1210. The Two Of Us Together And Each Of Us Alone - Yehuda Amichai

 Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

        “The two of them together and each of them alone”

          —from a rental contract

Another summer, my girl, is over and gone,

And Dad didn’t come to Luna Park to play.

Still, all the swings go on swinging away.

The two of us together and each of us alone.

The seas horizon keeps losing its ships-

Holding onto anything now is hard indeed.

The fighters are waiting behind the hills.

Compassion is what we dearly need.

The two of us together and each of us alone.

The moon is sawing the clouds in half.

Come, let’s step forth for a lovers’ duel.

Just the two of us at love before the warring camps.

It still may be possible to change it all.

The two of us together and each of us alone.

My love turns me like a salt sea it seems,

Into sweet drops of autumn’s first rain.

I’m brought to you slowly as I fall. Take me in.

For us there’s no angel who will come to redeem.

For we are together. Each of us alone

The two of us together and each one alone - Yehuda Amichai

    Translated from the Hebrew by A.Z. Foreman

My dear, another summer's turned dark

And my dad hasn't come to the amusement park.

The seesaw still goes up and down.

The two of us together and each one alone.

The horizon loses its ships off the shore. 

Hard to hold onto a thing anymore.

The fighters crouched behind the hill.

How much we need of mercy still!

The two of us together and each one alone.

The moon is sawing the clouds in two.

Let hand-to-hand love bring me against you.

We alone will make love where the two camps fight.

Perhaps we can still make everything right.

The two of us together and each one alone.

 

My love has changed me, it seems plain, 

As the salt sea to drops of sweet first rain.

I am brought to you slowly and falling, my dear.

Receive me. No angel redeems us here.

Because the two of us are together. Each is alone.

1209. Jorge Luis Borges - Jorge Luis Borges

 

But after all

writing poetry

is nothing more 

than a guided dream

and now now advanced age

has taught me

to resign myself

to being Borges.

1208. As Seen At The Uffizi - Dan Brown -

 

An audience of shepherds 

Looks on adoringly

As Mary gently bounces

The babe upon her knee.

To Mary’s side stands Joseph.

He isn’t looking on.

His gaze is middle distance 

He wishes he were gone.

Up into the high mountains

That rim the little town 

To dwell among the shepherds

Till things have settled down.

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. )