[ Constructivo ; Joaquin Torres Garcia (1933) ]

 

If I Could Tell You

--W. H. Auden

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play,

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more than I can say,

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,

There must be reasons why the leaves decay;

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,

The vision seriously intends to stay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,

And all the brooks and soldiers run away;

Will Time say nothing but I told you so?

If I could tell you I would let you know.

 

A Walk After Dark

-W. H. Auden

A cloudless night like this

Can set the spirit soaring:

After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

The things I did could not

Be so shocking as they said

If that would still be there

After the shocked were dead

Now, unready to die

Bur already at the stage

When one starts to resent the young,

I am glad those points in the sky

May also be counted among

The creatures of middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night

As more an Old People's Home

Than a shed for a faultless machine,

That the red pre-Cambrian light

Is gone like Imperial Rome

Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like

The stoic manner in which

The classical authors wrote,

Only the young and rich

Have the nerve or the figure to strike

The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad

Like the past and its wronged again

Whimper and are ignored,

And the truth cannot be hid;

Somebody chose their pain,

What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night

By no established rule,

Some event may already have hurled

Its first little No at the right

Of the laws we accept to school

Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,

Unconscious of final ends,

As I walk home to bed,

Asking what judgment waits

My person, all my friends,

And these United States.

 

Prime

--W.H.Auden

Simultaneously, as soundlessly,

Spontaneously, suddenly

As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind

Gates of the body fly open

To its world beyond, the gates of the mind,

The horn gate and the ivory gate

Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously

Quell the nocturnal rummage

Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favoured,

Ill-natured and second-rate,

Disenfranchised, widowed and orphaned

By an historical mistake:

Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being,

From absence to be on display,

Without a name or history I wake

Between my body and the day.

Holy this moment, wholly in the right,

As, in complete obedience

To the light’s laconic outcry, next

As a sheet, near as a wall,

Out there as a mountain’s poise of stone,

The world is present, about,

And I know that I am, here, not alone

But with a world, and rejoice

Unvexed, for the will has still to claim

This adjacent arm as my own,

The memory to name me, resume

Its routine of praise and blame,

And smiling to me is this instant while

Still the day is intact, and I

The Adam sinless in our beginning,

Adam still previous to any act.

I draw breath; that is of course to wish,

No matter what, to be wise.

To be different, to die and the cost,

No matter how, is Paradise

Lost of course and myself owing a death:

The eager ridge, the steady sea,

The flat roofs of the fishing village

Still asleep in its bunny,

Though as fresh and sunny still, are not friends

But things to hand, this ready flesh

No honest equal, but my accomplice now,

My assassin to be, and my name

Stands for my historical share of care

For a lying self-made city,

Afraid of our living task, the dying

Which the coming day will ask.

 

[ Prayer ; George Stefanescu ]

 

 

I Commit

--Mathew Zapruder

I commit to vote because

I'm pretty sure I grab

whatever I need from the world

and place it in my mind

which is getting incrementally

like the commons

undeniably more toxic and sad

yes I too walk around

considering my intractable problems

complaining it's too late

for more sonatas

everything is already too beautiful

music and anger won't save us

yet I commit to talking

earnestly with Sarah

about the school board

it will be night and we will be sitting

shoulder to shoulder 

at the old table we love

each holding a pencil

like grade school children left alone at last

then in the morning

before our son wakes

I commit to holding

this tiny bit of quicksilver

(quick in the sense of living

in its very molecular nature

it wants to usefully combine with yours)

in my palm and to walking

up to the blue mailbox

I pass most mornings

in that familiar silence

under those nameless little trees

when all things that surround me wait

 

Invocation

--Han VanderHart

I do not know whether it is morning         or mourning,

the name of the doves calling         in the hems of day

sometimes, I do not know         the spelling of a single word

or why the couple gesture in their car         making a left turn

tonight the clouds settle on the mountains:         pale pink

and then mist, and then         no mountain

almost every day I say to someone:         “it is not important”

but the wing of it         the beak         the onyx eye

is that I do not know this         either

 

Daybreak

--Bert Meyers

Birds drip from the trees.

The moon's a little goat

over there on the hill;

dawn, as blue as her milk,

fills the sky's tin pail.

The air's so cold a gas station

glitters in an ice-cube.

The freeway hums like a pipe

when the water's on.

Streetlights turn off their dew.

The sun climbs down from a roof,

stops by a house and strikes

its long match on a wall,

takes out a ring of brass keys

and opens every door.

 

[ Composition with Oval in Color Planes II ; Piet Mondrian ]

 

 

Continuum

--Anne Waldman

“beautiful things fill every vacancy”

                                  for C. D. Wright

         filaments of her gift

persistent mysteries

     palpable consciousness

a world of naming

    of ablutions in time

        fighter instinct

action, the pressing in,

        closing in

            heart thrums

for a powerful image

       dazzling light:

redemption!

       to reassess language, 

its tactility

   emotion, lyric, oblique 

irony twists, shifts by

   pulse & ear, resilient

her consummate body poetics

    echo into night

it hits us what is now absent

    from every bouquet

cut like flowers before their time

 

