1207. Our Two Silences - Anna Swir

 

Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

Silence

flows into me and out of me

washing my past away.

I am pure already waiting for you. Bring me 

your silence.

They will doze off

nestled in each other’s arms,

our two silences. 

1206. A Call - Seamus Heaney

“Hold on,” she said, “I’ll just run out and get him.

The weather here’s so good, he took the chance

To do a bit of weeding.”

So I saw him

Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig,

Touching, inspecting, separating one

Stalk from the other, gently pulling up

Everything not tapered, frail and leafless,

Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,

But rueful also…

Then found myself listening to

The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks

Where the phone lay unatended in a calm

Of mirror glass and sun struck pendulums…

And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays,

This is how Death would summon Everyman.

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.

1205. Thumbprint - Eve Merriam

 

On the pad of my thumb

are whorls, whirls, wheels

in a unique design:

mine alone.

What a treasure to own!

My own flesh, my own feelings.

No other, however grand or base,

can ever contain the same.

My signature,

thumbling the pages of my time

My universe key,

my singularity.

Impress, implant,

I am myself,

of all my atom parts I am the sum.

And out of my blood and my brain

I make my own interior weather,

my own sun and rain.

Imprint my mark upon the world

whatever I shall become.

1204. Symphony in Yellow - Oscar Wild

 

An omnibus across the bridge

   Crawls like a yellow butterfly,

   And, here and there, a passer-by

Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay

   Are moored against the shadowy wharf.

   And, like a yellow silken scarf,

The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade

   And fluter from the Temple elms,

   And at my feet the pale green thames

Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

1203. Years Later - David Palmer Grenell

In the dusty triangular attic

a box of old school books.

Inside, a worn volume of poems,

a page turned down at the corner-

my father and I, meeting again,

depending on The Red Wheelbarrow. 

1202. Love in A Flat - Lauren K. Alleyne

 

after Dean Young

Dean in a story about Coltrane:

how one time in a recording, he hit

a wrong note—a real clam.

In the second take, he hit it again,

this time harder, longer.

The third time, it became the heart—

the sound all the other notes wrap themselves around,

a different understanding of the melody—

the song beneath the song: the stubborn beat

holding up the heaviness of flesh.

1201. For Guy Davenport - Wendell Berry

Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years,

the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

and the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,

the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing. Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy. The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.

In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining

joining each to all again.

and then we turn aside, alone,

out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

1200. At McClure’s Beach, Point Reys National Seashore, California - Ann Fisher-Wirth

       I would ask my family

Wait for a foggy afternoon, late May,

after a rainy winter so that all

the wildflowers are blooming on the headland.

Wait for honey of lupins. It will rise

around you, encircle you, from vast golden bushes

as you take the crooked trail

down from the parking lot. Descend

earth’s crest, sweet winding declivity

where California poppies lift up their

chalices, citrine and butterscotch,

and phlox blows in the wisps of fog, every

color of white and like the memory

of pain, and like first dawn, and lavender.

Where goldfinches, nubblins of sunlight,

flit through the canyon. Walk one by one

or in small clusters, carrying babies,

children holding your hands—with your eyes

your oval skulls, your prodigious memories

or skills with the fingers. Your skirts or shirts

will flirt with the wind, and small brown rabbits

will run in and out, you’ll see their ears first.

nested in the grasses, then the bob

of fleeting hindquarters.

Now come to the sand,

the mussel shells, broken or open, iridescent,

color of crows; wings in flight

or purple martins, and the bullwhips

of sea kelp, some like frizzy-headed voodoo

poppets, some like long hollow brown or bleached

phalluses. The X X birdprints running

across the scalloped sand will leave a trail of stars,

look at the black oystercatcher, the scamp

with the long red beak, it’s whipping along

in the courtship dance. Look at the fog,

above you now on the headland, and know how much

I love the fog. 

Don’t cry, my best beloveds,

It’s time to scatter me back now. I’ve wanted this

all my life. Look at the cormorants,

the gulls, the elegant scythed whimbrel,

do you hear its quiquiquiqui

rising above the eternal Ujjayi breath,

the roar and silence and seethe and whisper,

the immeasurable insweep and release of ocean.

(Ujjayi breathing, or "victorious breath," is a yoga technique involving a 

gentle constriction at the back of the throat (glottis) to create a soft, 

ocean-like, or Darth Vader-esque sound as you inhale and exhale 

through the nose, fostering focus, calmness, and deep diaphragmatic

 breathing during yoga or meditation. )

1199. For A Wedding On Mount Tamalpias - Jane Hirshfield

July,

and the rich apples

once again falling.

You put them to your lips,

as you were meant to,

enter a sweetness

the earth wants to give.

Everything loves this way,

in gold honey,

in gold mountain grass

that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,

the shadow of clouds passing by.

And the dry grasses,

the live oaks and bays,

taste the apples’ deep sweetness 

because you taste it as you were meant to,

tasting the life that is yours,

while below, the foghorns  bend to their work,

bringing home what is coming home,

blessing what goes.

1198. North of San Francisco - Yehuda Amichai

 

    Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Blochr

Here the soft hills touch the ocean

like one eternity touching another

and the cows grazing on them

ignore us, like angels.

Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar

is a prophecy of peace. 

The darkness does not war against the light,

it carries forward

to another light, and the only pain

is the pain of not staying. 

In my land, called holy,

they wont’t let eternity be:

they’ve divided it into little religions

zoned it for god-zones,

broken it into fragments of history,

sharp and wounding until death.

and they’ve turned in tranquil distances

into a closeness convulsing with the pain of the present.

On the beach at Bolinas, at the foot of the wooden steps,

I saw some girls lying in the sand bare-bottomed.

their heads bowed, drunk

on the kingdom everlasting,

their souls like doors

closing and opening inside them

to the rhythm of the surf.