We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 145th birthday.
A name, Cromac, makes us speak
Of a dark bay… O death of love,
Be less sad for weeping
Other names, other days
Where you were like the blind man
Looking at the dark red
And playing with his scratched hands
Over the old bench of his childhood…
Like the blind man, when he dreams
And grumbles, and when his heart
Scolds the warm bodied beauty
Watching him, in tears…
Cromac. The House under the branches
Whose window with flower eyes
Separated her long white hands
Gently, noiselessly, over your heart…
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
The lone molar of a whore
who had died unknown
had a gold filling.
As if by silent agreement
the others had all fallen out.
But this one the morgue attendant knocked out
and pawned to go dancing.
For, he said,
only earth should return to earth.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
Someone is silent
and you think he is speaking
and you answer
and speak well
and reveal yourself
layer by layer that you cannot
give you who is speaking
and it gets cold and colder
someone is silent
and you wait
for the silence
to all ends
and further
and the word does not carry
and you do not know
where the light is
the light and dark
someone is walking
and you think
he is walking well
and you follow him
and keep up with him
and do not go mad
someone is walking
and you think he is walking softly
on soft soles
and you pluck the softness
and leave the hard
and the ice crunches
and you say I can’t hear it
Once I thought that God has
A home near the clouds, full of glory—
Like a king has a castle in a children’s story.
With diamond bricks and gold the castle was made,
The base of its towers, ivory and crystal laid.
I thought that You sit on Your throne with pride.
While the Moon, a tiny glimmer on Your robe, rides.
The pattern of Your robe, the moonbeams draw.
A small jewel in Your crown, every star I saw.
Our sun was no more than a button on Your vest.
The sky, a small part of Your coat, so I guessed.
But no one has seen where You live or rest.
I thought that You did not want us to know.
I was so sad for this image of God here below.
My thoughts in prayer were out of fear, it’s true—
Of what a very angry God might do.
Prayer was like memorizing a lesson in school,
Reviewing geometry or math, without any rules.
Prayer was the punishment of a principal, who
Wanted answers to questions no one knew,
Or told you to form tenses of verbs no one used.
Then one night with my father, hand in hand,
We walked down a village road in our land.
There we saw a welcoming home.
I asked without waiting, “Whose is it, do you know?”
“It is God’s noble house,” my father replied.
“We can stay here awhile and pray inside.
We can pray here in quiet, beyond the sight of men,
We can make ourselves fresh and clean again.
We will talk with our conscience and learn what to do.”
“But does that angry God have a home here too?!”
To my question my father replied,
“Yes, God’s home is in our hearts, it is inside.
God’s house is covered with carpet soft and bright.
God is a mirror in our hearts full of light.
God is forgiving and hatred does not know. . .”
And suddenly I knew my love for this God would grow.
This familiar and kind God is mine, and will be—
A friend closer than myself to me.
Close to me as my very own life.
A good and an honored Friend
In Whom I delight.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Just as soon as Mass is over,
Put our pious airs away;
And with luncheon in our baskets,
To the mountain! To the mountain!
To the mountain for the day!
Hark, the bells of glory ringing
From the belfries of the Spring!—
Sun and sky! — oh, what a blessing
After gloomy days, they bring!
How the water o’er the mill-wheel
Rumbles furious and fast,
Bursting through a thousand echoes
Until — there — ‘tis gone at last!
For the woods our hearts are hungry;
Every bird hears us reply;
Incense seems to sweep our bosoms—
To the mountain! To the mountain!
To the mountain, let us hie!
Every grotto holds a secret;
Every cleft its creed and rite;
On the slopes is scattered grandeur—
Hawthorn flowers and crags in sight!
On the peaks the wind is hymning,—
Heaven is nigh — the town, far down;
Ah, why should not human dwellings
All the free-world mountains crown?—
At the nightfall — with our baskets
Empty — to the town we haste;
All the mountains fill with shadows,—
Spirits of the dreaded waste!
We present this work in honor of the 15th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Press yourself close
to the ground.
The earth
still smells of summer
and your body
still smells of love.
