DELAY

The Hubble Extreme Deep Field*

The radiance of that star that leans on me

Was shining years ago. The light that now

Glitters up there my eye may never see,

And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until

Its first desire is spent. The star’s impulse

Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful

And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings

1926-2001

*The Hubble Extreme Deep Field

NASA, ESA, UCSC, Leiden Obs and the XDF Team.

This image by the Hubble Space telescope is the deepest image of the far Universe ever taken in visible light.   The faintest galaxies formed 13 billion years ago, just a few percent of its present age.  

I’LL BE A WICKED OLD WOMAN

I’ll be a wicked old woman,

thin as a rail,

the way I am now.

Not one of those big-assed ones

with buttocks churning behind them,

as Celine said.

Not one of the good-natured grandmas and aunties

against whose soft and plump arms

it is nice to lay one’s cheek.

I’m more like a scarecrow

in our gardens full of rosy tomatoes

like children’s cheeks.

There are some old crones

who are both vivacious and angry as a bee

with eyes on top of their heads

who see everything, hear everything and have an opinion -

grumblers since birth.

I’ll squawk and chatter all day,

cackle like a hen over her chicks

about the days when I was

a young, good-looking girl.

When I led boys by the nose.

Colts and stallions I tamed,

with the flash in my eyes, the flash of my skirt,

passing over infidelities and miseries

the way a general passes over his lost battles.

I’ll be free to do anything as an old woman,

among things I still can and want to do

like playing bridge or dancing

the light-footed dances of my days.

I’ll spin and trip on my stick-like legs,

attached to my body like toothpicks to a kabob.

That old hag sure can boogie!

The young smarties gathered around me

will shout and applaud.

An old woman like a well-baked bun with sesame seeds,

that’s what I’m going to be like.

I’ll stick between everyone’s teeth, as I did before,

while with a wide hat and dresses down to the ground

I stroll through the landscapes of my past life.

Smelling the furze, admiring the heather,

on every thistle catching my undergarment - my soul.

Radmila Lazic

1949

translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic 

BEING ALIVE

Bloodaxe Books

Radmila Lazic is a leading Serbian poet and activist. Born in 1949, she has published six award-winning poetry collections as well as anthologies of anti-war letters and women poets. She is founder and editor of the journal Profemina.

Born in Serbia, Charles Simic is one of America’s leading poets. He won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. His own poetry is published in Britain by Faber. He teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

From LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

William Wordsworth

1770-1850

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

The full text of Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey can be found here.

My source:
Poetry For The Spirit
Poems of Universal Wisdom And Beauty
Edited by Alan Jacobs

NOT MY BEST SIDE

Uccello: St George and The Dragon, National Gallery

I

Not my best side, I'm afraid.

The artist didn't give me a chance to

Pose properly, and as you can see,

Poor chap, he had this obsession with

Triangles, so he left off two of my

Feet. I didn't comment at the time

(What, after all, are two feet

To a monster?) but afterwards

I was sorry for the bad publicity.

Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror

Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride

A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?

Why should my victim be so

Unattractive as to be inedible,

And why should she have me literally

On a string? I don't mind dying

Ritually, since I always rise again,

But I should have liked a little more blood

To show they were taking me seriously.

II

It's hard for a girl to be sure if

She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite

Took to the dragon. It's nice to be

Liked, if you know what I mean. He was

So nicely physical, with his claws

And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,

And the way he looked at me,

He made me feel he was all ready to

Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.

So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,

On a really dangerous horse, to be honest

I didn't much fancy him. I mean,

What was he like underneath the hardware?

He might have acne, blackheads or even

Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--

Well, you could see all his equipment

At a glance. Still, what could I do?

The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,

And a girl's got to think of her future.

III

I have diplomas in Dragon

Management and Virgin Reclamation.

My horse is the latest model, with

Automatic transmission and built-in

Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,

And my prototype armour

Still on the secret list. You can't

Do better than me at the moment.

I'm qualified and equipped to the

Eyebrow. So why be difficult?

Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued

In the most contemporary way? Don't

You want to carry out the roles

That sociology and myth have designed for you?

Don't you realize that, by being choosy,

You are endangering job prospects

In the spear- and horse-building industries?

What, in any case, does it matter what

You want? You're in my way.

U.A. Fanthorpe

1929-2009

I SO LIKED SPRING

I so liked Spring last year

Because you were here; -

The thrushes too -

Because it was these you liked to hear -

I so liked you.

This year’s a different thing, -

I’ll not think of you.

But I’ll like Spring because it is simply Spring

As the thrushes do.

Charlotte Mew

1869-1928

MEN IN THE CITY

Alfonsina Storni

The woods of the horizon 

are on fire;

eluding flames,

the swift blue bucks

of twilight

cross.

Little golden goats

migrate toward

the vault

and recline

on the blue moss.

Below,

the city 

rises up,

a cement rose,

motionless on its stem

of dark cellars.

Its black pistils -

towers, cupolas -

emerge,

waiting for lunar 

pollen.

Suffocated

by the flames of the fire

and lost

among the petals of the rose,

almost invisible,

crossing back and forth

the men . . .

Alfonsina Storni

1892-1938

Men in the City translated from the Spanish by Rachel Benson

Alfonsina Storni was born at sea to Argentine parents who registered her birth in Switzerland. She lived for most of her life in Buenos Aires. Self-supporting from the age of thirteen, she travelled with a theatre company, wrote plays for children, worked as a teacher, a milliner, and a journalist. She had one son. The publication of her first book in 1916 brought immediate recognition, and she was soon accorded the stature of a major poet throughout Latin America. In 1938, incurably ill, she drowned herself in the waters of Mar del Plata.

From the Penguin Book of Women Poets 1978

SLOW RAIN

This water, sad and fearful,

like a child who suffers,

before touching the Earth,

fades away.

Calm the wind, calm the tree -

but in the tremendous silence,

this lean, bitter song

is falling.

The sky is like a heart,

immense, opening up, bitter,

it is not rain; it is a bleeding,

long, and slow.

Men in houses

do not feel this bitterness,

this sad flow of water

out of the heavens.

This long and tiring descent

of conquered water,

towards Earth, recumbent,

and paralysed!

It is raining . . . . and like a tragic jackal

the night watches over the land.

What is going to spring up, in the shadow,

out of Mother Earth?

Will you sleep, while outside

falls suffering, this slow water,

this lethal water, sister

of death?

Gabriela Mistral

1889-1957

translated from the Spanish by Gunda Kaiser and James Tipton

‘Gabriela Mistral’ was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga who was born in Vicuna, Chile. She received literary acclaim in 1915 with her ‘Sonetos de Muerte’ and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. She is considered one of the great lyrical geniuses of Spanish letter.

(From the Penguin Book of Women Poets, 1979)