Poetry

They waited all day for the sun to appear. Then, late in the afternoon, like a good prince, it showed itself for a few minutes. Blazing high over the benchland that lies at the foot of the peaks behind their borrowed house. Then the clouds were drawn once more. They were happy enough. But all…

Late summer breathed from earth and stones,      Tall lupins probed the air, The Milky Way was combed-out light,      The sheen off midnight's hair. I watched a long time in the yard      The usual stars, the still And seemly planets, lantern-bright      Above our darkened hill. And then a star that moved, I thought,      And then it…

trans. Czech David Young and author Those who were greening, they shall be turned to snow. Those who were about to fly shall fall asleep in the tar pits      like the wolves of La Brea. Those who called out shall be turned to an exclamation point      at the end of a declaratory sentence      never spoken….

trans. Italian Jonathan Galassi Don't ask us for the word to frame our shapeless spirit on all sides, and blaze it in letters of fire, to shine like a lost crocus in a dusty plain. Ah, the man who walks secure, a friend to others and himself, uncaring that high summer prints his shadow on…

When I grow up and you get small, then — (In Kaluza's theory the fifth dimension is represented as a circle associated with every point in spacetime)      —then when I die, I'll never be alive again?            Never. Never never?            Never never. Yes, but never never never?            No . . . not never…

trans. Italian Ruth Feldman Sir, starting next month Please accept my resignation And, if necessary, find a replacement for me. I leave a lot of uncompleted work, Whether from laziness or practical difficulties. I should have said something to someone, But no longer know what or to whom: I have forgotten. I should have given…

trans. Czech Ewald Osers Life taught me long ago that music and poetry are the most beautiful things on earth that life can give us. Except for love, of course. In an old textbook, published by the Imperial Printing House in the year of Vrchlicky's death, I looked up the section on poetics and poetic…

Popsicle stick is the diminutive of tongue depressor, it is a serious implement to contemplate, you reach with your little pink chocolated hands, you want more— my large clean hand withdraws what was once the ice cream bar I shared with my baby son, we cleaned it with our last licks, & I dry it…

In the drafty land of a day's work, where bone saws sing down to the tone of marrow, these men in white coats live out my dream surgeons gone wild. Outside, I hear the mallet man, halting the morning between eyes with his dull thud, and the knife of the skinner slips beneath hides, the…