But the grass
is already yellowed above you.
The wind is cold
and full of thistledown.
And the dream which waylays you
shadow-footed
your dream
has autumn eyes.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
On a vine in a lonely grove
Slept a fortune-filled Jasmine Blossom—
A pure, tender-bodied lass
Lost in dreams of love,
Eye closed, lax—in a leaf-bed
On a spring night;
In some far off land
Was the wind called Malaya
Who left this pining lover.
With grieving came the memory of sweet touch,
A memory of a moonlight-laved midnight,
A memory of his beloved’s trembling, tender form—
What then? The wind
Crossed lakes, rivers, groves,
Bush-creeper masses, deep mountain-woods,
Arrived where he had played
With the budding bloom.
She was sleeping,
How could she know of her lover’s coming?
The Nayak kissed her cheeks,
Cradel-like the vine-strand began to swing.
Even then she didn’t awaken,
Asked no pardon,
Wide slumber-curved eyes stayed shut,
Perhaps drunk with youth’s wine—
Who can say?
Brutal, the Nayak
Worked sheer barbarity—
With gusty blasts
Jerked the lovely, tender body around,
Crushed the round white cheeks;
The damsel started—
Turned a startled glance all around,
Spied her lover by her bed,
Smiled shyly—blossomed—
Having played the game of love
With the wooer.
Morning flew by in the usual way,
Up and down streets, it raced,
Unwinding the spring of an ongoing watch
That the night would wind up again.
A coat was fastened over the chest
With a clasp and a little chain,
Then a voice from the gut: “tayer yiddish kind,
Give to a beggar, Jewish daughter.”
From under her rags she studies me
With a tender, cunning old face,
A sentinel’s eye and a hookish nose,
And a black wig, parted smooth.
An ancient, yellowish hand
Grabs my sleeve, and the words
Of a language I don’t comprehend
Sound out, seizing my heart.
And there I stop, I cannot go on,
Though I know—I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t,
And drop a small coin in her open palm
And lift a thirsty heart to her face.
“Old woman, how did you, half-blind,
Pick me out among these strangers?
After all, I’m like them, the same as those—
Dull, alien, strange.”
“Daughter, dear, there are things about us
That no one can mistake.
Our girls have the saddest eyes,
And a slow languorous walk.
And they don’t laugh like the others—
Openly in their simplicity—
But beam behind clouds as the moon does,
Their sadness alive in their smiles.
Even if you lose your faith and kin,
A yid iz immer a yid!
And thus my blood sings in your veins,”
She says in her alien tongue.
That morning flew by in the usual way,
Up and down streets, it raced,
Unwinding the spring of an ongoing watch
That the night would wind up again.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
Choose life instead of those prisms with no depth even if their colors are purer
Instead of this hour always hidden instead of these terrible vehicles of cold flame
Instead of these overripe stones
Choose this heart with its safety catch
Instead of that murmuring pool
And that white fabric singing in the air and the earth at the same time
Instead of that marriage blessing joining my forehead to total vanity’s
Choose life
Choose life with its conspiratorial sheets
Its scars from escapes
Choose life choose that rose window on my tomb
The life of being here nothing but being here
Where one voice says Are you there where another answers Are you there
I’m hardly here at all alas
And even when we might be making fun of what we kill
Choose life
Choose life choose life venerable Childhood
The ribbon coming out of a fakir
Resembles the playground slide of the world
Though the sun is only a shipwreck
Insofar as a woman’s body resembles it
You dream contemplating the whole length of its trajectory
Or only while closing your eyes on the adorable storm named your hand
Choose life
Choose life with its waiting rooms
When you know you’ll never be shown in
Choose life instead of those health spas
Where you’re served by drudges
Choose life unfavorable and long
When the books close again here on less gentle shelves
And when over there the weather would be better than better it would be free yes
Choose life
Choose life as the pit of scorn
With that head beautiful enough
Like the antidote to that perfection it summons and it fears
Life the makeup on God’s face
Life like a virgin passport
A little town like Pont-á-Mousson
And since everything’s already been said
Choose life instead
Poets Corner 