853. Alexandrian Kings - C. P. Cavafy

C. P. Cavafy - Alexandrian Kings (1)
Translated from the Greek by Theoharis C. Theoharis

The Alexandrians flocked
to view the children of Cleopatra,
Kaisarion and his little brothers,
Alexander and Ptolemy, who for the first time
had been brought out to the Gymnasium,
to be proclaimed kings there,
amidst the gleaming company of soldiers on parade.

Alexander—him they named king
of Armenia, Media, and the Parthians.
Ptolemy—him they named king
of Cilicia, Syria, and Phoenicia.
Kaisarion was standing furthest forward,
dressed in rose-toned silk,
on his belt paired lines of sapphires and amethysts,
his shoes laced by white
ribbons pinned with rose-blush pearls.
Him they named higher than the younger ones,
him they named King of Kings.

The Alexandrians certainly understood
that these were words and histrionics.

But the day was warm and poetic,
the sky a clear, wide blue,
the Alexandrian Gymnasium a
triumphant artistic feat,
the courtiers luxury at its crest,
Kairsarion all grace and beauty
(the son of Cleopatra, blood of the Lagids);
and the Alexandrians raced to the festive name-day,
and worked themselves into raptures, and called out
cheers in Greek, in Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,
enchanted by the lovely spectacle—
even though they very clearly knew the value of these things,
what inane words make up these titled kings.

C. P. Cavafy - Alexandrian Kings (2)
Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

The Alexandrians turned out in force
to see Cleopatra’s children,
Kairsarion and his little brothers,
Alexander and Ptolemy, who for the first time
has been taken out to the Gymnasium,
to be proclaimed kings there
before a brilliant array of soldiers.

Alexander: they declared him
king of Cilicia, Syria, and Phoenicia.
Kairsarion was standing in front of the others,
dressed in pink silk,
on his chest a bunch of hyacinths,
his belt a double row of amethysts and sapphires,
his shoes tied with white ribbons
prinked with rose-colored pearls.
They declared him greater than his little brothers,
they declared him King of Kings

The Alexandrians know of course
that this was all mere words, all theatre.

But the day was warm and poetic,
the sky a pale blue,
the Alexandrian Gymnasium
a complete artistic triumph,
the courtiers wonderfully sumptous,
Kaisarion all grace and beauty
(Cleopatra’s son, blood of the Lagids);
and the the Alexandrians thronged to the festival
full of enthusiasm and shouted acclamations
in Greek, and Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,
charmed by the lovely spectacle—
though they knew of course what all this was worth,
what empty words they really were, these kingships.

852. Insomnia - Linda Pastan

.
I remember when by body
was a friend.

when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.

The door to the future
had not started to shut,

and lying on my back
between cold sheets

did not feel
like a rehearsal.

Now what light is left
comes up—a stain in the east,

and sleep, reluctant
as a busy doctor,

gives me a little
of its time.

851. Sunrise - Mary Oliver

.
You can
die for it -
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. but

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of china,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

850. A Meditation On John Constable - Charles Tomlinson

"Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?"

––John Constable: The History of Landscape Painting

He replied to his own question, and with the unmannered
 Exactness of art; enriched his premises
By confirming his practice: the labour of observation
 In face of meteorological fact. Clouds
Followed by others, temper the sun in passing
 Over and off it. Massed darks
Blotting it back, scattered and mellowed shafts
 Break damply out of them, until the source
Unmasks, floods its retreating bank
 With raw fire. One perceives (though scarcely)
The remnant clouds trailing across it
 In rags, and thinned to a gauze.
But the next will dam it. They loom past
 And narrow its blaze. It shrinks to a crescent
Crushed out, a still lengthening ooze
 As the mass thickens, though cannot exclude
Its silvered-yellow. The eclipse is sudden,
 Seen first on the darkening grass, then complete
In a covered sky.
             Facts. And what are they?
He admired accidents, because governed by laws,
 Representing them (since the illusion was not his end)
As governed by feeling. The end is our approval
 Freely accorded, the illusion persuading us
That it exists as a human image. Caught
 By a wavering sun, or under a wind
Which moistening among the outlines of banked foliage
 Prepares to dissolve them, it must grow constant;
Though there, ruffling and parted, the disturbed
 Trees let through the distance, like white fog
Into their broken ranks, It must persuade
 And with a constancy, not to be swept back
To reveal what it half-conceals. Art is itself
 Once we accept it. The day veers. He would have judged
Exactly in such a light, that strides down
 Over the quick stains of cloud-shadows
Expunged now, by its conflagration of colour.
 A descriptive painter? If delight
Describes, which wrings from the brush
 The errors of a mind, so tempered
It can forgo all pathos; for what he saw
 Discovered what he was, and the hand––unswayed
By the dictation of a single sense––
 Bodied the accurate and total knowledge
In a calligraphy of present pleasure. Art
 Is complete when it is human. It is human
Once the looped pigments, the pin-heads of light
 Securing space under their deft restrictions
Convince, as the index of a possible passion,
 As the adequate gauge, both of the passion
And its object. The artist lies
 For the improvement of truth. Believe him.

