104: Tristia, Osip Madelstam
I have studied the science of good-byes,
the bare-headed laments of night.
The waiting lengthens as the oxen chew.
In the town the last hour of the watch.
And I have bowed to the knell of night in the rooster’s throat
when eyes red with crying picked up their burden
of sorrow and looked into the distance
and the crying of women and the Muses’ song became one.
Who can tell from the sound of the word ‘parting’
what kind of bereavements await us,
what the rooster promises with his loud surprise
when a light shows in the Acropolis,
dawn of a new life,
the ox still swinging his jaw in the outer passage,
or why the rooster, announcing the new life,
flaps his wings on the ramparts?
A thing I love is the action of spinning:
the shuttle fluttering back and forth, the hum of the spindle,
and look, like a swan’s down floating toward us,
Delia, the barefoot shepherdess, flying—
o indigence at the root of our lives,
how poor is the language of happiness!
Everything’s happened before and will happen again,
but still the moment of each meeting is sweet.
Amen. The little transparent figure
lies on the clean earthen plate
like a squirrel skin being stretched.
A girl bends to study the wax.
Who are we to guess at the hell of the Greeks?
Wax for women, bronze for men:
our lot falls to us in the field, fighting,
but to them death comes as they tell fortunes.
Words, Miller Williams
Strip to the waist and have a seat. The doctor
will be in soon. He smiles and the nurse smiles.
He sits on the table, bumping his knees together,
scratching around is navel, counting the tiles.
We never talk, she says, and so you talk
and everything you speak of falls apart.
This is how we come to understand
what they mean by chambers of the heart.
Some words are said to start a conversation.
Some, after which there’s nothing more to say.
“Amen,” for instance. “I said I was sorry.”
“Tower, we’re going down. This is PSA.”
122, Osip Madelstam
Let me be in your service
like the others
mumbling predictions,
moth dry with jealousy.
Parched tongue
thirsting, not ever for a word—
for me the dry air is empty
again without you.
I’m not jealous any more
but I want you.
I carry myself like a victim
to the hangman.
I will not call you
either joy or love.
All my own blood is gone.
Something strange paces there now.
Another moment
and I will tell you:
it’s not joy but torture
you give me.
I’m drawn to you
as to a crime—
to your ragged mouth,
to the soft bitten cherry.
Come back to me,
I’m frightened without you.
Never had you such power
over me as now.
Everything I desire
appears to me.
I’m now jealous any more.
I’m calling you.
Songs from the House of Death, Or How to Make It Through to the End of a Relationship, Joy Harjo
for Donald Hall
1.
From the house of death there is rain.
From rain is flood and flowers.
And flowers emerge through the ruins
of those who left behind
stores of corn and dishes,
turquoise and bruises
from the passion
of fierce love.
2.
I run my tongue over the skeleton
jutting from my jaw. I taste
the grit of heartbreak.
3.
The procession of spirits
who walk out of their bodies
is ongoing. Just as the procession
of those who have loved us
will go about their business
of making a new house
with someone else who smells
like the dust of a strange country.
4.
The weight of rain is unbearable to the sky
eventually. Just as desire will
burn a hole through the sky
and fall to earth.
5.
I was surprised by the sweet embrace
of the perfume of desert flowers after the rain
though after all these seasons
I shouldn’t be surprised.
6.
All cities will be built and then destroyed.
We built too near the house of the gods of lightning,
too close to the edge of a century.
What could I expect,
my bittersweet.
7.
Even death who is the chief of everything
on this earth (all undertakings, all matters of human
form) will wash his hands, stop to rest under
the cottonwood before taking you from me
on the back of his horse.
8.
Nothing I can sing
will bring you back.
Not the songs of a hundred horses running
until they become wind
Not the personal song of the rain
who makes love to the earth.
9.
I will never forget you. Your nakedness
haunts me in the dawn when I cannot distinguish your
flushed brown skin from the burning horizon, or my hands.
The smell of chaos lingers in the clothes
you left behind. I hold you
there.
I'm Not Lonely, Nikki Giovanni
i’m not lonely
sleeping all alone
you think i’m scared
but i’m a big girl
i don’t cry
or anything
i have a great
big bed
to roll around
in and lots of space
and i don’t dream
bad dreams
like i used
to have you
were leaving me
anymore
now that you’re gone
i don’t dream
and no matter
what you think
i’m not lonely
sleeping
all alone
shapeshifter poems, Lucille Clifton
1
the legend is whispered
in the woman’s tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them
2
who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl
laments into the evening who
will protect her this prettylittlegirl
3
if the little girl lies
still enough
shut enough
[cruelty. don’t talk to me about cruelty]
hard enough
shapeshifter may not
walk tonight
the full moon may not
find him here
the hair on him
bristling
rising
up
4
the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world
Poems of Air, Mark Strand
The poems of air are slowly dying;
too light for the page, too faint, too far away,
the ones we’ve called The Moon, The Stars, The Sun,
sink into the sea or slid behind the cooling trees
at the fields edge. The grace of light is everywhere.
Some summer day or winter night the poems will cease.
No one will weep, no one will look at the sky.
A heavy mist will fill the valleys,
an indelible dark will rain on the hills,
and nothing, not a single bird, will sing.
[Untitled], Nikki Giovanni
there is a hunger
often associated with pain
that you feel
when you look at someone
you used to love and enjoyed
loving and want
to love again
though you know you can’t
that gnaws at you
steadily as a mosquito
some michigan summer
churning his wings
through your window screen
because the real world
made up of baby clothes to be washed
food to be cooked
lullabies to be sung
smiles to be glowed
hair to be plaited
ribbons to be bowed
coffee to be drunk
books to be read
tears to be cried
loneliness to be borne
says you are a strong woman
and anyway he never thought you’d really miss him
Making Love, Sharon Olds
You wake up, and you do not know
where you are, or who you are
or what you are, the last light of the evening
coming up to the panes, not coming in,
the solid, slanted body of the desk
between the windows, its bird’s-eye slightly
shining, here and there, in the wood. And you
try to think back, you cannot remember it,
it stands behind your mind, like a mountain,
at night, behind you, your pants are torn
or across the room or still dangling from one leg
like a heavy scarlet loop of the body, your
bra is half on or not on or you were naked to begin with,
you cannot remember, everything is changed.
Tomorrow, maybe, taking a child yo school,
your foot in the air half off the curb you’ll
see his mouth where it was and feel it and the
large double star of your two bodies,
but for now you are like the one in the crib,
you are everyone, right now,
the milky, greenish windows still as
sentinels, saying, Don’t worry,
you will not remember, you will never know.
Drooling Madness at St. Liz, Charles Bukowski
Sherri told me they had been
lovers in there
but she had gotten off course
waylaid a few weeks or so
and she showed me the place
in the Cantos where he wrote
about it:
Ez was grabbing the bars
looking at the moon and
asking,
where is she tonight?
one would think a wise man
would see past that but the
fact is that some wise men
become that because
of their feelings.
anyhow, so you see
the old boy got hooked on
the trivialities of the flesh
just like the rest of us.
I kept wanting to ask her
about the new lover she had been
with but since she didn’t tell
me I figured it was about
usual. which doesn’t mean it
isn’t all right. wasn’t.
actually, though, at times
like that I think mostly of
yellow lampshades & also of
toilets flushing. especially
when it happens to me. Ezra,
though, I think was more
beautiful and kind.
