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Anniversary with Agaves

trans. Italian Ruth Felman This day, one of love and laceration so many years ago, finds us walking together, over sand and rocks, your hand helping me in the difficult places and your gaze directing mine toward the high barrier of agaves and reeds, the northeast boundary of the beach. “See,” you say to me,…

Rose

In memory of Barbara Loden Sometimes, when I see people like Rose, I imagine them as babies, as young children. I suppose many of us do. We search the aging skin of the face, the unhappy eyes and mouth. Of course I can never imagine their fat little faces at the breast, or their cheeks…

Violet

Like a coffin in a procession whose corpse leaves A stealthy trickle of violets in its wake While Attica bids it a soft Good evening. Like some harrassed gardener bending down Among the cables and the skinflint stones Without hearing the passion of the bitter-orange When it cloaks itself in wind and beckons with the…

Greeting

trans. Italian Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann Mariarosa be good; I am leaving and deserting you* I'll never hear the May song again, daughter of oak and underbrush. You dressed in flowers of the broom, grown back on the uncultivated slope. You were inviolate, shut like a bittr blossom. Your frightened eyes were white beanflowers,…

The Island Of Ven

"Ellie, listen to this: In the evening after sunset, when according to my habit I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed that a new and unusual star, surpassing all others in brilliancy, was shining almost directly above my head, and since I had, almost from boyhood, known all the stars in…

The Garden Was Entering The Sea

The garden was entering the sea Cape of deep carnation Your hand was leaving with the tide Smoothing the sea's bridal gown Your hand was opening the sky. Angels with eleven swords Were sailing alongside your name Slashing through the flowery waves Down below the white sails leaned In quick northeasterly squalls. With the white…

The Catherine-Wheels

The Catherine-wheels ogled us from the embankment where the man who lit them was poking them, his face red from the fuse. Today, with the holiday over, my dear, you've gone back to your own city. Yesterday night the clarinets at the time of the explosions, and the voices of families sitting in the piazza…

Getting to Know Frederick

Suddenly Frederick is not at her side. She stops and looks back. There he is, just standing there. He has dropped the duffel to the curb and is staring at his parents' house across the street. He rubs his black beard and shakes his head. Seeing this, she realizes he is facing a rare moment…

Notes on Poetics and Ethics

trans. Greek Martin McKinsey 1. It is one of the talents of great stylists to make obsolete words cease from appearing obsolete through the way in which they introduce them in their writing. Obsolete words which under the pens of others would seem stilted or out of place, occur most naturally under theirs. This is…