All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

--Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were flowers

with spinning blossoms.

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labors

and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters,

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

 

A Boat

--Richard Brautigan

O beautiful

was the werewolf

in his evil forest.

We took him

to the carnival

and he started

     crying

when he saw

the Ferris wheel.

Electric

green and red tears

flowed down

his furry cheeks.

He looked

like a boat

out on the dark

water.

 

[ Zonnegloed ; Emile Claus (1905) ]

 

 

The Name of that Silence is These Grasses in the Wind

-- JJJJJerome Ellis

The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage. White pines whistle skyward. “With our beings shaped to songs of praise,” writes the fifth-century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius. “What the scripture writers have to say regarding the divine names refers, in revealing praises, to the beneficent processions of God.” What processes from the instant? Find the ceremony in every instant. “Every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, inception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence.” What is the name of this instant? Where is the name of this instant? Swimming in the Rappahannock, clinging to the swollen belly of that ruby-throated hummingbird. 

“Bring anonymity,” writes poet Tim Lilburn.

This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed. 

 

Summer

--Conrad Aiken

Absolute zero: the locust sings:

summer’s caught in eternity’s rings:

the rock explodes, the planet dies,

we shovel up our verities.

The razor rasps across the face

and in the glass our fleeting race

lit by infinity’s lightning wink

under the thunder tries to think.

In this frail gourd the granite pours

the timeless howls like all outdoors

the sensuous moment builds a wall

open as wind, no wall at all:

while still obedient to valves and knobs

the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs

expounding hope propounding yearning

proposing love, but never learning

or only learning at zero’s gate

like summer’s locust the final hate

formless ice on a formless plain

that was and is and comes again.

 

If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby.

The pines support heaven upon their needles.

An aquamarine July strolls along the seashore,

Its ever-returning feet massaged by pebbles.

You dilute the climate with tears. Carving melons

Smells of vacation ... just as the inevitable captain.

Hello! I know this well: summer has come. Henceforth,

It will knock at my threshold. I will prepare. I change

Unnecessarily so many times each day. The soul

Immaculate gasps when you bring her to the glassy sea.

When summer ends, I will spill iodine. Let it smell,

To make the captain believe his sea is my flat.

--Lyudmyla Diadchenko (trans. Padma Thornlyre)

 

[ Landscape with a Red House ; Aristarkh Lentulov (1917) ]

 

Giving Up Reason

--Pam Rehm

It happens like this:

Majestically,

the pigeons spill down

a few steps away

on a hot summer’s day

on Broadway

jostling one another

All the dust and the mess

I’ve become

overtaken

by unevenness

Within the days

Between the hours

I’m bewildered by

all the dollars I’ve spent

on a life out of balance

when there’s all this

cosmic consciousness

within a kiss

and the 1 AM

that haunts the hand

in my pocket

searching for the key

hole

All those mistakes ago

Like everyone else,

I feed them

A few cents of bread

But it’s the thirst

no one thinks about

When I look out

YOU are

always

The landscape within

 

Acts of Love

--Pam Rehm

If endear is earned

and is meant to identify   

two halves

then it composes   

one meaning

which means   

a token

a knot   

a note

a noting in the head   

of how it feels

to have your heart   

be the dear one

 

Acts of Vexation

--Pam Rehm

The only thing under the sun

I can run to

is Ecclesiastes

for there is nothing gathered into one self

that can be kept

Want is humbled by death

as every purpose manifests it

Feeling this all my life

a piercing fright

gathers in the stomach's pit

This is it and this is not the end

of the road

for even despair is a kind of goad

to wisdom

The beauty of the world

over one's own anguish

The day that I lost all feeling

I was both a Fool and a Goddess

 

[ Butterflies ; Piroska Szanto ]

 

 

The Three Trees at Hudimesnil

--Nathan Spoon

I shouldn’t be doing this the room said. I didn’t

know rooms could do anything much less

talk about it I said. Well that’s on you the room

said but at least you know better now. A person

wearing a pink shirt gray jacket and beige pants

was stroking their chin. Another one was wearing

a mask. A big part of living is matching what

you do or say to what else is being done or said

by others. The difficulty is in knowing where to

draw the line. For example the philosophical and

conceptual mind desires to be included with its

casual counterparts such as the need for rest and

idleness. We are living through imperfect times

and clearly deserve all the shit we’ll give ourselves.

 

Envy Seas

--Nathan Spoon

Stemming brightly from a small jar : four flowers. It is like 

the ontology of being unaware of how many selves 

can be contained within a single individual. Be brief 

and then forget what happens next given the theory of 

the lyric driving sheep along in their natural orders. 

That character Parmenides started it sliding to plain 

after plain of natural versus dominator hierarchies like

these. Next came all the rest. Some days it is difficult 

to remember how much a stranger might remember.

