Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke English 1561 – 1621
Oh, what a lantern, what a lamp of light
Is thy pure word to me
To clear my paths and guide my goings right!
I swore and swear again,
I of the statues will observer be,
Thou justly dost ordain.
The heavy weights of grief oppress me sore:
Lord, raise me by the word,
As thou to me didst promise heretofore.
And this unforced praise
I for an off’ring bring, accept, O Lord,
And show to me thy ways.
What if my life lie naked in my hand,
To every chance exposed!
Should I forget what thou dost me command?
No, no, I will not stray
From thy edicts though round about enclosed
With snares the wicked lay.
Thy testimonies as mine heritage,
I have retained still:
And unto them my heart’s delight engage,
My heart which still doth bend,
And only bend to do what thou dost will,
And do it to the end.
In honor of the Commemoration of Ataturk, we present this work by one of Turkey’s finest modern poets.
Nurduran Duman Turkish b. 1974
Is it the bird’s rush
or do the clouds dance?
The surface is frosted glass.
Listen! The sounds are building their bridge in the lunar park;
between yesterday and later, from words to frou-frous. The sounds take
their places – in the water, on trees; recorded forever in space as
radio waves. We have the ability not to listen. But if we listen we do
not have to hear.
The city’s getting taller.
Yellows flow with the boat,
birds hit windows.
This city loves its clouds, but clouds aren’t the bad guy in this life
story. Neither is the sun, even though it takes days to break through.
Does the sun’s smile have a sound?
Stained glass love is restored
waiting for the wind’s tune.
Paper ships flutter on roofs.
This is the Wiggledywasticus,
Very remarkable beast.
Nose to tail an eighth of a mile;
Took him an acre or two to smile;
Took him a quarter ‘f an hour to wink;
Swallowed a pond for his morning drink
Oh! would it had been vouchsafed to us
Upon the Wiggledywasticus
Our wondering eyes to feast!
This is the Ptoodlecumtumpsydyl,
Rather unusual bird.
Hand a mouth before and behind;
Ate whichever way he’d a mind;
Spoiled his digestion, so they say,
Pindled and dwindled quite away,
Or else he might have been living still,
The singular Ptoodlecumtumpsydyl.
A pity, upon my word!
This is the Ichthyosnortoryx,
Truly astonishing fish.
Used to snort in a terrible way;
Scared the lobsters to death, they say;
Had a nose like a tea-kettle spout;
Broke it snorting, and so died out.
Sad! if he had n’t got into this fix,
We might have made of the ‘Snortoryx
A very acceptable dish.
In honor of Galician Literature Day, we present this work by the most famous poet from the Galician region of Spain.
Rosalia de Castro Spanish 1837 – 1885
The atmosphere is incandescent;
The fox explores an empty road;
Sick grow the waters
That sparkled in the clear arroyo,
Unfluttered stands the pine
Waiting for fickle winds to blow.
A majesty of silence
Overpowers the meadow;
Only the hum of an insect troubles
The spreading, dripping forest shadow,
Relentless and monotonous
As muffled rattle in a dying throat.
In such a summer the hour of midday
Could as well go
By the name of night, to struggle-weary
Man who has never known
Greater vexation from the vast cares
Of the soul, or from matter’s majestic force.
Would it were winter again! The nights! The cold!
O those old loves of ours so long ago!
Come back to make this fevered blood run fresh,
Bring back your sharp severities and snows
To these intolerable summer sorrows…
Sorrows!…While vine and corn stand thick and gold!
The cold, the heat; the autumn or the spring;
Where, where has delight set up its home?
Beautiful are all seasons to the man
Who shelters happiness within his soul;
But the deserted, orphaned spirit feels
No season smile upon its luckless door.
The dark fires shall burn in many rooms;
will they sometimes miss me with my tangled hair—
still girls in dark uniforms
crouching in winter with their cold hands trembling,
still voices echoing as our voices echoed
and the faded frumped-up form
of a mistress teaching French?
Does she remember us or do we pass
only like dreams of dark figures,
some with different hair or deep voices,
or merely countless hats hanging on pegs,
countless columns of moving massed black legs?
Our minds are sprawled on unforbidden lawns,
our voices lie like queer leaves in the clipped grass,
as we believe so we shall pass.
On the road over head,
To the passers-by,
‘Listen,’ she said,
‘Inside this cliff are the dead.
They cry
Because they are dead.’
‘You hear,’ said I,
‘The cry
Of the wind in the hollow face
of the cliff:
Within the cliff
There is only earth.’
‘And what,’ she said,
‘Are the dead
But earth?’
I have cursed you enough
in the lines of my poems
& between them,
in the silences which fall
like ash-flakes
on the watertank
from a smog-bound sky.
I have cursed you
because I remember
the smell of Joy
on a sealskin coat
& because I feel
more abandoned than a baby seal
on an ice floe red
with it’s mother’s blood.
I have cursed you
as I walked & prayed
on a concrete terrace
high above the street
because whatever I pulled down
with my bruised hand
from the bruising sky,
whatever lovely plum
came to my mouth
you envied
& spat out.
Because you saw me in your image,
because you favored me,
you punished me.
It was only a form of you
my poems were seeking.
Neither of us knew.
For years
we lived together in a single skin.
We shared fur coats.
We hated each other
as the soul hates the body
for being weak,
as the mind hates the stomach
for needing food,
as one lover hates the other.
I kicked
in the pouch of your theories
like a baby kangaroo.
I believed you
on Marx, on Darwin,
on Tolstoy & Shaw.
I said I loved Pushkin
(you loved him).
I vowed Monet
was better than Bosch.
Who cared?
I would have said nonsense
to please you
& frequently did.
This took the form,
of course,
of fighting you.
We fought so gorgeously!
We fought like one boxer
& his punching bag.
We fought like mismatched twins.
We fought like the secret sharer
& his shade.
Now we’re apart.
Time doesn’t heal
the baby to the womb.
Separateness is real
& keeps on growing.
One by one the mothers
drop away,
the lovers leave,
the babies outgrow clothes.
Some get insomnia –
the poet’s disease –
& sit up nights
nursing
at the nipples
of their pens.
I have made hot milk
& kissed you where you are.
I have cursed my curses.
I have cleared the air.
& now I sit here writing,
breathing you.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Poets Corner 