Tadeusz Rozewicz

A Voice

by Tadeusz Rozewicz

They mutilate they torment each other

with silences with words

as if they had another

life to live

they do so

as if they had forgotten

that their bodies

are inclined to death

that the insides of men

easily break down

ruthless with each other

they are weaker

than plants and animals

they can be killed by a word

by a smile by a look

Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

Seamus Heaney

Postscript
by Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-gray lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

The Periscope

The Periscope

The periscope contains two mirrors
tipped just so I can look through the window
behind my head, see the pink blossoms
replaced by clusters of red leaves.
Someone told me warblers
take only a small bite
from each flower, not enough to damage
the fruit within. When I bring my eye
close to one mirror I see my eye in the mirror
at the far end of the tube. A periscope
discards truth for that finer thing, illusion,
like my age when I’m dreaming,
like the vast unpopulated landscape
outside my urban window.
I take a test online:
Would you rather go to a party or a library?
Is fastidiousness a sign of mental illness
or proof of a Christian upbringing?
Should you bring a lapdog to a funeral?
What part of a Smithfield ham
can be replaced with an octopus?
A more sophisticated world would favor
odd numbers —
one eye, five legs, nine tentacles.
The periscope is made of cardboard
& has never heard of a submarine.
The submarine is a disguised banana.
The banana is one spine of a sea urchin
found only in the South China Sea.
Lying here on a sandy blanket
drenched in late afternoon sunlight
I watch the crabs sidewalk
across the hot sand. Every sixth crab
will be eaten by a seagull
except in the mirror world
where every seventh seagull
will be eaten by a giant clam.
The mirrors whisper softly after midnight
about what to reveal in the morning.
Confectioners sugar on the scrambled eggs.
Eggshells bidding for seats at the opera.
The high chair sawing off its legs,
replacing them with globes of stainless steel
& spinning, spinning away.

Robert Duncan

x: It’s Spring. Love’s Spring.

                                                  The April stirring

      not to be denied.  Inert

      wonderings try me.

And I am very Death that lusts after all men;

that straight and crooked draws into his ken

      all bright live eyes

      to wive.  Avidly.

The mind possesses them. Another life!

To trick the inevitable weather.

To spring the catch:  but the catch

      springs up from the song

long as the year, an engagement, lifelasting,

      even distracted . . .

It is a melody skirted, a configuration

      — as in Schönberg’s Serenade —

a blossoming in shame, almost seen

      or heard, but never . . .

an exact other melody of the strings

      that art refuses to render

      useful.

And so — unrenderd —

      we are torn apart

— as April rips the weather of our hearts —

      longing from longing:

we could not afford,  or lovewise devise

      the cost

      that sustains us.

Robert Duncan

Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
by Robert Duncan

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likeness of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under the Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

Touring Egypt

Touring Egypt

The nest above the garage belongs to a finch.
Mine is the savaged arm below the pillow —
raised veins, petechiae — dozens.
Ghost today, memory tomorrow,
age deals this unexpected sanction
of intimate loss, the body’s lurch
apart. Oh, for a package tour of Egypt,
vector idly picked to intercept
this slapdash, two-bit lurch
toward derivatives I don’t sanction —
rude death, wait for tomorrow.
Impelled to nurture another dozen
(lice & worms fattening the nestlings’ pillow)
each spring this blithe finch.

Atlanta, 1955

Esther, John, Carol, David

Atlanta, 1955

The whistle — descending third — meant home.
How wonderfully far that familiar sound
traveled at dusk to children bicycling round
suburban streets yellow with ragweed bloom.
Tonto, Geronimo, wannabe hounds of hell
played hide & seek in half-built houses
pressing on pastures of last-chance cows
fated to fuel Atlanta’s urban swell.
Up to the school, down to the pond, a zoom
around a corner to the corner store
where no one had coins so our gang
leader stole. We seemed impossibly far
when dinnertime tolled & pronto — hunger pangs.
Oh! There were mothers, whistling us home.

