Autumnal Hook

What if Persephone remained a hard woman?
An ethics of care turned towards oneself.
Love’s harvest, the halves of intimacy in these latitudes.
A climate of change revealed as cycle of constant
return, how to reconcile, farm my inadequacy
for yours or simply distract. Let’s just say
for argument’s sake, let’s just say
pugilism is always political, platforms cropping hay,
the field of absolutes you might travel to.
I distil the brackish dark, listen low over the lees,
liar strings laid flush to decider core. Store
of regrets, bare-knuckled figs, a desire to fall foul.
Your rallying jig as jubilant plucked yew.
Cross-dressing Orpheus to your Eurydice,
I discover I want as a mode. To provoke
the strike back, for you to tell me that the light
is yours, and it is I who have disengaged song,
who must feel my way through the ever-burdened earth.
To be called a muffler, bobbing compliment.

On the Threshing Floor, I Chase Chickens Away

In honor of Labor Day, we present this scene of the poet at work.

And I see sparrows fly over. They look around
as if it’s inappropriate to stop for just any grain of rice.
They have clear eyes, with light from inside.
Starlings also fly over, in flocks, bewildered.
They flutter and make a sound that seems to flash.
When they’re gone, the sky gets lower, in dark blue.
In this village deep in the central plain
the sky is always low, forcing us to look at its blue,
the way our ancestors make us look inside ourselves,
narrow and empty, so we look out again
at the full September –
we’re comforted by its insignificance but hurt by its smallness.
Living our life this way, we feel secure.
So much rice. Where does it come from?
So much gold color. Where does it come from?
Year after year I’ve been blessed, and then deserted.
When happiness and sadness come in the same color code,
I’m happy
to be forgotten. But who am I separated from?
I don’t know. I stay close to my own hours.

Translation by Ming Di

Who’s There?

If, when people call at the house,
I tell my girls to reply
The lady, sir, is not at home,
Don’t think it just a lie;
For the truth is I no longer know
Who’s there when I say I.

Translation by Graeme Wilson

Let This Be Your Praise

And what is praise but the offering up of one’s self,
the daily rituals: waking to the stream of light seeping in
under the bedroom door, dressing slowly, humming Marley’s
‘Three Little Birds’ or a made up melody,
cursing the traffic and the heat – the unbearable brazenness
of the morning sun – punctuating your profanities
with pleas for forgiveness. When you were a child
your mother threatened to wash your mouth with soap.
You have not forgotten how a mouth can sully everything,
its desire to be perfect and how often it fails.
At work you smile with the girl who asks stupid questions,
you imagine she has unpaid bills, a wayward child,
you imagine you are more alike than different.
You cut your nails at your desk, laugh when someone falls,
eat lunch too quickly, take Tums for the indigestion.
In the evening you drink peppermint tea, watch TV and
when your eyes grow heavy you say a quick word
of prayer, a thank you for another full day, a request that you
not be killed in your sleep. Perhaps, you squeeze in an orgasm.
And if this is not praise, this simple act of living, if this is not
enough, then let us lie here and do nothing and see
what God has to say about that.

from The Iskender-Nama

We present this work in honor of the Turkish holiday, Victory Day.

Up and sing! O anqa-natured nightingale!
High in every business doth thy worth prevail:
Sing! for good the words are that from thee proceed;
Whatsoever thou dost say is prized indeed.
Then, since words to utter thee so well doth suit,
Pity were it surely if thy tongue were mute.
Blow a blast in utt’rance that the Trusted One,
When he hears, ten thousand times may cry: “Well done!”
Up and sing! O bird most holy! up and sing!
Unto us a story fair and beauteous bring.
Let not opportunity slip by, silent there;
Unto us the beauty of each word declare.
Seldom opportunities like this with thee lie;
Sing then, for th’ occasion now is thine, so hie!
Lose not opportunities that thy hand doth find,
For some day full suddenly Death thy tongue shall bind.
Of how many singers, eloquent of words,
Bound have Death and Doom the tongues fast in their cords!
Lose not, then, th’ occasion, but to joy look now,
For one day thy station ‘neath earth seek must thou.
Whilst the tongue yet floweth, now thy words collect;
Them as meaning’s taper ‘midst the feast erect,
That thy words, remaining long time after thee,
To the listeners hearing shall thy record be.
Thy mementoes lustrous biding here behind,
Through them they’ll recall thee, O my soul, to mind.
Those who’ve left mementoes ne’er have died in truth;
Those who’ve left no traces ne’er have lived in sooth.
Surely with this object didst thou come to earth,
That to mind should ever be recalled thy worth.
“May I die not!” say’st thou, one of noble race?
Strive, then, that thou leavest here a name of grace.

