James Schuyler

 

Salute

Past is past, and if one
remembers what one meant
to do and never did, is
not to have thought to do
enough? Like that gather-
ing of one each I
planned, to gather one
of each kind of clover,
daisy, paintbrush that
grew in that field
the cabin stood in and
study them one afternoon
before they wilted. Past
is past. I salute
that various field.

W, S. Merwin

For a Coming Extinction

Gray whaleNow that we are sending you to The EndThat great godTell himThat we who follow you invented forgivenessAnd forgive nothingI write as though you could understandAnd I could say itOne must always pretend somethingAmong the dyingWhen you have left the seas nodding on their stalksEmpty of youTell him that we were madeOn another dayThe bewilderment will diminish like an echoWinding along your inner mountainsUnheard by usAnd find its way outLeaving behind it the futureDeadAnd oursWhen you will not see againThe whale calves trying the lightConsider what you will find in the black gardenAnd its courtThe sea cows the Great Auks the gorillasThe irreplaceable hosts ranged countlessAnd fore-ordaining as starsOur sacrificesJoin your word to theirsTell himThat it is we who are important

C. A. Conrad

 

Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (excerpt)

25 shard

James Richardson

 

Pines

Pine—the tree, that is—grows from a rootthat means to swell, from which we also getthe word fat, and by extensionEire and the Pierian springs, for their fertility.But the pine in to pine for or to pine awaystems from a root to pay for or atonewhich gives us penalty and punish and pain.Somehow two thoughts, on different sidesof a shearing fault of language, have slid togetherand stuck, for our lifetimes, anyway, at the sound pine.It’s not so common, in this practical century,for lovers to pine away, and as our climate warms,pines are retreating higher, but late as it is,anyone sleepless will hear the sound of the windthinning through pines as pained. Maybe at firstthey were a little strange with each other,but it’s natural, now, that pine and pine are pine.Just as, when two who met on a trail one morningare still talking at sunset, something otherthan matching their strides is keeping them together.

Clark Coolidge

 

The Country Autumns

But it could not be brought to see what it

could be brought. And the leaves are

away again, teamed. A parent at the

last and a parent in the middle. And

as stones I thought it right.

Two plates, and on the other side all the

forest pieces. The clock says stay.

The books lower the earth, and in gardens

flat stones spin. The volume was of waiting.

Today is today, until the preposition taken up.

Next to the tree sways.

 

The sky in pieces the leaves part the

leaves piece together. To and from a hand

given all directions. The bark comes from

below. Takes from the books of the moves under

the sky. Speaker holds up the talks held last.

Motors the dust and the yellow syllables.

A slant on which was never here or

only partly.

Clark Coolidge

 Bontecou Chandelier

guiding (along the) studio to black soapbar 
to city to lumpy to county to straw (heads) 
"class" knive there tines (Brewery) 
fist emitter, nates or staples 
cow over january (Of Hag) the Bell be belt to whist to lab

Benson's Balloon (brown rust slats) cap bouncer 
topples brass lag of genuine (ten last coral keys) 
picture grips frame lost in sounds in candy (soundings) 
Barrel. & have it the ten "tells". Money. 
lots contentment, grease or asp 
the white like the cancel

jars jars jars oil staples donuts 
wire, at the wrist, the Hey

Crenulated. Absolving. Holiday Swells. 
meant snake to draw to slight slide to it 
cuss snow car crust (drainage, Albany) rubble 
can in sincerity (lumps, jeers) 
bent nose ends fires (mattress, Iron) 
Jersey, Jersey

Jorie Graham

from EPIGRAPHS 

by Jorie Graham

 [for The Errancy]

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind
                      —Wyatt

 
For someone a fresh breeze blows.
For someone the sunset luxuriates-
                      —"Requim," Anna Akhmatova

 
[for Swarm]

To say I love you is to say I want you to be
                      —St. Augustine

 

[for Never]

"How can I believe in that? Surely it cannot be?"
                      —John Keats 
                     (upon first viewing the scenery of the Lake District)

from EPIGRAPHS 

by Jorie Graham 

[for Overlord]

Belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
                     —Franz Kafka

The gods keep changing, but the prayers stay the same.
                     —Yehuda Amichai

Before a war breaks out, it has long begun in the hearts of the people.
                     —Leo Tolstoy

 

[for Fast]

 Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far
Out of that minute?
                  —Robert Browning

Collected by Juleen Johnson 

Walt Whitman

Whitman with Peter Doyle. Studio portrait (1865)

From Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

 
We descend upon you and all things­­­­—we arrest you all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality,
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions
                  and determinations of ourselves.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers!

