23. For Sheridon - Robert Lowell

We only live between before we are and what we were. In the lost negative you exist, a smile, a cypher on old-fashioned face in an old-fashioned hat. Three ages in a flash: the same child in the same picture, he, I, you, chockablock, one stamp like mother’s wedding silver— gnome, fish, brute cherubic force. We could see clearly and all the same things before the glass was hurt. Past fifty, we learn with surprise and a sense of suicidal absolution that what we intended and failed could never have happened— and must be done better.

22. FROM THE JOURNALS OF THE FROG PRINCE - Susan Mitchell

In March I dreamed of mud,
sheets of mud over the ballroom chairs and table,
rainbow slicks of mud under the throne.
In April I saw mud of clouds and mud of sun.
Now in May I find excuses to linger in the kitchen
for wafts of silt and ale,
cinnamon and river bottom,
tender scallion and sour underlog.

At night I cannot sleep.
I am listening for the dribble of mud
climbing the stairs to our bedroom
as if a child in a wet bathing suit ran
up them in the dark.

Last night I said, “Face it, you’re bored
How many times can you live over
with the same excitement
that moment when the princess leans
into the well, her face a petal
falling to the surface of the water
as you rise like a bubble to her lips,
the golden ball bursting from your mouth?”
Remember how she hurled you against the wall,
your body cracking open,
skin shriveling to the bone,
the green pod of your heart splitting in two,
and her face imprinted with every moment
of your transformation?

I no longer tremble.

Night after night I lie beside her.
“Why is your forehead so cool and damp?” she asks.
Her breasts are soft and dry as flour.
The hand that brushes my head is feverish.
At her touch I long for wet leaves,
the slap of water against rocks.

“What are you thinking of?” she asks.
How can I tell her
I am thinking of the green skin
shoved like wet pants behind the Directoire desk?
Or tell her I am mortgaged to the hilt
of my sword, to the leek-green tip of my soul?
Someday I will drag her by her hair
to the river—and what? Drown her?
Show her the green flame of my self rising at her feet?
But there’s no more violence in her
than in a fence or a gate.

“What are you thinking of? she whispers.
I am staring into the garden.
I am watching the moon
wind its trail of golden slime around the oak,
over the stone basin of the fountain.
How can I tell her
I am thinking that transformations are not forever?

21. MOVING - Ted Walker

Do not attempt to sleep —your strangeness
Arouses the new house. Amazed floors,
Unaccustomed yet to what is yours,
Shift to the burden of what you bring;
Overhead, the loft that encloses

A fresh store of sentimental junk
Creaks from your broken bits of childhood.
Sometimes maybe it’s all to the good
To touch, to rearrange all you own
Elsewhere. But in someone else’s sink,

Though it’s yours now and paid for, even
A cup can remind you of who you are,
And what you were, and why you are here .
From choice, or by accident, or both,
Once more you’ve humped your stuff. The oven

Was worst, its squat, impervious bulk
Grudging each inch. Yet plain heaviness,
Lifted and lifted, doesn’t oppress
Like those gross abstracts we can’t dispose
Of. They arrive with the morning milk.

20. THE SLEEPWALKER - Greg Kuzma

He is at the very tip of the edge of the top step
and now he takes the first step

down through the tall ferns of the burgundy
carpets, hanging on tight as he can to the burgundy

bannister, one hand held out, you know, like the monster
you see on the late late show, but the other, unlike the monster,

gripping the bannister tight because, of course, he is a man
and not something driven by strange forces, which a man

cannot understand and which cause fear. It is simply
a case of a sleepwalker. After a few hours the body simply

rises, looking for nothing in particular; it thinks
it is in the library, the birds blowing in the window, it thinks

it wants to be in the study, writing with the orange pencils,
and so it goes there, or perhaps it is leaving now with the pencils

and is going into the kitchen. Sometimes the fantasy
is less ordered, the walker tumbles, believes he is in a fantasy

even —such knowledge is possible—and this brings on
the helplessness; but usually childhood returns; on

a warm beach late at night, the walker stands stained
with the tears of a young girl; trembling, rain-stained,

he stumbles back up the road to a campfire, in front of which
two old people sit, toward which

he does not want to go. His heart is all summer,
and he wants it to keep on staying summer

so that his mouth shapes again another adjective.
When we wake him sometimes he clings to this adjective

and will not see the orange juice, or the sweatered family
kneeling near him. Perhaps he in one who has no family.

