1153. In The Very Earliest Time - Eskimo

In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth.

a person could become an animal if he wanted to

and an animal could become a human being.

Sometimes they were people

and sometimes animals

and there was no difference.

All spoke the same language.

That was the time when words were like magic.

The human mind had mysterious powers.

A word spoken by chance

might have strange consequences.

It would suddenly come alive

and what people wanted to happen could happen—

all you had to do was say it.

Nobody can explain this:

That’s the way it was

1152. Sometimes - David Whyte

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones 

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place 

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently 

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away. 

1151. Writing A Resume - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

What’s needs to be done?

Fill out the application

and enclose the resume

Regardless of the length of life

a resume is best kept short.

Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.

Landscapes are replaced by addresses, 

shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves, mention only marriage:

of all your children, only those who were born.

Who knows you matters more than whom you know.

Trips only if taken abroad.

Memberships in what but without why.

Honors, but not how they were earned. 

Write as if you’d never talked to yourself

and always kept yourself at arm’s length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,

dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth,

and title, not what’s inside.

His shoe size, not where he’s off to,

that one you pass off as yourself.

In addition, a photograph with one ear showing

What matters is its shape, not what it hears.

What is there to hear, anyway?

The clatter of paper shredders.

1150. On Living (Part 1) - Nazim Hikmet

Translated from the Turkish by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness a squirrel, for example—

   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

       I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously,

        so much so and to such a degree

that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,

your back to the wall, or else in a laboratory

in your white coat and safety glasses, you can die for people—

even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,

even though you know living

is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously

 that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—

 and  not for your children, either, but because although 

         you fear death you don’t believe it,

         because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

1149. Cucumber - Paul Reps

 

1148. On A Portrait Of Two Beauties - Ho Xuan Huong (1592- 1788)

Translated from the Vietnamese by John Balaban

On A Portrait Of Two Beauties

How old are these two anyway?

Big and little sister, equally lovely.

In 100 years, smooth as two sheets of paper.

In 1,000 years, they still will glow like springtime.

Will the plum tree ever know the wind and moon?

Will reed and willow accept their dull fates?

Why not portray the other pleasures? Blame

the artist, gifted, but a bit dim about love.

—————————————————————————————————————

Country Scene

The waterfall plunges in mist.

Who can describe this desolate scene:

the long white river sliding through

the emerald shadows of the ancient canopy

…a shepherd’s horn echoing in the valley,

fishnets stretched to dry on sandy flats.

A bell is tolling, fading, fading

just like love. Only poetry lasts.

———————————————————————————————

Spring-Watching Pavilion

A gentle spring evening arrives

airily, unclouded by worldly dust.

Three times the bell tolls echoes like a wave.

We see heaven upside-down in sad puddles.

Love’s vast sea cannot be emptied.

and springs of grace flow easily everywhere.

Where is nirvana?

Nirvana us here, nine times out of ten.

1147. All Night - Zi Ye (Tzu Yeh) (3rd BCE)

Translated by Arthur Waley

All night I could not sleep

because of the moonlight on my bed.

I kept on hearing a voice calling:

Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “Yes.”

1146. Half a Double Sonnet - Mary Jo Salter

For Ben

Their ordeal over, now the only trouble

was conveying somehow to a boy of three

that for a week or two he’d be seeing double.

Surely he wouldn’t recall the surgery

years later, but what about the psychic scars?

And so, when the patch come off, they bought the toy

he’d wanted most. He held it high “Two Cars!”

he cried; and drove himself from joy to joy.

Two baby sisters… One was enough of Clare,

but who could complain—conderring that another

woman had stepped forward to take care

of the girls, which left him all alone with Mother.

Victory! Even when he went to pee,

he was seconded in his virility.

1145. Grenimi AI - Winged Icarus

 

"Wow! I asked the Gemini AI to write a poem about the fall of Icarus

and this is what I got. "

On fragile wings, ambition soared,

Icarus, by Daedalus adored.

Escaped they did, from island's plight,

With feathers stitched and sunlit flight.

The world unfurled, a boundless blue,

But warnings wise, fell from his view.

Intoxicated, by heights unknown,

He chased the sun, upon its throne.

Too close he danced, with fiery might,

The waxen bond, could not withstand the light.

A silent scream, a feathery rain,

Icarus fell, a sun-kissed stain.

The waves embraced, his tragic fate,

A fleeting dream, sealed by his haste.

A lesson writ, in sky and sea,

Of hubris tamed, and mortality.

1144. Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu - Li Po (705-762 A.D.)

  Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Moutain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noonday sun?

How thin, how wretchedly, you have grown!

You must have been suffering from poetry again.

1143. A Game Of Chess - Gwen Harwood

To John Brodie

Nightfall: the town’s chromatic nocturne wakes

dark brilliance on the river; colours drift

and tremble as enormous shadows lift

Orion to his place. The heart remakes

that peace torn in the blaze of day. Inside

your room are music, warmth and wine, the board

with chessmen set for play. The harpsichord

begins a fugue; delight is multiplied.

A game: the heart’s impossible ideal —

to choose among a host of paths, and know

that if the kingdom crumbles one can yield

and have the choice again. Abstract and real

joined in their trance of thought, the two players show

the calm of gods above a troubled field. 

1142. On The Birth Of A Son - Su Shih (Su Tung-Po) (1036-1101 A.D.) -

Translated by Arther Waley

Families when a child is born

Hope it will turn out intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked by whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he’ll be happy all his days

And grow into a cabinet minister.

1141. Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt - Jane Hirshfield

The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.

We look at each other there with the old joy.

It was always her gift to bring me into the present—

Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves

Happiness and unhappiness

differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of

    pressed tin,

this painting proposes.

Each carries the same water, it says.

1140. Arithmetic - Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons 

in and out of your head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win 

if you know how many you had 

before you lost or won.

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children 

go to heaven — or five six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head 

to your hand to your pencil to your paper 

till you get the answer.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right 

and everything is nice and you can look 

out of the window and see the blue sky — or the

answer is wrong and you have to start all over 

and try again and see how it comes out this time.

If you take a number and double it and double it again 

and then double it a few more times, the number 

gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher 

and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is 

when you decide to quit doubling.

Arithmetic is where you have to multiply — 

and you carry the multiplication table in your head and 

hope you won't lose it.

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, 

and you eat one and a striped zebra 

with streaks all over him eats the other, 

how many animal crackers will you have if somebody

  offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say

Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and 

she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, 

who is better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

1139. The Song Of The Lark - David Whyte

The song begins and the eyes are lifted

but the sickle points toward the ground,

its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,

while over the dark wood, rising or falling,

the sun lifts on cool air,

the small body of a singing lark.  

The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens

and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.

Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,

will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened

by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field

branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.

What is called in her rises from the ground

and is found in her body,

what she is given is secret even from her.

This silence is the seed in her

of everything she is

and falling through her body

to the ground from which she comes,

it finds a hidden place to grow

and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,

where the dark-edged sickle cannot go. 

1138. When The Shoe Fits - Chuang Tzu -

Translated by Thomas Merton

Ch’ui the draftsman

Could draw more perfect circles freehand

Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth

Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind

Was meanwhile free and without concern

With what he was doing.

No application was needed

His mind was perfectly simple

and knew no obstacle.  

So, when the shoe fits

The foot is forgotten,

When the belt fits

The belly is forgotten,

When the heart is right

“For” and “against” are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions,

No needs, no attractions:

Then your affairs

Are under control. 

You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right

And you are easy.

Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy

Is to forget the right way

And forget that the going is easy.