they're wrong.
We've heard the story before. It's wrong.
The news will document it, but it will be wrong.
The war on terror, the war on Islam, the clash of civilizations.

The explosion will exceed the necessity of the occasion.
The exchange of fire will be unbalanced.
The response will be disproportionate.
The reporter is factually incorrect, theoretically misinformed, morally
    reprehensible.

The clear typeface and perfect binding are misleading.
The reader is uncomfortably and inappropriately implicated.
The tranquil mind is insufficient to the task.
The young men, necks dirty and damp, advance.

--Adam Sol

[Sven2]

Restoration Ode

What tends toward orbit and return,
comets and melodies, robins and trash trucks
restore us. What would be an arrow, a dove
to pierce our hearts restore us. Restore us

minutes clustered like nursing baby bats
and minutes that are shards of glass. Mountains
that are vapor, mice living in cathedrals,
and the heft and lightness of snow restore us.

One hope inside dread, "Oh what the hell"
inside "I can't" like a pearl inside a cake
of soap, love in lust in loss, and the tub
filled with dirt in the backyard restore us.

Sunflowers, let me wait, let me please
see the bridge again from my smacked-up
desk on Euclid, jog by the Black Angel
without begging, dream without thrashing.

Let us be quick and accurate with the knife
and everything that dashes restore us,
salmon, shadows buzzing in the wind,
wren trapped in the atrium, and all

that stills at last, my friend's cat,
a pile of leaves after much practice,
and ash beneath the grate, last ember
winked shut restore us. And the one who comes

out from the back wiping his hands on a rag,
saying, "Who knows, there might be a chance."
And one more undestroyed, knocked-down nest
stitched with cellophane and dental floss,

one more gift to gently shake
and one more guess and one more chance.

--Dean Young

[Sven2]

The Soul Bone

Once I said I didn't have a spiritual bone
in my body and meant by that
I didn't want to think of death,
as though any bone in us
could escape it. Maybe
I was afraid of what I couldn't know
for certain, a thud like the slamming
of a coffin lid, as final and inexplicable
as that. What was the soul anyway,
I wondered, but a homonym for loneliness?
Now, in late middle age, or more, I like to imagine it,
the spirit, the soul bone, as though it were hidden
somewhere inside my body, white as a tooth
that falls from a child's mouth, a dove,
the cloud it can fly through. Like bones,
it persists. Little knot of self, stubborn
as wildflowers in a Chilmark field in autumn,
the white ones they call boneset, for healing,
or the others, pearly everlasting.
The rabbis of the Midrash believed in the bone
and called it the luz, just like the Spanish word
for light, the size of a chickpea or an almond,
depending on which rabbi was telling the story,
found, they said, at the top of the spine or the base,
depending. No one's ever seen it, of course,
but sometimes at night I imagine I can feel it,
shining its light through my body, the bone
luminous, glowing in the dark. Sometimes,
if you listen, you might even hear that light
deep inside me, humming its brave little song.

--Susan Wood

[Sven2]

Forever

Even in Dante's inspired version,
Heaven and Hell don't seem appropriate
For human habitation, being too static,
Too imbued with notions of the eternal.
Yes, for the sake of justice, the violent
Who get away with murder on earth
Should be made to feel a heat more fiery
Than the coals of rage that burned within them;
The betrayers of friends and patrons deserve a chill
Colder than the ice in their arctic hearts.
But shouldn't their sentences have a limit?
Won't their victims, the pillaged and trampled
And rolled to the wall, safe at last
In the balmy realm of the blessed,
Grow uneasy, eventually, with the thought
Of their oppressors in endless torment?
Won't they decide a determinate stay
Is long enough? It's not for us to object
If Abel throws down a rope at last to Cain,
If Jesus takes Judas by the hand.
So hell, if imagination wins out,
Ought to be slowly emptying,
And then heaven as well, as the saints
Return to earth to help the sinners
Learn what damage they can undo
If they give themselves to the effort,
And what damage they'll have to leave as is.

--Carl Dennis