Charlie Chaplin Impersonates a Poet

--Cornelius Eady

The stage is set for imminent disaster.

Here is the little tramp, standing

On a stack of books in order

To reach the microphone, the

Poet he’s impersonating somehow

Trussed and mumbling in a

Tweed bundle at his feet.

He opens his mouth: Tra-la!

Out comes doves, incandescent bulbs,

Plastic roses. Well, that’s that,

Squirms the young professor who’s

Coordinated this,

No more visiting poets!

His department head groans

For the trap door. As it

Swings away

The tramp keeps on as if

Nothing has occurred,

A free arm mimicking

A wing.

 

 

God Could Not Make Her a Poet

--Cornelius Eady

Thomas Jefferson said this, more or less,

After he read the musings of the clever African

Phillis Wheatley, a sensation of both the Colonies

And England, a black patriot, though a slave.

Whatever a black hand can build, he knew,

Could only be guided by a master’s vision,

Like this room of the mansion he probably

Wrote his opinion in—what black mind could

Dream in these proportions? And gather

The slope of these Virginia hills so lovingly

To his window? God could give her words,

But the subtle turn? Like giving a gull

A sack of gold.

 

 

------=--===-----[ Cold Day ; Rudolf Bér ]

 

Drops in pressure, now, a field of cold, a shift

       between rain and snow

The movement into this remembering

       of separate things, train sounding its horn, removing

       itself from the scene

Snow thickening the far bars of trees, graying them in

Blotting, dulling, gauzing over this dream

It is snowfalling, it is beauty-filling and cleansing

       this burn of words

       it is delivering something seeming to uplift and to begin

--from, Winter Journal: Disseminate Birds over Water; Emily Wilson

slant hand of beech leaves

shag of oaks before water

When did you go missing from me?

That passage between limb and slipped skin

gouged hickories, the ermine-bright birch

through all that is traveling slopeward

       circleting leaf through branch weave

       corymbs of curled leaves

       lone cedar document rising

Through trees that far land moves descant

the old rusts and pastes undershined

Don’t you ever think this is so strange?

the sibilant drift of dried leaves

the coming down all to some shambles

the encroachments on the innermost things

Don’t you feel how everything is strained beyond

       certain remembering?

--from, Winter Journal: Wind Thumbs through Woods; Emily Wilson

 

Am I not as God made me but stranger?

Made stranger still by what I have seen

at this hour of earth untended, unministered—

light caught up in the river’s grooved tread

That sun more like a mass grope out of emptiness

       and the black river weeds before it, torn and trained,

       rocketed and stark and stuck-to

The tall shadow of the willow grows forth....

....The fish in my skin relinquishes

Will I know then what I have become?

The river darkens from its end of trees closing in

There is the sun and this deep depression

Exiting as viewed in this river

--from, Winter Journal: The Sky Is the Lost Orpheum; Emily Wilson

[ View from the National Gallery ; John O'Connor (1881) ]

 

Fragment

--Thomas Hardy

At last I entered a long dark gallery,

Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side

Were the bodies of men from far and wide

Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

"The sense of waiting here strikes strong;

Everyone's waiting, waiting, it seems to me;

What are you waiting for so long? —

What is to happen?" I said.

"O we are waiting for one called God," said they,

"(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws;

And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;)

Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.

Yes; waiting, waiting, for God to know it." ...

"To know what?" questioned I.

"To know how things have been going on earth and below it:

It is clear he must know some day."

I thereon asked them why.

"Since he made us humble pioneers

Of himself in consciousness of Life's tears,

It needs no mighty prophecy

To tell that what he could mindlessly show

His creatures, he himself will know.

"By some still close-cowled mystery

We have reached feeling faster than he,

But he will overtake us anon,

If the world goes on."

The Haunter

--Thomas Hardy

He does not think that I haunt here nightly :

   How shall I let him know

That whither his fancy sets him wandering

   I, too, alertly go?—

Hover and hover a few feet from him

   Just as I used to do,

But cannot answer the words he lifts me—

   Only listen thereto!

