Under the sky born after the rain, I hear the quiet slap of oars against the water and I’m thinking: happiness is nothing but the quiet slap of oars against the water. Or maybe it’s nothing but the light on a small boat, appearing and disappearing on the dark swell of years slow as a funeral supper. Or the light of a house discovered behind the hill when we’d thought nothing remained but to walk and walk. Or the gulf of silence between my voice and the voice of someone revealing to me the true names of things simply by calling them up: poplars, roofs. The distance between the clinking of a bell on a sheep’s neck at dawn and the thud of a door closing after a party. The space between the cry of a wounded bird out on the marsh and the folded wings of a butterfly just over the crest of a wind-swept ridge. That was happiness: drawing random figures in the frost, fully aware they’d hardly last at all, breaking off a pine bough on the spur of the moment to write our names in the damp ground, catching a piece of thistledown to try and stop the flight of a whole season. That’s what happiness was like: brief as the dream of a felled sweet acacia tree or the dance of a crazy old woman in front of a broken mirror. Happy days pass as quickly as the journey of a star cut loose from the sky, but it doesn’t matter. We can always reconstruct them from memory, just as the boy sent out to the courtyard for punishment collects pebbles to form resplendent armies. We can always be in the day that’s neither yesterday nor tomorrow, gazing up at a sky born after the rain and listening from afar to a quiet slap of oars against the water.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Rubén Bonifaz Nuño Mexican 1923 – 2013
Because I was alone I want to think of you as alone. That you didn’t go, that you slept. That you left me without leaving, and that you needed me to be able to be happy.
Anyway, I’ve recovered my place in the world: you came back, you became reachable
You give me back the time, the pain, the ways, happiness, the voice, the body, the soul, life, and death, and what lives beyond death.
You give me back everything locked up in the appearance of a woman, your self, the one I love.
You came back little by little, you woke and weren’t surprised to find me beside you.
And I could almost see the last step of the secret you climbed while sleeping, as you opened —slowly, quietly—your eyes inside my eyes that kept the deathwatch over you.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Margaret Tait Scots 1918 – 1999
One day I Lit a fire At which I Boiled eggs Made tea Dried my shoes And I sat On a stool Watching The sticks catch and flame Quite a while It seemed, Until the whole pile I’d gathered had all burnt away.
Flame Is a thing I Always wonder about. It seems to be made of colour only. I don’t know what else it’s made of.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
Anne Sexton American 1928 – 1974
You always read about it: the plumber with the twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story.
Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son’s heart. from diapers to Dior. That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, the white truck like an ambulance who goes into real estate and makes a pile. From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman who is on the bus when it cracks up and collects enough from the insurance. From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story.
Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile down from heaven in the seam of a cloud. The man took another wife who had two daughters, pretty enough but with hearts like blackjacks. Cinderella was their maid. She slept on the sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. Her father brought presents home from town, jewels and gowns for the other women but the twig of a tree for Cinderella. She planted that twig on her mother’s grave and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat. Whenever she wished for anything the dove would drop it like an egg upon the ground. The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know. It was a marriage market. The prince was looking for a wife. All but Cinderella were preparing and gussying up for the event. Cinderella begged to go too. Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils into the cinders and said: Pick them up in an hour and you shall go. The white dove brought all his friends; all the warm wings of the fatherland came, and picked up the lentils in a jiffy. No, Cinderella, said the stepmother, you have no clothes and cannot dance. That’s the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave and cried forth like a gospel singer: Mama! Mama! My turtledove, send me to the prince’s ball! The bird dropped down a golden dress and delicate little slippers. Rather a large package for a simple bird. So she went. Which is no surprise. Her stepmother and sisters didn’t recognize her without her cinder face and the prince took her hand on the spot and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she’d better get home. The prince walked her home and she disappeared into the pigeon house and although the prince took an axe and broke it open she was gone. Back to her cinders. These events repeated themselves for three days. However on the third day the prince covered the palace steps with cobbler’s wax and Cinderella’s gold shoe stuck upon it. Now he would find whom the shoe fit and find his strange dancing girl for keeps. He went to their house and the two sisters were delighted because they had lovely feet. The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on but her big toe got in the way so she simply sliced it off and put on the slipper. The prince rode away with her until the white dove told him to look at the blood pouring forth. That is the way with amputations. They just don’t heal up like a wish. The other sister cut off her heel but the blood told as blood will. The prince was getting tired. He began to feel like a shoe salesman. But he gave it one last try. This time Cinderella fit into the shoe like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony the two sisters came to curry favor and the white dove pecked their eyes out. Two hollow spots were left like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.
We present this work in honor of the 60th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Luis Cernuda Spanish 1902 – 1963
Body of stone, morose body In woolens like the walls of the universe, Body like the birthdays of the races, Like edifices overwhelmingly innocent, Like the shyest waterfalls White as the night, while the mountain Rips up manic shapes, Pains like fingers And pleasures like fingernails.
Not knowing where to go, where to go back to, Seeking those merciful winds That wear away the wrinkles in the earth, That bless those desires cut out at the roots Before flowering. Their great blossom, like a child.
Lips want that flower Whose fist, kissed by the night, Opens the doors of oblivion lip by lip.
We present this work in honor of the 105th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Wilfred Owen English 1893 – 1918
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
Napoleon Lapathiotis Greek 1888 – 1944
Autumn, I loved you when the leaves fall And leave the branches naked for winter’s icy bites, When the evenings flee, the poms are apple red, And lonely are the nights…
And stand I now and ask: what fate and what storm, While alone sailing the abysmal depths of mort, Strangely and hopelessly has brought me now forlorn A beggar in your court…
And when the dinner ends and night falls, And quietly, like books, the light dies in the sky I come back looking for my lost peace of old, Like a charity from up high…
I loved you fall, when the leaves fall and Leave the branches, and lonely is each night. But did I really love you – or is just the shiver Of the coming winter’s icy bite…
Cursed! be the father of the bride of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe with which the woodsman hacked down the oak from which the bed was carved in which was conceived the great-grandfather of the man who was driving the carriage in which your mother met your father.
We present this work in honor of the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ana Cristina Cesar Brazilian 1952 – 1983
I don’t even need to marry I get all I need from him I won’t leave here anymore I really doubt it This subject of women has come to an end The cat ate it and enjoyed himself He dances just like a barrel organ The writer no longer exists But also doesn’t have to become a god Someone’s at the house Do you think he can stand it? Mr. Tenderness is knocking I couldn’t care less Conspiring: I answer back again Trap: dying to know She’s strange Also you lie too much He’s stalking me Who did you sell your time to? I don’t really know: I slept with that klutz It makes no sense at all But what about the gig? He’s being a good boy I think it’s an act Don’t even start
Poets Corner 