JamesTate

 

Conjuring Roethke

Prickle a lamb, 

giggle a yam, 

beat a chrysanthemum 

out of its head 

with a red feather. 

Dream of a pencil 

or three airmail stamps 

under your pillow. 

Thank the good fairy 

you're not dead. 

The heat's on, 

the window's gone, 

the ceiling is sorry 

it hurt you. 

But this is not air 

holding your hand, 

nor weasels beneath 

your dirt rug. 

I think the corks 

are out of breath, 

the bottles begin 

laughing a zoo. 

I wish you were here. 

The calendar is red, 

a candle closes 

the room. 

If this is the life 

we are all leaving 

it's half as bad. 

Hello again mad turnip. 

Let's tango together 

down to the clear 

glad river.

Adrienne Rich

 

from 21 Love Poems

X

Your dog, tranquil and innocent, dozes through
our cries, our murmured dawn conspiracies
our telephone calls. She knows—what can she know?
If in my human arrogance I claim to read
her eyes, I find there only my own animal thoughts:
that creatures must find each other for bodily comfort,
that voices of the psyche drive through the flesh
further than the dense brain could have foretold,
that the planetary nights are growing cold for those
on the same journey, who want to touch
one creature-traveler clear to the end;
that without tenderness, we are in hell.

Jean Valentine

For S., at the Boat Pond

The newspapers blowing over the street
made her cry, all the birds in New York were crying
because they couldn't speak Greek,

she took nothing with her and went out onto the street.
The day was obscure, one more
lick of the quiet licking at the door,

her soft black magic, swallowing him, the children,
the world: leaving, everyone leaving,

all turning angels or nothing,
nothing or swimming like paradise children.

Kathleen Jamie

Arraheids

See thon raws o flint arraheids
in oor gret museums o antiquities
awful grand in Embro –
Dae’ye near’n daur wunner at wur histrie?
Weel then, Bewaur!
The museums of Scotland are wrang.
They urnae arraheids
but a show o grannies’ tongues,
the hard tongues o grannies
aa deid an gaun
back to thur peat and burns,
but for thur sherp
chert tongues, that lee
fur generations in the land
like wicked cherms, that lee
aa douce in the glessy cases in the gloom
o oor museums, an
they arnae lettin oan. But if you daur
sorn aboot an fancy
the vanished hunter, the wise deer runnin on;
wheesht… an you’ll hear them,
fur they cannae keep fae muttering
ye arnae here tae wonder,

whae dae ye think ye are? 

James Tate

Images of Little Compton, Rhode Island

Here the tendons in the swans’ wings stretch,
feel the tautness of their futuristic necks,
imagine their brains’ keyhole accuracy,
envy their infinitely precise desires.

A red-nosed Goodyear zeppelin emerges from the mist
like an ethereal albino whale on drugs.

One wanders around a credible hushed town.

Mosquito hammering through the air
with a horse’s power: there will be no cameramen.
We will swap bodies maybe
giving the old one a shove.

That’s an awful lot of work for you I said
and besides look at your hands,
there are small fires in the palms,
there is smoke squirting from every pore.

O when all is lost,
when we have thrown our shoes in the sea,
when our watches have crawled off into weeds,
our typewriters have finally spelled perhaps
accidentally the unthinkable word,

when the rocks loosen and the sea anemones
welcome us home with their gossamer arms
dropping like a ship from the stars,

what on earth shall we speak or think of,
and who do you think you are?

Jean Valentine

 

Osip Mandelstam: 394 

Toward the empty earth
falling, one step faltering—
some sweetness, in this
unwilling hesitance—

she walks, keeping
just ahead of her friends,
the quick-footed woman,
the younger man, one year younger.

A shy freedom draws her, her hobbled step
frees her, fires her, and it seems
the shining riddle in her walk
wants to hold her back:

the riddle, that this spring weather
is for us the first mother:
the mother of the grave.
And this will keep on beginning forever.

There are women,
the damp earth’s flesh and blood:
every step they take, a cry,
a deep steel drum.

It is their calling
to accompany those who have died;
and to be there, the first
to greet the resurrected.

To ask for their tenderness
would be a trespass against them;
but to go off, away from them--
no one has the strength.

Today is an angel; tomorrow
worms, and the grave;
and the day after
only lines in chalk.

The step you took
no longer there to take.

Flowers are deathless.   Heaven is round.
And everything to be is only a promise.

