Nocturne

--Li-Young Lee

That scraping of iron on iron when the wind   

rises, what is it? Something the wind won’t   

quit with, but drags back and forth.

Sometimes faint, far, then suddenly, close, just   

beyond the screened door, as if someone there   

squats in the dark honing his wares against   

my threshold. Half steel wire, half metal wing,   

nothing and anything might make this noise   

of saws and rasps, a creaking and groaning

of bone-growth, or body-death, marriages of rust,   

or ore abraded. Tonight, something bows

that should not bend. Something stiffens that should   

slide. Something, loose and not right,   

rakes or forges itself all night.

 

Falling: The Code

--Li-Young Lee

1.

Through the night   

the apples

outside my window   

one by one let go   

their branches and   

drop to the lawn.

I can’t see, but hear

the stem-snap, the plummet

through leaves, then

the final thump against the ground.

Sometimes two   

at once, or one   

right after another.

During long moments of silence

I wait

and wonder about the bruised bodies,   

the terror of diving through air, and   

think I’ll go tomorrow

to find the newly fallen, but they

all look alike lying there

dewsoaked, disappearing before me.

2.

I lie beneath my window listening   

to the sound of apples dropping in

the yard, a syncopated code I long to know,

which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know

the meaning of what I hear, each dull   

thud of unseen apple-

body, the earth   

falling to earth

once and forever, over   

and over.

 

[ October Evening ; Leon Spilliaert (1912) ]

 

 

Leaves

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Years do odd things to identity.

What does it mean to say

I am that child in the photograph

at Kishamish in 1935?

Might as well say I am the shadow

of a leaf of the acacia tree

felled seventy years ago

moving on the page the child reads.

Might as well say I am the words she read

or the words I wrote in other years,

flicker of shade and sunlight

as the wind moves through the leaves.

 

Thank You

--Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden's dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.

 

3 

You'll be driving along depressed when suddenly

a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through

and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably

won't last. But for a moment the whole world

comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—

red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,

gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations

of burning. You're on fire. Your eyes are on fire.

It won't last, you don't want it to last. You 

can't stand any more. But you don't want it to stop. 

It's what you've come for. It's what you'll

come back for. It won't stay with you, but you'll 

        remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt

        or something you've felt that also didn't last.

--from Leaves; Lloyd Schwartz

 

[ Landscape with Trees ; Vincent van Gogh ]

 

Death Is a Simple Thing

--Dmitry Blizniuk

Here, in the countryside, death is simple and unpretentious.

It goes without makeup, and

a chipped log rattles

under a dented axe.

This low, big-boned tree stump

(be careful, watch your step)

is a guillotine for chickens.

Feathers and down are stuck in the notches in the wood,

like last unlit cigarettes before execution,

or unsent letters to beloved ones…

And autumn birches pose nude around the house:

armfuls of freckles are thrown up to the clouds

and hang there,

on the long, equine face of October.

 

 

Great Music

--Dmitry Blizniuk

There’s something about destiny

that resembles a dentist’s work:

sterility, perseverance, carefulness,

consistent cruelty,

disposable whiteness.

One day, you enter the kitchen and suddenly realize

that you’ve lost forever

this smiley summer,

this milky cloudy planet,

this slim nervous woman with green eyes.

And you put on the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata,

having no faith at all in art.

You throw a lousy witch into a fire,

expecting her to spit, swear, kick her legs.

Hah! The angered melody will soar up,

emitting smoke, the smell of sackcloth,

and the fume of uncombed felty gold of the hair.

And frightened, you close yourself off,

but the music will seep in even through the shuttered windows.

Its poisonous vapor will worm its way in.

Your body will start sweating at once,

getting covered with small drops of fright,

like hot chicken meat in a clear bag.

Oh, great music,

you work wonders

and nightmares.

 

Within the Word Autumn

--Dmitry Blizniuk

Someone walks within the word Autumn,

walks on high red heels,

one floor above,

one understanding above.

Someone stops at the window,

pulls the curtains open,

and secretly admires the suntanned horsemen of the falling leaves

that prance, rearing up on their hind legs, golden and flared.

The willow at the lamp post has lost its mind;

it mourns with bowed head,

dropping green saliva on the ants.

Then, later,

late at night,

the moon will come up,

it will be thin like an eyelid —

a teacher with a birthmark on her face

will take a crowd of stars-second-graders

on a trip above the night city.

