(no subject)
Feb. 16th, 2017 11:31 amPoem | ||
to James Schuyler | ||
There I could never be a boy, | ||
though I rode like a god when the horse reared. | ||
At a cry from mother I fell to my knees! | ||
there I fell, clumsy and sick and good, | ||
though I bloomed on the back of a frightened black mare | ||
who had leaped windily at the start of a leaf | ||
and she never threw me. | ||
I had a quick heart | ||
and my thighs clutched her back. | ||
I loved her fright, which was against me | ||
into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock | ||
which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted with life! | ||
and she'd toss her head with the pain | ||
and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion | ||
and she, moon-like, hated to love me. | ||
All things are tragic | ||
when a mother watches! and she wishes upon herself | ||
the random fears of a scarlet soul, as it breathes in and out | ||
and nothing chokes, or breaks from triumph to triumph! | ||
I knew her but I could not be a boy, | ||
for in the billowing air I was fleet and green | ||
riding blackly through the ethereal night | ||
towards men's words which I gracefully understood, | ||
and it was given to me | ||
as the soul is given the hands | ||
to hold the ribbons of life! | ||
as miles streak by beneath the moon's sharp hooves | ||
and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the armor of the world. | ||
Frank O'Hara |
Ecclesiastes | |
The trick is that you’re willing to help them. | |
The rule is to sound like you’re doing them a favor. | |
The rule is to create a commission system. | |
The trick is to get their number. | |
The trick is to make it personal: | |
No one in the world suffers like you. | |
The trick is that you’re providing a service. | |
The rule is to keep the conversation going. | |
The rule is their parents were foolish, | |
their children are greedy or insane. | |
The rule is to make them feel they’ve come too late. | |
The trick is that you’re willing to make exceptions. | |
The rule is to assume their parents abused them. | |
The trick is to sound like the one teacher they loved. | |
And when they say “too much," | |
give them a plan. | |
And when they say “anger” or “rage” or “love," | |
say “give me an example.” | |
The rule is everyone is a gypsy now. | |
Everyone is searching for his tribe. | |
The rule is you don’t care if they ever find it. | |
The trick is that they feel they can. | |
Khaled Mattawa, b. 1964 |
(no subject)
Jan. 18th, 2014 09:51 amSunday Morning
Teal blue and grey, and
several shades of orange -
a history of ties.
Half Windsor or full?
The fingers will know.
Earlier they stepped
through several keys - tunes
by Lowell Mason.
A quick text to Zorn:
We'll have a descant,
so bring your horn today.
(no subject)
Dec. 24th, 2011 01:28 pm'Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms —
It had the Tassels on —
I thought how yellow it would look —
When Richard went to mill —
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how Red — Apples wedged
The Stubble's joints between —
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in —
I wondered which would miss me, least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father'd multiply the plates —
To make an even Sum —
And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me —
But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year —
Themself, should come to me —
Emily Dickinson
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Walace Stevens
(no subject)
May. 5th, 2011 02:07 pmPuisque tout passe, faisons | Since everything must pass | |
la mélodie passagère; | Let us sing a passing song; | |
celle qui nous désaltère, | the one that's sastisfying | |
aura de nous raison. | will be so because of us. | |
Chantons ce qui nous quitte | Let us sing about whatever | |
avec amour et art; | leaves with love and art; | |
soyons plus vite | let us be faster still | |
que le rapide départ. | than the rapid departure. | |
Rainer Maria Rilke | ||
(A. Poulin Jr.) |
(no subject)
Mar. 27th, 2011 07:40 pmThey gave me counsel and words to the wise | Gaben mir Rat und gute Lehren, | |
And eulogies more than enough, | Überschütteten mich mit Ehren, | |
Told me to just be patient a while, | Sagten, daß ich nur warten sollt, | |
