We present this work in honor of Algerian Independence Day.
My country
I am a Lion
And I will make you tremble
til your forests
Me, the Crazed
Mad for the love of his land
Where no other madman
Resembles me
My
Stature
Stands tall
Your
Grave
Cannot
Contain it…
The earth turns
Even lying down
I
Rise
Like
A
Palmtree
In
The soil
Of the earth.
We present this work in honor of Independence Day.
What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took to strong drink.
Why else would he stay out
under the stars all night
and why hadn’t he married?
But who would want him! Neither
Ethiopian nor English, neither
lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird
humming as he penned in his mind
another enflamed letter
to President Jefferson—he imagined
the reply, polite and rhetorical.
Those who had been to Philadelphia
reported the statue
of Benjamin Franklin
before the library
his very size and likeness.
A wife? No, thank you.
At dawn he milked
the cows, then went inside
and put on a pot to stew
while he slept. The clock
he whittled as a boy
still ran. Neighbors
woke him up
with warm bread and quilts.
At nightfall he took out
his rifle—a white-maned
figure stalking the darkened
breast of the Union—and
shot at the stars, and by chance
one went out. Had he killed?
I assure thee, my dear Sir!
Lowering his eyes to fields
sweet with the rot of spring, he could see
a government’s domed city
rising from the morass and spreading
in a spiral of lights…
A predilection for stone fruit
sees a trail of peach
and plum stones in his shadow
You had traced him down
this discreet path to where
his casual touch
was six light insect
feet on your forearm
In the magazine you read about
the ten sexiest women
for April; they all live
in suburbs beginning with W
and wear impossible shoes
You hunt for modern equivalents
of One hundred ways with mince
and watch his hand become
refined under its wedding ring,
the fingers longer and nails less bitten
He coaxes your shoulders straight,
uncurling them with firm hands
but you were merely bent over
with laughter
Now your tongue forks into four:
one part for being good-natured
one for lamentation
the third part of irony
and the last for an imaginary language
You move to a newly-invented
suburb beginning with X
where you will use the four parts
of the tongue with equilibrium
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 300th birthday.
Ha! there comes he, with sweat, with blood of Romans,
And with dust of the fight all stained! O, never
Saw I Hermann so lovely!
Never such fire in his eyes!
Come! I tremble for joy; hand me the Eagle,
And the red, dripping sword! come, breathe, and rest thee;
Rest thee here in my bosom;
Rest from the terrible fight!
Rest thee, while from thy brow I wipe the big drops,
And the blood from thy cheek! — that cheek, how glowing!
Hermann! Hermann! Thusnelda
Never so loved thee before!
No, not then when thou first, in old oak-shadows,
With that manly brown arm didst wildly grasp me!
Spell-bound I read in thy look
That immortality, then,
Which thou now hast won. Tell to the forests,
Great Augustus, with trembling, amidst his gods now,
Drinks his nectar; for Hermann,
Hermann immortal is found!
“Wherefore curl’st thou my hair? Lies not our father
Cold and silent in death? O, had Augustus
Only headed his army, —
He should lie bloodier there!”
Let me lift up thy hair; ‘tis sinking, Hermann;
Proudly thy locks should curl above the crown now!
Sigmar is with the immortals!
Follow, and mourn him no more!
We present this work in honor of Canada Day.
‘Tis evening, and the round red sun sinks slowly in the west,
The flowers fold their petals up, the birds fly to their nest,
The crickets chirrup in the grass, the bats flit to and fro,
And tinkle-tankle up the lane the lowing cattle go,
And the rich man from his carriage looks out on them as they come—
On them and on the barefoot boy that drives the cattle home.
“I wish,” the boy says to himself—“I wish that I were he,
And yet, upon maturer thought, I do not—no siree!
Not for all the gold his coffers hold would I be that duffer there,
With a liver pad and a gouty toe, and scarce a single hair;
To have a wife with a Roman nose, and fear lest a panic come—
Far better be the barefoot boy that drives the cattle home.”
And the rich man murmurs to himself: “Would I give all my pelf
To change my lot with yonder boy? Not if I now myself.
Over the grass that’s full of ants, and chill with dew to go—
With a stone bruise upon either heel, and a splinter in my toe!
Oh, I’d rather sail my yacht a year across the ocean’s foam
Than be one day the barefoot boy that drives the cattle home.”
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.
If you want to study its essence, its purpose,
its usefulness in the world,
you’ve got to see it as a whole. Salt
isn’t the individuals who make it up
but the solidary tribe. Without it
each particle would be like a fragment of nothingness,
dissolving in some unthinkable black hole.
Salt surfaces from the sea. It’s petrified
foam.
It’s sea baked by the sun.
And so finally worn-out,
deprived of its great water force,
it dies on the beach to become stone in the sand.
Salt is the desert where there once was sea.
Water and land
reconciled,
matter of no one.
It’s why the world tastes of what it is to be alive.
Translation by Katherine M. Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
We present this work in honor of the 295th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?
I saw a pettish wasp
Fall foule therein:
Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp
Lest he should fling
His sting.
But as affraid, remote
Didst stand hereat,
And with thy little fingers stroke
And gently tap
His back.
Thus gently him didst treate
Lest he should pet,
And in a froppish, aspish heate
Should greatly fret
Thy net.
Whereas the silly Fly,
Caught by its leg
Thou by the throate tookst hastily
And ‘hinde the head
Bite Dead.
This goes to pot, that not
Nature doth call.
Strive not above what strength hath got,
Lest in the brawle
Thou fall.
This Frey seems thus to us.
Hells Spider gets
His intrails spun to whip Cords thus
And wove to nets
And sets.
To tangle Adams race
In’s stratigems
To their Destructions, spoil’d, made base
By venom things,
Damn’d Sins.
But mighty, Gracious Lord
Communicate
Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford
Us Glorys Gate
And State.
We’l Nightingaile sing like
When pearcht on high
In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright,
And thankfully,
For joy.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
My words, where are you now? What say you to me?
Come to my rescue, I’m delirious, don’t let me be.
What benefit can fulfill this hand’s goal
To claims due of nourishment for my soul.
But all minds of men appear to be in retreat
Faced with a gesture of solidarity so discrete.
In my hands it feels like a budding sheath,
Other times I behold a Gladiola wreathe.
In my mouth, at times it is a cheek so vermillion
Other times it is a kiss, like none in a million.
And my heart, oh my words! What lies within unseen?
Call upon the heavens and see if gods will intervene.
Or remain quiet, because to have silence is better
But then, come! Give! You can do nothing greater!
In a fertile field of superb Douro,
Sleeping on the grass, she rested,
When I saw that Fortune showed me
With joyful countenance her treasure.
On the one hand, a lot of silver and gold
With valuable stones the ground curved;
Here a scepter, there a throne stood,
Thousands of grass and laurel wreaths hung.
– The misadventure is over – he tells me then:
Of how many goods I show you, which one pleases you,
For I grant them with kindness, go, seek.
I chose, woke up, and saw nothing:
I settled down with me as soon as the adventure
It never goes beyond being dreamed.
His manifold movements
toy with hearts.
He removes his garments
and is clothed in enchantment.
Supple as a branch
playful as a gazelle
his undulating motions
dally with the intelligence
of onlookers
as fate makes playthings of men.
And when he presses down on his head
with his feet
he is like a well-tempered sword
bent double
tip touching the pommel.
Poets Corner 