Anthology - Poets T-Z - A - B-D - E-I - J-L - M

Nils-Øivind Haagensen

A TRIFLE

I didn’t manage to make a hole in it

I didn’t try hard

I had a go

the patterning of the gift wrapping was perfect

the suit was my best one

the tie likewise, the parting took ten minutes

to set, the sideburns felt good underneath

the fingertips, the earlobes

were soft as I want them

the mouth and the voice said all I wanted to say

nevertheless—

I said, all that flows, flows

but that which clots

that which rains

that which is of clay

that which fills my rooms after I

am finished packing and cleaning out

that which follows the lines of the house

that which stops after a long time

I tried to make a hole in it

I didn’t try hard

I had two cigarettes

she smoked one

I bought a dress for her

she already had five

she said, all that floats, floats

but that which trembles

that which blows

that which is made of wood

that I listen for when you’ve disappeared

into the rain

that which first begins after a long time

I tried to make a hole in it

I didn’t try hard

tr. Charles Armstrong

Nick Laird

THE HALL OF MEDIUM HARMONY

In lieu of a Gideon Bible

            the bedside table drawer

has a Lonely Planet Guide to China

            and a year-old Autotrader.

You skim through the soft-tops, the imports,

            the salvage & breakers,

then pick up the book. Over there

            they are eight hours ahead

so it must be approximately dawn

            in the Forbidden City,

where something might evade the guides

            already at the entrance,

might glide right past the lion-dogs

            on guard, asleep in bronze,

might fire the dew on the golden tiles,

            ignite each phoenix on its ridge.

Light. Nine-thousand nine-hundred

            and ninety-nine rooms

begin to warm under its palm.

            Here, in the book, is a diagram.

There is the Hall of Union and Peace.

            The Hall of Medium Harmony.

The Meridian Gate. The Imperial Library.

            The inner golden bridges.

You fidget. You are, you admit, one of

            the earth’s more nervous passengers.

But it’s different, this, a reasonable space.

            In the palace of an afternoon

a child-king hiding in the curtain

            listening. For a second apart

from the turn of the thing, for a second

            forgetting the narrative’s forfeit—

how nothing can outlast its loss,

            that solace is found, if at all,

in the silence that follows each footstep

            let fall on the black lacquer floor

of the now, of the here, where you are,

            in the sunlight, blinking, abroad.

Pascale Petit

THE ANT GLOVE

Dear Father, after Mother’s death, after I’d read

            all your letters to her and her letters to you

and finally understood that I was the fruit of her rape,

            I walked into the forest.

The tribe I met there helped me write this letter

            preparing me as they would prepare a boy

who wanted to become a man.

            The elders raided nests of giant hunting ants

for three hundred shining black workers

            which they wove into the palm fibres of a glove,

their stinging abdomens pointing inwards.

            They blew on them to enrage them.

They painted my writing hand with black dye

            from the genipap fruit and thrust it into the glove.

I had to remain silent while the ants attacked.

            Can you smell the lemony scent of formic acid?

These words are dancing the Tocandeiro.

            I hope you’re dancing as you hold my letter,

as I had to dance wearing the ant glove

            stomping my soles hard on the ground.

Afterwards I cut the stones from my feet.

            Afterwards I celebrated with a feast

biting off ant-heads to suck blood from their bodies

            until my lips and tongue were numb.

I hope you’ve sucked the blood from the words

            that stung you. My hand is still swollen.

Are your fingers swelling as they stroke my signature?

            Are your lips and tongue numb from kissing my kisses?

My hand is always in the glove, writing goodbye,

            red and blue feathers flutter from my wrist.

John Keats

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

1

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

    But being too happy in thine happiness—

        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

                In some melodious plot

    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

    Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

                And purple-stained mouth;

    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

    What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

        Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                And leaden-eyed despairs,

    Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

        Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

4

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

        Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

                But here there is no light,

    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

        Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

5

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

    Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

        Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

                And mid-May’s eldest child,

    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

        The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

    I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

    To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                In such an ecstasy!

    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

        To thy high requiem become a sod.

7

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

    No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

    In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                The same that oft-times hath

    Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

    As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! Adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

        Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

                In the next valley-glades:

    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

        Fled is that music—Do I wake or sleep?

