Aimé Césaire: “Oiseaux / Birds”

OISEAUX
l’exil s’en va ainsi dans la mangeoire des astres
potant de malhabiles grains aux oiseaux nés du temps
qui jamais ne s’endorment jamais
aux espaces fertiles des enfances remuées
—Aimé Césaire

BIRDS
exile thus goes into the feeder made of stars
bearing clumsy grains to the birds born of time
which never never fall asleep
in the fertile spaces of stirred up childhoods

Translation by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith

Photo credit: Morning star / Estrella de la mañana by victor nuno

Constantin Cavafy: “Waiting for the Barbarians”

Περιμένοντας τους βαρβάρους, Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (1904)

Constantin Cavafy (b. 29 April 1863)

English translation read by Hari Politopoulos. Video kudos: Palamas12

Emily Dickinson: “A little madness in the Spring”

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown—
Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole Experiment of Green—
As if it were his own!

—Emily Dickinson

Photo credit: Waimoku falls trail by angela7dreams

Ted Berrigan: Sonnet 34

SONNET 34

Time flies by like a great whale
And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets
Hollow portals of solid appearance
Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us
People go by in the fragrant day
Accelerate softly my blood
But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood
Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk
In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide
Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,
I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail,
Tell me now, again, who I am

–Ted Berrigan

Photo credit:  perspective by mistress f

May Swenson: “The Tall Figures of Giacometti”

THE TALL FIGURES OF GIACOMETTI

We move by means of our mud bumps.
We bubble as do the dead but more slowly.

The products of excruciating purges
we are squeezed out thin hard and dry.

If we exude a stench it is petrified sainthood.
Our feet are large crude fused together

solid like anvils. Ugly as truth is ugly
we are meant to stand upright a long time

and shudder without motion
under the scintillating pins of light

that dart between our bodies
of pimpled mud and your eyes.

–May Swenson

Photo credit: Piazza (Alberto Giacometti) via Guggenheim Museum

Doggerel Friday: On Purists

THE PURIST

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

–Ogden Nash

Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey

LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

Shakespeare: Sonnet 86

SONNET 86

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

–William Shakespeare (b. 23 April 1564)

Photo credit: Shakespeare 1858 by súgán

Ted Kooser: “Starlight”

STARLIGHT

All night, this soft rain from the distant past.
No wonder I sometimes waken as a child.

–Ted Kooser

Photo credit: pluie d’étoile… by Mzelle Biscotte

Doggerel Friday: On Fame

FAME
If I didn’t care for fun and such,
I’d probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
–Dorothy Parker

Jack Gilbert: “Refusing Heaven”

REFUSING HEAVEN

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt.

–Jack Gilbert

Photo credit: J & L Steel, Pittsburgh 1951 posted by Joey Harrison

John Willanski: “The Weather is Good”

Video kudos: dishlexicman

Czesław Miłosz: “One More Contradiction”

ONE MORE CONTRADICTION

Did I fulfill what I had to, here, on earth?
I was a guest in a house under white clouds
Where rivers flow and grasses renew themselves.
So what if I were called, if I was hardly aware.
The next time early I would search for wisdom.
I would not pretend I could be just like the others:
Only evil and suffering come from that.
Renouncing, I would choose the fate of obedience.
I would suppress my wolf’s eye and greedy throat.
A resident of some cloister floating in the air
With a view on the cities glowing below,
Or onto a stream, a bridge and old cedars,
I would give myself to one task only.
Which then, however, could not be accomplished.

–Czesław Miłosz

Translation by Robert Hass

Samuel Beckett: “Cascando”

CASCANDO

1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

–Samuel Beckett (b. 13 April 1906)

Photo credit: Faded II by wit

Nicholas Kritter: “From Day to Night”

If your Friday preferences tilt toward Hallmark (as mine sometimes do) don’t click the video. The reading is from sections 6 and 7 of “The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible,” a poem in Galway Kinnell‘s Book of Nightmares. Moving. Memorable sound track. How wondrous are the odd orbits that summon us.

Thank you Nicholas Kritter!