They'd intercede in my behalf. | Haben mich protegieren gewollt. | |
But for all their patronages | Aber bei all ihrem Protegieren | |
I could have perished under bridges | Hätte ich können vor Hunger krepieren, | |
Had there not come a man of heart | Wär nicht gekommen ein braver Mann, | |
To look after me and take my part. | Wacker nahm er sich meiner an. | |
Oh worthy man! He keeps me in food! | Braver Mann! Er schafft mir zu essen! | |
I'll never forget his solicitude! | Will es ihm nie und nimmer vergessen! | |
Ah, what shame I can't embrace him! | Schade, daß ich ihn nicht küssen kann! | |
It's in my looking glass I face him. | Denn ich bin selbst dieser brave Mann. | |
Heinrich Heine | ||
(Walter W. Arndt) |
(no subject)
Feb. 28th, 2011 11:28 am(no subject)
Dec. 24th, 2010 06:44 pm
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( a few notes )
(no subject)
Nov. 21st, 2010 10:59 pmSan Angelo I loved you. The same as the night. Like poetry itself. The harder you made it, the more I tried. Even now, after all these years, the space between us still burns. You, the architect of every fantasy. That night (the last one), I had you again. I brought handcuffs, poppers, the works. I buried my face in your chest, without regret, like the last meal on Earth. When I roughed you a bit, you only tensed your lips. Hard, defiant. It turned me on even more. --after Baudelaire |
(no subject)
Nov. 20th, 2010 07:34 pmCalling to see you is like visiting a cemetery: silence, wind in the grass, withered flowers. Flask of vinegar, bitter cynic, you have a sneer for every fashion, and an insult for each of your friends. No one's good enough; you even put me down, but that's fine; I can handle worse shit than that. Where do you get that high-and-mighty confidence? You're hardly a star or a model of beauty, and you're not so hot in bed. But lust drives me to make a pass, to feast on your bony body like a maggot on a carcass. There's something about you naked on the carpet: your cold disdain is a bracing aphrodisiac. --John Tranter, after Baudelaire |
...from the Paris Review. It was a little challenge to identify which fleur du mal this was. I think it must be Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne.
(no subject)
Nov. 17th, 2010 10:29 pm
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(no subject)
Jun. 6th, 2010 06:51 amAn Ever-Fixed Mark |
Years ago, at a private school |
Run on traditional lines, |
One fellow used to perform |
Prodigious feats in the dorm; |
His quite undevious designs |
Found many a willing tool. |
On the rugger field, in the gym, |
Buck marked down at his leisure |
The likeliest bits of stuff; |
The notion, familiar enough, |
Of 'using somebody for pleasure' |
Seemed handy and harmless to him. |
But another chap was above |
The diversions of such a lout; |
Seven years in the place |
And he never got to first base |
With the kid he followed about: |
What interested Ralph was love. |
He did the whole thing in style-- |
Letters three times a week, |
Sonnet-sequences, Sunday walks; |
Then, during one of their talks, |
The youngster caressed his cheek, |
And that made it all worth-while. |
These days, for a quid pro quo, |
Ralph's chum is all for romance; |
Buck's playmates, family men, |
Eye a Boy Scout now and then. |
Sex stops when you pull up your pants, |
Love never lets you go. |
--Kingsley Amis |
(no subject)
Feb. 21st, 2010 11:13 pmWhat is usual is not what is always. |
As sometimes, in old age, hearing comes back. |
Footsteps resume their clipped edges, |
birds quiet for decades migrate back to the ear. |
Where were they? By what route did they return? |
A woman mute for years |
forms one perfect sentence before she dies. |
The bitter young man tires; |
the aged one sitting now in his body is tender, |
his face carries no regret for his choices. |
What is usual is not what is always, the day says again. |
It is all it can offer. |
Not ungraspable hope, not the consolation of stories. |
Only the reminder that there is exception. |
Jane Hirshfield |
(no subject)
Jan. 26th, 2010 02:48 pmI think this is the best English translation of Catullus 63. It is slightly long.
But if you have 5 minutes, try it, you might find it worth your time...
