[ Roofs ; Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1931) ]

 

 

The Empty Dance Shoes

--Cornelius Eady

My friends,

As it has been proven in the laboratory,   

An empty pair of dance shoes

Will sit on the floor like a wart

Until it is given a reason to move.

Those of us who study inertia

(Those of us covered with wild hair and sleep)

Can state this without fear:

The energy in a pair of shoes at rest   

Is about the same as that of a clown

Knocked flat by a sandbag.

This you can tell your friends with certainty:   

A clown, flat on his back,

Is a lot like an empty pair of

    dancing shoes.

An empty pair of dancing shoes

Is also a lot like a leaf   

Pressed in a book.

And now you know a simple truth:

A leaf pressed in, say, The Colossus

    by Sylvia Plath,

Is no different from an empty pair of dance shoes

Even if those shoes are in the middle of the Stardust Ballroom   

With all the lights on, and hot music shakes the windows   

    up and down the block.

This is the secret of inertia:

The shoes run on their own sense of the world.   

They are in sympathy with the rock the kid skips   

    over the lake

After it settles to the mud.

Not with the ripples,

But with the rock.

A practical and personal application of inertia

Can be found in the question:   

Whose Turn Is It

To Take Out The Garbage?   

An empty pair of dance shoes

Is a lot like the answer to this question,

As well as book-length poems

Set in the Midwest.

To sum up:

An empty pair of dance shoes

Is a lot like the sand the 98-pound weakling   

    brushes from his cheeks

As the bully tows away his girlfriend.   

Later,

When he spies the coupon at the back of the comic book,

He is about to act upon a different set of scientific principles.   

He is ready to dance.

 

Photo of Miles Davis at Lennies-on-the-Turnpike, 1968

--Cornelius Eady

New York grows

Slimmer

In his absence.

I suppose

You could also title this picture

Of Miles, his leathery

Squint, the grace

In his fingers a sliver of the stuff

You can’t get anymore,

As the rest of us wonder:

What was the name

Of the driver

Of that truck? And the rest

Of us sigh:

Death is one hell

Of a pickpocket.

 

Nina's Blues

--Cornelius Eady

Your body, hard vowels

In a soft dress, is still.

What you can't know

is that after you died

All the black poets

In New York City

Took a deep breath,

And breathed you out;

Dark corners of small clubs,

The silence you left twitching

On the floors of the gigs

You turned your back on,

The balled-up fists of notes

Flung, angry from a keyboard.

You won't be able to hear us

Try to etch what rose

Off your eyes, from your throat.

Out you bleed, not as sweet, or sweaty,

Through our dark fingertips.

We drum rest

We drum thank you

We drum stay.

 

[ Fiberglass Scroll ; Albert Oehlen (2004) ]

 

How Dark the Beginning

--Maggie Smith

All we ever talk of is light—

let there be light, there was light then,

good light—but what I consider

dawn is darker than all that.

So many hours between the day

receding and what we recognize

as morning, the sun cresting

like a wave that won’t break

over us—as if  light were protective,

as if  no hearts were flayed,

no bodies broken on a day

like today. In any film,

the sunrise tells us everything

will be all right. Danger wouldn’t

dare show up now, dragging

its shadow across the screen.

We talk so much of  light, please

let me speak on behalf

of  the good dark. Let us

talk more of how dark

the beginning of a day is.

 

Joke

--Maggie Smith

In what I think is a dream,

I look at some manifestation of the past

& say, I know you’re not real. Someone has to.

As most dream-things do, the past

shapeshifts, reconstitutes itself with new

eyes & a new haircut—the past

made over—& then I forget its name.

I forget what I’m doing with the past.

What is that joke about the river?

It’s not really a joke, no more than the past

is really past—the one about water never

being the same water. As it flows past,

the river’s current—now that’s a joke—

is always flowing now, now, now. Past

seven, when I wake from what I think

is a dream—a dream where I tell the past

the truth about itself—it is the present

as it always is. There is no past.

 

You Could Never Take A Car to Greenland,

--Maggie Smith

my daughter says. Unless the car could float.

Unless by car you mean boat. Unless the ocean

turned to ice and promised not to crack.

Unless Greenland floated over here,

having lifted its anchor. Unless we could row

our country there. Our whole continent

would have to come along, wouldn't it? Unless

we cut ourselves free. What kind of saw

could we use for that? What kind of oars

could deliver one country to another?

