20th Century Poems

The Last Toast

Nicanor Parra
Chilean
1914 – 2018

 

Whether we like it or not,
We have only three choices:
Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

And not even three
Because as the philosopher says
Yesterday is yesterday
It belongs to us only in memory:
From the rose already plucked
No more petals can be drawn.

The cards to play
Are only two:
The present and the future.

And there aren’t even two
Because it’s a known fact
The present doesn’t exist
Except as it edges past
And is consumed…,
like youth.

In the end
We are only left with tomorrow.
I raise my glass
To the day that never arrives.

But that is all
we have at our disposal.

Woman You Are Love Incarnated

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.

Jaishankar Prasad
Indian
1890 – 1937

 

Now I’ve come to know—
I am a woman of weakness.
My soft beauty of winds
Makes me lose to everyone.

But why does my heart
Itself grows so tender?
And why do my dusky eyes
Well up suddenly with tears?

To lose myself fully,
To trust the shades of a tall tree,
To lie down there silently,
Why do my longings grow in the web of love?

Woman, you are love incarnated
Under the silver mountain of faith.
Keep on flowing like a river of nectar
On the beautiful bed of life.

Pad, Pad

Stevie Smith
English
1902 – 1971

 

I always remember your beautiful flowers
And the beautiful kimono you wore
When you sat on the couch
With that tigerish crouch
And told me you loved me no more.

What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind
All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.
Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.

To the Duke of Leipzig

We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Else Lasker-Schuler
German
1869 – 1945

 

Your eyes have perished;
You have been so long at sea.

But I too
Am lacking a beach.

My temples are made of shell,
Weeds and sea-stars hang on me.

Some day I want to rove
With my aimless hand across your face,

Or be a lizard on your lips
Curling up in the thrall of love.

Incense streams out of your skin,
I want to celebrate

And bring you all my gardens.
My heart breaks out in blossoms everywhere.

Sad Song

María Enriqueta Camarillo
Mexican
1872 – 1968

 

What a squalid alleyway
Is that old Santero Street!
There you hear but one bird’s lay—
The grizzly owl’s ill-omened bleat.
What cobbles ‘neath its low eaves meet,
What hovels poot! All, all, they beat
My heart into the clay!

O stranger, go not, I entreat,
Go not through old Santero Street;
It is the squalid alleyway,
Where lies the carpenter’s retreat
That made my darling’s coffin dray.

Winter in America

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, we present this work by a poet who helped lead the campaign to establish the holiday.

Gil Scott-Heron
American
1949 – 2011

 

From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims
And to the buffalo who once ruled the plains
Like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds
Looking for the rain
Looking for the rain

Just like the cities staggered on the coastline
Living in a nation that just can’t stand much more
Like the forest buried beneath the highway
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow

And now it’s winter
Winter in America
Yes and all of the healers have been killed
Or sent away, yeah
But the people know, the people know
It’s winter
Winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting
‘Cause nobody knows what to say
Save your soul, Lord knows
From Winter in America

The Constitution
A noble piece of paper
With free society
Struggled but it died in vain
And now Democracy is ragtime on the corner
Hoping for some rain
Looks like it’s hoping
Hoping for some rain

And I see the robins
Perched in barren treetops
Watching last-ditch racists marching across the floor
But just like the peace sign that vanished in our dreams
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow

And now it’s winter
It’s winter in America
And all of the healers have been killed
Or been betrayed
Yeah, but the people know, people know
It’s winter, Lord knows
It’s winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
Save your souls
From Winter in America

And now it’s winter
Winter in America
And all of the healers done been killed or sent away
Yeah, and the people know, people know
It’s winter
Winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows, nobody knows
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save

Tram and Acropolis

Nikos Engonopoulos
Greek
1907 – 1985

 

le soleil me brule et me rend lumineux

through the monotonous rain
the mud
the ashen atmosphere
the trams pass
and through the deserted marketplace
• deadened by the rain –
they proceed towards
the
terminals

my thought
filled with emotion
follows them lovingly until
they reach
there where the fields begin
where the fields are drowned by the rain
at the terminals

what sorrow it would have been – my God –
what sorrow
if my heart was not consoled
by the hope of marble
and the prospect of a bright sunray
which shall give new life
to the splendid ruins

exactly like
a red flower
amid green leaves

After Rain

We present this work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the author’s death.

P.K. Page
Canadian
1916 – 2010

 

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman’s wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.

I suffer shame in all these images.
The garden is primeval, Giovanni
in soggy denim squelches by my hub,
over his ruin
shakes a doleful head.
But he so beautiful and diademed,
his long Italian hands so wrung with rain
I find his ache exists beyond my rim
and almost weep to see a broken man
made subject to my whim.

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest
within this beauty as one rests in love,
till pears upon the bough
encrusted with
small snails as pale as pearls
hang golden in
a heart that know tears are a part of love.

And choir me too to keep my heart a size
larger than seeing, unseduced by each
bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell,
so that the whole may toll,
its meaning shine
clear of the myriad images that still-
do what I will-encumber its pure line.

A Lady

Amy Lowell
American
1874 – 1925

 

You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.