MIRAGES

Pharos - Salvador Dali

(The Lighthouse of Alexandria)

Waking up in the same skin isn't enough.

You need more and more evidence

of who it is that

wakes up in the same skin.

But what evidence?

Reality is unreliable: a whirlwind

of dust that appears

and disappears every day.

Your thirst stretches out its white dunes.

Every day in the dust

you distinguish

not islands but their darkness

heaped on the polished mirror of a sea.

Not doors but their shadows

slammed in the house of wind.

Not lighthouses but their half-second SOS

in red, green and yellow.

Not language but languages.

Not a hand closing a curtain

but a hand.

And the day is over,

not wiser than the night in which

you waited for someone

who came and wasn't what you waited for.

Kapka Kassabova

born Sofia, Bulgaria, 1973

(now New Zealand)

THE WAKING

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear,
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

1908-1963

THE WAR WORKS HARD

Picasso - Guernica

How magnificent the war is!

How eager and efficient!

Early in the morning,

it wakes up the sirens

and dispatches ambulances 

to various places, 

swings corpses through the air,

rolls stretchers to the wounded,
summons rain from the eyes of mothers,
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins...
Some are lifeless and glistening,
others are pale and still throbbing...
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children,
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky,
sows mines in the fields,
and reaps punctures and blisters,
urges families to emigrate,
stands beside the clergymen
as they curse the devil
(poor devil, he remains
with one hand in the searing fire)...
The war continues working, day and night,.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches,
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets.
It contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs,
provides food for flies,
adds pages to the history books,
achieves equality
between killer and killed,
teaches lovers to write letters,
accustoms young women to waiting,
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures,
builds new houses for the orphans,
invigorates the coffin makers,
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader's face.
The war works with unparalleled diligence.
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.



Dunja Mikhail
b. Baghdad 1965
translated from the Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow

THE SOUNDS OF EARTH

(broadcast from Voyager-II to the universe)

First, the most popular sound:

we call it talking - it s also known fondly as

shooting one's mouth off, discussing,

chewing the fat, yammering, blabbing,

conversing, confiding, debating, blabbing,

gossiping, hollering, and yakking.

So, here's a whole bunch of jaw creakers.

How come none of you guys out there

don't yap at us - we'd sure like to hear

what you have to say

on the subject of where the hell you are.

For our second selection,

we will now play a medley of music

which you may or may not care for

since as I know myself

music is a very personal thing.

Why not aim a little musical extravaganza earthward ?

As I say, we're waiting.

Now for our something-for-everyone finale.

Here's a rush hour traffic jam,

brakes are screeching - horns are blasting.

This is a phone ringing, a keyboard tapping,

and a printer whirring in the background.

I'm very partial to this next example of earth sounds:

a rocking chair creaking back and forth on a porch

accompanied by birds and crickets chirping.

To finish up, we've got a lawn mower,

knitting needles, a hammer, a saw,

a football stadium after a score,

a door shutting, a baby crying

and the ever-popular drone of television

blaring across the airways.

We're equal opportunity down here

so if you're a blob or have three heads

or look like something the cat dragged in -

we won't bat an eyelid.

Julie O'Callaghan

1954

ANCIENT HISTORY

Albrecht Durer

The Horsemen Of The Apocalypse

The year began with baleful auguries;

comets, eclipses, tremors, forest fires,

the waves lethargic under a coat of pitch,

the length of the coastline. And a cow spoke,

which happened last year too, although last year

no one believed cows spoke. Worse was to come.

There was a bloody rain of lumps of meat

which flocks of gulls snatched in mid-air

while what they missed fell to the ground

where it lay for days without festering.

Then a wind tore up a forest of holm-oaks

and jackdaws pecked the eyes from sheep.

Officials construing the Sybilline books

told of helmeted aliens occupying

the crossroads, and high places of the city.

Blood might be shed. Avoid, they warned,

factions and in-fights. The tribunes claimed

this was the usual con-trick

trumped up to stonewall the new law

about to be passed. Violence was only curbed

by belief in a rumour that the tribes

to the east had joined forces and forged

weapons deadlier than the world has seen

and that even then the hooves of their scouts

had been heard in the southern hills.

The year ended fraught with the fear of war.

Next year began with baleful auguries.

Jamie McKendrick

1955

THE LAYERS

Elina Brotherus
Der Wanderer  III -  2004

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned campsites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1974 and 2000

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

David Tennant as Hamlet

To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

Act Three Scene 1

Hamlet

BREATHING SPACE JULY

Pieter Bruegel
The Corn Harvest -  1565

The man who lies on his back under huge trees
is also up in them. He branches out into thousands of tiny branches.
He sways back and forth,
he sits in a catapult that hurtles forward in slow motion.

The man who stands down at the dock screw up his eyes against the water.
Ocean docks get older faster than men.
They have silver-grey posts and boulders in their gut.
The dazzling light drives straight in.

The man who spends the whole day in an open boat
moving over the luminous bays
will fall asleep at last inside the shade of his blue lamp
as the islands crawl like huge moths over the globe.

Tomas Transtromer

1931

translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly