I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York
see a vast bridge stretching to the humbled outskirts with only you
Standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves’ soft blue look at the hills with silver
like glasses like and old ladies hair
It’s well known that God and I don’t get along together
It’s just a view of the brass works for me, I don’t care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater
you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together.
—Now That I am in Madrid I Can Think
Frank O’Hara
Unable to bear
the uncertainty
of the future,
we consulted seers,
mediums, stock market gurus,
psychics who promised
happiness on this
or another planet,
astrologists of love,
seekers of the Holy Grail.
Looking for certainty
we asked for promises,
lover’s knots, pledges, rings,
certificates, deeds of ownership,
when it was always enough
to let your hand
pass over my body,
your eyes find the depths of my own,
and the wind pass over our faces
as it will pass
through our bones,
sooner than we think.
The current is love,
is poetry,
the blood beat
in the thighs,
the electrical charge
in the brain.
Our long leap
into the unknown
began nearly
a half century ago
and is almost
over.
I think of the
amphorae of stored honey
at Paestum
far out-lasting
their Grecian eaters,
or of the furniture
in a pharoah’s tomb
on which
no one sits.
Trust the wind,
my lover,
and the water.
They have the
answers
to all your questions
and mine.
—Erica Jong, Middle Aged Lovers
One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no-one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason, even in the winter, even in the rain.
—A.S.J. Tessimond, Day dream
After twelve years and a death
returning in August to see the end of summer
French skies and stacked roofs the same grays
silent train sliding south through the veiled morning
once more the stuccoed walls the sore
pavilions of the suburbs glimpses
of rivers known from other summers leaves
still green with chestnuts forming for their
only fall out of old dark branches and again
the nude hills come back and the sleepless
night travels along through the day as it
once did over and over for this was the way
almost home almost certain that it was
there almost believing that it could be
everything in spite of everything
—W.S. Merwin, On the Old Way
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
—David Whyte, Everything is Waiting For You
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.
—Rupert Brooke, ‘The Life Beyond’
Love, we must part now: do not let it be
Calamitous and bitter. In the past
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more eager to be free,
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see
The grain going forward to a different use.
There is regret. Always, there is regret.
But it is better that our lives unloose,
As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light,
Break from an estuary with their courses set,
And waving part, and waving drop from sight.
—Philip Larkin, Love, We Must Part Now: Do Not Let It Be
“Wiolonczela”
Adam Zagajewski
Niechętni jej mówią: to tylko
skrzypce, które przeszły mutację
i zostały usunięte z chóru.
To nieprawda.
Wiolonczela ma niejeden sekret,
ale nigdy nie płacze,
tylko śpiewa grubym głosem.
Nie wszystko jednak zamienia się
w śpiew.Czasem można usłyszeć
jakby szmer albo szept:
jestem samotna,
nie mogę zasnąć.
Translated from the Polish
“Cello”
Adam Zagajewski
Those who don’t like it say it’s
just a mutant violin
that’s been kicked out of the chorus.
Not so.
The cello has many secrets,
but it never sobs,
just sings in its low voice.
Not everything turns into song
though. Sometimes you catch
a murmur or a whisper:
I’m lonely,
I can’t sleep.
—Adam Zagajewski
Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
with the dog at your feet, his head resting
on a shoe, and the clock’s ticking
like water dripping in a sink
— I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
given the inherent cruelty of the world
where beautiful things and people
are blasted apart all the day long,
I would never want to come back, knowing
I could never be this lucky twice…
—Bruce Dawe, ‘You and Sarajevo’
She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she’s wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o’clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter’s kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse.
—Raymond Carver, ‘My Daughter and Apple Pie’
