DAWN REVISITED

Imagine you wake up

with a second chance; the blue jay

hawks his pretty wares

and the oak still stands, spreading

glorious shade. If you don’t look back,

the future never happens.

How good to rise in sunlight,

in the prodigal smell of biscuits -

eggs and sausage on the grill.

The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open

to a blank page. Come on,

shake a leg! You’ll never know

who’s down there, frying those eggs,

if you don’t get up and see.

Rita Dove

1952

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress.

HARLEM (2)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore -

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

1902-1967

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

VIGIL

Life is too short to sleep through.
Stay up late, wait until the sea of traffic ebbs,
until noise has drained from the world
like blood from the cheeks of the full moon.
Everyone else around you has succumbed:
they lie like tranquillised pets on a vet's table;
they languish on hospital trolleys and friends' couches,
on iron beds in hostels for the homeless,
under feather duvets at tourist B&Bs.
The radio, devoid of listeners to confide in,
turns repetitious. You are your own voice-over.
You are alone in the bone-weary tower
of your bleary-eyed, blinking lighthouse,
watching the spillage of tide on the shingle inlet.
You are the single-minded one who hears
time shaking from the clock's fingertips
like drops, who watches its hands
chop years into diced seconds,
who knows that when the church bell
tolls at 2 or 3 it tolls unmistakably for you.
You are the sole hand on deck when
temperatures plummet and the hull
of an iceberg is jostling for prominence.
Your confidential number is the life-line
where the sedated long-distance voices
of despair hold out muzzily for an answer.
You are the emergency services' driver
ready to dive into action at the first
warning signs of birth or death.
You spot the crack in night's façade
even before the red-eyed businessman
on look-out from his transatlantic seat.
You are the only reliable witness to when
the light is separated from the darkness,
who has learned to see the dark in its true
colours, who has not squandered your life.



Dennis O’Driscoll
1954-2012

Dennis O'Driscoll was an Irish poet, essayist, critic and editor. He was regarded by many as one of the best European poets of his time.

QUILTS

Like a fading piece of cloth

I am a failure.

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter

My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able

To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days

When just woven I could keep water

From seeping through

Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave

Dazzled the sunlight with my 

Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories

The tasks I can no longer complete

Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only 

this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end

Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt

That I might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to

Will hear my whispers

And cuddle

near

Nikki Giovanni

1943-

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. is an American writer, commentator, activist, and educator. She is currently a distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech.

END OF THE WORLD

The day the world ends

will be clean and orderly

like the notebook

of the best student in the class.

The town drunk

will sleep in a ditch,

the express train will pass

without stopping at the station

and the regimental band 

will endlessly practice

the march they have played in the square for twenty years.

Only some children

will leave their kites tangled

in telephone lines

to run home crying

not knowing what to tell their mothers

and I will carve my initials

in the bark of a linden tree

knowing that it won’t do any good.

The kids will play football

in the empty lot on the edge of town.

The holy sects will come out 

to sing on the street corners.

The crazy old woman will pass with her parasol.

And I will say to myself: “The world cannot end,

because here on the patio the pigeons and the sparrows

 are still squabbling over the grains."

Jorge Teillier
1935-1996

translated from the Spanish by Miller Williams

WITH A GREEN SCARF

With a green scarf I blindfolded 

the eyes of the trees

and asked them to catch me.

At once the trees caught me,

their leaves shaking with laughter.

I blindfolded the birds

with a scarf of clouds

and asked them to catch me.

The birds caught me

with a song.

Then with a smile I blindfolded

my sorrow

and the day after it caught me

with a love.

I blindfolded the sun

with my nights

and asked the sun to catch me.

I know where you are, the sun said,

just behind that time.

Don’t bother to hide any longer.

Don’t bother to hide any longer,

said all of them,

as well as all the feelings

I tried to blindfold.

Marin Sorescu
1936-1997

Translated from the Romanian by Michael Hamburger

AND WE LOVE LIFE

And we love life if we find a way to it.
We dance in between martyrs and raise a minaret for violet or palm trees.

