Why this concern with a total stranger who opens and shuts doors at the supermarket
why bother hoping he has a great day that some customer amongst those who throng in and out will see in him a special talent that catapults him to stardom that on his way home he’ll find a winning lottery ticket in the gutter that through the door I’ve watched him open thirty times his favourite actress will enter smiling and (o miracle!) grant him a great big hug
why don’t I concentrate on something worthwhile as I wait in the car for Luis in front of the busiest shopping mall in Managua where a worker attempts to earn a living hauling the heavy chain of trivia
only to be exposed to my intense observation an accessory to my imagining of another’s life in which this poem might be of use to an Everyman who has won my fleeting affection.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.
Willa Cather American 1873 – 1947
Evening and the flat land, Rich and sombre and always silent; The miles of fresh-plowed soil, Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness; The growing wheat, the growing weeds, The toiling horses, the tired men; The long empty roads, Sullen fires of sunset, fading, The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this, Youth, Flaming like the wild roses, Singing like the larks over the plowed fields, Flashing like a star out of the twilight; Youth with its insupportable sweetness, Its fierce necessity, Its sharp desire, Singing and singing, Out of the lips of silence, Out of the earthy dusk.
We present this work in honor of the 150th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Manuel Acuña Mexican 1849 – 1873
Without tears, without complaints, without farewells, without a sob! We carried on until the last… fortune brought us here with the same objective, we both came to bury the soul beneath the tomb of scepticism.
Without tears…tears have no power to bring a cadaver back to life; our flowers fall and they turn but at least in the turning, they leave us with dry sight and a firm conscience.
Now you see it! for your soul and mine spaces and the world are deserts… we have concluded both, covered with sadness and affliction, we’re not at the end, we’re just two corpses in search of the shroud of forgetting.
Children and dreamers when we barely left the cradle, pain, still alien to our lives slipping along sweet and serene like a swan’s wing in a lagoon; when the dawn of the first caress hasn’t yet peeked beneath the veil that the virginal ignorance of the child extends between his eyelids and the sky your soul like mine, in its clock advancing the hour and in their darknesses lighting the day, they saw a panorama that opened beneath a kiss and at that dawn’s light; and feeling, upon seeing that countryside the wings of a supreme force, we opened them early, and early they brought us to the end of the voyage.
We gave to earth the tints of love, and of the rose; to our garden nests and songs to our heaven birds and stars; we used up the flowers on the road to fashion from them a crown for the angel of destiny… and today in the midst of sad discord of such an agonized or dead flower one lifts only the pale and deserted bloom that is poisoned by memory.
From the book of life what we write today is the last page… Let’s close it at once and in the sepulchre of lost faith we will also bury our anguish.
And since heaven now concedes that these evils are our last so the soul can prepare to rest, although the final tear cost us we saw the task through to the end. And afterward, when the angel of forgetting has delivered these ashes that guard the painful memory of so many illusions smashed to bits and of so much vanished pleasure, we’ll leave these spaces and return to the tranquil life of earth, now that the night of early pain advances toward and encloses us in the sweet horizons of tomorrow.
Let’s leave these spaces or if you want to, we can try out our breath, a new journey to that blessed region whose only memory resuscitates the cadaver of the soul, upon feeling. Let’s throw ourselves off this world then, where everything is shadow and void, we’ll make a moon from memory if the sun of our love has grown cold; we’ll fly if you like, to the depths of those magic regions and pretending hopes and illusions we’ll smash the tomb and rising on our bold and powerful flight, we will form a heaven between shadows and we will be the owners of that heaven.
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Cherubina de Gabriak Russian 1887 – 1928
Bitter and wild — the smell of the earth: The fields are o’ergrown with dark carnations! Having flung my garments onto the grass, I burn, like a candle, in the evening field. Running into the distance, my steps are moist, Tenderly naked, I blossom by the water. Like white coral in an overgrowth of vines, I am scarlet in the scarlet of my scarlet hair.
East winds that melt the mountain snow Come and go, without words. Blow over my head, young breeze, Even for a moment, blow. Would you could blow away the gray hairs That grow so fast around my ears!
Sticks in one hand, Branches in another: I try to block old age with bushes, And frosty hair with sticks: But white hair came by a short cut, Having seen through my devices.
We present this work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ahmed Fouad Negm Egyptian 1929 – 2013
Who are they and who are we? They are the princes and the Sultans They are the ones with wealth and power And we are the impoverished and deprived Use your mind, guess… Guess who is governing whom? Who are they and who are we? We are the constructing, we are the workers We are Al-Sunna, We are Al-Fard We are the people both height and breadth From our health, the land raises And by our sweat, the meadows turn green Use your mind, guess… Guess who serves whom? Who are they and who are we? They are the princes and the Sultans They are the mansions and the cars And the selected women Consumerist animals Their job is only to stuff their guts Use your mind, guess… Guess who is eating whom? Who are they and who are we? We are the war, its stones and fire We are the army liberating the land We are the martyrs Defeated or successful Use your mind, guess… Guess who is killing whom? Who are they and who are we? They are the princes and the Sultans They are mere images behind the music They are the men of politics Naturally, with blank brains But with colorful decorative images Use your mind, guess… Guess who is betraying whom? Who are they and who are we? They are the princes and the Sultans They wear the latest fashions But we live seven in a single room They eat beef and chicken And we eat nothing but beans They walk around in private planes We get crammed in buses Their lives are nice and flowery They’re one specie; we are another Use your mind, guess… Guess who will defeat whom?
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
José Eustasio Rivera Colombian 1888 – 1928
Vibrating cicada: with your lyrical efforts summers you sang in the blue distance, and at the trembling of your resonant wings, it shone all the sun in my eyes and in the smiling valley.
And you were silent when you saw me on the edge of the pampas wander, when the dying ray of the day, with the blonde palm trees that the afternoon swayed I had loves, and the plain taught me dreams.
Today when languid mists dressed the prairie, My soul awaits something without knowing what it awaits: May the sun shine, may you return and soar in the light!
Not even a cloud over the eternal wasteland… Since you no longer sing, winter has come and the mute mists turn the mountains gray.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
C.S. Lewis Irish 1898 – 1963
By and by Man will try To get out into the sky, Sailing far beyond the air From Down and Here to Up and There. Stars and sky, sky and stars Make us feel the prison bars.
Suppose it done. Now we ride Closed in steel, up there, outside Through our port-holes see the vast Heaven-scape go rushing past. Shall we? All that meets the eye Is sky and stars, stars and sky.
Points of light with black between Hang like a painted scene Motionless, no nearer there Than on Earth, everywhere Equidistant from our ship. Heaven has given us the slip.
Hush, be still. Outer space Is a concept, not a place. Try no more. Where we are Never can be sky or star. From prison, in a prison, we fly; There’s no way into the sky.
Poets Corner 