Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud
that fall right into place, shot with arrows,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations,
rhymes underheard for a thousand years.
I won’t touch a flower already in morning bloom
but quicken the unopened evening buds.
In a blink I see today and the past,
put out my hand and touch all the seas.
Who was it that cried out? This cry,
a call that opens night
breaks out like a bird
breaking to greet dawn, or
the arrival of a high tide
that brings schools of fish
whose scales make the waters
glint and shimmer, glint and shimmer.
Who cried? Who woke us
to such things on such a dark night?
Do not ask. No, do not ask.
The moon will make a basin
for tears and where your heart beats
a well will dry up and the weight
of ships leaning against the wind
will make you think of a woman
hanging in the hammock
of an early death.
We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
How many poems of love, sung in vain!
Oh, how old becomes my soul
when I recall the ancient
absurd story of yesterday.
How many poems of love, moaned in vain!
First you were a flower, I, the Bee.
Then my heart found in your window
the bitter snow that drove me old.
How many poems of love, lost in vain!
Today, my windows are wide open,
there is sunshine… many flowers, and it’s summer…
But it’s sad to see by my doorstep,
among so many dead butterflies,
so many poems of love cried in vain!…
Translation by Octavio Corvalán
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
A deep bell that links the downs
To the drowsy air;
Every loop of sound that swoons,
Finds a circle fair,
Whereon it doth rest and fade;
Every stroke that dins is laid
Like a node,
Spinning out the quivering, fine,
Vibrant tendrils of a vine:
(Bim – bim – bim.)
How they wreathe and run,
Silvern as a filmy light,
Filtered from the sun:
The god of sound is out of sight,
And the bell is like a cloud,
Humming to the outer rim,
Low and loud:
(Bim – bim – bim.)
Throwing down the tempered lull,
Fragile, beautiful:
Married drones and overtones,
How we fancy them to swim,
Spreading into shapes that shine,
With the aura of the metals,
Prisoned in the bell,
Fulvous tinted as a shell,
Dreamy, dim,
Deep in amber hyaline:
(Bim – bim – bim.)
We present this work in honor of the 145th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Stout Laird o’ Blackford Hill, let me
But gain your honour’s lug a wee,
I fain wad let your lairdship see
Sufficient cause
To mak your hill to a’ as free
As ance it was.
Weel mind I o’ the joyous days
I gathered hips, an’ haws, an’ slaes,
Climbing ower Blackford’s heathy braes
Birds’ nests to herry,
Or smearing face, an’ hands, an’ claes,
Wi’ bramble berry …
Then shall a laird whase kindly heart
Has ever ta’en the puir man’s part,
Be reckon’d like some mean upstart,
O’ saulless stature,
Wha sells, as at an auction mart,
The face o’ nature?
Though bairns may pu’, when yap or drouthy,
A neep or bean, to taste their mouthy,
Losh, man! their hames are no sae couthy
As your bien Ha’;
Though puir folks’ bairns are unco toothie,
Their feeding’s sma’.
An’ a’ the neeps, an’ a’ the beans,
The hips, the haws, the slaes, the geens,
That e’er were pu’ed by hungry weans,
Could ne’er be missed
By lairds like you, wi’ ample means
In bank and kist.
Then listen to my earnest prayer,
An’ open Blackford Hill ance mair;
Let us a’ pree the caller air
That sweeps its braes,
An’ mak it worth the poet’s care
To sing your praise.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 215th birthday.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill’s withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
From the frozen Labrador,
From the icy bridge of the northern seas,
Which the white bear wanders o’er,
Where the fisherman’s sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night
Into marble statues grow!
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
On the rushing Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed
As his fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
Where the fires of Hecla glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above
And the ancient ice below.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater’s heel;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
And in mournful silence pass.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor–fire
His evil power away;
And gather closer the circle ‘round,
When the firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend
As his sounding wing goes by!
We present this work in honor of the Day of Reconciliation.
in the night when everything was black
burnt to a cross of ash
on the blind glass
and the dog’s bark a dark kite
blowing away in darkness
to where the moon
tears like the keel of a sinking boat
I dreamt my language
the title page smeared black
with signs now undecipherable raw
and inside the book
I saw my reflection
standing there three times
first among dead friends
with mottled grieving faces
like dogs staring directly into the blind window
while their thoughts like empty glasses
turning in the hands
and I was there
thin neck and moustache
our poems are slaves each with a full wave
feathers proudly on the head
then in a tableau at departure
in the garden of the night
with cape of white hair
my mother an aged virgin in my embrace
and further back
in the folds of memory
all other trusteds as torches of forgetting
were I now the prophet
sent to spy if there is life
in this world
or the senseless exile returning to say
our language was a footnote
under the illegible page history?
a last time on a bench in the empty garden
of a madhouse of toothless ageds
as skeletons with little bitter flesh
swaddled in the blanket
and wild tuft and eyes blind marbles
bow and mutter bow and mutter
many words oh many words
but only the whispering of dead slaves
but not enough to groove or make boat
and outside of the book beyond all listening
the bark and the wind and the ash
of the moon in dark water
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.
Mounting a horse with an abundant mane and in glittery armor, a hero
will have to have a face as dazzling as that orb of day.
But a base one ordered to sing of heroes,
I cannot have a face, however ordinary.
Like a photo of the hateful man an abandoned woman tore into shreds,
My face is torn apart and lost in advance.
Faceless, holding in both hands a lyre quite like a face,
on a hill with a view of the field shining with battle dust, under a plane tree,
or on a boulder of a cape overlooking the sea where triremes come and go,
I sit for thousands of years, I just continue to sit.
The odes that, faceless, I sing in praise of passing heroes
overflow as beautiful blood from the chest would I hade with the lyre.
The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.
If you wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Storm fort or redoubt, you had only to shout
For Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk,
Singing, “Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!”
And with murderous intent he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
They parried and thrust, they side-stepped and cussed,
Of blood they spilled a great part;
The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
Say that hash was first made on the spot.
They fought all that night neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.
As Abdul’s long knife was extracting the life,
In fact he was shouting, “Huzzah!”
He felt himself struck by that wily Calmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer,
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh,
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
There’s a tomb rises up where the Blue Danube rolls,
And graved there in characters clear,
Is, “Stranger, when passing, oh pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.”
A splash in the Black Sea one dark moonless night
Caused ripples to spread wide and far,
It was made by a sack fitting close to the back,
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
‘Neath the light of the cold northern star,
And the name that she murmurs in vain as she weeps,
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 230th birthday.
A single fir-tree, lonely,
On a northern mountain height,
Sleeps in a white blanket,
Draped in snow and ice.
His dreams are of a palm-tree,
Who, far in eastern lands,
Weeps, all alone and silent,
Among the burning sands.
Poets Corner 