Translation by E.J.W. Gibb

The Last Leaf

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 215th birthday.

Oliver Wendell Holmes
American
1809 – 1894

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Prometheus

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 275th birthday.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German
1749 – 1832

Cover your sky, Zeus,
With cloudiness,
And try out your strength,
Like a boy beheading thistles,
On oaks and mountain tops;
You must leave standing
My earth
And hut not built by you,
And my hearth
Whose glow you envy.

I know nothing poorer
Under the sun than you, o gods!
You sparely nurture
Your majesty
On sacrificial tribute
And the breath of prayers,
And would starve
If children and beggars
Were not hopeful fools.

When I was a child
And had reached my wit’s end,
I turned my lost eye
To the sun, as if above it
Were an ear to hear my lament,
A heart like mine
To take pity on me in my straights.

Who helped me
Against the arrogant Titans?
Who saved me from death,
From slavery?
Did you not attain it all yourself,
Holy glowing heart,
And young and innocent, betrayed,
Radiated thanks for deliverance
To the sleeper up above?

I honour you? For what?
Have you ever soothed
The pain of the burdened?
Have you ever dried
The tears of the frightened?
Have not almighty time
And eternal fate,
My lords and yours,
Forged me into manhood?

Did you imagine
I would hate life,
Flee into deserts
Because not all
My dreams blossomed
Into fruition?
Here I sit, make men
In my image,
A race that shall be like me,
Suffer, weep,
Take pleasure and enjoy,
And ignore you,
Like me.

Translation by Peter Lach-Newinsky

And Moan of Winds and Whispered Thoughts of Gloom…

And moan of winds and whispered thoughts of gloom,
From life no joy is won…
Yet somewhere, — warmth, and ocean’s muffled boom,
And lustre of the sun.
The blizzard wails, and in the heart it throws
A load of tears unshed.
Yet somewhere myrtle, verdant myrtle grows,
And stainless roses spread.
Life, passing by, in empty brooding delves,
Unmeaning, unbedight…
Yet somewhere, mirth and bliss will yield themselves,
And comeliness and light!

Translation by Paul Selver

For Who Is Enemy to Woman

We present this work in honor of Women’s Equality Day.

So deep does envy’s arrow pierce your heart,
That woman you treat so vile.
Against woman, male does not war,
In all other creatures of the Earth.

O enemy of heaven, and of nature,
How dare you raise hand,
Against so young and beautiful a vision,
Where comes, this, your so perverse desire?

The divine and goodly maker, of your rib,
Of beautiful design, for you brought forth woman,
So, that of one faith, and one love,
In this realm, you would be united!

Well may you claim glory and pride,
Among lions cruel, and evil beasts,
Yet however by nature violent they be,
To the female, their male forbears.

Perhaps not first, nor second,
To your own ill, you will do what you would,
But hold. In peace with your woman live:
For behind the Lion, the Lioness doth lie.

To Merida

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.

I was born in a white sleeping city
under the pious wing of its eaves,
where in large flowerbeds they look stretched out
its carpet of whiteness the lemon trees.

Staining the horizon they spin restlessly
dominating the landscape from above,
the tireless blades of the weather vanes
defying the clouds in their madness.

City of my grandparents, with your upright
Centennial laurels! Your burning
flamboyants, your lilies of pure white dawn…
Every time I think of you sweetly and distantly,
I compare you in my dreams to a sultana
who, lying on the bed, stretches!

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