golempoem

Not a dog, I know, but, then again, the poem’s not quite doggerel either…video kudos to Zilly2dope and a finder’s fee to fblume!

The phenomenon of déjà vu has often been described. Is the term really apt? Shouldn’t we rather speak of events which affect us like an echo–one awakened by a sound that seems to have issued from the darkness of past life? By the same token, the shock with which a moment enters our consciousness as if already lived through tends to strike us in the form of a sound. It is a word, a rustling or knocking, that is endowed with the power to call us unexpectedly into the cool sepulcher of the past, from whose vault the present seems to resound only as an echo. Strange that no one has yet inquired into the counterpart of this transport–namely, the shock with which a word makes us pull up short, like a muff that someone has forgotten in our room. Just as the latter points us to a stranger who was on the premises, so there are words or pauses pointing us to that invisible stranger–the future–which forgot them at our place.

–Walter Benjamin

Translation by Howard Eiland

Photo credit: Walter Benjamin by tellini

A SU RETRATO

Este, que ves, engaño colorido,
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engaño del sentido:

éste, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los años los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores,
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,

es un vano artificio del cuidado,
es una flor al viento delicada,
es un resguardo inútil para el hado:

es una necia diligencia errada,
es un afán caduco y, bien mirado,
es cadáver, es polvo, es sombra, es nada.

–Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Read more »

CEZANNE’S PORTS

In the foreground we see time and life
swept in a race
toward the left hand side of the picture
where shore meets shore.

But that meeting place
isn’t represented;
it doesn’t occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay
is Heaven and Eternity,
with a bleak white haze over its mountains.

And the immense water of L’Estaque is a go-between
for minute rowboats.

–Allen Ginsberg

freedom has overtaken me     I
had run ahead of it for years
along an interesting
but narrow road     obeyed at least
half the rules imposed by
lovers children     a house a
political position     now out
of breath probably     I’m stuck
freedom has hold of my jacket
won’t let go     I am alone

–Grace Paley (pub. 2008)

Photo credit: a man by bies

Photo credit: A Mother and her Son by Thomas Hawk

TWIGS

Neither music,
fame, nor wealth,
not even poetry itself,
could provide consolation
for life’s brevity,
or the fact that King Lear
is a mere eighty pages long and comes to an end,
and for the thought that one might suffer greatly
on account of a rebellious child.

My love for you
is what’s magnificent,
but I, you, and the others,
most likely,
are ordinary people.

My poem
goes beyond poetry
because you
exist
beyond the realm of women.

And so
it has taken me
all of sixty years
to understand
that water is the finest drink,
and bread the most delicious food,
and that art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people’s hearts.

After we die,
and the weary heart
has lowered its final eyelid
on all that’ve done,
and on all that we’ve longed for,
and all that we’ve dreamt of,
all we’ve desired
or felt,
hate will be
the first things
to putrefy
within us.

–Taha Muhammad Ali (1989-91)

Translation by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin

The photo depicts one of the 3rd century mosaics in Suffurriya (صفورية‎), the town in Gallil where the poet was born and forced to flee in 1948.

TO LIVE IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

To the memory of Zvi Hurvitz:
Pioneer, commander, and bereaved father.

To be cocked like a rifle, the hand
clutching a pistol, to walk
in a closed, harsh line, even after
the cheeks are filled with dust,
and the seared flesh is fallen away, and the eyes can no longer
focus on a target.

There is a saying: a loaded gun is bound to fire.
Not true.
In the Land of Israel, anything can happen:
a broken pin, a spring rusted through,

or, the sudden cancellation of your orders, without explanation,

as it once happened to Abraham on Mount Moriah.

–Aryeh Sivan (1984)

Translation by M. Salomon

Photo credit: Jerusalem by premasagar

SMS
To Iva

Did you see the sign of the sunset?
A field sown with secrets.
Rays sprout among the clouds.
Late birds
gracefully alight
and peck early-risen stars.
I only know that these are not landscapes.
Everything is silent and impossible.
Ask the sky what it wants to say.
You can.

–Lyubomir Levchev

Translation by Valentin Krustev

Photo credit: A Parallel Sunset in the East by Fort Photo

WORK, SOMETIMES

I was sad all day, and why not.  There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.

The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.

What are we sure of?  Happiness isn’t a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing.  Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.

Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.

You have had days like this, no doubt.  And wasn’t it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room?  Ah, what a
moment!

As for myself, I swung the door open.  And there was
the wordless, singing world.  And I ran for my life.

–Mary Oliver

Photo credit: Spring Rain by ImageMD