Over deep seas Attis, carried on a rapid catámaran, | |
eagerly with hurrying footsteps sought that forest in Phrygia, | |
penetrated the tree-thick coverts, the goddess' shadowy habitat, | |
and there, by furious madness driven, wits adrift in insanity, | |
5 | seized a keen flint, slashed away the weight of his groin's double complement; |
and when she felt the members left her shorn of all their virility | |
dropping still a spatter of fresh-shed • blood on the ground as she sped along, | |
quickly with snow white hand she seized the lightweight rat-a-tat tympanum— | |
yours the tympanum, a Cybébé, yours, great Mother, the mysteries— | |
10 | and on the hollow drum-skin beat a • táttoo with delicate fingertips, |
making this passionate invocation, body convulsed, to her followers: | |
"On together with me, you Gallae, seek the high forests of Cybelé, | |
on together, you roving herd of the Dindyménian Dómina, | |
who like exiles in pursuit of new and alien territory, | |
15 | following me as leader, comrades to my orders obedient |
bore the salt sea's tidal swiftness, its rough oceanic truculence, | |
and now have all unmanned your bodies • from too great hatred of venery— | |
by your impetuous wanderings let your • mistress' heart be exhilarate! | |
Purge your spirits of slow reluctance, and all together now follow me | |
20 | to the Phrygian home of great Cybébé, the goddess' Phrygian forest groves, |
where the sound of cymbals echoes, and the sharp rattle of kettledrums, | |
where the Phrygian player's déep notes boom from the curve of his basset-horn, | |
where the maenads, ivy-garlanded, toss their heads in mad ecstasy, | |
where with shrilling ululations they act out their ritual ceremonies, | |
25 | where the goddess's roving troupers long have flitted perégrinant— |
there is where we now must hasten with our impetuous sarabands!" | |
As soon as Attis, woman no woman, had uttered these words to her followers | |
an instant cry went up from the quivering • tongues of the ululant revellers, | |
echoing cymbals clashed, there thudded the light tattoo of the tambourines, | |
30 | as headlong to leafy Ida hastened with scurrying footfall her company. |
Leading them, breathless, pressing onward, gasping her heart and spirit up, | |
threading thick woodlands Attis wandered, the drumbeat still her accompaniment, | |
like some heifer, as yet unbroken, fleeing the collar's grim discipline, | |
while the Gallae crowded hotly after their swift-footed pacesetter. | |
35 | So when they reached Cybébé's precinct, swooning-exhausted, woman-faint, |
shot with huge effort, breadless, empty, soon they collapsed into somnolence. | |
Tides of slumber, slow and languorous, closed their eyes, rippled over them: | |
in soft repose there ebbed to nothing all their minds' rabid delirium. | |
But when the Sun with his golden orb and eyes of sharp-dazzling radiance | |
40 | lightened the pale white empyrean, harsh earth, the sea's liquid riotousness, |
chasing away Night's gloomy shadows, his fresh steeds' hooves briskly clattering, | |
then Sleep arose from Attis wakened, fled away swiftly, precipitate, | |
sought comfort in the trembling bosom • óf the goddess Pasíthea. | |
So after slumber, now abandoned by her frenzied paroxysm, | |
41 | Attis reflected on the deed that she herself had initiated, |
saw where she was, what things she'd lost, mind purged to diaphanous clarity. | |
Back to the shore she forced her footsteps, heart full of simmering bitterness, | |
and there, as she gazed with tear-filled eyes at the ocean's lonely immensity, | |
thus she addressed her distant homeland, in saddest accents and piteously: | |
50 | "Ah, dear country that shaped my being, country that bore and delivered me, |
which to my misery I abandoned-like some runaway minion | |
fleeing his master—and pressed on hotfoot to Ida's wildwooded forestry, | |
passed the snowline, made my way to the wild beasts' frost-riven ádyta, | |
reaching as far, in my mad frenzy, as their remotest covert—ah where, | |
55 | where, in which quarter, O my country, must I now look for your territory? |
My eyes, unbidden, long to turn their • gaze upon you, motherlandwards, | |