The danger is that he will fall downstairs, or lapse
in his mind into something which becomes, through the lapse

of consciousness, his reality. This is the real danger
of a sleepwalker, although there is one other danger —

that in going wherever he goes he improves the arrangement
so that he will prefer always to be walking in the arrangement

free of the stairs he walks daily, which lead nowhere,
or the smooth surfaces of other peoples’ lives, which lead nowhere,

but his must be risked. You must let him go his way
for the first few weeks, in case he discovers along the way

something better than we have. This is why perhaps in the past
these types were always held in awe; in the past

people looked for messiahs in unusual conduct, the children
of sleepwalkers watched carefully for years, until these children

themselves some night go out onto the terrace and walk
themselves dead against a tree. Who is to say if such a walk

is not valid as sleeping all night tormented by guilt,
or living the day through aware of this guilt?

19. IDENTITY - Paul Petrie

They are always saying, the others, “Be what you are!”

There are wolves in a dark wood running
on the track of deer.
The crusted snow
crunches under their paws
and flashing hooves.
The wind
ruffles their fur—rubs dark their tawny haunches.
Their tongues hang down
red-flagging the moon.
And in the sky
an owl makes quiet rings.

When the hunt is done
shall I lie
lashing the hard, white snow crust with my hooves,
lick up the pools
that sink in the frosty snow in red circles,
or float in the sky
composing the whole dark picture
under my wings?

18. WAVES - A Laragia Traditional Song

Waves coming up: high waves coming up
against the rocks,
Breaking, shi ! shi !
When the moon is high with its light upon the
waters:
Spring tide; tide flowing to the grass,
Breaking, shi ! shi !
In its rough waters, the young girls bathe.
Hear the sound they make with their hands
as they play!

17. THE BIRTH OF LOVE - Robert Penn Warren

Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky
Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she,
From water the color of sky except where
Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver,
Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against
The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness
Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips
With fluent silver. The man,

Some dozen strokes out, but now hanging
Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet
Cold with the coldness of depth, all
History dissolving from him, is
Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees

The body that is marked by his use, and Time’s,
Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air,
Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees
How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is,
And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge
down in
The pure curve of their weight and buttocks
Moon up and, in that swelling unity,
Are silver, and glimmer. Then

The body is erect, she is herself, whatever
Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped
in each hand,
Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but
With face lifted toward the high sky, where
The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star
Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten,
Does not move now. The gaze
Remains fixed on the sky. The body,

Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems
To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness what light
In the sky yet lingers or, from
The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body,
With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is
A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward
the high sky.
This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits
Of no definition, for it
Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which
Definition might be possible. The woman,

Face yet raised, wraps,
With a motion as though standing in sleep,

The towel about her body, under the breasts, and
Holding it there, hieratic as lost Egypt and erect,
Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds
Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond
The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness
Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man,

Suspended in his darkling medium, stares
Upward where, though not visible, he knows
She moves, and in his heart he cries out that if only
He had such strength, he would put his hand forth
And maintain it over her to guard, in all
Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever
Inclemency of sky or slur of the world’s weather
Might ever be. In his heart
He cries out. Above

Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain,
he sees
The first star pulse forth. It gleams there.

I do not know what promise it makes to him.

16. FAITH - Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Renata Gorcznski

The word Faith means when someone sees
A dew-drop or a floating leaf, and knows
That they are, because they have to be.
And even if you dreamed, or closed your eyes
And wished, the world would still be what it was,
And the leaf would still be carried down the river.

It means that when someone’s foot is hurt
By a sharp rock, he also knows that rocks
Are here so they can hurt our feet.
Look, see the long shadow cast by the trees;
And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:
What has no shadow has no strength to live.

15. THE WOMAN ON THE MALL - Robert Dana

I
That morning
is only as you remember it
imperfectly

And a woman
walks the green mall lightly
in her own light summer dress

She is neither the woman
who started toward you
nor she who will finally arrive

At your window
the first white insects of winter
sting the glass

II

Morning blows from the northwest

Around her everywhere elms are dying
Teeth shriek in their carcasses
All day they will fall for burning

Her heart beats in her ears
Her breath is wet silver
She walks the weeds barefoot speaking their names to the water

Buckhorn Lambsquarters Sheep-Sorrel
Yellow Rocket Black Medic Heal-All

Fish tug the sun into a dozen silent targets on the lake

It is all there
the emptiness gentle in her hands

III

She is not herself
There is nothing she has not wanted

But the room has kept to its own whiteness

She has seen the sky gather on the river
seen it skid over the falls into a flock of water
Wind slid over her arm like warm nylon

Knowing that yes is a question, she’d loved him
she did not need
to be able to say so

