Archive
Cormorants
There are sizable numbers of Neotropical cormorants (Phalacrocorax olivaceus) that hang around the lakes near where I live here in Tempe. As I drove home this evening a flight of about ten of them were moving from one of the lakes westwards to another nearby lake. That sparked the posting of a poem.
Children imitating cormorants
Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants.
Kobayashi Issa / translated by Robert Hass
<img src>
The Panther
From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted
that it no longer holds anything anymore.
To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.
The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride
which circles down to the tiniest hub
is like a dance of energy around a point
in which a great will stands stunned and numb.
Only at times the curtains of the pupil rise
without a sound . . . then a shape enters,
slips though the tightened silence of the shoulders,
reaches the heart, and dies.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(translation by Robert Bly)
“Nothing more terrible, nothing more true”
John Wilkins has reminded me of Philip Larkin’s poem Aubade:
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Wander over to John’s place to read the rest of the poem which strangely works well with my first post today.
Friday Poem (12/12)
AGRIPPA
(A Book of The Dead)
by William Gibson
I hesitated
before untying the bow
that bound this book together.
A black book:
ALBUMS CA. AGRIPPA
Order Extra Leaves By Letter and Name
A Kodak album of time-burned
black construction paper
The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady’s shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen
Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Inside the cover he inscribed something in soft graphite
Now lost
Then his name
W.F. Gibson Jr.
and something, comma,
1924
(read on)
Poem: The Stoat
The Stoat
Walking in the warmest afternoon
this year has yielded yet, through slopes of whin
that made the shadows luminous, and filled
the slow air with its fragrance, we went down
a narrow track, stone-littered, under trees
which with new leaf and opening bud contrived
to offer a green commentary on light;
and as we wondered silent, stone by stone,
on lavish spring, a sudden volley broke,
a squealing terror ripped through twig and briar,
as a small rabbit pawing at the air
and stilting quickly thrust full into view,
clenched on its rump a dark-eyed stoat was viced,
shaped in its naked purpose to destroy.
We stopped. I stepped across. Before a stick
could fall in mercy, its harsh grip released,
the crouching stoat vanished, and the rabbit ran
whimpering and yelping into the thick grass.
Something had happened to the afternoon;
the neighbourly benevolence of spring
was shattered with that cast of violence;
and as we turned to follow the steep track,
it seemed no inconsistent codicil,
that in the mud a broken shell should loll
in equal speckled parts, and on a stone,
a little yolk, a golden sixpence, lay,
a fallen sun in a wrecked universe.
Poem (0815)
Like a desert flower waiting for rain,
like a river-bank thirsting for the touch of pitchers,
like the dawn
longing for light;
and like a house,
like a house in ruins for want of a woman –
the exhausted ones of our times
need a moment to breathe,
need a moment to sleep,
in the arms of peace, in the arms of peace.
Like a Desert Flower / Parween Faiz Zadah Malaal
A Poem by Mahmoud Darwish
I haven’t posted poetry in nearly three months, so spurred on by the news that the noted Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has died today following heart surgery, I think I need to start doing so again (at least semi-regularly). The AFP story notes that Darwish had survived two previous heart surgeries, with the last one in 1998 prompting him to write:
"I have defeated you, death/ All the beautiful arts have defeated you/ The songs of Mesopotamia, the obelisks of Egypt, the carved tombs of the pharaohs on the altar have defeated you, and you are vanquished.”
On the value of poetry, he wrote poignantly:
"I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet."
Most of his work has not been translated into English, but a selection is available here.
Psalm 9
O rose beyond the reach of time and of the senses
O kiss enveloped in the scarves of all the winds
surprise me with one dream
that my madness will recoil from you.
Recoiling from you
In order to approach you
I discovered time.
Approaching you
in order to recoil from you
I discovered my senses.
Between approach and recoil
there is a stone the size of a dream
It does not approach
It does not recoil.
You are my country
A stone is not what I am
therefore I do not like to face the sky
nor do I die level with the ground
but I am a stranger, always a stranger.
Friday Poem (0516)
Ox Transcended
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0502)
Ox Forgotten
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0425)
Riding the Ox Home
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0418)
Taming the Ox
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0411)
Catching the Ox
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0403)
Seeing the Ox
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0328)
Finding the Tracks
Along the river, under trees – jumbled tracks!
Thick fragrant woods, is this the way?
Though the ox wanders far in the hills,
His nose touches the sky. He cannot hide.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Friday Poem (0320)
Looking for the Ox
Searching through tall endless grass,
Rivers, mountain ranges, the path trails off.
Weary, exhausted, no place left to hunt:
Maples rustle, evening, the cicada’s song.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
Recent Comments