Poetry

In Rio de Janeiro, dozens of new sambas are composed for each year’s Carnival. Although sambas concerning love outnumber all others, there are always some about world events, such as landing on the moon, and Brazilian politics and life in general. This sampling from 1965, a year after the “rightest” revolution, comments on, or pokes…

508. And behold! There were blossoms in the wind, and there were blossoms in the moving letters of the death warrant, and the wind moved them not, for behold the wind was stayed in its course, and there were flocks in the river, crossing the river, and the river moved against them, and behold no…

I feel that I should introduce myself. I am X, a not very unusual person, A rather ordinary specimen of human life. At the moment I feel that I serve no purpose, Which is why I am here—I want to feel useful. Also, I find mental hospitals interesting. And I do hope you will find…

     Tom and Nancy were walking along the esplanade.      ”You see that guy walking ahead of us, with the shorts on? The one with so much hair on his legs. You know, I’d been looking at that guy for at least five minutes before I realized that he was also wearing a pair of black nylon…

A lump in your groin. A burning in your discharge. You cannot quit the cigarettes or the entire nights spent refining the pointless game of billiards. Setting the smoke of drugs adrift on the afternoon light, you salvage up a time perhaps when spring made a car look great and mascaraed girls from the lunchroom…

Life was cheap in South America. Anything could happen there. That was one way. He was tired. That was another. So many of his erotic daydreams began that way. He’d lie in his bed and masturbate, usually just before he got up. Many of them had to do with the way they’d survive after an…

Oh my Sabine farm, when shall I see you, when again With old authors, with sleep and lazy hours Can I find sweet forgetfulness of painful life? Oh when will the beans (Pythagoras’ cousins!) lie close With the greens well oiled with fat bacon? Oh nights and feasts of the gods! when I and my…

* Euclid, alone, who looked in beauty’s heart, Assumed the whole was greater than the part; But Cantor, with the infinite in control, Proved that the part was equal to the whole. *Cantor’s Theorem: In an infinite class the whole is no greater than some of its parts.

I. Invocation It’s crazy to think one could describe them— Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears— As though they were all alike any more Than sweeps, opticians, poets or masseurs. Moreover, they are for more than one reason Difficult to speak of seriously and freely, And I have never (even this is difficult…