April

--William Carlos Williams

If you had come away with me

into another state

we had been quiet together.

But there the sun coming up

out of the nothing beyond the lake was

too low in the sky,

there was too great a pushing

against him,

too much of sumac buds, pink

in the head

with the clear gum upon them,

too many opening hearts of lilac leaves,

too many, too many swollen

limp poplar tassels on the

bare branches!

It was too strong in the air.

I had no rest against that

springtime!

The pounding of the hoofs on the

raw sods

stayed with me half through the night.

I awoke smiling but tired.

 

Dawn

--William Carlos Williams

Ecstatic bird songs pound

the hollow vastness of the sky

with metallic clinkings—

beating color up into it

at a far edge,—beating it, beating it

with rising, triumphant ardor,—

stirring it into warmth,

quickening in it a spreading change,—

bursting wildly against it as

dividing the horizon, a heavy sun

lifts himself—is lifted—

bit by bit above the edge

of things,—runs free at last

out into the open—!lumbering

glorified in full release upward—

                             songs cease.

 

[ Interior with Book ; Richard Diebenkorn (1959) ]

 

The Latest Freed Man

--Wallace Stevens

Tired of the old descriptions of the world,

The latest freed man rose at six and sat

On the edge of his bed. He said,

                                            “I suppose there is

A doctrine to this landscape. Yet, having just

Escaped from the truth, the morning is color and mist,

Which is enough: the moment’s rain and sea,

The moment’s sun (the strong man vaguely seen),

Overtaking the doctrine of this landscape. Of him

And of his works, I am sure. He bathes in the mist

Like a man without a doctrine. The light he gives—

It is how he gives his light. It is how he shines,

Rising upon the doctors in their beds

And on their beds… .”

                                 And so the freed man said.

It was how the sun came shining into his room:

To be without a description of to be,

For a moment on rising, at the edge of the bed, to be,

To have the ant of the self changed to an ox

With its organic boomings, to be changed

From a doctor into an ox, before standing up,

To know that the change and that the ox-like struggle

Come from the strength that is the strength of the sun,

Whether it comes directly or from the sun.

It was how he was free. It was how his freedom came.

It was being without description, being an ox.

It was the importance of the trees outdoors,

The freshness of the oak-leaves, not so much

That they were oak-leaves, as the way they looked.

It was everything being more real, himself

At the centre of reality, seeing it.

It was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself,

The blue of the rug, the portrait of Vidal,

Qui fait fi des joliesses banales, the chairs.

 

The Good Man Has No Shape

--Wallace Stevens

Through centuries he lived in poverty.

God only was his only elegance.

Then generation by generation he grew

Stronger and freer, a little better off.

He lived each life because, if it was bad,

He said a good life would be possible.

At last the good life came, good sleep, bright fruit,

And Lazarus betrayed him to the rest,

Who killed him, sticking feathers in his flesh

To mock him. They placed with him in his grave

Sour wine to warn him, an empty book to read;

And over it they set a jagged sign,

Epitaphium to his death, which read,

The Good Man Has No Shape, as if they knew.

 

Human Arrangement

--Wallace Stevens

Place-bound and time-bound in evening rain

And bound by a sound which does not change,

Except that it begins and ends,

Begins again and ends again—

Rain without change within or from

Without. In this place and in this time

And in this sound, which do not change,

In which the rain is all one thing,

In the sky, an imagined, wooden chair

Is the clear-point of an edifice,

Forced up from nothing, evening’s chair,

Blue-strutted curule, true–unreal,

The centre of transformations that

Transform for transformation’s self,

In a glitter that is a life, a gold

That is a being, a will, a fate.

 

[ Heaven and Earth ; Dana Levin ]

 

Essay On One Hand and On the Other

--James Richardson

Consider the palms. They are faces,

eyes closed, their five spread fingers

soft exclamations, sadness or surprise.

They have smile lines, sorrow lines, like faces.

Like faces, they are hard to read.

Somehow the palms, though they have held my life

piece by piece, seem young and pale.

So much has touched them, nothing has remained.

They are innocent, maybe, though they guess

they have a darker side that they cannot grasp.

The backs of my hands, indeed, are so different

that sometimes I think they are not mine,

shadowy from the sun, all bones and strain,

but time on my hands, blood on my hands—

for such things I have never blamed my hands.

One hand writes. Sometimes it writes a reminder

on the other hand, which knows it will never write,

though it has learned, in secret, how to type.