849. A Primer of the Daily Round - Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
 Who happens just now to remember A
 Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

848. Of Simplicity - James Kavanaugh

.
Simplicity calls
After all the schemings done,
Now that I've paid homage
To damn near everyone.
God should be satisfied,
Parents got their due.
My education's justified.
I proved myself to you.

Simplicity calls
Now that everyone's been paid,
But even so I hesitate
Because I'm still afraid.
One of these days,
I'll jump the last few walls:
Give no explanation
Save "Simplicity calls"!

847. Fidelity - Grace Paley

.
After supper I returned to
my reading book I had
reached page one hundred
and forty two hundred and twenty
more to go I had been thinking that
evening as we spoke
early at dinner with a couple of young
people of the time dense improbable
life of that book in which I had become so comfortable
the characters were now my troubled companions
I knew them understood I could
reenter these lives without loss
so firm my habitation I scanned the shelves
some books so dear to me I had missed them
learned forward to take the work into
my hands I took a couple of deep breaths
thought about the acceleration of days
yes I could reenter them but . . .
No how could I desert that other whole life
those others in their city basements
Abandonment How could I have allowed myself
even thought of a half hour's distraction
when life had pages or decades to go
so much was about to happen to people
I already know and nearly loved

846. I Live My Life In Widening Circles - Rainer Maria Rilke

.
I live my life in widening circles
that drift out over the things.
I may not achieve the very last,
but it will be my aim.

I circle around God, around the age-old tower;
I've been circling for millennia
and still I don't know: an I a falcon a storm,
or a sovereign song?

845. King Demetrius - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn
Not like a king, but like an actor, he exchanged his showy robe of state for a dark cloak, and in secret stole away.
Plutarch, Life of Demetrius

When the Macedonians deserted him,
and made it clear that it was Pyrrhus they preferred
King Demetrius (who had a noble
soul) did not—so they said—
behave at all like a king. He went
and cast off his golden clothes,
and flung off his shoes
of richest purple In simple clothes
he dressed himself quickly and left:
doing just as an actor does
who, when the performance is over,
changes his attire and departs.

844. The Caedmon Room - Allen Grossman

.
Upstairs, one floor below the Opera House
(top floor of the building), is the Caedmon
room––a library of sorts. The Caedmon room
was empty of readers most of the time.
When the last reader left and closed the door,
I locked it and moved in for life. Right now,
I am writing this in the Caedmon room.
Caedmon was an illiterate, seventh-century
British peasant to whom one night a lady
appeared in a dream. She said to him, speaking
in her own language, "Caedmon! Sing me something!"
And he did just that. What he sang, in his
own language, was consequential––because
he did not learn the art of poetry
from men, but from God. For that reason,
he could not compose a trivial poem,
but what is right and fitting for a lady
who wants a song. These are the words he sang:
"Now praise the empty sky where no words are."
This was Caedmon's song. Caedmon's voice is sweet.
In the Caedmon room shelves groan under the
weight of his eloquent blank pages, Histories
of a sweet world in which we are not found.
Caedmon turned each page, page after page
until the last page––on which is written:
"To the one who conquers, I give the morning star."

843. Mist In The Morning - Mary Oliver

Mist In The Morning, Nothing Around Me
    But Sand And Roses

Was I lost? No question.
did I know where I was? Not at all.
Had I ever been happier in my Life? Never

842. The Laboratory - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple

Did it all
happen in the laboratory?
Beneath one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Are we a trial generation?
Poured from one beaker to another,
shaken in retorts,
observed by something more than an eye,
each one individually
taken by forceps?

Or maybe otherwise:
no interventions.
The transformations occur on their own
in accordance with a plan.
The needle draws
the expected zigzags.

Maybe until now there was nothing interesting in us.
The control monitors are seldom switched on,
except when there's a war, and a rather big one at that,
several flights over the lump of clay called Earth,
or significant movements from point A to point B.

Or perhaps thus:
they only have a taste for episodes.
Look! a little girl on a big screen
is sewing a button to her sleeve.

The monitors begin to shriek,
personnel come running in.
Oh, what short of tiny creature
with a little heart beating on the inside!
What graceful dignity
in the way she draws the thread!
Someone calls out in rapture:
Tell the Boss,
and let him come see for himself!

841. A Primer of the daily Round - Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
   Who happens just now to remember A
   Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

840. But Wise Men Apprehend What Is Imminent - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn

"The gods perceive what lies in the future, and mortals, what occurs in the present, but wise men apprehend what is imminent."
-Philostratus, Life of Apolloniur of Tyans, VII, 7

Mortal men perceive things as they happen.
What lies in the future the gods perceive,
full and sole possessors of all enlightenment.
Of all the future holds, wise men apprehend
what is imminent. Their hearing,

sometimes, in moments of complete
absorption in their studies, is disturbed. The secret call
of events that are about to happen reaches them.
And they listen to it reverently. While in the street
outside, the people hear nothing at all.

