We present this work in honor of the poet’s 250th birthday.
Death’s sleep soon flies;—They’ll wake again,
To scorn past life, so full of pain!
‘Tis we that sleep—‘tis we that dream—
Altho’ so much awake we seem;
Awake! —alas! —one dream is Life,
A Phantasma—a scene of strife—
By folly led, by passions torn,
Until we reach Life’s destined bourn!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Who could say for sure?
You see it as you pass by: eyes sinking
into a broken, red dirt road;
to the side, some painters’ shacks:
tender blue doorways, smoky
roof: the green runs
to the back, lively as a hen,
pecking at the wash, losing itself
among blue distances.
No one lingers
to look it over. You find it only
when you leave for another place, when
there’s no time.
Then
you’ll not find it again.
It’s paradise.
They say the last flame
will ignite
in the ocean.
In the belly of the whale
that houses the forgotten myths,
in its song,
conjuring the return of the gods.
But I stored away
some matches
to safeguard the flames
of the earth.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
The dervish dancer on the smoking steppes
Unscrolled, into the level lava-cool
Of Romish twilight, baleful hieroglyphs
That had been civic architecture,
The sculptured utterances of the Schools.
The Vikings rode the tasseled sea:
Over their shoulders, running towards their boats,
They had seen the lurking matriarchal wolves,
Ducked their bright foreheads from the iron laurels
Of a dark Scandinavian destiny,
And chosen, rather, to be dwarfed to pawns
Of the broad sulking sea.
And Lampman, when he prowled the Gatineau:
Were the white vinegar of northern rivers,
The stain of punkwood in chill evening air,
The luminous nowhere past the gloomy hills,
Were these his April cave—
Sought as the first men, when the bright release
Of sun filled them with sudden self-disdain
At bone-heaps, rotting pelts, muraled adventures,
Sought a more primitive nakedness?
The cave-men, Lampman, Lief, the dancing dervish,
Envied the fleering wolf his secret circuit;
But knew their doom to propagate, create,
Their wild salvation wrapt within that white
Burst of pure art whose only promise was
Ferocity in them, thudding its dense
Distracting rhythms down their haunted years.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 80th birthday.
In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,
that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:
we may call this
negative creation.
Persephone’s initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:
did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.
As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone
returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—
I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
“home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?
You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.
Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise
the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.
You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?
White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—
It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says
Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.
She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?
She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes
she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.
The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.
You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us
that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.
White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—
They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth
asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read
as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.
When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs
about her mother’s
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.
Song of the earth,
song of the mythic vision of eternal life—
My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—
What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 200th birthday.
Tender mercies, on my way
Falling softly like the dew,
Sent me freshly every day,
I will bless the Lord for you.
Though I have not all I would,
Though to greater bliss I go,
Every present gift of good
To Eternal Love I owe.
Source of all that comforts me,
Well of joy for which I long,
Let the song I sing to Thee
Be an everlasting song.
We present this work in honor of Dr. Ambdekar Jayanti.
There were two kingdoms only:
the first of them threw out both him and me.
The second we abandoned.
Under a bare sky
I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,
he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.
Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.
He held my hand with a trembling hand.
“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.
Look, further on ahead, there
between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.
Suddenly, I recall that town—
the red rooftops along the river bank;
and then, on the waters of that broad blue river
a white sail—quietly, quietly moving;
and on the grass of the riverbank
a young man, an artist
idly staring at the water.
And I? What was I doing?
When I think I can’t remember,
I realize it was all a picture in a borrowed book.
Translation by David Jacobson, Sally Ito, and Michiko Tsuboi
We present this work in honor of the Tunisian holiday, Martyrs’ Day.
Do not fill their voices with smoky air
because shut mouths of despair are blocking their spit, their revived viruses,
their weaknesses to tell the story
when the noise of a rolling stone is swearing at god.
Shall I, at least, say
that memory is decayed
that history is dismayed;
that past is dead deeds
and mythological dates are the land’s seeds
as the sheep have forgotten about the wolf’s teeth
clacking?
Shall I say that Eternity
means not a Calvin Klein’s perfume
but looms above their hats and doom
denying all celebrity?
Or will you forget someday
that trees have their leaves to be lost
over heartless pebbles and frost?
I have learnt from history that dam-builders
will be forever damned.
When the water will rise with the people’s tears,
it will spare none.
Shall I tell about a woman’s cry
amid sounds and swear-words?
Or loudly my voice will tell of
female shapes whose bodies have been displaced for time and space
in fashion magazines?
Can I turn on a TV pretending to re-appropriate history
or will its waves bring about voiceless shouts?
Now, when writing is fired by scientific neutrality that cries:
“I AM THE WORLD!”
Can I, at last, see purged tongues laying down their sandals and feet
with no chance even to cheat
or tell what their hearts hide?
Will I be hanged when they will understand?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 255th birthday.
Cups of crimson wine are circling in rounds of dance
If the beloved is glimpsed, this party abounds in dance
God made this beloved peerless in my view
Everything before my eyes resounds with dance
You captivate beasts and birds along with people low and high
Each in its way obeys your command in bounds of dance
Leave the party of my rivals and come over to mine
I’ll show you a star whose very name sounds like dance
Why shouldn’t Chanda be proud, O Ali, in both worlds?
At home with you she eternally astounds with dance
Poets Corner 