But waking into his room
her breath itches
with something he left no trace of

The room is too clean too cold
Its edges peck at her like an old address
she is too young to forget

Should she consult her marvellous shoes
they would tell her nothing
five floors above the ground

Let her walk down to the morning fire-haired
trailing her darkness behind her into the wet grass
Let her enter the schoolroom of broken children

She will teach them to touch their anger with the tips of their fingers

14. THE MAN WATCHING - Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by Robert Bly

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows; by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

13. COOKING AN OMELETTE - Jonathan Aaron

Break
two eggs
into a large bowl,
preferably a blue one.
Look down and see
them staring back at you,
their innocent embrace affirming
what must happen.
Now add salt (kosher salt is best,
being saltiest),
pepper, parsley (fresh,
snipped with scissors) to
remind you of the woods you’d like
to be in, a few flakes
of oregano, and a backhand pinch of garlic powder,
which tells you you are cooking.
Sometimes onions.
Tilt the bowl to favor gravity,
and, with a fork, whip
it all into a froth, a midget
ecosystem of delight.
You may here wish to remember
the perfect symmetry of childhood
mornings. Set
your dented, seasoned frying pan
with a light clang
over a high flame.
Wait until the pan is shining
with dark heat, then lower the flame.
Pour your brew into the pan, and listen.
The hiss is a reward.
Jog the pan in brief, determined arcs
above the flame to send your bubbly mass
in waves against the hot wall of the pan.
When little’s left to riffle outward from
the center, strike the pan at the handle’s base
with the butt end of a spatula or knife
to loosen what you’ve made from clinging metal.
Fold the settled, slightly moistened roundness gently
over, once from each side toward the middle, to create
a lozenge-of egg.
Flop it freely from the canted pan onto
a white plate.
Now you’ve finished.
If you’ve cooked it for your sweetie—
she having just arrived and there being nothing
in the house—you might want to please her
further by tossing on some parsley sprigs for color.
If it’s for yourself, forgo
such niceties, which only measure solitude.
Pick it up with both hands and begin.

12. THE SUN RISES WARMING THE LAND

Fragment from the Dulngulg cycle-Midbara tribe,
Wave Hill, Northern Territory

The day breaks— the first rays of the rising Sun,
stretching her arms.
Daylight breaking, as the Sun rises to her feet.
Sun rising, scattering the darkness;
lighting up the land . . .
With disc shining, bringing daylight,
as the birds whistle and call . . .
People are moving about, talking, feeling the warmth.
Burning through the Gorge, she rises,
walking westwards,
Wearing her waist-band of human hair.
She shines on the blossoming coolibah tree,
with its sprawling roots,
Its shady branches spreading . . .

11. The Keeper Of The Books - Jorge Luis Borges

Here they stand: gardens and temples and the
reason for temples;
exact music and exact words;
the sixty-four hexagrams;
ceremonies, which are the only wisdom
that the Firmament accords to men;
the conduct of that emperor
whose perfect rule was reflected in the world,
which mirrored him,
so that rivers held their banks
and fields gave up their fruit;
the wounded unicorn that’s glimpsed again,
marking an era’s close;
the secret and eternal laws;
the harmony of the world.
These things or their memory are here in books
that I watch over in my tower.

On small shaggy horses,
the Mongols swept down from the North
destroying the armies
ordered by the Son of Heaven to punish their
desecration's.
They cut throats and sent up pyramids of fire,
slaughtering the wicked and the just,
slaughtering the slave chained to his master’s
door,
using the women and casting them off.
And on the South they rode,
innocent as animals of prey,
cruel as knives.
In the faltering dawn
my father’s father saved the books.
Here they are in this tower where I lie
calling back days that belonged to others,
distant days, the days of the past.

In my eyes there are no days. The shelves
stand very high, beyond the reach of my years,
and leagues of dust and sleep surround the
tower.
Why go on deluding myself?
The truth is that I never learned to read,
but it comforts me to think
that what’s imaginary and what’s past are the
same.
to a man whose life is nearly over,
who looks out from his tower on what once was
city
and now turns back to wilderness.
Who can keep me from dreaming that there was a
time
when I deciphered wisdom
and lettered characters with a careful hand?
My name is Hsiang. I am the keeper of the books—
these books which are perhaps the last,
for we know nothing of the Son of Heaven
or of the Empire’s fate.
Here on these high shelves they stand,
at the same time near and far,
secret and visible, like the stars.
Here they stand–––gardens, temples.

10. TROUBLESOME FAME - Robert Graves

To be born famous, as your father’s son,
Is a fate troublesome enough unless,
Like Philip’s Alexander of Macedon,
You can outdo him by superb excess
Of greed and profligacy and wantonness.

