In honor of the Japanese holiday, Marine Day, we present this work by an author considered the soul of modern Japanese poetry.
winter rain
shines on
slight moss
like on damask
I put on deer
armor
and sit in a
narrow hallway
with the passing days
thoughts are light
bright
and futile
one bitter drop
contained
as in a Chinese bowl
cold and futile there is nothing
there is nothing
I should know by now
also, no books
and no visitors
Among green snakes and verbenas,
my status of a tame lion
has a lackluster buzz of hives
and a bark of burned ocean.
With ghosts and chains that cling
I’m a rotten religion and a fallen king,
or a feudal castle whose battlements
raise your name like golden bread.
Towers of blood on battlefields,
Smell of heroic sun and shrapnel,
of the sword of a terrified nation.
They are heard in my being, full of the dead
and wounded, of ashes and deserts,
where a great poet commits suicide.
We present this work in honor of the 85th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I will not follow you, my bird,
I will not follow you.
I would not breathe a word, my bird,
To bring thee here anew.
I love the free in thee, my bird,
The lure of freedom drew;
The light you fly toward, my bird,
I fly with thee unto.
And there we yet will meet, my bird,
Though far I go from you
Where in the light outpoured, my bird,
Are love and freedom too.
We present this work in honor of the 20th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Gliding through the still air, he made no sound;
Wing-shod and deft, dropped almost at her feet,
And searched the ghostly regiments and found
The living eyes, the tremor of breath, the beat
Of blood in all that bodiless underground.
She left her majesty; she loosed the zone
Of darkness and put by the rod of dread.
Standing, she turned her back upon the throne
Where, well she knew, the Ruler of the Dead,
Lord of her body and being, sat like stone;
Stared with his ravenous eyes to see her shake
The midnight drifting from her loosened hair,
The girl once more in all her actions wake,
The blush of colour in her cheeks appear
Lost with her flowers that day beside the lake.
The summer flowers scattering, the shout,
The black manes plunging down to the black pit —
Memory or dream? She stood awhile in doubt,
Then touched the Traveller God’s brown arm and met
His cool, bright glance and heard his words ring out:
“Queen of the Dead and Mistress of the Year!”
— His voice was the ripe ripple of the corn;
The touch of dew, the rush of morning air —
“Remember now the world where you were born;
The month of your return at last is here.”
And still she did not speak, but turned again
Looking for answer, for anger, for command:
The eyes of Dis were shut upon their pain;
Calm as his marble brow, the marble hand
Slept on his knee. Insuperable disdain
Foreknowing all bounds of passion, of power, of art,
Mastered but could not mask his deep despair.
Even as she turned with Hermes to depart,
Looking her last on her grim ravisher
For the first time she loved him from her heart.
In honor of the Argentine holiday, Independence Day, we present this work by one of Argentina’s most independent voices.
You didn’t listen to the beating of a tree’s heart,
couched against the trunk gazing upwards,
you didn’t see the leaves moving
with the throb of a heart,
you didn’t feel the shudder
of the swaying branches above your body,
you didn’t listen to the heart of the pines
when the wind moves them and those leaves
that are like green fragrant pins
fall, and when the clouds pass,
you didn’t see that the world was turning,
the entire world, and you didn’t feel
that the sky was drawing near,
was entering inside the pines,
and that you were disappearing, penetrating with it
inside the pines, becoming in that sky another tree.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 55th birthday.
tattered rain
& i’m navy blue
in the frayed streets
pressure reaching down
& slow magic coming on
drum flute & the night whistle
mute music of torn throats
& then
tongues twisted around on themselves
spew out froth
green
rabid at yellow dusk…
& the night gathers its red soaked apparel
staggers home
In honor of Independence Day, we present this work by one of the most quintessentially American of all American poets.
I drank musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker, he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere. Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising Association on the trade resources of South America.
And the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of our best people,
I knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is the living double of Jack London’s Sea Wolf.
In the mayor’s office the mayor himself told me he was happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office-seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat.
Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache,
And he had it all over the butter millionaire, Jim Kirch and the mayor when it came to happiness.
He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only makes them from start to finish, but plays them after he makes them.
And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted it,
And another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars, though he never mentioned the price till I asked him,
And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the music and the make of an instrument count for a million times more than the price in money.
I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about God.
There was light in his eyes of one who has conquered sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth conquering.
Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous of that day.
He played a dance they play in some parts of Italy when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine presses are ready for work.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It gave me two bright stars that when I open them,
I perfectly distinguish the black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop
And within the multitudes the man I love
Only two doors
are bolted.
All the others invite you in
and open with the softest
pressure of your curiosity.
Only these doors are
so hard to open
that your strength runs out.
No joiner comes and
planes them down and oils
the stubborn bolts.
The door which closed
behind you and you
outside.
The door which locked
before you and you
inside.
We present this work in honor of the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death.
The air filled with a pungent charcoal smell
And the doors closed before sunset;
From that neighborhood as languid as a laudanum
You are the only surviving trace in my memory, you
Who smiled at the vast light of her own dreams.
With your eyes, your teeth, and your white neck
What a sweet neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Your house was as small as a neat box;
Its balcony thickly intertwined and the shades
Of ivies at the tiny hours of the sunset
Washed over in a nearby hidden brook.
A green flowerpot stood in your window all year round
And in spring acacias blossomed in your garden
What a charming neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Earlier you had long hair, then short and styled;
Light-complexioned, you were as tall as an ear of corn,
Your wrists laden with ample golden bracelets
Tickled the heart of all men
And occasionally your short skirt swayed in the wind.
You sang mostly obscene love songs
What a sexy neighbor you were, Fahriye Abla!
Rumors had it that you were in love with that lad
And finally you were married to a man from Erzincan
I don’t know whether you still live with your first husband
Or whether you are in Erzincan of snowy mountaintops.
Let my heart recollect the long-forgotten days
Things that live in memory do not change by time
What a nice neighbor you were, Fahriye Abla!
Poets Corner 