She asks, Why is Greenland called Greenland

if it’s not green? Why is Iceland called

Iceland if it’s greener than Greenland?

Unless it’s a trick, a lie: the name Greenland

is an ad for Greenland. Who would go

promised nothing but ice? Who would cut

her home to pieces and row away for that?

 

[ Snowing ; Mark Edwards ]

 

One Day

One day after another--

perfect.

They all fit.

 

Backwards

Nowhere before you

any of this.

 

Here

No one

else in the room

except you. 

* 

Mind's a form

of taking

it all. 

* 

And the room

opens and closes.

--Robert Creeley

 

Fancy

--Robert Creeley

Do you know what

the truth is,

what's rightly

or wrongly said,

what is wiseness,

or rightness, what

wrong, or well-

done if it is,

or is not, done.

I thought.

I thought and

thought and thought.

In a place

I was sitting,

and there

it was, a little

faint thing

hardly felt, a

kind of small

nothing.

 

The End of The Day

--Robert Creeley

Oh who is

so cosy with

despair and

all, they will

not come,

rejuvenated, to

the last spectacle

of the day. Look!

the sun is

sinking, now

it's 

gone. Night,

good and sweet

night, good

night, good, good

night has come.

 

[ The View Into Infinity, 2023 ; Alfred Freddy Krupa ]

 

After Reading Wang Wei, I Go Outside to the Full Moon

--Charles Wright

Back here, old snow like lace cakes,

Candescent and brittle now and then through the tall grass.

Remorse, remorse, the dark drones.

The body’s the affliction,

No resting place in the black pews of the winter trees,

No resting place in the clouds.

Mercy upon us, old man,

You in the China dust, I this side of my past life,

Salt in the light of heaven.

Isolate landscape. World’s grip.

The absolute, as small as a poker chip, moves off,

Bright moon shining between pines.

 

Under the Nine Trees in January

--Charles Wright

Last night’s stars and last night’s wind

are west of the mountains now, and east of the river.

Here, under the branches of the nine trees,

                                           how small the world seems.

Should we lament, in winter, our shadow’s solitude,

our names spelled out like snowflakes?

Where is it written, “the season’s decrease diminishes me?”

Should we long for stillness,

                                  a hush for the trivial body

washed in the colors of paradise,

dirt-colored water-colored match-flame-and-wind-colored?

As one who has never understood the void,

                                                                      should I

give counsel to the darkness, honor the condor’s wing?

Should we keep on bowing to

                                   an inch of this and an inch of that?

The world is a handkerchief.

Today I spread it across my knees.

Tomorrow they’ll fold it into my breast pocket,

                                                      white on my dark suit.

 

Silent Journal

--Charles Wright

Inaudible consonant inaudible vowel

The word continues to fall

                                    in splendor around us

Window half shadow window half moon

                                                             back yard like a book of snow

That holds nothing and that nothing holds

Immaculate text

                           not too prescient not too true

 

[ Winter ; Vilhelms Purvitis (1910) ]

 

 

The Perfect Journey Is

-- A. R. Ammons

The perfect journey is

no need to go

another nothingly clear day and

I went

to walk between the pine

colonnades

up the road on the hill and there

hill-high in dry cold

I saw the weaves of glitterment

airborne, so fine,

the breeze sifting

figurations from the snow

reservoirs of the boughs

 

Snow of the

-- A. R. Ammons

Snow of the 

right consistency,

temperature, and

velocity will

fall in a lee

slope

building out over

space a

promontory of

considerable

reach in

downward curvature:

and snow

will do this

not once

but wherever possible,

a similarity of effect

extended

to diversity's 

exact numeration

* * *

here a month of snow,

more January than

February, intervenes

during which

I wrote

nothing: it is

the winter-deep, the 

annual sink:

leave it unwritten,

as snow unwrites

the landscape

* * *

  

 

Substantial Planes

--A. R. Ammons

It doesn't

matter

to me

if

poems mean

nothing:

there's no

floor

to the

universe

and yet

one

walks the

floor.

 

[ Tree ; Jacoba van Heemskerck (1918) ]

 

Absences

--Donald Justice

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.