while, for this too-brief space, my mind stays • free of its savage insanity. | |
Ah, am I doomed to these alien forests, far from what's home, what's familiar— | |
absent from country, from my possessions, from friends and those who engendered me | |
60 | absent from forum and from palaestra, from race-course and from gymnasium? |
Ah wretch, ah wretch, whose life henceforward is nothing but wailing and misery! | |
What variation of human figure exists that I haven't appropriated? | |
This I, now woman, was I the ephebe, the child; this I the young teenager, | |
this I the gymnasium's finest flower, the glory of oil-smooth athleticism. | |
65 | For me all thresholds were warm, for me all hallways were crowded with visitors, |
for me the house was a riot of posies, of flowers all looping and garlanded, | |
when the sun came up and the time was on me to rise and abandon my bedchamber. | |
Am I now to be known as the gods' own handmaid, the serving girl of great Cybelé? | |
Shall I be a maenad, I but a part of me, I unmanned to sterility? | |
70 | Am I to dwell on verdant Ida's chill and snow-clad escarpments? Shall |
I waste my remaining lifespan under • the lofty columns of Phrygia, | |
there with the hind that roams the forest, there with the boar in his timberland? | |
Now, ah now, what I've done appalls me; now, ah now, I repent of it!" | |
As from those rose red lips there issued with arrowy speed her sharp utterance, | |
75 | bringing a new report to the ready ears of the gods, those keen listeners, |
Cybelé then, unyoking the reins that harnessed the lions to her chariot pole, | |
goaded the left one, the cattle killer, kindling its wrath with her urgency: | |
"Go now, my fierce one, go, pursue him, plague him with savage dementia, | |
make the stroke of his frenzy drive him back to the groves of my habitat, | |
80 | he who yearns so overfreely to shake off my mastering dominance! |
Flog your back with your tail in fury, lash yourself into rabidity, | |
roar till each hidden covert reechoes your fierce and terrifying utterance— | |
go, my fierce one, toss the tawny • mane on your neck's muscularity!" | |
So spoke Cybébé in rage, with one hand • slipped the yoke pin. The beast took off | |
85 | in a feral fury, driven wild by its self-incitement to savagery, |
sprang on roaring, paws in motion sending the brushwood skittering. | |
But when it neared the sea-damp shoreline, the bright white stretch of the littoral, | |
and there saw delicate Attis standing by the sea's marbled infinity, | |
it charged. Demented, she scuttled headlong back to the wild woods, a fugitive, | |
90 | there to remain for ever, a lifelong • slave girl, a feminine acolyte. |
Goddess, great goddess, O Cybébé, goddess, mistress of Díndymos, | |
far from my own house be all your • furies, Lady, and madnesses— | |
whip up others into frenzy, goad on others to ecstasy! | |
Gaius Valerius Catullus | |
translated by Peter Green |
(no subject)
Dec. 24th, 2009 08:55 am25.XII.1993
For a miracle, take one shepherd's sheepskin, throw
in a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,
and a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye
a little chunk of space, a piece of sky,
and it will happen. For miracles, gravitating
to earth, know just where people will be waiting,
and eagerly will find the right address
and tenant, even in a wilderness.
Or if you're leaving home, switch on a new
four-pointed star, then, as you say adieu,
to light a vacant world with steady blaze
and follow you forever with its gaze.
Joseph Brodsky
translated by Richard Wilbur
catullus through cold mountain
Aug. 21st, 2009 12:56 am
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(no subject)
Jul. 13th, 2009 08:59 pmIt is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
W.C. Williams
slumdog frame of mind
Mar. 11th, 2009 12:38 pm
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This poem seems to hold much under a rather simple surface. I like the way the first line echoes the New Testament.
...been listening to new CD releases by Rudresh Mahanthappa reviewed in the New Yorker and other places. Of the two (Kinsmen, Apti), I prefer Apti.