Now the hero is gone. They were so great all four flowering

selves are still learning from them. Water is a yarn so hard 

that magic infuses even the corners and crevices of

every sticky law. People are always conflating love 

with new skies and new skies with cunning harmonies.

 

Cuddly in Camo

--Nathan Spoon 

Here comes rain on our roof!

It stays just long enough

to tickle me into writing this.

It stays just long enough

for everybody to get into

a pair of PJs (silk-cotton blend)

and then goes poof! At our best

we exude awesomeness. At our best

we are destined to turn pale

with the rest of humanity.

We are awesome and quick as

decomposing sticks at a trail’s

end. We bend dreams into circles

of green zone satire. We have

mahogany stuffed in our mahogany

ears. To all who are not us

we are sorry to say You’re welcome!

Nature thankfully adores a rumor!

A sunset! A glacier! Clouds

glimmer and cast inevitable

shadows off the groundswell

footrest. I remember you from

that time before we first met

when our eyes were wet

like summertime coasters

as we Ubered noiselessly

between pews. The aristocrats

are failing to panhandle via email.

One aristocrat is sleepily winding

through the face of another.

 

[ Summer Sky ; David Hockney (2008) ]

 

 

Giggle

--Shuntaro Tanikawa

“I gave birth to a fish”

says the woman

“I freed it in the sea right away”

 

Giggling under the breath

I am downtown

people are sick of other people

 

What shall we do now?

Shall we go see

our dead friends?

 

Here I am, not understanding anything

not knowing anything

I open a pocket paperback for now, but

 

All that comes to

my mind is:

It’s a fine day

 

The River

--Shuntaro Tanikawa

Earth-colored water hesitates, flows

I realize it is a river

The descendant of formless underground dwellers,

the water is heading toward the sea, that much I know

but I don’t know when and how it welled up

As the train crosses the river a young woman next to me yawns

There is something welling up, too, from the shadowy depth of her mouth

Suddenly I realize my brain is more dull-witted than my flesh

Feeling uneasy that I, the flesh, riding a train,

am made mostly of water

I, the brain, prop myself up with words

Sometime in a distant past, somewhere in a distant place

words were much less voluminous, but

their ties to the nether world were perhaps much stronger

Water remains on this planet

morphing into seas, clouds, rains and ice

Words, too, cling to this planet

morphing into speeches, poems, contracts and treaties

I, too, cling to this planet

 

from 62 Sonnets (excerpt)

--Shuntaro Tanikawa (t. by Martin Rock)

1 Shade Tree

In any case, joy lives inside this day

as in the heart of the new sun—

and in dining tables, and in guns,

and even in gods, though they remain oblivious.

In the tree’s shade, human hearts return

to embrace the day’s humility.

Freely, in this place,

one stands for a moment

to read the sky,

to sing the clouds’ song,

to pray, simply because it is time to summon pleasure.

I must forget

that which is beyond forgetting.

The sun glares. The trees glare back.

2 Yearning

In the shadow of the June sun, I accept my fate.

I’ve become alienated even from my own desires.

My yearning dashes about

vainly, with no time to look back.

I’ve made the mistake of loving without conviction.

All the while, just this charming exterior—

flattery without the knowledge of who flatters.

Fields and clouds are such simple things.

Soon, around my small grave,

only people, rocks, and sky will remain. And yet—

what immortal soul remembers tomorrow?

I’ve made the mistake of forgetting the gods.

Without life, how on earth can anything happen?

In the obscure early summer sun, my fate casts a shadow.

3 Homecoming

This was an alien land.

Through the side entrance of this miserable planet,

I was drawn to the darkness of its innermost part

by the profound, mysterious shapes of its rooms.

Who am I?

I have no means to return,

and will continue writing these dispatches

as long as I am here.

I have ceased yearning for other planets.

There is more amusement here than in eternity,

and yet someday, as a postscript, I’ll return.

Most likely, I’ll be called back unexpectedly

from this intimate, foreign land —

My own homecoming, and yet I will not be there.

10 Unknown Person

The car spoke.

The pencil spoke.

Chemistry, itself, spoke.

“You have made us,” they said. “You human.”

I wonder, what would Tanuki think of this?

What would the stars think?

What might the gods think

of this overflowing of passion, this foolish arrogance?

We move toward death, all in a line,

beginning with he who has forgotten how to be alone,

until the unknown person, here, is erased.

The wind blows over the earth at dusk and again over an unknown star.

The gods walk the earth at dusk, the earth which belongs to dusk.

Even over the unknown stars, they walk.

[ The Blue Chairs II ; Panayiotis Tetsis (1976) ]

 

 

To Assemble This Poem Properly

--Derek Mong

        begin from above. The first line wrote itself

in eraser. Your entrance refills with its cloud.

Can you feel now a dull tug on your pant leg?

You have shadows within shadows.

The poem strips them off like spare parachutes.

