May 2010
8 posts
Making Peace by Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out, “The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war.”
But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can’t be imagined before it is made, can’t be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards...
About Limits by Tatyana Shcherbina
The cicadas, the cicadas are singing, Rameses. The hemlock, Socrates, pour me my just amount. Let the others apply to their Central Committees. No, my brother Reason, I’m the soul, and I can’t.
The buildings, my idol! Look at the buildings! Are we really insects, with our shriveled wings who throw down our bodies on the bunks of the hive and drape our rags on the chairs they provide...
What He Thought by Heather McHugh
For Fabbio Doplicher We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the Mayor, mulled a couple matters over. The Italian literati seemed bewildered by the language of America: they asked us what does “flat drink” mean? and the mysterious “cheap date” (no explanation lessened...
The Discovery of Daily Experience by William...
It is a whisper. You turn somewhere, hall, street, some great event: the stars or the lights hold; your next step waits you and the firm world waits - but there is a whisper. You always live so, a being that receives, or partly receives, or fails to receive each moment’s touch.
You see the people around you - the honors they bear - a crutch, a cane, eye patch, or the subtler ones, that...
April
v Water
Father, I’m drowsing in April’s humming sun and think A girl the color of autumn kneels at the Squanicook’s bank, Who is the river’s daughter, dressed in driven skins, Who knows a cedar wind at Nissequassick brings The schools of alewife, herring, yellow perch ashore. The Place of Salmon roars with light. She steps, sure- Footed onto stone; lithe as a poplar,...
51. by Derek Walcott
No opera, no gilded columns, no wine-dark seats, no Penelope scouring the stll with delicate glasses, no practised ecstasy from the tireless tenor, no sweets and wine at no interval, no altos, no basses and violins sobbing as one; no opera house, no museum, no actual theatre, no civic center - and what else? Only the huge doors of clouds with the setting disc through which we leave and enter, only...
This Way Out by Rui Pires Cabral trans. from the...
But is there a way out? Imagine in insomnia the forests that grow at such hours in other regions, the trains that cross them to reach a destination in the future of others. Is there a way out? Imagine night filled with violent cities the rumbling of engines in the subways and rain falling on the black plastic of strawberry fields, all the suffering and uncertainty of the world. And in the morning,...
[Yes, I live inside the piano,] by Katerina...
Yes, I live inside the piano, but there is no need for you to come and visit me. AM