Roberto Cogo

*

the ash-grey heron allows an elegant

dance of his wings grasped at the invincible sky

he settles down on the highest branch

his black outline against the grey—we’re in the middle of wintertime

his slim retracted neck gives shape to an s in flight

then he heads downwards for another tree

where the water of the stream is a frozen ghostly green

and there he stays still and lost in thought

his eyes towards the mountains’ profile

within the gradual vanishing of light along his colourless beak

portrait inside a resinous dusk

thoughtfully but impassively fulfilling his task—a role that life

has assigned to him downright

all the frost of winter wraps and accompanies him

he and his branch are one on the elected tree

then he whirls round again over the silver-green slabs

following the pointed shadow of his wing

he stops and hovers in mid-air for a little while

not knowing what weight is

not worrying about gravity—he just lives and flies

tr. the author

Ezra Pound

*

M’amour, m’amour

            what do I love and

                        where are you?

That I lost my center

                        fighting the world.

The dreams clash

                        and are shattered—

and that I tried to make a paradiso

                                                        terrestre.

Roger Santiváñez

THOSE ABOUT TO BE

We stayed dark. The sun ignited its failure upon

our brains. The boiling vision of the city

fell from the last flashing window. The houses in

El Cerro looked like rubble from a wretched time.

We walked on, breathing the fragrance of the fruits, lushness

of the sunrise slowly penetrated by the nausea of

muddy streets.

Shouts and knives. Hidden, encrusted in trans-

parent bottles, being strangers in the eyes of the peo-

ple was hell and release from a crushing fatigue.

Silence was the path, the detour we arrived at through

fear. No use singing. Too melancholy, watch-

ing an adolescent girl torn between blood and

rough laughter.

Sweat was the corner. Under trees in their whispering time

it surged toward anger, the rigid trembling of the constella-

tions. And shining heads in the night

tr. Naomi Lindstrom

Ezra Pound

GRACE BEFORE SONG
 
Lord God of heaven that with mercy dight
Th’alternate prayer wheel of the night and light
Eternal hath to thee, and in whose sight
Our days as rain drops in the sea surge fall,
 
As bright white drops upon a leaden sea
Grant so my songs to this grey folk may be:
 
As drops that dream and gleam and falling catch the sun,
Evan’scent mirrors every opal one
Of such his splendor as their compass is,
So, bold My Songs, seek ye such death as this.

Sigurdur A. Magnusson

A CHILD LOST

White white angel-white

snowbanks on the slope

down to a frozen lake

and a lacuna

indiscernible to the child’s eyes

blinded

by gusts and snowdrifts

as the sled rushes

automatically

inexorably

toward the deep-blue eye of the ice

which closes over

five years’ existence

Sled-tracks on the slope

covered by snowdrift

The ice-plated lake

keeps its prey

tr. the author

Hannes Pétursson

MARIE ANTOINETTE

This immense swarm is like a surging ocean

and the wagon protrudes like a skerry.

She stands there silent, looks across the crowd;

the morning breeze

is still cool. And ahead

the bitter blade of the self-important guillotine

waits, suspended over the crowd.

                                                She is tired and hears

the shouting as though it came from afar,

subdued by her baneful stay in prison.

How can she understand that this whole savage

filthy crowd, this cruel bitter weapon

which gleams there, bloody, insatiable

as a damned monster, sowing death, affliction,

is the pure, unsullied dream of the thinkers, the future

more wholesome, an improvement, and the only option;

but what is being torn up by the roots:

the rotten government and heavy evil

is she, who gazes over the crowd in silence

pure and ashen.

tr. Sigurdur A. Magnusson

Silvia Goldman

CECILIA

Why does life persist like an endless day and NOT I?

Why life for a day and NOT I?

If only they knew

those who hear in my eloquent language sensible and direct emotions

those who see me eloquent and direct

that I don’t have a language

nor sensible nor direct emotions

if only they knew

that I would throw myself

that I would be cecilia

and closing my eyes also cecilia

and cecilia falling and silvia falling

and cecilia in the air and silvia in the air

and cecilia barefoot and silvia clasping her bare foot

and cecilia wanting to touch the ground and silvia holding her back

                the day cecilia fell silvia fell

and if only they knew

those who hear in my language a sensible rhythm without falls

that I am fallen

that I am broken

that I cecilia.

tr. Luiz Prazeres & Julia Garner

Anne Carson, EPITAPH: EVIL

Stephen Romer

ERMENONVILLE

So it once was, so it is again,

for a single afternoon,

on our bikes, wheels silted up with sand

in the desert of Ermenonville

where the filles du feu float their wraiths

at the vague ends of avenues.

They were goblins of melancholy

there among the ferns,

they were sirens, and drove me mad.

This time, for sanity, I pocketed

a pine kernel, to have and to hold,

while you rode ahead

on the path to Mortefontaine

where Corot painted in silver-fleck,

past the well in the road

where the water stands so clear.

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