                           --Voronezh. 4 May 1937

                                                            (translated with Anne Frydman)

Jean Valentine

 

Willi, Home

                                       In memory

Last night, just before sleep, this: a bright
daffodil
lying in bed, with the sheet pulled up to its chin.
Willi, did I ever know you? The shine
in the lamplight!      of your intelligent glasses,
round and humorous.
Did I ever know myself? When I
start bullshitting I see your eyebrows fly . . . This book
is dedicated to Willi,
whom I do not know,

whom I know. The words in my head
this morning
(these words came from an angel):
“It’s too late to say goodbye.
And there are never enough goodbyes.”
I know: the daffodil
is me. Brave. Willi’s an iris. Brave.
Brave. Tall. Home. Deep. Blue.

Robert Bly

 

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Robert Bly

 

Written in Dejection near Rome

What if these long races go on repeating themselves
century after century, living in houses painted light colors
on the beach,
black spiders,
having turned pale and fat,
men walking thoughtfully with their families,
vibrations
of exhausted violin-bodies,
horrible eternities of sea pines!
Some men cannot help but feel it,
they will abandon their homes
to live on rafts tied together on the ocean;
those on shore will go inside tree trunks,
surrounded by bankers whose fingers have grown long and slender,
piercing through rotten bark for their food.

Source: The Light Around the Body, by Robert Bly

Charles Simic

 Talking To Little Birdies

Not a peep out of you now
After the bedlam early this morning.
Are you begging pardon of me
Hidden up there among the leaves,
Or are your brains momentarily overtaxed?

You savvy a few things I don't:
The overlooked sunflower seed worth a holler;
The traffic of cats in the yard;
Strangers leaving the widow's house,
Tieless and wearing crooked grins.

Or have you got wind of the world's news?
Some new horror I haven't heard about yet?
Which one of you was so bold as to warn me,
Our sweet setup is in danger?

Kids are playing soldiers down the road,
Pointing their rifles and playing dead.
Little birdies, are you sneaking wary looks
In the thick foliage as you hear me say this?

Charles Simic

 

Totemism

Inside everyone there are secret rooms. They’re cluttered and the lights are out. There's a bed in which someone is lying down with his face to the wall. In his head there are more rooms. In one, the venetian blinds shake in the approaching summer storm. Every once in a while an object on the table becomes visible: A broken compass, pebble the color of midnight, an enlargement of a school photograph with a face in the back circled, a watch spring, each one of these items is a totem of the self.

Every art is about the longing of One for the Other. Orphans that we are, we make our sibling kin out of anything we can find. The labor of art is the slow and painful metamorphosis of the One into the Other.

Charles Simic

EXOTIC PETS AND DIVAS

THEY TALKED OF “Beauty” and “Truth” in those far off days. No one sneezed in the music room. Loving couples were made of Italian marble. Our “goddess” had huge white wings made of lightest gauze. She played the piano favoring the black keys. Her lover's hands fluttered; his sighs flew heavenward. Everywhere one met with upraised eyes. The old women hid behind their fans where they turned into tall vases.

O sunsets and golden domes! The liveried servants tiptoed in and out, their mouths sewn shut with red thread. In their hands they carried death masks of famous poets. There was one for everyone to wear while the tea was being poured.

All of a sudden they all vanished. The clock in which Time sits like a prisoner shifted its chains. There was only a loveseat left with its paws of a wild animal and a smell of smoke at twilight. Old chimney fires put out by long autumn rains.

Weldon Kees

 

A Musician's Wife

Between the visits to the shock ward
The doctors used to let you play
On the old upright Baldwin
Donated by a former patient
Who is said to be quite stable now.

And all day long you played Chopin,
Badly and hauntingly, when you weren't
Screaming on the porch that looked
Like an enormous birdcage. Or sat
In your room and stared out at the sky.

You never looked at me at all.
I used to walk down to where the bus stopped
Over the hill where the eucalyptus trees
Moved in the fog, and stared down
At the lights coming on, in the white rooms.

And always, when I came back to my sister's
I used to get out the records you made
The year before all your terrible trouble,
The records the critics praised and nobody bought
That are almost worn out now.

Now, sometimes I wake in the night
And hear the sound of dead leaves
against the shutters. And then a distant
Music starts, a music out of an abyss,
And it is dawn before I sleep again.

Weldon Kees

with Norris Getty, Nebraska State Capitol (1937)

Round

"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.
Renan admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."
But here dried ferns keep falling to the floor,
And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortssoz is dead.
A blow to the Herald-Tribune. A closet mouse
Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Renan
Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."

Flaps like a worn-out blind. Cezanne
Would break out in the quiet streets of Aix
And shout, "Le monde, c'est terrible!" Royal
Cortissoz is dead. And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. The soil
In which the ferns are dying needs more Vigoro.
There is no twilight on the moon, no mist or rain,
No hail or snow, no life. Here in this house

Dried ferns keep falling to the floor, a mouse
Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Cezanne
Would break out in the quiet streets and scream. Renan
Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly." And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortissoz is dead.
There is no twilight on the moon, no hail or snow.
One notes fresh desecrations on the portico.
"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.

