We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.
I walk among the straws and the twigs;
I see a moss-covered twig,
I see an orange stone;
And my feet say to me:
“Do not walk on them,
But leave them, that others may see them,
And know that we have seen them also.”
Before you, my mother Idoto,
Naked I stand;
Before your weary presence,
A prodigal
Leaning on an oilbean,
Lost in your legend
Under your power wait I
On barefoot,
Watchman for the watchword
At Heavensgate;
Out of the depth my cry:
Give ear and hearken…
DARK WATERS of the beginning.
Ray, violet, and short, piercing the gloom,
Foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.
Rainbow on far side, arched like boa bent to kill,
Foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.
Me to the orangery
Solitude invites,
A wagtail, to tell
The tangled-wood-tale;
A sunbird, to mourn
A mother on spray.
Rain and sun in single combat;
On one leg standing,
In silence at the passage
The young bird at the passage
SILENCE FACES at crossroads:
Festivity in black…
Faces of black like black
Column of ants,
Behind the bell tower,
Into the hot garden
Where all roads meet:
Festivity in black…
O Anan at the knob of the panel oblong,
Hear us at crossroads at the great hinges
Where the players of loft organ
Rehearse old lovely fragment, alone-
Strains of pressed orange leaves on pages
Bleach of the light of years held in leather:
For we are listening in cornfields
Among the wind players,
Listening to the wind leaning over
Its loveliest fragment…
We present this work in honor of the 30th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Vase says, I’m worth a thousand hammers
Hammer says, I shattered a hundred vases
Craftsman says, I made a thousand hammers
Great man says, I killed a hundred craftsmen
Hammer says, I even killed a great man
Vase says, I’m holding that great man’s cremains
We present this work in honor of the 30th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I was a tree and I broke
They broke all my branches
Because there found refuge all the lost children
So as to play the hanged.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Nanai as you leave – with the winds – I ride
in the eye of silence and everything goes
and there are many ships, many seas – big
clouds above – the people and May.
And inside me roaring – all trembling –
a heavy steamer and
then again you and May and the winds
and then again the people, the people.
And all that leaves – and does not stay –
in a city uninhabited, and in me
ungoverned, may the ship take you
out of the storm of this world.
My cousins, on Sundays, come to cut roses
and to ask me for some book of verses in French.
They move about the garden lawn, cutting flowers,
straight from the pages of Musset or Samain.
They love pretty phrases and clear bright mornings.
An imperturbable statue can thrill them through and through.
They are waitmg for the coming of the autumn evenings
because through the window-panes everything looks gold…
And they come to cut roses on Sundays… They know
that the echo of their voices is pleasing to me.
Among the petals they leave their harmonious laughter;
surely they are laughing unaware.
My cousins, when it rains, do not come. Sweedy
I bring away whatever buds the wind has blown down;
I make a bouquet with them, and place beneath the bouquet
a volume of poems by Musset or Samain.
We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.
When I die I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,
for you to smell the sea that we loved together
and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.
I want for what I love to go on living
and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,
for that, go on flowering, flowery one,
so that you reach all that my love orders for you,
so that my shadow passes through your hair,
so that they know by this the reason for my song.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
They came into our lives unasked for.
There was light momentarily, a flicker of wings,
a dance, a voice, and then they went out
again, like a light, leaving us not so much
in darkness, but in a different place
and alone as never before.
So we have been changed
and our vision no longer what it was,
and our hopes no longer what they were;
so a piece of us has gone out with them also,
a cold dream subtracted without malice,
the weight of another world added also,
and we did not ask, we did not ask ever
for those who stood smiling
and with flowers before the open door.
We did not beckon them in, they came in uninvited,
the sunset pouring from their shoulders,
so they walked through us as they would through water,
and we are here, in a different place,
changed and incredibly alone,
and we did not know, we do not know ever.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Outside space and time the deer wander, at once swift and languid, and no one knows whether their true place is in immobility or in movement; they combine the two in such a way that we are forced to place them in eternity.
Inert or dynamic, they keep changing the natural horizon, and they perfect our ideas of time, space, and the laws of moving bodies. Made expressly to solve the ancient paradox, they are at once Achilles and the tortoise, the bow and the arrow. They run without ever overtaking. They stop and something remains always outside them, galloping.
The deer cannot stand still, but moves forward like an apparition, whether it be among real trees or out of a grove in a legend: Saint Hubert’s stag bearing a cross between his antlers, or the doe that gives suck to Genevieve de Brabant. Wherever they are encountered, the male and the female compose the same fabulous pair.
Quarry without peer, all of us mean to take it, even if only with the eyes. And if Jan de Yespes tells us that what he pursued, when hunting, was so high, so high-he is not referring to the earthly dove, but to the deer: profound, unattainable, and in flight.
We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Lazily through the clear
Shallow and deep,
He oars his chartless way,
Half-asleep
The little paradox – so bright – so cold
Although his flesh seem formed of fire and gold
High emperor of his dim
Bubble-empearled
Jet-shadowed greenish-shallowed
Water-world
Like a live torch, a brand of burning gold,
He sets the wave afire and still is cold.
Poets Corner 