There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,

Like the memory of scales descending the white keys

Of a childhood piano—outside the window, palms!

And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,

Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,

Like the memory of a white dress cast down . . .

So much has fallen.

                                    And I, who have listened for a step

All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,

Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending

On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers

      abounding.

 

All We Have to Go By

--Linda Pastan

As if I had dreamed the snow

into falling,

I wake to a world

blanked out

in its particulars,

nearly erased.

The is the silence

of absolute whiteness- the mute

birds nowhere

in sight, the car

an animal tracks

filled in,

all boundaries,

as in love,

ambiguous.

Sometimes all we have

to go by

is the weather:

a message

the snow writes

an invisible ink,

what the sky means

by its litmus

colors.

Now my breath

on the chilly window

forms a cloud

which may turn

to rain later,

somewhere else.

 

Dark Register

--Cynthia Cruz

If you leave,

he said,

keep who you are.

Don’t let the world

and its desires

ruin you.

But after the dream

comes the habit.

And no way to fix it.

What is gone

cannot be put back.

Damage

from the inside.

What I have become

is warmed over

with that now

ancient dream.

What I was

is vanished.

I came back home

but I came back

gone.

 

[ Inside-Outside ; Heidrun Rathgeb (2021) ]

 

The Stars

--Simone Weil (tr. by Noah Rawlings)

Blazing stars, dotting the night sky’s distant plain,

Mute stars, forever frozen, forever spinning blind.

You tear from our hearts the days of yesteryear,

You toss us to tomorrow, heedless of our will,

And we weep, and all our cries to you are vain.

Since we must, we’ll follow you, our arms entwined,

Our eyes turned toward your brightness pure but bitter.

By your light, all sorrows matter little.

We fall silent, we stumble on our way.

Suddenly it’s there in our hearts: their divine flame.

 

The Book of Dreams

--Andrea Jurjević

I fall asleep under the tremolo voice box of the moon

I fall asleep under the scratched cymbal of the moon

The moon that’s the stone lodged in the throat of the night

The night so exiled it wants to find its way back home

I dream about the tough heel of a walnut roll from 1975

And sharing its sweet December bits with a clan of crows

I dream about a crow that’s my imaginary older brother

And a girl dance-swaying her bovine hips into widowhood

I dream of sun shooting itself up between the sharp shanks of hills

Down the ravine a woeful snake rent with a blunt fish knife

I dream of pouring woe into mugs and topping it with red wine

The river man that’s parched and all I have is that wine

In a dream I’m lying on a salamander-sleek slab inside a cave

Beside a skinless drum simmering with fat carp

The fish leaping in and out of the stew are soldiers in a foxhole

In a dream my love stirs that stew with long white oars

I have a native tongue and I grow a foreign one too

I have a need for closed captions when I talk to people

I have no feelings about god and a shipyard of suspicions about men

I also have rooms filled with clocks riffing in double time

I have a longing for the coiling shadows of cypresses

And a pull toward the soft gray hook of the moon

I have memory drawers filled with sweet chicory root

A pull to the purple lip of the sea and its theremin breath

In a naked dream I fall on the dock mum as cargo

Beg the rain to drop song on the pillows of my palms

The moon slips away like a pearly soap bubble

A glistening nipple pulled from a wet mouth

I winter in that waver

My bones are oars and within me a shady lady rows

I wake seasick from the sloshing in my veins

In another country I’m rain

 

A Ghost

--Cole Swensen

erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being

.......time and so

the house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of

.......a storm

The architect tore down room after room until the sound stopped. A

.......ghost is one

among the ages at the edge of a cliff empty sails on the bay even when

.......a ship

or the house moves off in fog asks you out loud to let the stranger in

 

[ Evening Walk; Deb Garlick (2019) ]

 

Thanks, Robert Frost

--David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?

someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.

Yes, and even for the past, he replied,

that it will turn out to have been all right

for what it was, something we can accept,

mistakes made by the selves we had to be,

not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,

or what looking back half the time it seems

we could so easily have been, or ought...

The future, yes, and even for the past,

that it will become something we can bear.

And I too, and my children, so I hope,

will recall as not too heavy the tug

of those albatrosses I sadly placed

upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,

yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,

and it brings strange peace that itself passes

into past, easier to bear because

you said it, rather casually, as snow

went on falling in Vermont years ago.