Robert Creeley: “The Language”

Video kudos: docUWM

Stanley Kunitz: “The Quarrel”

THE QUARREL

The word I spoke in anger
weighs less than a parsley seed,
but a road runs through it
that leads to my grave,
that bought-and-paid-for lot
on a salt-sprayed hill in Truro
where the scrub pines
overlook the bay.
Half-way I’m dead enough,
strayed from my own nature
and my fierce hold on life.
If I could cry, I’d cry,
but I’m too old to be
anybody’s child.
Liebchen,
with whom should I quarrel
except in the hiss of love,
that harsh, irregular flame?

–Stanley Kunitz (b. 29 July 1906)

Photo: Stanley Kunitz at carolyn’s

Hart Crane: “At Melville’s Tomb”

AT MELVILLE’S TOMB

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

–Hart Crane (b. 21 July 1899)

Photo credit: Herman Melville’s Grave by syrup-tendons

Frank O’Hara: “The Day Lady Died”

THE DAY LADY DIED

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille Day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
                                       I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking
of leaning on the john door in the FIVE SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keybord
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

1959

–Frank O’Hara

Rachel: “And maybe…”

AND MAYBE

And maybe those things never really were,
maybe
I never rose at dawn to the garden,
to work the earth in my fury?

Not once on those harvest days, so searing
and so long,
atop the cart that brimmed with fattened sheaves,
did I not give my voice to song?

Did I never cleanse myself in the innocence
and blue calm
of my Kinneret…oh, my Kinneret-
were you? Or did I dream it?

–Rachel (1927)

Translation by M. Salomon, dedicated to Myra Sklarew

Photo credit: Israel–December 1981–Sunset Lake Kinneret by Prora

José Alberto Pinheiro: “Summer”

About 4 mins, shot in super 8, a 2002 film by José Alberto Pinheiro.

“Always a Hero Comes Home” … Really?

Out of the mist of history
He’ll come again
Sailing on ships across the sea
To a wounded Nation

Signs of a savior
Like fire on the water
It’s what we prayed for
One of our own

Just wait
Though while he may roam
Always
A hero comes home
He goes where no one has gone
But always
A hero comes home

Deep in the heart of darkness sparks
A dream of lies
Surrounded by hopelessness
He finds the will to fight

Theres no surrender
Always remember
It doesn’t end here
We’re not alone

Just wait
Though while he may roam
Always
A hero comes home
He goes where no one has gone
But always
A hero comes home

And he will come back on the crimson tide
Dead or alive
And even though we know the bridge has burned
He will return
He will return

Just wait
Though while he may roam
Always
A hero comes home
He knows of places unknown
But always
A hero comes home

Someday they’ll carve in stone
“The hero comes home”

He goes and comes back alone
But always
A hero comes home

Just wait
Though while he may roam
Always
A hero comes home

Lyrics for the closing song of Beowulf (U.S.: Zemeckis, 2007, 115 mins)

Composed by Alan Silvestri, sung by Idina Menzel

Frank O’Hara: “Song (Is It Dirty)”

Film by Joseph Fusco.

Yvor Winters: “Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight”

SIR GAWAINE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

Reptilian green the wrinkled throat,
Green as a bough of yew the beard;
He bent his head, and so I smote;
Then for a thought my vision cleared.

The head dropped clean; he rose and walked;
He fixed his fingers in the hair;
The head was unabashed and talked;
I understood what I must dare.

His flesh, cut down, arose and grew.
He bade me wait the season’s round,
And then, when he had strength anew,
To meet him on his native ground.

The year declined; and in his keep
I passed in joy a thriving yule;
And whether waking or in sleep,
I lived in riot like a fool.

He beat the woods to bring me meat.
His lady, like a forest vine,
Grew in my arms; the growth was sweet;
And yet what thoughtless force was mine!

By practice and conviction formed,
With ancient stubbornness ingrained,
Although her body clung and swarmed,
My own identity remained.

Her beauty, lithe, unholy, pure,
Took shapes that I had never known;
And had I once been insecure,
Had grafted laurel in my bone.

And then, since I had kept the trust,
Had loved the lady, yet was true,
The knight withheld his giant thrust
And let me go with what I knew.

I left the green bark and the shade,
Where growth was rapid, thick, and still;
I found a road that men had made
And rested on a drying hill.

–Yvor Winters

Photo credit: from Cotton Nero A.x. courtesy of the British Library

Snug: “Coda”

This video, along with more than 150 other works by the very prolific Charles Bryant, can be found at brychar66.