When I could answer he did not say them:

   When I could let him know

How I would like to join in his journeys

   Seldom he wished to go.

Now that he goes and wants me with him

   More than he used to do,

Never he sees my faithful phantom

   Though he speaks thereto.

Yes, I companion him to places

   Only dreamers know,

Where the shy hares print long paces,

   Where the night rooks go;

Into old aisles where the past is all to him,

   Close as his shade can do,

Always lacking the power to call to him,

   Near as I reach thereto!

What a good haunter I am, O tell him,

   Quickly make him know

If he but sigh since my loss befell him

   Straight to his side I go.

Tell him a faithful one is doing

   All that love can do

Still that his path may be worth pursuing,

   And to bring peace thereto.

 

 

The Dead Man Walking

--Thomas Hardy

They hail me as one living,

But don't they know

That I have died of late years,

Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,

A pulseless mould,

A pale past picture, screening

Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,

Not in a loud hour,

For me ceased Time's enchantments

In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,

No catch of breath,

When silent seasons inched me

On to this death ....

— A Troubadour-youth I rambled

With Life for lyre,

The beats of being raging

In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing

The goal of men,

It iced me, and I perished

A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,

Through the Last Door,

And left me standing bleakly,

I died yet more;

And when my Love's heart kindled

In hate of me,

Wherefore I knew not, died I

One more degree.

And if when I died fully

I cannot say,

And changed into the corpse-thing

I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling

The time somehow

In walking, talking, smiling,

I live not now.

 

[ Night Sanctuary ; Otto Hesselbom ]]..

 

Chagall Dreams

--Michael Magee

He is carrying his beloved Bella

above the village green, tilting

her sideways like the prow of a ship,

while he paints with the hooves

of a cow. Using the chimney steeple

as his nib, he writes down the hour.

A fish with wings flies by,

violins play with their own bows,

a pendulum clock is swinging above

the sun with the aura of a candle.

O, if you could hold it, encircling it all;

it’s a world you could put your arms around.

A gouache of never-ending sky,

sea urchins in trills, rising into the ether

where women grow like Russian nesting dolls

and roosters crow to their glowing wives,

while everyone sings to the windmill of nature

in notes only a poet or a lover could decipher.

 

 

Out of Season

--Michael Magee

Winter slows us down toward sleep,

we burrow deep beneath our covers

dreaming of our private season.

We wake each day with weary eyes,

creep out to eat our daily bread,

arrange our collars in the mirror.

Today echoes the day before,

the empty stomach of the fireplace,

the ashes of too many winters.

Outside the life is marginal,

the morning sketched in charcoal,

branches lean as spider webs,

the wind stripping the throat bare,

knifing beneath the collarbone.

We hold the breath inside our lungs

and store up speech like kindling wood.

We stir the coals that flare within.

 

It is the Stars that Govern Us

--Michael Magee

The stars are pinned against the sky,

pale and frozen in the ivory moonlight,

the constellations rigid as Monarchs.

Now become the dream; a human specimen.

Prod them with your eyes, let your fingers

trace the patterns of the dipper's handle,

drink deeply from the vessel's mouth;

how cold the moonlight feels on your tongue.

Turn it over, let the mercury run

down your veins until your body stiffens,

arms and legs are fastening in the sockets,

eyes light the way, turning like beacons.

Know that you are hollow to the core,

feel the certain fusion of your hempispheres.

Your life is being pulled into its course,

piercing through your skin the silver axis.

Your heart is hardening, feel its weight,

the valves are tightening slowly into place.

Now let them fix you with their icy stares;

now let them gaze at your great constellations.

[ Christopher Burke ]

 

Gratitude Ode: Snowplow

--Jeffrey Bean

Kind yellow bull pacing

the borders of the neighborhood,

trampling the edges where city light

meets blue-black frozen fields. Push,

shove: same simple philosophy

of razor on face, groom and smooth.

Tireless whittler, while we sleep

you cut back into being

the grids our forebears dreamed

so in the morning we can glide

along our cold inheritance.

