1071. Morning Birds - Tomas Tranströmer

 Translated from the Swedish by Gunnar Harding and Frederic Will

I wake my car.

Its windshield is covered with pollen.

I put on my sunglasses

and the song of the birds darkens.

While another man buys a newspaper

in the railroad station

near a large goods wagon

which is entirely red with rust

and stands flickering in the sun.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Straight across the spring warmth a cold corridor

where someone comes hurrying

to say that they are slandering him

all the way up to the Director.

Through a backdoor in the landscape

comes the magpie

black and white, Hel’s bird.

And the blackbird moving crisscross

until everything becomes a charcoal drawing,

except for the white sheets on the clothesline:

a Palestrina choir.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Fantastic to feel how my poem grows

while I myself shrink.

It is growing, it takes my place.

It pushes me out of its way.

It throws me out of the nest.

The poem is ready.

1070. 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 the green skin

shoved like wet pants behind the Directoire desk?

Or tell her I am mortgaged to the hilt

of my sword, io 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 here’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?

1069. Bring Me The Sunflower - Eugenio Montale

Translated from the Italian by George Kay

Bring me the sunflower for me to transplant

to my own ground burnt by the spray of sea,

and show all day to the imaging blues

of sky that golden-faced anxiety.

Things hid in darkness lean towards the clear,

bodies consume themselves in a flowing

of shades: and they in varied music—showing

the chance of chances is to disappear.

So bring me the plant that takes you right

where the blond hazes shimmering rise

and life fumes to air as spirit does;

bring me the sunflower crazy with the light.

1068. The Promise We Live By - Simon J. Ortiz

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle
the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.
We never quite know what the sky promises,
and there is certain assurance in that fate.
It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered
more than promises. They’ve passed us by.
So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,
and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some
warm mask that molds the contours of my face
with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural
but I hope not, having already found reliable
the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.



Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills
is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it
is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.
Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself
whose myths are always changing in the light.
So it’s this we arrive into daily, always
another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we
who wage weather within our furious spirits.



Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.
Never mind if the sky does not quite agre

1067. Autobiographia Literaria - Frank O'Hara

 When I was a child

I played by myself in a

corner of the schoolyard

all alone.

I hated dolls and I

hated games, animals were

not friendly and birds

flew away.

If anyone was looking

for me I hid behind a

tree and cried out “I am

an Orphan.”

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

1066. Ode To Thaliarchus - Horace

Translated from the Latin by David Ferry

See Mount Soracte shining in the snow.

See how the laboring overladen trees

Can scarcely bear their burdens any longer.

See how the streams are frozen in the cold.

Bring in the wood and light the fire and open

The fourth-year vintage wine in the Sabine jars,

O Thaliarchus, as for everything else,

Forget tomorrow. Leave it up to the gods.

Once the gods have decided, the winds at sea

Will quiet down, and the sea will quiet down,

And these cypresses and old ash trees will shake

In the storm no longer. Take everything as it comes.

Put down your books for profit every new day

That Fortune allows you to have. While you’re still young,

And while morose old age is far away,

There’s love, there are parties, there’s dancing and there’s music,

There are young people out in the city squares together

As evening comes on, there are whispers of lovers, there’s laughter.