Thank you, my dear
You came, and you did
well to come: I needed
you. You have made
love blaze up in
my breast—bless you!
Bless you as often
as the hours have been endless to me
while you were gone.
In the older photograph
my eyes are two frowning pockets,
and my chest only housed knots and clauses.
I used fast shutter speeds to capture photographs
before sadness spilled into the frame.
I was never one to track progress, but today I did.
Before taking that selfie, I bent the sun
toward my face and poured it into my void
like cement filling the cracks of a wall.
My troubled teenage years lingered in my throat
like a shoplifter in a supermarket aisle.
What a difference 5 years makes, today
my skin is no longer a carousel of masks.
Praises be to a thick syrup of therapy,
a puree of prayer, peelings of coping mechanisms,
a cup of my mother’s honeyed voice.
In the second photograph
the white space is filled with a safe noise.
My shoulders are firm and upward,
my eyes are two glowing pebbles.
Not even an edit can smudge this moment.
We present this work in honor of the Ochi Day.
The heavenly battles descend on the soil
and death returns to earth:
its place of origin.
High flashes accompany it;
it is the only luxury left to the corpses.
Indeed, how did evil change direction!
From below, its immediate action would start:
from mud, hoofs of animals
boots, swamps and it would rise
up to the black clouds and the innocent souls.
Now the desert,
as I imagine it with countless pink shades
sand breasts
breathing in the desert wind
a secret body
with its dark oases hidden under
impartial spectator of disaster
conquered by parachutes.
From above downwards now
the evolution of bleeding flesh;
heaven a past in flames
will be forgotten
and the good will be thrust in the earth
buried deep, very deep in memory.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
We present this work in honor of Diwali.
I did not come on this earth as a seed,
To fall in the circle of births,
I am not the elements
Earth, water, fire, air and ether
I am beyond the primordial universal self and the individual self,
I am the Supreme Consciousness.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
When you told me you would be gone
But a little while,
I nodded gently.
I was so young, so innocent.
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 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Countries on a misty atlas are
houses that smell of mold now,
plastered with the blood of wounded seagulls.
One turns around clumsily,
in the house it entered by mistake,
comparing the corpse of the world on its wings
with what happens inside.
Outside, street kids play
red and green games,
pathetic tissue with limitless freedom!
The pained body of the seagull drops.
Love is a little rug;
A little sea counted by its walls!
This poem is for you.
It’s a reprieve.
It says
nothing in your little black heart
can frighten me,
I’ve looked too long
into my own.
Thank you for the gift
of your uncertainties.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 250th birthday.
How soft the pause! the notes melodious cease
Which from each feeling could an echo call;
Rest on your oars; that not a sound may fall
To interrupt the stillness of our peace:
The fanning West-wind breathes upon our cheeks
Yet glowing with the sun’s departed beams.
Thro’ the blue Heav’ns the cloudless moon pours streams
Of pure resplendent light. in silver streaks
Reflected on the still unruffled lake.
The Alpine hills in solemn silence frown,
While the dark woods nights deepest shades embrown.
And now once more that soothing strain awake!
Oh! ever to my heart, with magic power,
Shall those sweet sounds recall this rapturous hour.
Poets Corner 