Bullseye

Bullseye

Driving home I shake at what I’ve done —
handfuls of grapes prised from their stems,
their tart flesh juiced between my teeth,
the bottle of cold beer a welcome balm.
Four ticks the women struggled to release,
troublesome barbs lodged in skin,
the imminent threat of Lyme Disease an old
refrain, fables victims told, the flood
of horror — leeches fastened to tender skin.
Sleep continues to be my best release —
dark, cotton, arm under pillow, balm
until I wake at midnight, heart in my teeth,
slung from the highest trunk, branch, stem.
Guilty, I am. Oh for this dream to be done!

Sea Glass

Sea Glass

Collecting sea glass, high tide,
I raced toward the rocks, away from swash
until I forgot. The swash rose past my knees.
I stayed on my feet, I swayed, I waited, then peered
at backwash for minuscule bits
of orange & red, green & blue, pearlescent
white, shells worn thin as mica, rocks
blotched & streaked, fossiled & pitted, hollowed
& cored. Next I knew a streaking wave
sideswiped a second seeker, bloodied
on gravel-strewn sand, muscled by forces
beyond her ken, she rued her salty camera
& phone. We come from Nevada, she said,
we have nothing like this at home.

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham [WSJ]

Orpheus and Eurydice
by Jorie Graham

Up ahead, I know, he felt it stirring in himself already, the glance,
the darting thing in the pile of rocks,

already in him, there, shiny in the rubble, hissing Did you want to remain
completely unharmed? —

the point-of-view darting in him, shiny head in the ash-heap,

hissing Once upon a time, and then Turn now darling give me that look,

that perfect shot, give me that place where I’m erased. . . .

The thing, he must have wondered, could it be put to rest, there, in the glance,
could it lie back down into the dustiness, giving its outline up?

When we turn to them — limbs, fields, expanses of dust called meadow and avenue —
will they be freed then to slip back in?

Because you see he could not be married to it anymore, this field with minutes in it
called woman, its presence in him the thing called

future — could not be married to it anymore, expanse tugging his mind out into it,
tugging the wanting-to-finish out.

What he dreamed of was this road (as he walked on it), this dustiness,
but without their steps on it, their prints, without
song —

What she dreamed, as she watched him turning with the bend in the road (can you
understand this?) — what she dreamed

was of disappearing into the seen

not of disappearing, lord, into the real —

And yes she could feel it in him already, up ahead, that wanting-to-turn-and-
cast-the-outline-over-her

by his glance,

sealing the edges down,

saying I know you from somewhere darling, don’t I,
saying You’re the kind of woman who etcetera —

(Now the cypress are swaying) (Now the lake in the distance)
(Now the view-from-above, the aerial attack of do you
remember?) —

now the glance reaching her shoreline wanting only to be recalled,
now the glance reaching her shoreline wanting only to be taken in,

(somewhere the castle above the river)

(somewhere you holding this piece of paper)

(what will you do next?) (— feel it beginning?)

now she’s raising her eyes, as if pulled from above,

now she’s looking back into it, into the poison the beginning,

giving herself to it, looking back into the eyes,

feeling the dry soft grass beneath her feet for the first time now the mind

looking into that which sets the _________ in motion and seeing in there

a doorway open nothing on either side
(a slight wind now around them, three notes from up the hill)

through which morning creeps and the first true notes —

For they were deep in the earth and what is possible swiftly took hold.

WHRB

WHRB

The silver mike in a soundproof booth
overlooks side-by-side turntables
screwed to a raw plywood bench.
A tight space. While one song plays
to the live feed I unsleeve a fresh
LP, guide the spindle through
the center hole. My anti-static brush
sweeps the grooves. I choose the cut, set
the needle, rotate round to the first sound,
& as one last note fades, I flip
a knob to swap the feed, toggle a switch
to start the new song, rate my segue.
One-girl DJ, now & again
I name the artists, the bands. Mostly I spin.

