We present this work in honor of the poet’s 170th birthday.
I wish to leave the world
By its natural door;
In my tomb of green leaves
They are to carry me to die.
Do not put me in the dark
To die like a traitor;
I am good, and like a good thing
I will die with my face to the sun
I know, friend,
it is all within me as in
a sonorously mute coffer.
All sleeps within me,
tremulously quiet,
and in active rest,
in a brief palpitation of palpitating entrails,
in such sweet presence as to be barely presence at all…
I know, friend,
my friend, blinder than dead serpents,
my friend, softer than overripe fruit:
It is all within me.
It is all within me silent, subterranean, fused
in pale stratas of light and silence,
nourishing my life,
growing my life…
There are sorrows that wear red in the streets.
There is a pride that screams.
There are joys in colourful dress
and songs that rent the sun.
There are many things, my friend, many things
– my friend, softer than overripe fruit –
at the surface of its skin.
And in me all is
silent,
dimmed,
so silent I can even forget it,
as dimmed as a child dying.
All as in a mutely sonorous coffer
trembling in stillness…
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
I.
Father of yesterday who made hope
full of children and debts.
I conjure your hand which was never dry
and never knew stone or spear.
When you were judge, you were ill with insomnia…
as you longed to save so many thieves.
Let the sparrows chirp peace for you
and may you have playthings at last!
I make believe, now, that you’re sleeping
and your affectionate greeting, your amazement, lives on.
My life now moves with entropy;
Now, I’m truly the sad little daughter
that can no longer lean on your shoulder
because you died in January, Father.
II.
Grief arrives so violently
like the rain after the dawn;
today my smile is different:
an invisible tear that doesn’t weep.
(I tell myself in secret: maybe he’s coming by,
and not only as he knows of this grieving
but because I still wait anxiously
in case he asks for the key to our house…)
I can’t believe it… I need you,
and you are dead, my father, little dead one.
This time you are checkmated.
Like a crazy person, in super human delirium,
I lift your chess piece with my hand
and place you playing in the game!
III.
I have dressed in white, green, red,
because grief does not rhyme with love.
It has been a long time, my father, since your eyes
refused darkness or glare.
Don’t let hail and snow fall on your innocent and foreign grave.
Let the birth of spring sing to you
let a flower exude perfume on the ninth!
I reserve the glory of your room for you,
a happy sparkle of the sun, that I keep apart
that piece of earth where you were born,
your robes, your books, your saw…
It’s not enough now to love you so much:
you’re dead, my father, you’re dead.
IV.
Your comfortable chair… where is it?
Your student violin… how does it sound?
You buried pennies in the sand
and gave my mother other names.
I keep all your letters and pictures.
In my dream your prostate is cured.
On the patio floor and in my affection,
your last shoes walk on.
I want to see you beyond the shutter.
Come, spirit; come, my supportive angel.
I no longer know what to do, what to say,
because I long to eat breakfast
with my father, my sage, my almsman,
at 81 Tirrey Avenue.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 70th birthday.
Naturally, Flaubert’s parrot
could not be called Chucho,
his author wouldn’t stick him
with a name like that.
From which follows the importance of names.
But in the stories last night
—the reconstruction of a postcard
which we were creating to
resemble Christmas—
chess pieces
nearly dismembered
in the children’s hands
before midnight,
they had to pull out the parrot
with his blue half-exposed
chest feathers
and the nun who comes
when he sings
“o whore, o whore, o whore,”
and her face colors
all the way to the wine
all the way to believing herself so
—though she wasn’t—
with the pleasure of
momentarily
believing herself something she is not,
spilling
shame into the alien
cup.
Is it true that after an outcry
they erupt – the things we believed ourselves to be?
II
The parrot Loulou “…used to descend the stairs
by setting the curve of her beak
on the steps.”
Then she disappeared forever
and her owner, Felicity, never
got over it,
or the nun either.
The family blames themselves
and they still make the sign of the cross,
for they didn’t train him to the level
of the occasion:
he was not Flaubert’s parrot
who upheld a name
with her hauteur – her meaning –
just an ordinary parrot
named, to his disadvantage,
Chucho.
We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.
In my garden, roses:
I don’t want to give you roses
that tomorrow…
that tomorrow you won’t have.
In my garden, birds
with crystal song:
I do not give them to you;
they have wings to fly.
In my garden, bees
craft a fine hive:
A minute’s sweetness…
I don’t want to give you that!
For you, the infinite or nothing:
what is immortal or this mute sadness
you won’t understand…
The unnamable sadness of not having
something to give
to someone who carries on the forehead
a portion of eternity.
Leave, leave the garden…
Don’t touch the roses:
things that die
should not be touched.
You want to study the night of my spirit
There, in the pit of my soul
the place never reached
by the clear sunlight of hope
But don’t ask me what sleeps
beneath the veil of speechless shade;
stop beside the abyss, and weep
as if by the edge of a grave
Amber. Marble. Sapphire. The jingling babble
of magic treasure. May my bold desires
make the most of such enchantment. Let me
stir them around with my hand.
Alabaster and azure. Day’s blood.
Stones in a heap. Roses made of milk.
Great laughter of light. My longing grasps
and tumbles the precious jewels.
Sea. Sky. Sun in my arms!
Fire
of bright diamonds playing!
Malachite, topaz. Serpentine ribbons
sparkling in my hands! Caught
in my fingers, wreaths of turquoise,
lapis lazuli, jade, aquamarine!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
They asked that man if they could
take his time and join it to history.
They asked for his hands,
because in difficult times
there is nothing better than a good pair of hands.
They asked for his eyes
that once had tears
so he could ponder the bright side
(especially the bright side of life)
because for horror one terrified eye is enough.
They asked for his lips,
dry and cracked, to affirm,
to erect, with each affirmation, a dream
(the high dream);
they asked for his legs,
hard and gnarled,
(his old high-stepping legs)
because in difficult times
is there anything better than a pair of legs
for building or trench-digging?
They asked him for the forest that nourished him as a child
with its obedient tree.
They asked for his chest, his heart, his shoulders.
They told him
that it was strictly necessary.
Later they explained
that all this giving would be pointless
unless he gave up his tongue,
because in difficult times
there is nothing so useful for stopping hatred or lies.
And finally they begged him
please, to begin to walk
because in difficult times
that is without a doubt the decisive test.
‘Son, are you suffering?’
(It was your voice, mother, speaking to me…
and your cheek and your smell
and the warm tenderness of your lips.
I became seas and marshes:
All the fallen stars plunging into my waters,
Unrelenting waters, mother, ungovernable.)
‘Is that you, my son?’
(As though your finger touched
in the midst of the night’s depths
soothing my brow,
and I, shuddering and with choking throat
wracked by boundless pain.
Mother, my bones, my tendons hurt;
the joints of my blood hurt;
this stone wounding my breast hurts…
and the jaws tearing at my back.)
You there as limpid as a moist jasmine flower!
‘Son, are you suffering?’
I.
Very much the bride with a belly of five months
she made her devotions to insomnia.
Three knocks on wood cracked her open.
The thieves shrieked around the splinters.
Very much the bride she cold-creamed her face,
abandoned in the middle of her honeymoon.
“Let battle commence!” the little boys said.
II.
Let the stone-ground light exist.
We were not inhibited
and trod on each others’ feet as when dancing a bolero.
I bumped into his groin,
splitting it on purpose.
Villain that I was trod on it I poured cold water on
his message.
I told him I was tender,
that I anchored my self at street corners.
Let the yellow light of oregano exist.
Poets Corner 