Idra Novey
Person not a member
of a group. A visitor,
guest, or the breast
that brushes your arm
on the subway. Person
with whom you’ve had
no acquaintance but who’s taken
your rocking chair
from the curbside
and curls up in it
and closes her eyes.
Person in line
behind you now, waiting
for a glass of water,
or of whiskey, of elixir.
Person logging online
at the same second
from the Home Depot in Lima.
Or in search of the Dalai Lama.
Person not privy or party
to a decision, edict, et cetera,
but who's eaten
from the same fork
at the pizzeria
and kissed your wilder sister
on New Year's. Person assigned
to feed the tiger at the zoo
where you slipped your hand
once
into the palm
of somebody else's father.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Rue, something like blue
or is the chapter new?
Machines, apple juice &
purple hue
give away a date due
Death for mom or Rue
Cid Corman
It isnt for want
of something to say—
something to tell you—
something you should know—
but to detain you—
keep you from going—
feeling myself here
as long as you are—
as long as you are.
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
John Keats
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Edgar Allan Poe (preveo Tin Ujević)
Prije mnogo i mnogo ljeta
u kraljevstvu na obali
življaše djeva znana sred svijeta
pod imenom Anabela Lee,
i življaše sred briga i radosnih sjeta
da me voli i da se volimo mi.
Bio sam dijete i bila je dijete
u kraljestvu što plâču valovi,
no ljubavlju većom od ljubavi svete
ljubljasmo se ja i Lee,
te nam na ljubavi nebeske čete
zaviđahu, anđeli svi.
I tako prije ljeta i ljeta
u kraljestvu što plâču valovi,
vjetar iz oblaka skrši poput cvijeta
moju lijepu Anabelu Lee,
i tako njoj brata žalost dopa,
da je ponese daleko od mene,
da je u kamenom grobu zakopa,
što ječi od umorne pjene.
Anđeli nesrećni i u raju
zaviđahu njoj i meni
i zato, (svi ljudi znaju
u kraljestvu što ga more mî)
u noći iz magle zaduhuju
vjetri i ubiju moju Anabelu Lee.
No naša je ljubav jača od one
njih što bjehu stariji no mi,
njih što jesu umniji no mi,
pa ni anđeli s vrh vasione,
pa ni bjesovi što pod morem rone,
duše ne mogu rastaviti: dušu mi
od duše lijepe Anabele Lee.
Kad mjesec sine, nosi mi sanje
o lijepoj Anabeli Lee;
kad zvijezde izađu, sinu oči danje
prelijepe Anabele Lee;
i tako noću za noći ja sjedim
i dragu, moju ljubav i moj život gledim,
tamo u grobnici na valu,
u njenom grobu na zvučnome žalu.
Franz Wright
I met William Burroughs in a dream.
It was some sort of bohemian farmhouse,
and he was enthroned, small and skeletal,
in a truly gigantic red armchair.
When I asked him how he was, he replied
Well, you know what they say—for best results,
always mock and frighten lobster before boiling.
Franz—I like that name, Franz. Childe Franz
to the dark tower something or other … Hey,
got a smoke? And quit worrying so much:
they can’t help themselves, they’re like abused dogs
and they’re going to react to affection and kindness
with uncontrollable savagery. Just tell them,
You’re out of my mind, pal. You’re out
of my mind. Either that or, I’m out of yours.
That’ll keep them brain-chained to their trees.
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Enes Kišević
Dan je kao sunčan.
Ti si kao veseo.
Prolaziš, kao ne vide te.
Svima je kao lijepo.
Svima je kao dobro.
Svima je kao ludo.
I ti si kao sretan.
Živi se kao u miru.
Ptice su kao slobodne.
Budućnost kao na dlanu.
Savjest je kao čista.
I suncu je kao jasno.
O, srce, kao pjevaj.
Svi kao brinu o svima.
Svatko je prijatelj kao.
Svima je kao stalo do tebe
i do svijeta.
I dan kao ode.
I ti se kao smiješiš!
I ništa te kao ne boli.
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Emily Dickinson
The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly—and true—
But let a Splinter swerve—
'Twere easier for You—
To put a Current back—
When Floods have slit the Hills—
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—
And trodden out the Mills—
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
John Ashbery
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
Emily Dickinson
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –
William Butler Yeats
One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm.
But charm and face were in vain,
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.