Sea Lion at Dog Beach

Sea Lion At Dog Beach

The dogs find the body first,
fin over teakettle tumbled by surf
up the tide line onto the beach
of kelp-strewn sand, pale meat
where seafaring creatures
chewed at the drowned hide,
nothing remains of the head, no eyes,
fins limp & folded, backwash
lifts & swirls the shrinking corpse
away from the nuzzling dogs,
their owners’ shouts, bathers gawking
beside, so close, so raw.

W S Merwin

W S Merwin

The Present

As they were leaving the garden
one of the angels bent down to them and whispered

I am to give you this
as you are leaving the garden

I do not know what it is
or what it is for
what you will do with it

you will not be able to keep it
but you will not be able

to keep anything
yet they both reached at once

for the present
and when their hands met

they laughed

Charles Tomlinson

Charles Tomlinson

During Rain
by Charles Tomlinson

Between
slats of the garden
bench, and strung
to their undersides
ride clinging
raindrops, white
with transmitted
light as the bench
with paint: ranged
irregularly
seven staves of them
shine out
against the space
behind: untroubled
by the least breeze they
seem not to move
but one
by one as if
suddenly ripening
tug themselves free
and splash
down to be
replaced by an identical
and instant twin:
the longer you
look at it
the stillness proves
one flow unbroken
of new, false pearls,
dropped seeds of now
becoming then.

Harry Humes

Harry Humes

from The Bottomland:

Vultures

by Harry Humes

Three we found sheathed in ice

after a late freezing rain.

They were like glittering bottles

stuck on a branch,

their small eyes watching,

eyes that could see

rabbit guts half a mile away.

We lowered them in a sling

and carried them like logs to the shed.

Our daughter traced a finger

over the red turkey heads.

She lay next to them.

They were longer by inches.

Suddenly a horny leg broke through,

a shoulder, some wing feathers,

and then the stench of their true

design drove us away.

We left the shed door open and watched

from the kitchen as they wobbled out,

fussing their feathers, stretching their wings,

bouncing grotesquely, then rising easily,

beautifully, the world’s real

pragmatists using the slightest updraft,

scanning the landscape, scouring it.

Their whole being was set for this

Puritan hatred of living flesh,
this love of neatness.

Adam Fell

Adam Fell

from I Am Not a Pioneer:

Limbo

by Adam Fell

Light falling on snow

is naturally cast upward,

but we are not designed

to fully contain the glow.

We wake in the dark of the woods

and must go forward.

When we are killed, we respawn

a few feet back until we solve

the error that wrecks us.

Each time, our bodies make

a sound like yielding,

a comprehension, a crumpling.

A burning barn glitched

behind a restless static of leaves.

Hatchlings on the beach at night

scuttling toward the city,

mistaking it for the horizon.

Devotion extends forward

despite our bodies’ failures.

We leap and leap across

the voltaic rooftop letters

of a falling HOTEL sign.

We kill its current, watch it startle out.

We barely reach the ledge.

But barely is sufficient in a moving world.

Our flashlights make the cattle leak

from pens to pockets of drying grass.

To face ourselves, we respawn endlessly.

There are not fresh hoof marks.

There are fresh hoof marks.

Individual Parts May Be Salvaged

Individual Parts May Be Salvaged

Alone in the house after my death

the robot powers down my phone,

straightens my cuffs,

wipes away fluids oozing after my fall.

While its moving parts tidy,

its cortex sends notifications —

Ben, your mother has fallen & can’t get up.

Matt, it’s already too late,

but get in your car and drive down here now.

Esther, your daughter’s finally on her way to join you.

She’s still the same,

so if you want to maintain your peace & quiet

you might want to descend to a lower circle

or petition Beatrice for a long overdue pardon.

The robot doesn’t know

it’s reached end of life too.

Recycling an intact elder care robot

has been against the law since 2025

though individual parts may be salvaged.

It’s the impossibility of securely erasing data structures

that dooms the robot’s cortex

& sensory appendages

to be rendered.

