Poetry

Oh, what fire in the broken bread, what pure Dawn in the dimmed stars! I see the day coming among the stones, You are alone, black-robed, in its whiteness.

If it comes to pass that I have to shout: “Long live Poland!” —what language will I have to do it in? 1975

trans. Russian Richard Lourie In memory it will be like this — the Dnieper River, Trukhanov Island, springtime, a near crimson sunset . . . us running together, arms racing in air. A nameless sadness went through my heart. Why? Weren't we together. Us three. At our games. But then evening fell. Time to leave….

I went again to that place I loved not far from here, or from the noise of cars though quiet enough this early— where the sound of a stream found a deep ear in the woods, and came out in me; went to that place as one might go to the slain body of a…

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,…

We lived on the bottom floor, four rooms in a new brick complex (rooms stacked on rooms) with a view of world enough: the school, also brick; the paved playground and remnant meadow beaten to dust by Sears-shod kids. Beyond was not our need. From the gravelled (“No Admittance”) roof, we could see the small…

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…

Both Erato the Muse of Lyric Poetry and Mime and Apollo the God of Poetry and Music are said to be with us, in us, above us, and behind us, and are often figured to be with a lyre, one singing and playing with it, and the other having it at her feet and waiting…

It's good to live near the water. Ships pass so close to land a man could reach out and break a branch from one of the willow trees that grow here. Horses run wild down by the water, along the beach. If the men on board wanted, they could fashion a lariat and throw it…