[Lily B]

The Colossus

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

Sylvia Plath

[Sven2]

Caligula

My namesake, Little Boot, Caligula,
you disappoint me, tell me what I saw
to make me like you when we met in school?
I took your name, poor odd-ball, poor spoiled fool,
my prince, young innocent and bowdlerized!
Your true face sneers at me, mean, thin, agonized,
the rusty Roman medal where I see
my lowest depths of possibility.

What can be salvaged from your life? A pain
that gently darkens over heart and brain,
a fairy's touch, a cobweb's weight of pain,
now makes me tremble at your right to live.
I live your last night. Sleepless fugitive,
your purple bedclothes and imperial eagle
grow so familiar they are home. Your regal
hand accepts my hand. You bend my wrist,
and tear the tendons with your strangler's twist...
You stare down the hallways, mile on stoney mile,
where the statures of gods return your smile.
Why did you smash their heads and give them yours?
You hear your household panting on all fours,
and itemize your features - sleep's old aide!
Item: your body hairy, badly made,
head hairless, smoother than your marble head;
Item: eyes hollow, hollow temple, red
cheeks rough with rouge, spindly legs, hands that leave
a clammy snail's trail on your soggy sleeve...
a hand no hand will hold... nose  thin, thin neck -
you wish the Romans had a single neck! 
Small thing, where are you? Child, you sucked your thumb
and couldn't sleep unless you hugged your numb
and woolly-witted toys of your small zoo.
There was some reason then to fondle you
before you found the death-mask for your play.
Lie very still, sleep with clasped hands and pray
for nothing, Child! Think, even at the end, good dreams
were faithful. You betray no friend
now that no  animal will share your bed.
Don't think!... And yet the God Adonis bled
and lay beside you forcing you to strip.
You felt his gored thigh spurting on your hip.
Your mind burned, you were God, a thousand plans
ran zig-zag, zig-zag. You began to dance
for joy, and called your menials to arrange
death for the gods. You worshiped your great change,
took a bath and rolled your genitals
until they shrank to marbles...

                                              Animals
fattened for your arenas suffered less
than you in dying - yours the lawlessness
of something simple that has lost its law,
my namesake, and the last Caligula.

Robert Lowell

[Sven2]

Harbor

All those slow walks along the pier of life,
before you embarked!
                                       —The evening falls
with an infinite peace—for I have returned to you—
as it was before,
when you were by the window
of the patio all in bloom, thinking.—
                                                             A sad desire
of gathering in my soul
the last of the whole spring
and presenting it to you in my mouth, my eyes,
makes me weep, sing, laugh at all the light.—My voice is
                                                                                         good,
so good, that now even yours seems
less good in its great kindness.—
                                                         I would like
to overwhelm you with music as high as those
stars, that shine in your eyes, sweetly,
as they do in the dark sky; to fill with light
all your soul—so many winters without me—
with my love, sustained
by an inner sun of magic gold,
on this evening, blue and high, made eternal...
                                                                 And upon returning
tonight, slowly, as if towards death,
you will feel happy, immensely
satisfied with my past,
desiring only to sleep well and slowly,
under the pure light, magical and complete,
of all the stars—all your good memories...

- Juan Ramon Jimenez
Translated by Antonio T. de Nicolas

[Sven2]

An Eldering Congregation (excerpt)

That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man. . .'     Dream of Gerontius
                                                           

I am confronted now with the weight of body
and the spirit's blank, half-willed ascendancy;
in the dark night I wake, uncertain if the sounds I've heard

are insinuations from the dead, or smallest creatures scurrying
somewhere between slates and ceiling. Sleep
is not won easily; dreams recur, old arguments, futilities;

vision blurs, perhaps from too much seeing
and memory has become a marshy bog; to you I pray,
Jesus, old fox and clever-paws, old wily-snout, deal

gently with me now. High tide by afternoon, Atlantic
purring like a tom-cat under sun, swollen moment of plenitude
before the turn. The years, taking on themselves

the fortitude of dreams, have been passing swift as dreams; my hair
holds like tufts of fine bog-cotton, skin crinkles
like the gold of gutter-leaves; the ribs of splayed half-deckers

are the days of my well-loved dead cluttering my own low tides;
whether my fall is to be hard or I'm to drift away under white
soft-billowing sails, I would that they could say of me, yes

he lived, and while he lived
he gathered a few, though precious, poems
lacquered with brittle loveliness, like shells.

-- John F. Deane

[Sven2]

American Self-Portrait IV

Here is the wind as it locks and reloads above
the waves. And there, the clatter of gulls scattershot

across the beach. Notice the couple caught in midlaugh
as the little dog of time tags along behind them, its leash

a tink tink tink in the distance. What is life but dark
waters washing us up? Tide in and tide out. The sky

white as an angel's robe, the angel's robe strung up
somewhere between what we want and what blinds.