James Tate

: 

The Definition of Gardening

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands in the driveway a long time.
"Horticulture is a groping in the dark
into the obscure and unfamiliar,
kneeling before a disinterested secret,
slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle,
birdbrained babbling gibberish, dig and
destroy, pull out and apply salt,
hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots,
where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous,
the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love,
into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating,
through the nose, the earsplitting necrology
of it, the withering, shrivelling,
the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder
and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris,
wireworms are worse than their parents,
there is no way out, flowers as big as heads,
pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently
at me, the me who so loves to garden
because it prevents the heaving of the ground
and the untimely death of porch furniture,
and dark, murky days in a large city
and the dream home under a permanent storm
is also a factor to keep in mind."

Dorothy Richardson

 It gratified her to discover that she could, at the end of this one day, understand or at the worst gather the drift of, all she heard, both of German and French. Mademoiselle had exclaimed at her French—les mots si bien choisis—un accent sans faute—it must be ear. She must have a very good ear. And her English was all right—at least, if she chose…. Pater had always been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever said “cut in half” or “very unique” or “ho’sale” or “phodygraff.” She was awfully slangy herself—she and Harriett were, in their thoughts as well as their words—but she had no provincialisms, no Londonisms—she could be the purest Oxford English. There was something at any rate to give her German girls…. She could say, “There are no rules for English pronunciation, but what is usual at the University of Oxford is decisive for cultured people”—“decisive for cultured people.” She must remember that for the class. […]

                                                            from Painted Roofs?

Weldon Kees

    

     Crime Club

No butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
No eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
Smiling among the bric-a-brac and murder.
Only a suburban house with the front door open
And a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
Passing. The corpse quite dead. The wife in Florida.

Consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
The torn photograph of a Wesleyan basketball team,
Scattered with check stubs in the hall;
The unsent fan letter to Shirley Temple,
The Hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
The note: "To be killed this way is quite all right with me."

Small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
Or that the sleuth, Le Roux, is now incurably insane,
And sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
Screaming that all the world is mad, that clues
Lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
Screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved.

Weldon Kees

1926

The porchlight coming on again,

Early November, the dead leaves

Raked in piles, the wicker swing

Creaking. Across the lots

A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.

An orange moon. I see the lives

Of neighbors, mapped and marred

Like all the wars ahead, and R.

Insane, B. with his throat cut,

Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.

I did not know them then.

My airedale scratches at the door.

And I am back from seeing Milton Sills

And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.

The porchlight coming on again.

Dorothy Richardson

 “She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she could look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly, almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book, there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books than that. . even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a page, even a sentence - and the "stronger" the author was the more came.” 

―from Honeycomb

Richard Wilbur

            Junk

Huru Welandes
worc ne geswiceσ?
monna ænigum
σara σe Mimming can
heardne gehealdan.

—Waldere

An axe angles

                               from my neighbor’s ashcan;

It is hell’s handiwork,

                                              the wood not hickory,

The flow of the grain

                                           not faithfully followed.

The shivered shaft

                                       rises from a shellheap

Of plastic playthings,

                                             paper plates,

And the sheer shards

                                          of shattered tumblers

That were not annealed

                                             for the time needful.

At the same curbside,

                                           a cast-off cabinet

Of wavily warped

                                    unseasoned wood

Waits to be trundled

                                          in the trash-man’s truck.

Haul them off! Hide them!

                                                 The heart winces

For junk and gimcrack,

                                             for jerrybuilt things

And the men who make them

                                                 for a little money,   

Bartering pride

                                  like the bought boxer

Who pulls his punches,

                                             or the paid-off jockey   

Who in the home stretch

                                              holds in his horse.   

Yet the things themselves

                                                 in thoughtless honor

Have kept composure,

                                          like captives who would not

Talk under torture.

                                        Tossed from a tailgate

Where the dump displays

                                              its random dolmens,

Its black barrows

                                     and blazing valleys,

They shall waste in the weather

                                                          toward what they were.

The sun shall glory

                                        in the glitter of glass-chips,

Foreseeing the salvage

                                             of the prisoned sand,   

And the blistering paint

                                                peel off in patches,

That the good grain

                                        be discovered again.

Then burnt, bulldozed,

                                             they shall all be buried   

To the depth of diamonds,

                                                 in the making dark

Where halt Hephaestus

                                           keeps his hammer

And Wayland’s work

                                       is worn away.