On the interstate, in your gray wake,

you scatter salt like a flower girl

flinging fistfuls of petals on a carpet

at a bride’s feet. Tang of steel and ice,

grit of sand and long work. In your belly:

a human mind, an illuminated map,

hands clutching a canister

of caffeine that for half a night

stays hot as a brain. While I sip gin

above a warm wood floor,

you flash your green and orange lights,

you carry night on your shoulders,

my good friend, my wild-eyed beauty,

path smasher. Across the places

you made for me, your constellations

of salt, I head toward Orion’s belt,

clear road forward I did nothing to deserve.

 

 

Snow Prayer

--Jeffrey Bean

       

Let sky's soft crush come in sleep.

          Let squirrels huddle, clouds shine. Please

a white-fresh fire. Please a kid's feast, her mouth

          stuffed with ice-ash, enlivened. May stoplights

flame across miles. May salt splash, trucks

          grumble. Let gray moths tremble,

dogs wallow and shove. Please smooth a field's

          face. Let shovel, let curse, let birds

hunch over wires and pines. Bring a lustrous

          season of bones. Let the old men

take down their parchment and pens. Let mummy cloth

          grip what is gone. Please a museum

of smoke, a hall of rooftops. Make me and the trees

          forget what we have lost, put on

our silver clothes in stillness, our skin shining,

          our rushing done. Let the ground be the sun.

 

 

Kid, Dreams are Little Curls of Light

--Jeffrey Bean

and memories are dreams. You can stand

on a bridge in warm wind, drink in the glitter

of the river, the heat shimmering over

grass, red flashes of birds between leaves,

and if you hold still, look hard, what you take

with you seems solid and true, like a secret

arm you've grown, invisible, and strong

for a while. But then light washes you

year after year till that shimmer is all

you remember, quick as a word, Kid,

how long is a moment? You know

better than I do. I'm drunk from counting days.

I once spent a miraculous night dancing

with friends on a bed, flaring music, big mouthfuls

of wine, and I woke up the next day full

of the long story. But now all I know is someone

dropped her cup onto a rug, right-side up,

and it sent a curl of red through the air toward

the books on my nightstand. I'm still waiting

for that flying wine to land.

[ Kamo Road ; TANAKA Ryōhei (1994) ] 

 

Unique Days

--Boris Pasternak

How I remember solstice days

Through many winters long completed!

Each unrepeatable, unique,

And each one countless times repeated.

Of all these days, these only days,

When one rejoiced in the impression

That time had stopped, there grew in years

An unforgettable succession.

Each one of them I can evoke.

The year is to midwinter moving,

The roofs are dripping, roads are soaked,

And on the ice the sun is brooding.

Then lovers hastily are drawn

To one another, vague and dreaming,

And in the heat, upon a tree

The sweating nesting-box is steaming.

And sleepy clock-hands laze away

The clockface wearily ascending.

Eternal, endless is the day,

And the embrace is never-ending.

 

I grew. Foul weather, dreams, forebodings

Were bearing me - a Ganymede -

Away from earth; distress was growing

Like wings - to spread, to hold, to lead.

I grew. The veil of woven sunsets

At dusk would cling to me and swell.

With wine in glasses we would gather

To celebrate a sad farewell,

And yet the eagle's clasp already

Refreshes forearms' heated strain.

The days have gone, when, love, you floated

Above me, harbinger of pain.

Do we not share the sky, the flying?

Now, like a swan, his death-song done,

Rejoice! In triumph, with the eagle

Shoulder to shoulder, we are one.

--Boris Pasternak

There'll be no one in the house

Save for twilight. All alone,

Winter's day seen in the space that's

Made by curtains left undrawn.

Only flash-past of the wet white

Snowflake clusters, glimpsed and gone.

Only roofs and snow, and save for

Roofs and snow-no one at home.

Once more, frost will trace its patterns,

I'll be haunted once again

By my last year's melancholy,

By that other wintertime.

Once more, I'll be troubled by an

Old unexpiated shame,

And the icy firewood famine

Will press on the window-pane.

But the quiver of intrusion

Through those curtains folds will run.