 
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence-
                  forward;
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
                  from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you perma-
nently within us;
We fathom you not—we love you.
                       

James Schuyler

Raymond Foye, Janes Schuyler, Chelsea Hotel, 1989

 Mark Trail’s funny fliers, 

A Bill Berkson Birthday Ode

To be born in August!
the month that rips out
the basting and the seasonal
suit holds together or
lets go and

you leap naked into life

and airborne greet September
October: ripe sun, foodstuffs,
colored leaves, in a flood
pouring like water. Farmer
Gull goes off for a winter
rest. You are alone

though at one with far-
mers, framers, ships,
ships’ radio operators,
orators, opera stars,
and all one thought
you slice the water
and it flies from you
“nitidus –a –um” words
shining as pebbles

the sea shifts and chews 

G. C. Waldrep

 

Broken Things

You stow them to the rear of worship: bits of jagged iron, 

candle nubs, miscellaneous gears and levers, each perfect 
unto itself but useless apart from its fellows. The human 
back is meant to bear this weight: cable spools, dusty 
vases. Here is a picture of Christ, and here is a picture of 
Christ. Imagine the eyes first, oblique timepieces upon 
which vision prints. I cough up a tooth, mature and perfect. 
It glistens in my hand. The chancel remains locked, 
nursing its treasures with a dim milk. I can just feel the 
tooth resting in the center of my palm; I shift it slightly,
its planes mazing the half-light. Is it broken, I ask myself. 
Is it worship. Every century or four someone scrubs the 
images from the walls and replaces them with new images. 
A fish. A crown. A scythe. See, this special niche for 
books from which pages have been torn. You may open 
and close them: an almanac, a lab manual, a toddler’s
pop-up fable. In my hand I am still holding this single
tooth, which my body offered up. It is not, to my knowledge, 
mine. I imagine the dark chancel full of teeth, a mouth
sewn shut. GO FIND OUT THE ARROW instructs
the legend in the glass, that falls on me. Nowhere is there 
speech or talk of mending. A child’s collage, a cracked
slate. I can’t decide where to leave the tooth: in the Lady 
Chapel, by the font, at the ad hoc altar to war veterans
in the north aisle. The tooth requires neither assembly nor 
instruction. It is a cool kernel in my outstretched hand.
So I swallow the tooth. In this way I turn my back on 
worship. I take it with me, away from the splintered table 
leg, the xylophone missing a key, the saints’ tongues,
the floral wire, old kneelers with their stuffing leaking out. 
Easter baskets, water pitchers. The damaged umbrellas.

Ron Silliman

passages from "Parrot Eyes Lust"

for Elliot Helfer

             Do potatoes suffer?

*****

Angela Davis’s innocence

always was inscribed
absolutely
by the fact that
               the guns
registered in her name
Jonathan Jackson had stolen
from the Che-Lumumba Club safe house

                       Still that concept—
the Che-Lumumba Club safe house—
is itself worthy
of further exploration

                       Sentences
                       dangling in midair

                       Davis
                       as an undergraduate
                       studied at the Sorbonne

                       I got a job
                       with Pacific Gas & Electric

                                

                        ******

                              

                     Who one runs into
                            in this
                                 resolutely Republican
                    county when 
                                      reporting
                               for jury duty

                                     For five years
                                 they’ve nursed this grief
                              bitterness, rage
                          the death of their daughter
                                          just two days old

                        the beautiful but 
                                     beleaguered defendant

                     the crap cafeteria
                           that in theory stops serving
                                 half an hour
                         before the judge
                                 releases the panel for lunch

Ron Padgett

 Poem

I’m in the house.

It’s nice out: warm 

sun on cold snow. 

First day of spring 

or last of winter. 

My legs run down 

the stairs and out 

the door, my top 

half here typing

                                 

Franz Wright

 Auto-Lullaby

Think of   a sheep

knitting a sweater;

think of   your life

getting better and better.

Think of   your cat

asleep in a tree;

think of   that spot

where you once skinned your knee.

Think of   a bird

that stands in your palm.

Try to remember

the Twenty-first Psalm.

Think of   a big pink horse

galloping south;

think of   a fly, and

close your mouth.

If   you feel thirsty, then

drink from your cup.

The birds will keep singing

until they wake up.