An abandoned ride at a fair, challenging the elements.
Everyone stops at the bull and says I can do this. Everyone, without exception, has confidence in their heels and they mount the electric violence of its back. They’re still confident when the movement begins, as if a powerful, invisible hand has slipped a token into the machine without warning. The metallic click cuts through the sound, a tiny bulldozer flattening the silence. Then everything begins, and there’s no way to keep the body straight, that form we once thought we dominated but that now reveals itself to us as if it has been waiting its turn biting its nails since it was given a name.
If I were a mouse I would rather lose my tail in the trap than miss out on my cheese.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 225th birthday.
Luise Hensel German 1798 – 1876
I am tired, go to bed, Close both little eyes; Father, let your eyes Be over my bed! If I have done wrong today, Don’t look at it, beloved God! Your mercy and Jesus’ blood Turn all damage into good. All those who are close to me, God, let them rest in your hand! Let all people, small and large, Be under your protection. Send rest to sick hearts, Let teary eyes be closed; Let the moon stand in the sky And look upon the quiet world!
They say in the valley one day, a sweet, innocent lily, full, proud, happy, shone in the sunlight. “Could there be another, tell me true, so white and pure as I?” And she died of envy, howling with madness, when she met Aurelia, who was whiter, more pure.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Louis Simpson American 1923 – 2012
A siren sang, and Europe turned away From the high castle and the shepherd’s crook. Three caravels went sailing to Cathay On the strange ocean, and the captains shook Their banners out across the Mexique Bay.
And in our early days we did the same. Remembering our fathers in their wreck We crossed the sea from Palos where they came And saw, enormous to the little deck, A shore in silence waiting for a name.
The treasures of Cathay were never found. In this America, this wilderness Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound, The generations labor to possess And grave by grave we civilize the ground.
I know what the sea tells the desert And the words of high palm trees through gesturing The sound of the sands praising when water flows The fear of the spikes harvested them scythes of strangers And the thirsty seed reveals to me If he gets high, he is free And if the wind whispers in the wide open I realized her grandfather’s shiver In the ecstasy of the passions I know what was silenced from the sighs of the mute when it complains to me about the burden it bears And the blame of the dead The disillusions of the alive It is the heartbreak of History The most glorious names And it went on to pick up the tracks In the desperation of darkness
We present this work in honor of the 565th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega Spanish 1398 – 1458
From Calatrava as I took my way At holy Mary’s shrine to kneel and pray, And sleep upon my eyelids heavy lay, There where the ground was very rough and wild, I lost my path and met a peasant child: From Finojosa, with the herds around her, There in the fields I found her.
Upon a meadow green with tender grass, With other rustic cowherds, lad and lass, So sweet a thing to see I watched her pass: My eyes could scarce believe her what they found her, There with the herds around her.
I do not think that roses in the Spring Are half so lovely in their fashioning: My heart must needs avow this secret thing, That had I known her first as then I found her, From Finojosa, with the herds around her, I had not strayed so far her face to see That it might rob me of my liberty.
I questioned her, to know what she might say: “Has she of Finojosa passed this way?” She smiled and answered me: “In vain you sue, Full well my heart discerns the hope in you: But she of whom you speak, and have not found her. Her heart is free, no thought of love has bound her, Here with the herds around her.”
The sun, upon a cliff its bright rays beaming, Trickles the melting snow; and so my lot As well: I too melt when I feel the hot Gentleness of your flame upon me gleaming.
My weeping eye becomes a brooklet, streaming; And my soul, vanquishing my flesh, vows not Again to bend itswill—nay, not one jot— To seek out vice or be full wayward-seeming.
But let your fire desist, leaving me lost, And cold my heart grows, frozen more than frost Of frigid winter’s day, white as the snows.
Dear Lord, I pray you not abandon me! Return, else eath must be my destiny: I live but by that gift your grace bestows.
In honor of St. Joseph’s Day, we present this work by one of today’s most spirited Colombian poets.
Andrea Cote-Botero Colombian b. 1981
Also remember, María, four in the afternoon in our scorched port. Our port that was more a stranded bonfire or a wasteland or a lightning flash. Remember the burning ground, us girls scratching the earth’s back as if to disinter the green meadow. The lot where they were serving the snack, our plate brimming with onions salted by my mother, fished by my father. But despite all that, you know well, we would have liked to invite God to preside at our table, God but without a word without miracles and only so you would know, María, that God is everywhere as well as in your plate of onions although it makes you cry.
But above all remember me and the wound, before they grazed from my hands in the wheatfield of onions to make from our bread the hunger of all our days so that now that you no longer remember and the bad seed feeds the wheatfield of the missing I discover you, María, which is not your fault nor the fault of your forgetting, for this is the time and this its task.
Poets Corner 