We love life if we find a way to it.

And we steal from the silkworm a thread to build a sky and fence in this departure.
We open the garden gate for the jasmine to go out as a beautiful day on the streets.

We love life if we find a way to it.

And we plant, where we settle, some fast growing plants, and harvest the dead.
We play the flute like the colour of the faraway, sketch over the dirt corridor a neigh.
We write our names one stone at a time, O lightning make the night a bit clearer.

We love life if we find a way to it. . . . .




Mahmoud Darwish
1942-2008

translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

THE ANGEL HANDED ME A BOOK

Placing a book in my hands, the angel said, “It holds all you would wish to know.” And he vanished.
So I opened the book, which wasn’t thick.
It was written in an unknown alphabet.
Scholars translated it, but produced very different versions.
They disagreed even about their own readings, agreeing neither upon the tops or bottoms of them, nor the beginnings, nor the ends.
Toward the close of this vision, it seemed to me that the book
melted, until it could no longer be told apart from the world that surrounds us.





Paul Valéry
1871-1945

translated from the French by Carolyn Forché 


Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath.

From MORAL PROVERBS AND FOLKSONGS

The best of the good people

know that in this life

it’s all a question of proportion;

a little more, a little less . . .

Don’t be surprised, dear friends,

that my forehead is furrowed.

With men I live at peace, but with my insides

I am at war.

The cricket in his cage

by his tomato,

sings, sings, sings.

Pay attention:

a solitary heart

is no heart at all.

In my solitude 

I have seen very clearly

things that are not true.

Antonio Machado
1875-1939

‘Moral Proverbs and Folksongs'
translated from the Spanish by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney


Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of ’98.

THIS IS BAD

Someone hands you an English thriller,

highly recommended.

You don’t read English.

You’ve worked up a thirst

for something you can’t afford.

You have deep insights,

brand new, and they sound

like an academic glossing Hoelderlin.

You hear the waves at night

ramping against the shore

and you think: that’s what waves do.

Worse: you’re asked out

when at home you get better coffee,

silence, and you don’t expect to be amused.

Awful: not to die in summer

under a bright sky

when the rich dirt

falls easily from the shovel.

Gottfried Benn
1886-1956

‘This is Bad’ translated from the German by  Harvey Shapiro




Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he initially welcomed but soon thereafter criticized the National Socialist regime.

HAPPINESS

Stephen Dunn

A state you must dare not enter

with hopes of staying,

quicksand in the marshes, and all

the roads leading to a castle

that doesn’t exist.

But there it is, as promised,

with its perfect bridge above

the crocodiles,

and its doors forever open.

Stephen Dunn

1939-

Dunn is an American poet who has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other awards are three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Rockefeller Foundations Fellowship. 

OCEANS

I have a feeling that my boat 

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

And nothing

happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . .Waves . . .

- Nothing happens?

Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Juan Ramon Jiminez

1881-1956

‘Oceans’  translated from the Spanish by  Robert Bly

Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.

CONCH

In front of the mirror in my parents’ bedroom lay a pink conch. I used to approach it on tiptoes, and with a sudden movement put it against my ears. I wanted to surprise it one day when it wasn’t longing with a monotonous hum for the sea. Although I was small I knew that even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.


Zbigniew Herbert
1924-1998


‘Conch’ translated from the Polish by John and Bogdana Carpenter

 Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers.

RELATIONSHIP

What a silence, when you are here, What

a hellish silence.

You sit and I sit.

You lose and I lose.

Janos Pilenszky

1921-1981

translated from the Hungarian by Peter Jay

WATER-BURN

The large blue Horse*

We should have been galloping on horses, their hoofprints

Splashes of light, divots kicked out of the darkness,

Or hauling up lobster pots in a wake of sparks. Where

Were the otters and seals? Were the dolphins on fire?

Yes, we should have been doing more with our lives.

Michael Longley

1939-

*The Large Blue Horse 

by  Franz Marc

1880-1916

German Expressionist Painter

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