1095. Tree - Rumiko Kora

Translated by Miyuki Aoyama and Leza Lowitz

Within a tree

there is another tree that does not yet exist

now its branches tremble in the wind.

Within the blue sky

there is another blue sky that does not yet exist

now a bird flies across its horizon.

Within a body

there is another body that does not yet exist

now its shrine gathers new blood.

Within a city

there is another city that does not yet exist

now its plazas sway where I am heading

1094. I Am In Need Of Music - Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

1093. His Town - Stephen Dunn

The town was in the mists of chaos.

-A STUDENT’S TYPO

He wasn’t surprised. What town wasn’t?

Everywhere the mists of property, the mists

of language. Every Main Street he’d known

shrouded in itself. The mist-filled churches

and the mist-filled stores in strange collusion.

Nevertheless, this was where he chose to live.

Clarities, after all, were supposed to be hidden;

otherwise, no fun in the classroom or in the field.

Life? His neighbors preferred the movie versions,

loose ends tied up, mists of romance and thrill,

And sometimes he did, too.

Now and again he’d get underneath, see

snakes in among the flowers; hearts askew.

And friends from cities would report

they’d been places where the mists had risen.

You needed to look aslant, they said,

so dangerous would the real appear a first.

No safety in the universe. He’d stay put.

Besides, he liked to be in the mists of tall trees

and in the mists of what made him hungry for more.

He liked the mistiness of familiar boundaries

so he could let in, secretly, what he loved.

And the chaos? It favored no geography,

a perpetual rumbling beneath and above him

wherever he was. He had lived with it so long

it was simply the music he worked to, slept to

and woke with, in the mist of it all.

1092. After I Came Back From Iceland - Sheenagh Pugh

After I came back from Iceland,

I couldn’t stop talking. It was the light,

you see, the light and the air. I tried to put it

into poems, even, but you couldn’t write

the waterfall on White River, blinding

and glacial, nor the clean toy town

with the resplendent harbour for its glass.

You couldn’t write how the black lava shone,

nor how the outlines of the bright red roofs

cut the sky sharp as a knife: how breathing

was like drinking cold water. When I got back

to Heathrow and walked out into Reading,

I damn near choked on this warm gritty stuff

I called air; also on the conjecture 

that we’d all settle for second best

once we’d forgotten there was something more.