Category: Not My Poetry

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.

Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.

It’s what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.

It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
diseases as
optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across
your path
and 
bites you in the ass.

Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
Emily.
It’s a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.

– Caitlin Seida (American poet, b. 1989 (?))

January, 5

Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy.

The train darts north,
hungry as a tongue.

Only the exile longs for
the words to name a country:

either live it or learn,
at a bare table,

ancestral silence, like a rumble
deep in the loch’s throat,

the forgotten song
of the curling-stone,

the snow slipping like white meat
from the bones of the mountain.

- Alison Fell (Scottish poet, b. 1944)

Climbing the Tower at the Temple 
 of Blessings with Friends

The fragrant realm of incense teems
With shrines and temples; yet none seems
     A match for the tower here.
As breezes fan our high redoubt,
A vision of Great Power spreads out
     Like trigrams for a seer.
We joke we’ve joined the feathered race,
And reached the elevated space
     Of empty atmosphere.
Or I perhaps am now a king
Of every seen and unseen thing:
     I’ve left the mortal sphere.
Palaces hunker at the base
And in the span these gables trace
     Mountains and rivers appear.
Last night the wind blew autumn in;
From east to west, the plain of Qin
     Seems measureless and clear.
A hundred miles away are seen
The royal tombs at Wuling, green
     Still lustrous yet austere.
This golden age owes gratitude
To Ruan’s brave men; I too have stood
     With a border sentry’s spear.
In this good cause our thanks are sent:
Today we climb this monument
     In perfect carefree cheer!

- Gao Shi (Tang Dynasty poet, ca. 704–765)

高适  同诸公登慈恩寺浮图
香界泯群有，浮图岂诸相。
登临骇孤高，披拂欣大壮。
言是羽翼生，迥出虚空上。
顿疑身世别，乃觉形神王。
宫阙皆户前，山河尽檐向。
秋风昨夜至，秦塞多清旷。
千里何苍苍，五陵郁相望。
盛时惭阮步，末宦知周防。
输效独无因，斯焉可游放。

This poem is posted on the blog Tang Poetry, with translation by the blog’s author.

I don’t know Chinese at all. At best, I occasionally recognize a character and can guess its meaning, because of my study of Korean. At my height proficiency, I maybe had 100-150 characters memorized as recognition vocabulary, which is not necessary knowledge for modern Korean but which is quite useful in getting a better understanding of the relation between words, their etymologies, and distiguishing the language’s abundant homonyms, since about 60% of Korean vocabulary was borrowed (in past centuries) from Chinese. The sounds are often quite different, so even knowing the old Korean character and its pronunciation doesn’t inform me in any way about the modern Chinese pronunciation.

"Coorie Doon"

Chorus
Coorie Doon, Coorie Doon, Coorie Doon, my darling,
Coorie Doon the day.

Lie doon, my dear, and in your ear, 
To help you close your eye, 
I'll sing a song, a slumber song,
A miner's lullaby.

Your daddy's doon the mine my darling
Doon in the Curlby Main, 
Your daddy's howking coal my darling
For his own wee wean.

There's darkness doon the mine my darling,
Darkness, dust and damp.
But we must have or heat, or light,
Oor fire and oor lamp.

Your daddy coories doon my darling, 
Doon in a three foot seam,
So you can coorie doon my darling, 
Coorie doon and dream.

– Matt McGinn (Scottish songwriter, 1928-1977

Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves

Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, . . . stupendous
Evening strains to be time’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being as unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steepèd and páshed – quite
Disremembering, dísmémbering, ' áll now. Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind
Off hér once skéined stained véined varíety ' upon áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds – black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins (English poet, 1844-1889)

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

- W. H. Auden (British poet, 1907-1973)

Muezzin

Before light’s encroaching
Beams, across wavelengths
Of glints, in between yawning
Protocols of waking,
The cocks strike a redundant
Note.
Choked by their own sensitve
Yodelling spree, muted by
Spittle of outstretched, moaning
Clouds, frayed and piqued by
The lusts of flying machines,
Hours stretch on rubber’s speed.
The rain is a common spiv, holding
On the crests of soaking waves
Upon night’s purloined
Sleep.
On the roof, the rain pelts
With energy, hunting the
Fire-caked degree of heat,
Insufferable to the dictates
Of yelling protests.
Faint mirrors of earliness hang
Loose on frescoes of heaven, peeking
Through serrated drapes above
Window panes. And these, like neighing,
Spavined horses, wake
Memories of puking slumber...
And the hours of dimmed contours
Stretched. And the lilt from the
Pluvial melody humbles the
Insomnia monody, drummed
Into the silence of fastened hedonism.
No sunrise within the grey
Patterns of veiled clouds...
Cocks’ crows, subsumed within
This muffled protocols, become
Distant trumpets of varieties,
Preening themselves of the usage
Of establishing culture.
Allah, Allah, Allah! ! !
The presence became fixed!
At the very hour of the cocks’ choir,
When piddling gathers the froth of
First waking with the grogginess
Of drunken dreams, the muezzin
Reads out the laws....
From the jungle chambers, elated
Spirits from pricked ears and
Rising furs soothe the voice,
Arched, raised and powered
Even to the birth of essences and
Dehiscing of inscrutable
Energies of efflorescences.
Allah, Allah, Allah!

– Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu (Nigerian poet, b. 1968)

El río invierte el curso de su corriente.
El agua de las cascadas sube.
La gente empieza a caminar retrocediendo.
Los caballos caminan hacia atrás.
Los militares deshacen lo desfilado.
Las balas salen de las carnes.
Las balas entran en los cañones.
Los oficiales enfundan sus pistolas.
La corriente se devuelve por los cables.
La corriente penetra por los enchufes.
Los torturados dejan de agitarse.
Los torturados cierran sus bocas.
Los campos de concentración se vacían.
Aparecen los desaparecidos.
Los muertos salen de sus tumbas.
Los aviones vuelan hacia atrás.
Los “rockets” suben hacia los aviones.
Allende dispara.
Las llamas se apagan.
Se saca el casco.
La Moneda se reconstituye íntegra.
Su cráneo se recompone.
Sale a un balcón.
Allende retrocede hasta Tomás Moro.
Los detenidos salen de espalda de los estadios.
11 de Septiembre.
Regresan aviones con refugiados.
Chile es un país democrático.
Las fuerzas armadas respetan la constitución.
Los militares vuelven a sus cuarteles.
Renace Neruda.
Vuelve en una ambulancia a Isla Negra.
Le duele la próstata. Escribe.
Víctor Jara toca la guitarra. Canta.
Los discursos entran en las bocas.
El tirano abraza a Prat.
Desaparece. Prat revive.
Los cesantes son recontratados.
Los obreros desfilan cantando
¡Venceremos!

– extracto del poema-libro “La Ciudad” de Gonzalo Millán (poeta chileno, 1947-2006)

Hace 50 años hoy, Pinochet – con aprobación de la CIA estadounidense – hizo su golpe en contra del legítimo presidente de Chile, Salvador Allende.

Chanson dada
I

La chanson d’un dadaïste
qui avait dada au cœur
fatiguait trop son moteur
qui avait dada au cœur

l’ascenceur portait un roi
lourd fragile autonome
il coupa son grand bras droit
l’envoya au pape à rome

c’est pourquoi
l’ascenceur
n’avait plus dada au cœur

mangez du chocolat
lavez votre cerveau
dada
dada
buvez de l’eau

II

la chanson d’un dadaïste
qui n’était ni gai ni triste
et aimait une bicycliste
qui n’était ni gaie ni triste

mais l’époux le jour de l’an
savait tout et dans une crise
envoya au vatican
leur deux corps en trois valises
ni amant
ni cyciste
n’étaient plus ni gais ni tristes

mangez de bons cerveaux
lavez votre soldat
dada
dada
buvez de l’eau

III

la chanson d’un bicycliste
qui était dada de cœur
qui était donc dadaïste
comme tous les dadas de cœur

un serpent portait des gants
il ferma vite la soupape
mit des gants en peau d’serpent
et vint embrasser le pape

c’est touchant
ventre en fleur
n’avait plus dada au cœur

buvez du lait d’oiseaux
lavez vos chocolats
dada
dada
mangez du veau

- Tristan Tzara (Romanian-French poet, 1896-1963)

The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

– Mark Strand (Canadian-American poet, 1934-2014)

Cloud Marauder

He is the cloud marauder,
whatever that means.

He said he was,
and if it's less than true,
what else could he be?

He said he was the cloud
marauder, marauds clouds.
It's good enough for me.

- James Tate (American poet, 1943-2015)

The Bench of Boors

In bed I muse on Tenier’s boors,
Embrowned and beery losels all:
      A wakeful brain
      Elaborates pain:
Within low doors the slugs of boors
Laze and yawn and doze again.

In dreams they doze, the drowsy boors,
Their hazy hovel warm and small:
      Thought’s ampler bound
      But chill is found:
Within low doors the basking boors
Snugly hug the ember-mound.

Sleepless, I see the slumberous boors
Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall:
      Thought’s eager sight
      Aches—overbright!
Within low doors the boozy boors
Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light.

- Herman Melville (American novelist and poet, 1819-1891)

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

- Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)

Blackberry-Picking

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

- Seamus Heaney (Irish poet, 1939-2013)

Some Trees

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

- John Ashbery (American poet, 1927-2017)

To the Old Gods

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,

You should have fled our ever-dying song,
The mound, the well, and the green trysting tree.
They have forgotten, yet you linger still.

Goddess of caverned breast and channeled brow, 
And cheeks slow hollowed by millennial tears,
Forests of autumns fading in your eyes, 

Eternity matvels at your counted years
And kingdoms lost in time, and wonders how 
There could be thoughts so bountiful and wise 

As yours beneath the ever-breaking bough, 
And vast compassion curving like the skies.

- Edwin Muir (Scottish poet, 1887-1959)

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

- Richard Brautigan (American poet, 1935-1984)

Full Moon, West Coast

Blotched with its unattainable mountains
this was that yellow half-wheel rolled above Bald Hill,
diminishing cirque climbed to its apogee of night,
unsluicing sheeted silver on the world.
It rose persimmon-colored from the sea,
and hued like pumpkin as it fired the trees,
suffused and swollen, lanterning the dusk;
now less than evening size,
processes all blue midnight and looks down,
pouring from zenith on the blank-faced stones.

Leaving no wrinkle on the planet's face
at loss of what its winds and waves absorb
and grind and blow to nothingness
here are the furious struggles all brought down:
slow drown of clashing towers of jangled bells
and bodies that were wasted sacks of blood
subsiding to the lit and level floor,
their heroes cried to silence.
Here is negation of both word and deed,
of goodness and of evil in men's hearts,
a pool wherein the heaviest stone may fall
and write its weight of nothing in the glass.

- Eric Wilson Barker (American poet, 1905-1973)

TO SPEAK OF NOTHING
It is a serious thing, nothing.
The notion confounds the mind
As wind confounds the sea.
A woman fixes words to a miracle,
A man describes himself to God.
The syllables amount to something,
But they are nothing to speak of.

– M. Scott Momaday (American poet, b. 1934)