There’s a kind of leaving when you arrive even though it’s the place you’ve come from— how love can be alive There, though not for you, and while it’s like none of the first feelings, a recognition of what is passing flashes, itself passing—there were more deaths, but now there’s only one, And what…
translated by Lyn Coffin, with Leda Pugh Oh, pain will die, I swear, when I succeed in making a Myshkin of these tears to master agony, quietly, there where I burn with beautiful helpless need, where voices go mute, and feelings wake late, before finally disbanding. To smile (to reach understanding) just as He said….
translated by Kirk Nesset I’ll be an easy cadaver to carry through woods and over the sea; in a carriage, on a white ship, as the oboe laments, or bassoon, over the droning croaking of toads. I’ll be an innocent cadaver, quietly regarding my remains, while despite me a requiem sounds, the moan of a…
Sometimes in the fading winter light that streaks my desk by six o’clock revealing grains in aging oak, like desert sands, I imagine, before leaving my shelved books to laze with those I love before the easy flicker of some talk show on TV, that I stay back this time, …
Hot Los Angeles summer days, late ’50’s, a seven-year-old Shut in the tiny, midtown apartment on South Kingsley Drive, I’d flip on the TV to the black-and-white game shows, Rerun comedies, and half-hour detective dramas, Seeking company, avoiding the soaps, news, and cartoons. One of my favorites for a while was a show called Kideo…
It could come right now as a dit-dah of rain, mere pine needle lost in a tree-stack of beads, thorn expelled from red dot, print felt an inch from a finger, pursed lips speaking in tears. It makes you look dotty. Easily amused. It starts like a Spanish ¡—down on your…
translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday, a day and night without a single question, surprised by nothing. I performed my ordinary chores, as if nothing more were required. Inhale, exhale, step by step, tasks and errands, and not a single thought beyond setting out and getting home again….
Federal holding cell, Hughes County jail Fights. Never quiet—like years back with the folks, but ratcheted-up, bloodied, multiplied, till the badge writes the last two shovers up, says he’ll do the same for all of us if we can’t keep the crybabies smothered I WANT SOME PEACE, SLEEP, NO MORE GETTING OUT OF THE CHAIR,…
after Rilke It’s time, Lord. The summer was so immense. Now on the sundials your shadows stretch their lengths And across the meadows you release the winds. Command the last fruits to swell with life, Grant them still a few days of florid sun, Press them to completion, and like a hunter Chase the fleeting…
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