What are the chances I'll recall any of this
next week? How likely is it that the hour I

have my hook dug into will tear its tine from
your skin? Let's tell the carpenter to put down

his hammer. What do we care if the bell goes on
with its silent journey through hours? We can

build our own fire, string our own line. Maybe the sea
will peel back its waves, maybe the blackened boat

of the body will reel in the last rope from the pier,
maybe the fish, maybe the lone gull, maybe the moon

aswim in its minnow-bucket . . . even if the stars
take it all back, even if the drummer drops his sticks

and walks into the ocean, even if the trees tie on
their bad blindfolds, we'll be okay. We don't need

anything except what we will remember, and even that
will change, like a cloud whose rain is about to fall.

Just wait. Someone is going to warn that boy against
building sandcastles so close to the water. It won't be me.

--Dean Rader

[Sven2]

The Second Music


Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.


--Annie Lighthart 

[Sven2]

Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and deca-
dence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stub-
bornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thick-
ening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught--they say--
God, when he walked on earth.

--Robinson Jeffers

[Sven2]

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

--Langston Hughes

[Sven2]

I've Put In Gardens South of the Fields

Woodcutter and recluse - they inhabit
these mountains for different reasons,

and there are other forms of difference.
You can heal here among these gardens,

sheltered from rank vapors of turmoil,
wilderness clarity calling distant winds.

I chi'i - sited my house on the northern hill,
doors opening out onto the southern river,

ended trips to the well with a new stream
and planted hibiscus in terraced banks.

Now there are tree flocks at my door
and crowds of mountains at my window,

and I wander thin trails down to fields
or gaze into a distance of towering peaks,

wanting little, never wearing myself out.
It's rare luck to make myself such a life,

though like ancient recluse paths, mine
bring longing for the footsteps of friends:

how could I forget them in this exquisite
adoration kindred spirits alone can share?


--Hsien Ling-Yun
(385 to 433)
translated by David Hinton

[Sven2]

Lines Three, Five, Seven Words Long

Autumn wind clear,
autumn moon bright,

fallen leaves gather in piles, then scatter,
and crows settling-in, cold, startle away.

Will we ever see, ever even think of each other again?
This night, this moment: impossible to feel it all.

--Li Po
(755-762)
translated by David Hinton

[Sven2]

The Han River

Steady and full, all surging swells and white gulls in flight,
it flows springtime deep, a green so pure, it should dye robes.

Going south and coming back north, I've grown older, older.
Late night lingers, farewell to a fishing boat bound for home.

--Tu Mu
(803-853)
translated by David Hinton

[Sven2]

Questions at Christmas

Whether he was born in winter,
Whether he was crucified,
Lanced with pity by a soldier,
Whether the apostles lied,
I cannot say, we cannot know.
Around us the drifts of whiteness blow.

If he was love is he alive
Even in the deadest night.
Those who in his name contrive
To punish love, theirs is the blight
More desolate than winter fields.
Ask what love the story yields.

What love discerns us from our birth
If any love beneath these stars
Discerns the children of this earth?
Who is the mother of our years?
What is the meaning of our prayers?
What love is certain as our fears?

--David Mason

 

[Sven2]

Farewell

Here in these mountains, our farewell over,
sun sinking away, I close my brushwood gate.

Next spring, grasses will grow green again.
And you, my old friend -- will you be back too?

Wang Wei
translated by David Hinton

[Sven2]

Visitor

I am dreaming of a house just like this one
but larger and opener to the trees, nighter
than day and higher than noon, and you,
visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy
milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like.
For each night is a long drink in a short glass.
A drink of blacksound water, such a rush
and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.
And if it isn't night yet, though I seem to
recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.
Did you receive my invitation? It is not
for everyone. Please come to my house
lit by leaf light. It's like a book with bright
pages filled with flocks and glens and groves
and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr
in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that
took too long to read but minutes to unread—
that is—to forget. Strange are the pages
thus. Nothing but the hope of company.
I made too much pie in expectation. I was
hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a
nightgown in a real way. Did you receive
my invitation? Written in haste, before
leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.
An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill
or arrive but moves silently in a direction.
Like a dark book in a long life with a vague
hope in a wood house with an open door.

--Brenda Shaughnessy

[Sven2]

[Even deathly tired, the sun]

Even deathly tired, the sun
always finds the right position
to rise above the mountains.

Sharply, the olive wind splits
the foliage of alien trees.

At night, all-knowing luminous angels
pull the birdswarms ahead
between moon and waters.

Everything in Heaven, on Earth,
receives and obeys a wisdom
secretly conveyed.

Why not my heart, my brain and my sleep?
Why not my presumptuous tongue,
too short to say your name,
too long for silence.

Why does my heart not know out and not in,
why does my brain always think in circles?
Why does my sleep pass by yours
with the emperor-moths?

Why is the tongue too short and too long?
Bitterly it maims the sweetest name
and never climbs above sobbing's
lowest point to words of the heart.


--Christine Lavant
translated by David Chorlton