839. Of Simplicity - James Kavanaugh

.
Simplicity calls
After all the schemings done,
Now that I've paid homage
To damn near everyone.
God should be satisfied,
Parents got their due.
My education's justified.
I proved myself to you.

Simplicity calls
Now that everyone's been paid,
But even so I hesitate
Because I'm still afraid.
One of these days,
I'll jump the last few walls:
Give no explanation
Save "Simplicity calls"!

838. Insomnia - Linda Pastan

.
I remember when my body
was a friend.

when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.

The door to the future
had not started to shut,

and lying on my back
between cold sheets

did not feel
like a rehearsal.

Now what light is left
comes up—a stain in the east,

and sleep, reluctant
as a busy doctor,

gives me a little
of its time.

837. To The Required Unknown - William Wehrmeister

.
This world, with its flashing lights, and images, and blazing with speed

gives us little time, and less to reflect, and worse does our lives impede

so much so, that even to glance at a book, or any printed matter to read

it drops from our hands, with nervous tics and birdlike jumps that bleed

and betray only too well how this very second steals even that small seed

of graciousness, of time well spent quietly and well, to soothe others need.

But at times, must we whether work, travel, or move to events accurst,

yet must we stop, in force, for there is no other choice, no, this calls first,

only breathing that never stops, and the human voice, and baking thirst

wins precedence, for stopping brings only disaster, the horrid worst

but, with that duress, there comes a surety, a certainty that knows erst

a chance to be still and reflect, think deep thoughts, and write this verse.

836. Oatmeal - Galway Kinnell

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if
  somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
  breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
  companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal with
  John Keats.
Keats said I was right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture,
  gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to
  disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is OK to eat it with an
  imaginary companion, and that he himself had enjoyed
  memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if such porridges are not as wholesome as Keats claims,
  still, you can learn something from them.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
  "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it––those were his words––
  "Oi ad a 'eck of a toime, "he said more or less, speaking
  through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck
  in his pocket, but when he got home he couldn't figure out the
  order of the stanzas, and he and a friend spread the papers on
  a table, and they made some sense of them, but he isn't sure
  to this day if they got if right
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between
  stanzas and the way here and there a line will go into the
  configuration  of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
  and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
  causing the poem to  move forward with God's reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard
  about the scraps of paper on the table and tried shuffling
  some stanzas of his own but only made matters worse.
When breakfast was over John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the
  works lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn." I doubt if there
  is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him
  started on it and two the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed
  their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by
  hours," came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him––drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into
  the glimmering furrows, muttering––and it occurs to me:
  maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion's
tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over
  from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and
  simultaneously gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to
  invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

835. Theodotus - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn

If you are among the truly elect,
watch how you achieve your predominance.
However much you're glorified, however much
your accomplishments in Italy and Thessaly
are blazoned far and wide by governments,
however many honorary decrees
are bestowed on you in Rome by your admirers,
neither your elation nor your triumph will endure,
nor will you feel superior—superior how?—
when, in Alexandria, Theodotus brings you,
upon a charger that's been stained with blood,
poor wretched Pompey's head.

And do not take it for granted that in your life,
restricted, regimented, and mundane,
such spectacular and terrifying things don't exist.
Maybe at this very moment, into some neighbor's
nicely tidied house there comes—
invisible, immaterial—Theodotus,
bringing one such terrifying head.

834. I Am Too Close. - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

I am too close for him to dream of me.
I don't flutter over him, don't flee him
beneath the roots of trees. I am too close.
The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice.
The ring doesn't roll from my finger.
I am too close. The great house is on fire
without me calling for help. Too close
for one of my hairs to turn into the rope
of the alarm bell. Too close to enter
as the guest before whom walls retreat.
I'll never die again so lightly,
so far beyond my body, so unknowingly
as I did once in his dream. I am too close,
too close, I hear the word hiss
and see its glistening scales as I lie motionless
in his embrace. He's sleeping,
more accessible at this moment to an usherette
he saw once in a traveling circus with one lion,
than to me, who lies at his side.
A valley now grows within him for her,
rusty-leaved, with a snowcapped mountain at one end
rising in the azure air. I am too close
to fall from that sky like a gift from heaven.
My cry could only waken him. And what
a poor gift: I, confined to my own form,
when I used to be a birch, a lizard
shedding times and satin skins
in many shimmering hues. And I possessed
the gift of vanishing before astonished eyes,
which is the riches of all. I am too close,
too close for him to dream of me.
I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head -
it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins.
A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,
waiting to be counted.