 

[ Enso (the flowers smell but disappear) ; Zenkei Shibayama ]

 

 

When the immense drugged universe explodes

In a cascade of unendurable colour

And leaves us gasping naked,

This is no more than the ectasy of chaos:

Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal love

Which alone, as we know certainly, restores

Fragmentation into true being.

--Robert Graves; Ecstasy of Chaos

 

A Dancer's Life

--Donald Justice

The lights in the theater fail. The long racks

Of costumes abandoned by the other dancers

Trouble Celeste. The conductor asks

If she is sad because autumn is coming on,

But when autumn comes she is merely pregnant and bored.

On her way back from the holidays, a man

Who appears to have no face rattles the door

To her compartment. How disgusting, she thinks;

How disgusting it always must be to grow old.

Dusk falls, and a few drops of rain.

On the train window trembles the blurred

Reflection of her own transparent beauty,

And through this, beautiful ruined cities passing,

Dark forests, and people everywhere

Pacing on lighted platforms, some

Beating their children, some apparently dancing.

The costumes of the dancers sway in the chill darkness.

Now sinking into sleep is like sinking again

Into the lake of her youth. Her parents

Lean from the rail of a ferryboat waving, waving,

As the boat glides farther out across the waves.

No one, it seems, is meeting her at the station.

The city is frozen. She warms herself

In the pink and scented twilight of a bar.

The waiter who serves her is young. She nods assent.

The conversation dies in bed. Later,

She hurries off to rehearsal. In the lobby,

Dizzy still with the weight of her own body,

She waits, surrounded by huge stills of herself

And bright posters announcing events to come.

Her life—she feels it closing about her now

Like a small theater, empty, without lights.

 

Fish Rain

--James Davis May

It’s rare, but it happens:

A waterspout forms near land

and raptures the fish to the sky.

We’re not quite sure what happens next.

Well, we know that many die, 

that some are shredded by the winds,

that some are frozen into chunks of ice, 

and that some, some survive

even after the cyclone stops,

and they exist up there a while. 

Maybe they’re pummeled 

but supported by the currents

in the clouds, the way you keep

a tennis ball in the air

with a single racket—kept up 

until they aren’t and fall,

and even then some survive

to drown on land. What must it be like

to die after that ascension?

Before, life was so much hunger 

and short-lived satisfaction, 

but mostly buoyancy 

without knowing that word 

or any word. Yes, they’re dumb, 

but surely they know or sense 

something is ending,

one eye focused on the ground

the other on the lost sky—   

and the water an absence, 

a memory they can’t remember,

while that human sound of wonder

starts up when they’re found

and can’t, I imagine, help them. 

 

[ Dream ; Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1922) ]

 

 

Waking at 3 a.m. 

--William Stafford

Even in the cave of the night when you

wake and are free and lonely,

neglected by others, discarded, loved only

by what doesn’t matter—even in that

big room no one can see,

you push with your eyes till forever

comes in its twisted figure eight

and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;

you think slower than the tide in

the grain of the wood; you become

a secret storehouse that saves the country,

so open and foolish and empty.

You look over all that the darkness

ripples across. More than has ever

been found comforts you. You open your

eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast

and as far as your thought can run.

A great snug wall goes around everything,

has always been there, will always

remain. It is a good world to be

lost in. It comforts you. It is

all right. And you sleep.

 

Your Life

--William E. Stafford

You will walk toward the mirror,

closer and closer, then flow

into the glass. You will disappear

some day like that, being

more real, more true, at last.

You learn what you are, but slowly,

a child, a woman, a man,

a self often shattered, and pieces

put together again, till the end:

you halt, the glass opens--

A surface, an image, a past.

 

Everything that happens is the message:

you read an event and be one and wait,

like breasting a wave, all the while knowing

by living, though not knowing how to live...

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up

eye and ear—suddenly we fall into

sound before it begins, the breathing

so still it waits there under the breath—

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills

where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied

stillness unfolding their careful words:

“Everything counts. The message is the world.”

— William Stafford, from "A Message From Space"

 

[ Houses ; Vasile Dobrian (1932) ]

 

 

Haiku- Summer 2024

it doesn't matter

what day it is when you wake

up with a bird song

a mind like august-

the slow turn of the pages

under the shade tree

life like a novel,

its not so much what happens

but how it is read

 

Everyday 

Some ideas don't hide in the hills

existing because we are intended

to go find them, but fly the same

as wind does what it does, as seas

lift on spaces called by the moon.

