We present this work in honor of the 550th anniversary of the poet’s death.
You, azure bird, shining parrot, you walk flying. Oh Highest Arbiter, Life Giver: trembling, You extend Yourself here, filling my house, filling my dwelling, here.
With Your piety and grace one can live, oh Author of Life, on earth: trembling, You extend Yourself here, filling my house, filling my dwelling, here.
We present this work in honor of Dragon Boat Day.
I swim in that long river
And rest on its bank.
I climb that high hillcrest
And cut the wild thorn.
Alas! I journey afar,
Alone I travel, in utter solitude.
I look up at that temperate wind
And shed tears like the rain.
Here I will never hear the cuckoo’s call.
Here trees will never wear the shtreimel-snow.
Yet here in the pine’s shade I can hear all
My childhood, brought to life from long ago.
The needles chiming: Once upon a time
“Home” was the word I gave to snow, not sand,
And the brook-fettering ice- a greenish rime
Of my song’s language in a foreign land.
Perhaps the voyaging birds alone who find
Their own route hanging between the sky and earth,
Know how I pine between two lands of birth.
In you I was transplanted, O my pine.
In you I branched into myself and grew
Where disparate landscapes split one root in two.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
There will be anger
Followed by the deluge.
We know we will be among the drowned.
But we will take the devil with us down
To the deepest of deeps:
Our end will be his…
But slowly… What will be said
Of us when they look back on it all?
What will be said
Of us after the deluge,
After the coming drowning, after the coming anger,
What will be said of us poets and writers?
Were we men in truth,
Half-men
Or mere shadows?
Fear,
Fear of the sword,
Made of us something unspeakable —
Except in the vulgar tongue.
What will be said?
Will it be said we chose silence
For fear of death?
The letter has an edge like a sword,
Can turn against its speaker.
What will be said?
Will it be said that we chose to speak in symbols,
Whispers, silent gestures,
In all the arts of coded speech?
We said it all — in vino veritas,
But people
Had other concerns:
Their daily bread,
A kilo of meat.
Maqrizi,
You who always come after the deluge:
A plague is a plague —
It always comes on the tail of a famine.
It snatched your daughter, and many other daughters
As the wolf was standing guard.
I hereby solemnly swear, Maqrizi,
Not to leave this world
Without scandal.
I ask no one for justice:
True justice is not to be begged.
Our judges are high priests,
Our high priests are distant
And all are traitors.
Let someone else write poetry,
I am writing the Chronicles of Maqrizi.
I drink, day
And night I drink.
Sinking… I sink into my depths.
There I see him,
In my heart a holy pearl,
Unbreakable,
Even if a giant mountain falls upon it.
When I sober up, I float to the surface, lose my pearl.
Was it lost? No. It was me who was lost—
When I sobered up I floated to the surface.
For sure the pearl is down there in the depths…
No.
It is between two thighs, trampled under feet
Shod in military or civilian boots,
Under the wheels of petro-dollar cars.
Usually I drink from two glasses…
My comrade in the madhouse died.
He used to share my drink
And share my grief.
We had no time for joy:
He used to share my past anger,
And present anger — and that to come.
Usually I drink from two glasses,
The second to toast him.
But tonight I drink from one glass:
It seems my friend, upon his death,
Had given up drinking;
Or maybe it was me who gave up.
Then let me drink to giving up drinking
Until the last of all the Noahs’ arks has left
With all those who will be saved from the coming deluge.
I sink and sink
And see in my glass
Monkey fornicating with rat
Or rat fornicating with wolf
Or wolf with owl.
Maqrizi’s daughter is lost
In the plague
And the plague always comes on the tail of a famine,
When prices are measured against a kilo of meat,
Even the price of writers, novelists, poets,
Artists and scientists,
When the stuff of the dreams of the poor is meat;
And fuul beans,
Fruit for the masters.
I recall a poet’s saying:
I shall sleep not to see
My country being bought and sold.
Then drink from two glasses,
Or, if you wish, drink from one.
If my death cannot be driven away,
Then let me engage with it
With what I have at hand.
Sometimes I wonder
how much longer I shall be here
to bite your hair
with my wooden toothcomb.
I am not afraid
of the freeze of frail fingers;
there is something
romantic about loss.
But I worry about the uneven rhythm
of the diviner’s hand,
the widening waist
that filters sand.
I worry that time
rests its hand on doorknob
and taps the floor
with its iron toe tip.
Somehow,
I must show you
the tricks my mother didn’t teach me;
tell you the tales that never reached me.
But if time will spurn
a mother’s wish
or turn its face away
from a daughter’s need,
remember this, little one:
a life lived well is a wave in flight;
discarded dreams
draw out painful night.
All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there’s a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damned -I’ll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damned do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damned poets, damned critics, damned blockheads, damned knaves,
Damned senators bribed, damned prostitute slaves;
Damned lawyers and judges, damned lords and damned squires;
Damned spies and informers, damned friends and damned liars;
Damned villains, corrupted in every station;
Damned time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I’ll readily give you
Damned ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flammed,
For we know by these marks the place of the damned:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
The sky a black sphere,
the sea a black disk.
The lighthouse opens
its solar fan on the coast.
Spinning endlessly at night,
whom is it searching for
when the mortal heart
looks for me in the chest?
Look at the black rock
where it is nailed down.
A crow digs endlessly
but no longer bleeds.
We present this work in honor of the 90th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Bandoneon of the slum,
old deflated bellow
I found you like a baby
that a mother abandoned,
at the door of a convent
without plaster on the walls,
under the light of a little lamp
that at night it illuminated you.
Bandoneon,
because you see that I am sad
and I can no longer sing,
you know
that I carry in the soul
branded a pain.
I took you to my room,
I cuddled you against my cold chest,
I was also left abandoned
in my digs.
You have wanted to console me
with your rasping voice
and your painful note
increased my illusion.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
This landlocked house should grace a harbor:
its widow’s walk of grey pickets
surveys an inland sea
of grass; wind
breaks like surf against
its rough shingles.
In summer the two grown sons
tie up here for a while.
The daughter with her mermaid hair
sits on a rock: her legs
will soon be long enough
to carry her away.
Sometimes the woman
lies awake
watching the fireflies bobbing
like ship’s lights, the bats
with their strict radar
patrolling the dark.
The man will leave too,
one way or another,
sufficient as an old snail
carrying his small house
on his back.
She will remain, pacing
the widow’s walk.
At dusk she’ll pick the milky flowers
that grow by the porch stair;
she’ll place them in the window,
each polished petal a star
for someone to steer home by.
We present this work in honor of the 320th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I will not lift my veil,—
For, if I did, who knows?
The bulbul might forget the rose,
The Brahman worshipper
Adoring Lakshmi’s grace
Might turn, forsaking her,
To see my face;
My beauty might prevail.
Think how within the flower
Hidden as in a bower
Her fragrant soul must be,
And none can look on it;
So me the world can see
Only within the verses I have writ—
I will not lift the veil.
Poets Corner 