Three screams stabbed me with their knives.
Landscape of three screams
long with astonishment.
The shrouds of mystery have jested!
Flight of torpors;
sighs
in the paralyzed fog.
Cypresses.
Bronze of terrors,
formless, fragmented.
Roads die
and bridges are built.
A tree mutates
by closing its pupils.
Dream’s angelic pigeons
timorously fall into the
icy nails of dread.
An infinite horror was
flowing in my entrails
in a death anthem.
A servitor of learning,
In her bosom burning
A love deep-hidden
For lore both lawful and forbidden.
In night’s cloak enshrouded,
Her girdle brightly crowded
With stars etherial,
The crescent moon her crown imperial.
We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, the Day of Good Will.
Cursed shall be the one whose passage in this world
Evades humaneness, engenders greed and hoarding
Cursed is he wallowing alone in caskets of wealth and
Counting rosary beads of accumulated cars
To be human is to humbly cherish the sweat of your toil
In measured style of decency and appreciation
To be human is to consider the plight of the needy
As they also are children of the earth
Yes, men and women of this blessed land
We present this work in honor of the Christmas holiday.
There’s no holly, but there is
the glass and granite towers
and the white stone lions
and the pale violet clouds. And
the great tree of balls in
Rockefeller Plaza is public.
Christmas is green and general
like all great works of the
imagination, swelling from minute
private sentiments in the desert,
a wreath around our intimacy
like children’s voices in a park.
For red there is our blood
which, like your smile, must be
protected from spilling into
generality by secret meanings,
the lipstick of life hidden
in a handbag against violations.
Christmas is the time of cold air
and loud parties and big expense,
but in our hearts flames flicker
answeringly, as on old-fashioned
trees. I would rather the house
burn down than our flames go out.
What shall we say to Death
you and I
when time is short and breath
scant for you and I?
How can I answer Yes or No
my dear my dear
when we’re far away from the cold
but near to each other here?
But what shall we say to Death
when it comes night comes
there is no cheating it unless
we’re blind and deaf and dumb?
What shall we say to Death
with Yes defeated by No
there’s only the winter of loving left
only the snow?
I have no answer to give you
my dear my dear
only that I was always with you
and I am still here
In honor of the Emperor’s Birthday, we present this work by one of modern Japan’s finest poets.
Splendor of an evening sky,
Who can ever fathom its timeless mystery?
Million eyes, when sparkling bright
In the sable sky,
Touch my heart, my lonely heart with serenity.
More than all the countless sands
Ganges river holds
Are the infinite Buddhas who fill this universe,
Ever watchful over us, Throughout day and night.
Hearing this, my lonely heart,
Fills with lasting peace.
In honor of the First Day of Chanukah, we present this work by one of Russia’s most famous Jewish poets.
How I remember solstice days
Through many winters long completed!
Each unrepeatable, unique,
And each one countless times repeated.
Of all these days, these only days,
When one rejoiced in the impression
That time had stopped, there grew in years
An unforgettable succession.
Each one of them I can evoke.
The year is to midwinter moving,
The roofs are dripping, roads are soaked,
And on the ice the sun is brooding.
Then lovers hastily are drawn
To one another, vague and dreaming,
And in the heat, upon a tree
The sweating nesting-box is steaming.
And sleepy clock-hands laze away
The clock-face wearily ascending.
Eternal, endless is the day,
And the embrace is never-ending.
Leave me, my love, it’s time to part
this paradise is not my portion.
I had to cross a bridge of flame whenever
I visited this land of bliss.
Yet I’ve been your life-long companion
since earliest youth and your tender years.
But now I come like a transient guest,
and go away like a bird of passage.
Has anyone drunken with love like us,
seen love like we have seen it?
We built a thousand castles on our way,
Walked together on a moon-drenched road,
Where joy danced and leapt before us,
we gazed at the stars that fell, and we possessed them.
And we laughed like two children together,
ran and raced with our own shadows.
After this nectar’s sweetness we awoke –
how I wished it had never been so!
Night’s dreams had vanished, the night was ended
the night that used to be our friend.
The light of morning was an ominous herald;
dawn loomed up like a wall of fire.
We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
A man of iron!
Iron the flesh of his invincible chest.
Iron his biceps and triceps, his arm raised in triumphant sign.
His hands of iron and his belly.
And his thighs potent columns of iron, and his calves,
brave pedestals sustaining that formidible Titan,
with his foot nailed to the earth, with clawed fingers he seizes
the roots of the tree from the Biblical Adam.
Iron his eyes.
Iron his teeth.
Iron his brain, his lungs and heart,
his kidneys, spleen, and sex.
Inside and out a man completely made of iron.
Strength!
The greatest strength that time has launched
is his incarnation.
Love, they say, is like a rose;
I’m sure ‘tis like the wind that blows,
For not a human creature knows
How it comes or where it goes.
It is the cause of many woes:
It swells the eyes and reds the nose,
And very often changes those
Who once were friends to bitter foes.
But let us now the scene transpose
And think no more of tears and throes.
Why may we not as well suppose
A smiling face the urchin shows?
And when with joy the bosom glows,
And when the heart has full repose,
‘Tis mutual love the gift bestows.
Poets Corner 