To become famous, as a wonder child,
Brings no less trouble, with whatever art
You toyed precociously, for Fame had smiled
Malevolence at your birth.... Only Mozart
Played on, still smiling from his placid heart.

To become famous while a raw young man
And lead Fame by the nose to a bitter end,
As Caesar’s nephew did, Octavian,
Styling himself Augustus, is to pretend
Peace in the torments that such laurels lend.

To become famous in your middle years
For merit not unblessed by accident—
Encountering catcalls, missiles jeers and sneers
From half your uncontrollable parliament—
Is no bad fate, to a good sportsman sent.

But Fame attendant on extreme old age
Falls best. What envious youth cares to compete
With a lean sage hauled painfully upstage—
Bowing, gasping, shuffling his frozen feet—
A ribboned hearse parked plainly down the street?

9. ENDLESS - Muriel Rukeyser

Under the tall black sky you look out of your body
lit by a white flare of the time between us
your body with its touch its weight smelling of new wood
as on the day the news of battle reached us
falls beside the endless river
flowing to the endless sea
whose waves come to this shore a world away.

Your body of new wood your eyes alive barkbrown of treetrunks
the leaves and flowers of trees stars all caught in crowns of trees
your life gone down, broken into endless earth
no longer a world away but under my feet and everywhere
I look down at the one earth under me,
through to you and all the fallen
the broken and their children born and unborn
of the endless war.

8. A CONTRIBUTON TO STATISTICS - Wislawa Szymborska

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better
---fifty-two,

doubting every step
---nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn’t take too long
---as high as forty-nine

always good
because they can’t be otherwise
---four, well maybe five

able to admire without envey
---eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
---sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
---forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
---seventy-seven

capable of happiness
---twenty-something tops

harmless singly,
savage in crowds
---half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
---better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
---just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
---thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
---eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
---thirty-five, which is a lot

righteous
and understanding
---three,

worthy of compassion
ninety-nine,

mortal
---a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure still remains unchanged

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

7. DREAM OBJECTS - John Updike

Strangest is their reality,
their three-dimensional workmanship:
veined pebbles that have an underside,
maps one could have studied minutes longer,
books we seem to read page after page.

If these are symbols cheaply coined
to buy the mind a momentary pardon,
whence this extravagance? Fine
as dandelion polls, they surface and explode
in the wind of the speed of our dreaming,

so that we awake with the sense
of having missed everything—tourists
hustled by bus through a land whose history
is our rich history, whose artifacts
were filed to perfection by beggars we fear.

6. THE HOLES - Stephen Berg

Suddenly I remember the holes,
Suddenly I think of a man with no entrances,
no exits, the closed man, with feelers or claws
so sensitive that he can tell
what rock is, or flesh, water, or flame.
Where does everything go when it comes in?
What should I do with the pure speech of cells
where we find ourselves?
The river flies, the dusk crawls into the ground,
the streets get up and leave,
the sun recklessly feeds our blood.
We could be crouching on the branch, we could be
gnawing the brown feathers and thighs of a new animal,
we could be plotting under the ice while others dream.
But I want the infinite man who sleeps
in my veins to rise, I want to hear
the thin buzzing that floats out of my chest
like an arm of locusts making terrible decisions.
Sometimes I want to die because of this.

5. SONG OF RESIGNATION - Yehuda Amichai - Translated by Assia Gutmann

I

I resign!

My son has my father’s eyes,
My mother’s hands,
And my own mouth.
There is no further need of me. Many thanks.
The refrigerator is beginning to hum toward
a long journey.
An unknown dog sobs over the loss of a stranger.

I resign!

II

I paid my dues to so many funds.
I am fully insured.
Let the world care for me now;
I am knotted and tied with it and all of them.
Every change in my life will cost them cash.
Every movement of mine will hurt them.
My death will dispossess them.
My voice passes with clouds.
My hand, stretched out, has turned into paper. Yet
another contract.
I see the world through the yellow roses
Someone has forgotten
On the table near my window.

III

Bankruptcy!
I declare the whole world to be a womb.
And as of this moment
I appoint myself,
Order myself
At its mercy.
Let it adopt me. Let it care for me.

I declare the President of the United States to be
my father,
The Chairman of the Soviet Union to have my power
of attorney,
The British Cabinet to be my family,
And Mao Tse-tung to be my grandmother.

I resign!
I declare the heavens to be God.
They all together go ahead and do those things
That I never believed they would.

4. FORGETFULNESS - Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.