Measuring silence with your footsteps,

Like the future, in you'll come.

You'll appear there in the doorway

Wearing something white and plain,

Something in the very stuff from

Which the snowflakes too are sewn.

--Boris Pasternak

In the Christmas Night ; John Bauer (1913)

 

 

 

In Its Body

--Karina Borowicz

       

The snow taps a pattern

on my skin. I always think of snow

as a living thing,

have always believed in its body,

that snow's silence is its own choosing.

The breath of snow.

Inaudible, but so is the breath of any wildness

to our ears.

This is the first day it has dared come so close

in a long time, and I'm not afraid.

 

 

The Old Country

--Karina Borowicz

There was another country

always spoken of

with reverence.

I didn’t understand

why we’d left, I didn’t yet

understand the saw blade

of history. I was nourished

by nostalgia for a place

I couldn’t remember.

Wasn’t there a great forest,

a bison that would lap

milk from my hand?

The scrape of that secret

dark tongue.

A woodsman’s cottage,

shelves lined with carved

and painted birds.

Our fireplace was where

the stories were read

from a burning book.

Molten logs, lit from within:

See the shadow of a man

in there. See a terrifying

creature with wings.

See it all fall down.

 

Volta

--Karina Borowicz

       

One by one the three stray geese

heading away toward Mt. Tom swerve

and are pulled into the bold V

moving toward me over the splintered

remains of the cornfield.

It's almost Christmas.

The gouged mud of the field

has frozen solid, sharp

even through boots.

What do they feel through their feathers,

up there, that's out of our reach?

For a moment I imagine my hands pierced

by all those quills.

 

[ Randegg in the snow with ravens ; Otto Dix (1935) ]

 

from First Lesson: Winter Trees

--Michael Waters

These winter trees charcoaled against bare sky,

a few quick strokes on the papery

blankness, mean to suggest the mind

leaping into paper, into sky, not bound

by the body's strict borders. The correspondence

school instructor writes: The ancient

masters loved to brush the trees

in autumn, their blossoms fallen.

I've never desired the trees' generous

flowering. but prefer this austere

beauty, the few branches nodding

like... like hair swept over a sleeping

lover's mouth, I almost thought too fast. 

 

Reading Dickens

--Michael Waters

Not long after the war, my father

  bought, by mail, the complete set

    of the works of Charles Dickens,

each book bound in black and red

  imitation leather, the titles

    embossed in gold.

The set filled a small bookcase

  near an overstuffed chair

    where my father spent

languid evening in lamplight,

  feet propped on the hassock,

    while David Copperfield

and honest Nicholas Nickleby

  fought their unsure way

    through the wicked world.

He might have imagined me,

  his only son, not yet born,

    on his pay, learning to read.

Each time he finished a book,

  he slipped a dollar

    between the gilt-edged pages--

some nights, the money low,

  he and my mother bounced

    before the bookcase, shaking

each volume, the few bills

  falling, enough for dinner

    or the double feature.

Decades later, reading Dickens,

  I imagine those early years,

    their slow stroll home,

her arm circling his waist,

  the whistling, papery leaves,

    the bath she drew before bed

while he waited downstairs, reading

  Dickens happy to not be

    living some great adventure.

One Caw

--Michael Waters

Against the snow they're silhouettes,

These crows, how many hundreds

Burdening branches, these

Blunt-scissors-&-construction-paper

Kindergarten cut-outs, these

Rorschach blots, sloppy calligraphy,

Or jagged wounds, the sky torn,

But not political, if that's possible.

Then a blast scatters the murder

& any direction they flee is wrong.

Smoke on the hillside. The soldier

Stares, rifle tensed on one shoulder.

He's looking me over, wondering who I am.

I've seen this scene in films, Russian novels,

Old Master oils, Pathé newsreels.

Or on CNN—smoke in the city,

Schoolchildren scattered among rubble—

If that's possible—or blue sky, shade trees,

Suburban sprawl. The police car stops.

The boy stares. How many hundreds.

One caw, then silence.

Something horrible about to happen.