That is sad, perhaps, but the dominant hand is sadder,

with its fear that it will never, not really, be written on.

They are like an old couple at home. All day,

each knows exactly where the other is.

They must speak, though how is a mystery,

so rarely do they touch, so briefly come together,

now and then to wash, maybe in prayer.

I consider my hands, palms up. Empty, I say,

though it is exactly then that they are weighing

not a particular stone or loaf I have chosen

but everything, everything, the whole tall world,

finding it light, finding it light as air.

 

Any Evening

--James Richardson

A far bird sings again, a little further.

There is less and less difference

between your shadow

and the shadow inside you

and all the shadows,

and the evening softly taking hold

says It has always been evening

and now you know.

 

Theory of Everything

--James Richardson

Someone breaks down. There is reason

after reason after reason.

Some patient is cured, and dies of the cure.

Forms are submitted: natural causes.

They rise through the purest offices

like scentless prayers We believe.

Someone’s frustration sweeps his desk --

papers fly out. In due course,

they touch the floor, and already

troops move. From the bleeding front 

fevers spread, and opportunists like fevers, 

as evolution says they must.

Houses are emptied, farms stripped

and Death, chainsmoking commandant,

lights one child off another. Pardon: old story.

What causes are not natural?

Who can object to partly cloudy?

Who disagrees with the news as usual?

You're right, the world has no need for imagination.

It makes sense, it makes so much sense.

 

 

[ Modality Series, Spring Awakening 854A ; Jock Macdonald (1937) ]

 

About Joy and Loss

--Yu Xuanji (b 843 - executed 863)

(trans. Peter Levitt & Rebecca Nie)

A branch of bay laurel

        blends in elegance with dark mist,

alongside rivers, ten thousand peach trees

        blossom red in the rain.

 

For now, let’s get drunk with celebratory cups of wine

        and leave your sad gazing behind—

from ancient times until now,

        sorrow and joy have been just the same.

 

Breaking Willow Twigs

----Yu Xuanji (b 843 - executed 863)

(trans. Leonard Ng)

Morning after morning I say goodbye,

crying into my gilded hairpin;

the willow twigs have been plucked bare

in the spring breeze and mist.

How I wish West mountain

didn’t have any trees.

Then I’d be spared these tears,

endlessly falling.

 

Farewell

--Yu Xuanji (b 843 - executed 863)

(trans. Peter Levitt & Rebecca Nie)

Flexible, without its own form,

        water settles into what holds it.

Clouds arise from no-mind,

        but they are willing to return.

Spring winds spread melancholy

        over the river as the sun descends—

separated from her companions,

        a wild duck flies alone.

 

[ Cranes ; Huang Yongyu (1978) ]

 

Winter Haiku - 2024/25

holiday décor

replacing all the dark warmth

found through a poem

january freeze-

there's infinity and then

there's the coffee rings

a simple hello

from the bright full moon

in my back window

 

Another Snow Man

All the frozen molecules collecting

upon absence are winter words

and those without much comfort

still contain their solace, presence

slowly abounding as snowflakes

dropping in settlement, thought

upon branches while the moon,

where it can, highlights empirical

sufferance within each element,

what is right here while carrying on

with a rather particular endurance

of ice, just when it comes to this.

 

[ Tondo ; Hedda Sterne (1973) ]

 

 

Note to Self

-Bret Shepard

No matter the size of window,

nor the contrary force

with which it resists,

when the window breaks

the outcome is evening.

There is only one method

for self-reflection. To achieve

a quiet mind you must first

hear it speak. Then you must

talk back to your mind

until you talk it to death.

 

Living as Magnets

--Bret Shepard       

The mood of the oven—

      plastic is more than plastic

when it burns. Did we design this

room to smell of plastic? The open

floor-plan circles us into each other.

And who cares.

And who suffocates. Fields suffocate

as snowfall pulls our bodies outside.

It shouldn't be shameful to breathe.

Wheat stubble crunches as feet

sink into snow. The ground pulls us.

For as long as I can remember,

the ground has been pulling us,

as if iron laced our bones, promising

            last breaths, a few

last clear breaths.

 

Evening Traffic

--Bret Shepard

Some caribou take place with late hunger. If death is the mind

out of season, you hunt the sound of what it was

in the melt-filled space outside. You hear it beneath the lowest

tempo of need. You find it in your nature. Lost

on the trails of others, lost in reflection

most nights—memories like the melt that was once ice. What is

lost outside moves without you. The sound is one track playing

hours of your inside voice.

 

[ 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 ]