My neurons, my ligatures

have begun to unweave.

My life of reconstructed memories

shrivel to stories soon to be no longer told.

To my granddaughter, I gave my tidiness,

to my younger son, my zen,

may the annual library sale profit from my books.

Friends, my undying devotion has died.

I remember every friend I ever had

even if I unfriended them.

Now I’m a dead facebook account,

a dead-letter email.

The robot scans for breached perimeters,

an ill-adjusted thermostat,

running water, a kettle boiling dry.

It livestreams my missing pulse.

It will open the door to the paramedics.

This robot has been awfully good to me,

outstanding at finding my glasses

& prompting me to medicate.

I don’t suppose she misses me.

I sometimes called her Rose.

Hakalau Rain

Hakalau Rain

begins as obake —

ghost fog — sails in 

to finish a sunny day.

A whisper of leaves,

rustle of fronds

rises to din

& rain cascades

like trucks

dump gravel,

like madwomen

flail.

My cat leaps

to a sill,

sees tools

mislaid, a bucket

rocketing end over end

to meet & tangle 

with hog wire fence.

I’m caught

in this riot,

made small

by tethered fog, 

this sudden chill,

I’m sodden & smiling,

dripping
with soft rain.

Weeding

Weeding

I disinter roots & branches of 

trees sawed & stumps ground last autumn

rotting at their slow pace.

Weeding is a constant path.

Between stones grow blanched stems,

under them, blanched roots with no stems.

I pitchfork weeds into toppling cones —

nutrient steam flecked with yellow flowers —

stack & restack pyres to stall growth.

By now I know each type of weed

including one I pardoned — its velvet leaf —

like as not, not what I wish for,

no more than sounds at my door at night,

not rain or wind, not possum or fox.

What pitchfork might rout this dark?

Bankei via Stephen Berg

First Song
by Stephen Berg

never was    always will be

mind before mind

earth water fire wind

sleep there tonight

you you on fire

burning yourself

attached

to this burning house

search

all the way back

to the womb

can’t remember a thing

good bad

ideas

self self

which

winter’s wonderful

bonfire’s

ridiculous

in summer

summer breezes

irritate

even before autumn’s

over

rich now

you hate the poor

and forget when you

had nothing

you saved every dollar

a fiend

watched by the famished

wraiths of your self

your whole life

making money

could not pay off

death

clinging wanting

nothing on my mind

that’s why I can say

it’s all mine

you want someone you love

now

only because

you never knew her

you can’t forget

not to remember

someone you never forgot

who?

looking back

you see it one brief evening

realize    see

everything’s a lie

bitter? does this

incredible world of grief

hurt? why wound yourself

brooding on dreams?

no hands    no eyes

nothing exists

touch see

that’s it

all this

in unreal

instead of clutching your head

go and sing

your mind

yours

torments you

because you need it

hating hell

loving heaven

torture yourself

in this joyous world

the hating mind

itself is not bad

not not hating

what’s bad

good    bad

crumple into a ball

of trash

for the gutter

ideas about

what you should do

never existed

I    I    I

finished

with Buddhism

nothing’s new

enlightenment really?

“mine”

keep wrestling with yourself

idiot

these days enlightenment

means nothing to me

so I wake up

feeling fine

tired of praying

for salvation    look

at those poor beautiful flowers

withering

saunter

along the river

breathe

in    out

die    live

day and night here

listen    the world’s

your hand

Buddhas

are pitiful

all dressed up    dazzled

by brocade robes

enemies

come from your mind

right wrong right wrong

never were

call it this    that

it doesn’t exist

except this page

except these wavering phrases

praised abused

like a block of wood straight through

my head’s the universe

can’t hide my ugliness my clumsiness

so I just go along

with what is

without anger

without happiness

nothing to see    nothing to know

before after now

call and you’ll hear

its heartbreaking silence

[from Stephen Berg's The Steel Cricket: Versions 1958-1997]