Watch their dark mouths briefly glisten

like guardrail reflectors. Leave silence

between them like warm loaves of bread.

Whatever small truth the poem hurtles toward

is already in your pockets. Release it here

and stop breathing. Watch it rain down

like disco ball light. If a story comes in, cold

from the margins, you alone can warm

its feet. To do so you must hold it

beneath the voice that trails you.

You offer the one it becomes on the ground.

The seamless transfer of two people

humming is one scenario in which the poem

successfully ends. In another these couplets empty

and you are a diver climbing their cool tubes

back up to the start. From there you see its finale

clearly, but do nothing to alter its course.

You'll soon crash through a tenth story window.

Do not worry. The poem's safe.

See its thousand shards glint at your feet.

 

What I Know about Epistemology

--John Surowiecki

As the light goes, go.

Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from

convention's good graces: learn, or someone

will have you filing files or writing writs,

demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge

door to door; someone might even drop

your lovely life into a factory and have you

derusting rings on the coolant-spouting

turntable of a vertical lathe.

It's best for everyone that what you know

is generally thought of as general knowledge.

You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars,

in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedrooms

where it whispers like a ribbon untying;

you can even find it in schools. But be careful:

it's dangerous, inescapable and exact

down to every atom of everything there is,

to every name each thing goes by and every

law each thing obeys. And the best part is,

you always know more than you know.

 

I want to talk about happiness and well-being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent and you feel at one with the world.

I want to talk about the early June weather, about harmony and blissful repose, about robins and yellow finches and bluebirds darting past the green leaves of trees.

I want to talk about the benefits of sleep, about the pleasures of food and alcohol, about what happens to your mind when you step into the light of the two o'clock sun and feel the warm embrace of air around your body.

--from 'The Brooklyn Follies'; Paul Auster

 

[ Untitled, June ; Stanley Whitney (1999) ]

 

 

Haiku- Spring 2025

 

with bitter coffee,

I watch the window cleaner

make a masterpiece

new but no so new,

the scent of cherry blossoms

falling in the rain

 

At Fulton Cemetery 

Moss filled inscriptions, spring time,

the bareness broken by a fertile

ground, common grackles foraging

their worms, The Conqueror Worm...,

as was said before so I can say again

through meanderings of my own 

within this middle age of life, mild

mundanity with a hint of obliviousness,

that dull momentum of city traffic,

while somehow, swift brevity praised

with hands I  build for an assured

sanctity of transience, extending

some hours where they'll provide

access for a few new memories,

to create off what has been made

before its all spent back down into 

the freedom of specious eternity,

which won't be known but digested

by what's been polished, fragrant,

born in thousandths with a ripe sun.

 

 

[ Hand ; Abidin Dino (1950) ]

 

Onions

--William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by   

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   

slithers and swirls across the floor   

of the sauté pan, especially if its   

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto   

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,   

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   

from the taut ball first the brittle,   

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,   

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on   

weeping as you go on in, through   

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   

in to the core, to the bud-like,   

acrid, fibrous skins densely   

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most   

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal   

comfort that infant humans secrete.   

This is the best domestic perfume.   

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed   

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual   

endurance. It’s there when you clean up   

and rinse the wine glasses and make   

a joke, and you leave the minutest   

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

 

I have been willing to consider the possibility that pleasure in itself, with regard for it as something that lessens our suffering, offers a consolation, a relief—I wanted to be able to avoid a vocabulary that insists on the secondariness or the tertiariness of pleasure. I would like to say that one of the primary reasons for being alive is to experience the pleasure of being alive. I would like to write as if it were a given to rise and look out the window on a particularly beautiful light on a summer morning, or on one of those winter mornings when snow has fallen and made the whole of New York City quiet, or you name your favorite such sight. To write of the experience of these things without any instinct to translate them into a relationship to humanism or God or philosophy or any idea, but simply because these impressions or perceptions were part of what it means to be human, and maybe because they are as close as we come to understanding the relationship of the human to the divine. That would be fine. I would love to be able to do that. Pleasure is in itself and by itself valuable and important.

--William Matthews (shortly before his death in 1997)

 

 

Minuscule Things

--William Matthews

There’s a crack in this glass so fine we can’t see it,

and in the blue eye of the candleflame’s needle

there’s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection

that could contain, like a microchip, an epic

treatise on beauty, except it’s in the eye of the beheld.

And at the base of our glass there’s nothing

so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous

patina like liquefied tarnish. It’s like a text

so short it consists only of the author’s signature,

which has to stand, like the future, for what might

have been: a novel, let’s say, thick with ambiguous life.

Its hero forgets his goal as he nears it, so that it’s

like rain evaporating in the very sight of parched

Saharans on the desert floor. There, by chance, he meets

a thirsty and beautiful woman. What a small world!

 

[ Irises ; Kateryna Bilokur ]