We present this work in honor of the Italian holiday, Ferragosto.
And it grows, the vain
summer,
even for us with our
bright green sins:
behold the dry guest,
the wind,
as it stirs up quarrels
among magnolia boughs
and plays its serene
tune on
the prows of all the leaves—
and then is gone,
leaving the leaves
still there, the tree still green, but breaking
the heart of the air.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
That too the hard-heavy nothingness of existing
There as daytime stirred
The white organ of scattering: heaps of salt
Like daytime
Lifting nature’s thick shells
Down comes the opposite of a fisherman
Dirty August! Things that drag me from here to there
A few hotels stick in my mind
Or they don’t stick in my mind
But not that the hotel itself
The brown coloured organ of loneliness: a heap of dreams
Made out of brown coloured flames
Nothing else needed, to see nothingness
Dirty August! In the end I set my eyelids on fire too
We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
The body of a tall living hero alone
Walks first
In a wood made of more than a thousand columns,
Then stretches out on a shield
—Partly shining and partly of still warm shadow—
Formed with pine needles.
He rests
Under the musical guard of a quadrille of flies
Held at a respectful distance
By the circularly extended quiverings
Of living flesh.
Some long trees
With the plumes on their summits,
Ward off in the sky
All dangerous flakes.
Prisoners by their roots
Strong
But sinuous on their heels,
They move off around the precious
Olympian figure,
Opening up the skies
For him to see.
He,
With clean body,
Neither hot nor cold,
Without urgent need,
His vision richly fed
On a thousand blue sparks,
Makes move
down in his throat
deep under the veil of his eyes
Ears and nostrils,
The secret screen,
The curtain
Of Memory and Forgetting.
Everything trembles then
And refuses no command.
Each thing in particular
Would be sacrificed willingly.
But he is as just as he is strong
And his modesty enhances his power.
He gives to everyone at each moment
Full authorization
According to their own desires
Having excused everything,
Enriched by his intelligence,
He, already dead for them,
Lies down as they go off.
We present this work in honor of the 60th anniversary of the poet’s death.
1
In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a minuscule puppy.
Now he’s eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his
bottle-cap watering-trough—
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.
Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.
2
But this morning the shoe-box house on the back porch is empty.
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? —
To run under the hawk’s wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,—
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.
The child is not dead
The child lifts his fists against his mother
Who shouts Afrika ! shouts the breath
Of freedom and the veld
In the locations of the cordoned heart
The child lifts his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who shouts Afrika ! shout the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride
The child is not dead
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Philippi
where he lies with a bullet through his brain
The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles Saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings
the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts
of mothers
this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world
Without a pass
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 145th birthday.
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy
a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the same
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens
to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum
archy
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
It’s not air that I breathe,
that is ice freezing
the blood of my senses.
The ground I tread opens for me.
Wherever I look darkens.
My eyes open, weeping
already when the day dawns.
And before dawn,
they look at the world
and do not want to believe…
We present this work in honor of the Egyptian holiday, Revolution Day.
I’m a poet
I’m still painting from bleeding wounds
A new song
I’m still building in the prisons of oppression
Happy times
I’m still writing
Even though the letter kills me
And throws me in front of people
like stray melodies
Or whenever appears before the eyes
A stubborn wish
A stray arrow glides into the night
And brings it down… a martyr
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
My mind’s a map. A mad sea-captain drew it
Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs,
And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs.
“Here there be tygers.” “Here we buried Jim.”
Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
About their buried idol, drowned so cold
He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
A country like the dark side of the moon,
A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
A land of hungry sorcerers.
Your mind?
—Your mind is water through an April night,
A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its white,
A lavender as fragrant as your words,
A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds,
Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
Flutters and beats about those lovely things.
You are the soul, enchanted with its wings,
The single voice that raises up the dead
To shake the pride of angels.
I have said.
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Such peace holds sway here!
One would say the graves themselves were smiling,
while the dead converse in muted tones
in upper case, deep in the darkness.
From there with plain and simple words
they want to reach our peaceful hearts.
But their lament, whatever they desire to say,
fails in its purpose, for they’ve fled too far away.
All that’s here to mark Martzokis are two
sticks of wood laid one across the other.
For Vasiliadis, here’s a great stone book.
And a plaque half hidden in the grass
– for that’s how Death presents her now –
this is Lamari, a forgotten poet.
Poets Corner 