It is not an effort it is somewhere

here nearby where time is patience

for its own dissolve, for what is

definable by what resides being

spontaneous inside the common.

Today at breakfast followed along

with a cup of coffee which is music.

Or a form of stillness presented in

forms of phrases and measures, set

to the length of feeling attention.

 

So, yesterday then tomorrow as real

as tomorrow that becomes yesterday,

both folded within the cover living

through the present, only grasped

by a mutual exchange of milliseconds.

What makes for a draft of history

while I then chart my own routes

but those too, those too.... simplest

news with sunlight, quartered silence,

hover of irreconcilable fragments.

None too different than a left shoe 

not knowing the pace of its direction.

Have it be meek or might, this leads

as it does and defined in the spirit

of choice and what follows is next.

Sunset again, a drink from the earth

satiated with original natural color.

Memory of a child who felt thought

growing relation as an imagination

of grass, dewdrops born with stars.

  [ Edgar Meyer and Christian McBride ]

 

Yes

--Muriel Rukeyser

It's like a tap-dance

Or a new pink dress,

A shit-naive feeling

Saying yes.

Some say Good morning

Some say God bless

Some say Possibly

Some say yes.

Some say Never

Some say Unless

It's stupid and lovely

To rush into Yes.

What can it mean?

It's just like life,

One thing to you

One thing to your wife.

Some go local

Some go express

Some can't wait

To answer yes.

Some complain

Of strain and stress

The answer may be

No for Yes.

Some like failure

Some like success

Some like Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes.

Open your eyes

Dream but don't guess.

Your biggest surprise

Come after Yes.

 

Provision

--W. S. Merwin

All morning with dry instruments

The field repeats the sound

Of rain

From memory

And in the wall

The dead increase their invisible honey

It is August

The flocks are beginning to form

I will take with me the emptiness of my hands

What you do not have you find everywhere

 

Sometimes

--David Whyte

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones 

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place 

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently 

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away. 

 

[ Bird's Nest ; Vincent van Gogh (1885) ]

 

Work

--Joseph Fasano

All day I’ve watched the wrens nest 

in the willows. 

Desire 

sways a life 

across its rivers 

like a lost horse dragging its saddle. 

And so? And so? 

What will they say of me 

at the end, then: 

he was lost; he sang; he tried to praise. 

The Egyptians, it is written, 

faced their judges in the underworld 

and told them everything, everything 

they weren’t. 

Hush, now. 

It is summer, lushest summer. 

Another love 

is gone again, 

another. The wren stares 

at her own nest 

in astonishment, its little cup 

of dust, of twigs, of hair. 

And the heart, the brittle gift 

we salvage? 

The work you do 

is secret, always secret. 

You scrape away, 

in darkened years 

of secret, 

every twisted thicket 

that it isn’t 

and suddenly, if roughly, 

        it is there.

 

 

What to Say to Those Who Think

You're a Fool for Choosing Poetry

--Joseph Fasano

       

Tell them yes.

Tell them poetry is what chose you.

Tell them

you had a night, once,

just as they did,

when you knelt alone on the cold tiles

and asked the night

to give you a reason for being.

Tell them the answer was your life.

Tell them we are nothing, nothing

without passion,

the wild dark flock

that fills our rooms with joy.

Tell them

you will give the rest of your blazing days

to try to give another life

that moment,

that moment when you opened

to the coldness

and found that the music of your ruin

was too beautiful to ever be destroyed.

 

The Joy That Tends Toward Unbecoming

--Joseph Fasano

Say five men carry a sixth from the birches.

He is thin from his night inside the river.

Someone has pushed his wrists through his belt

so it seems he has been out gathering blue flowers.

Someone is shouting the richer gospels.

I remember a woman leaning on the window,

thinking death had loosed its bird in the house.

I remember the bird fell on the third day

and I had to line my hands with a nest of old straw.

That night they found a boy in the square

like a foal, smelling of onion grass.

Someone had let a black swan

into the barn where the boy was kept

and in the moonlight we saw dark plumage in his fists.

Say you were the wild gift, how it had quarreled

and come near. Say you had been torn.

 

[ The Anatomy of a Foot ; Leonardo da Vinci ]