Light & Shadow

--Anne Waldman

Rest you by this various planet

or lounge in the sky lounge

be my guest I'll take you there

& introduce you around & show

you the sky ropes & the

city maps and the world as

flat as a map and the world

as round as a lively face

with head & atmosphere

and the sky as breath and the river

as chant and the sun as aria

aria for breathing and for loving

aria for the dancing light & shadow

light & shadow upon the dancing globe

light & shadow on the child's arms

in a park under trees & towers,

light on the fresh canvas, the painter

on the roof of West 2Ist Street

under thoughtful shadow,

shadow on spoons in the metal drawer

the zebra plant yearning for light

light for the eyes of Beethoven, shadow

inside the piano, mellow now violent

shadow out of the piano, power in the

light of the rain, sweet strings of light,

shadow under my desk, big black boots in winter,

light through friendly words

on shadowy telephone wires,

light in health & shadow in health,

illuminate moon rocks! knowledge from shadow,

light from darkest handwriting, print as light

and white paper, shadow

 

Philosophia Perennis

--Anne Waldman

I turned: quivering yellow stars in blackness   

I wept: how speech may save a woman

The picture changes & promises the heroine   

That nighttime & meditation are a mirage

To discuss pro & contra here is mute

Do I not love you, day?

A pure output of teleological intentions

& she babbles, developing a picture-theory of language

Do I not play the delicate game of language?   

yes, & it is antecedent to the affairs of the world:   

The dish, the mop, the stove, the bed, the marriage   

& surges forth the world in which I love

I and I and I and I and I and I, infinitely reversible   

Yet never secure in the long morning texture

A poor existing woman-being, accept her broken heart   

& yet the earth is divinity, the sky is divinity

The nomads walk & walk.

 

[ Soul and Tears ; Laurel Burch ]

 

 

Canto XXXIII

--Dan Beachy-Quick

slow gold, everlasting

forsythia behind the eyes it’s spring

spare no arrows, sparrows

empty the quiver of song

swallows quick allow the earth

a slow life never touched

hyacinth with his head wound never healing

a purple wound in the long spring behind the eyes

owl loud in the old dark wood

who darkens the night and how

in the galingale a lonely hour

the nightingale keeps awake all night

cassandra burns her hand on the cornerstone

the widow looks out the window

pulling apart her grief an empty loom

in the fig trees that fringe the field warblers

sing the dust that blurs the war

the crow puts on another crow’s armor, borrows

a crown, limps away to battle

how surrender but not submit is this the ethic

arms around the knees of whom, who’s there the air

the thrush from distant epochs hushes

the fatherless epic where the child cries

a jar on a hill fills with darkness, the nightjar

sucks milk from a sleeping goat

the logic of dew in the morning is not the logic of noon

a heedful retreat in the face of being

what dampens the blade dampens the root

the earth’s bitter turn, the wind blows west

and the wheat bends, but not the bittern

once again the robin woke me at dawn…

once again the robin woke me…

the cloud is a rock spiritually magnified

the mind is a cloud condensed truth forgets itself

what is narcissus doing now still looking down

into the pool so long ago become air what is the rain

 

Onta

--Dan Beachy-Quick

No ceremony for the initiation into facts—

Only patience that is not time. The fist

Of the mind grows roots and greens into a fern.

The fern of the mind suffers a solar age

And becomes what it suffers—the sun is not

A star, but a flower. A voice in the eternal

Honey says, What is needed is to think with the flower

Of the mind. Suffer is a word meaning many words—

Endure, experience. The flower endures the sun

By eating it. I only say I when no other word

Will do. What is the world is the world, what is

Not is not. That is the nectar thought. A hive

Or is it a cloud, knowledge gathering darkly above,

Hiding lightning, hiding stings. When the air

Clenches its fist and strikes a blow the sky is clear

Again. More clear than it’s ever been. The day-shy

Stars peek out behind the blinding veil, so very faint,

The snail’s glistening path draws her singular line

West behind the mountains, and already, it’s true,

The eye on its delicate horn trembles up in the east,

That snail, the moon. The humble mind hums.

Gnosis knows. There are no words. Just a tune.

 

Final Lesson in First Philosophy

--Dan Beachy-Quick

The sun brightens the clouds before it breaks

them apart. On the far side of the ocean

there are marble ruins of the broken

temples: the temple each cloud is. Ruin

is faith’s consequence—to house the force

that tears the house apart. The sun is

the yellow shield buckled on to the throat

of the sun-throated warbler—it says

with no words song’s unspeakable fact.

Silence is faith’s consequence—a world of

knowing that knowing is a world of not.

The book called The Sun held a fact one could love

but have no faith in. Close the book. Think,

thinker, in the dark. Moon—quiet the lark.

 

[ Morning ; Mikhail Vrubel (1897) ]

 

 

Clear Morning

--Louise Glück

I've watched you long enough,

I can speak to you any way I like--

I've submitted to your preferences, observing patiently

the things you love, speaking

through vehicles only, in

details of earth, as you prefer,

tendrils

of blue clematis, light,

of early evening--

you would never accept

a voice like mine, indifferent

to the objects you busily name,

your mouths 

smal circles of awe--

All this time

I indulged your limitation, thinking

you would cast it aside yourselves sooner or later,

thinking matter could not absorb your gaze forever--

obstacle of the clematis painting

blue flowers on the porch window--

I cannot go on

restricting myself to images

because you think it is your right

to dispute my meaning:

I am prepared now to force

clarity upon you.

 

Matins

--Louise Glück

The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves

of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.

Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils, Ice Wings,

........Cantatrice; dark

leaves of the wild violet. Noah says

depressives hate the spring, imbalance

between the inner and the outer world. I make

another case — being depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately

attached to the living tree, my body

actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace, in the evening rain

almost able to feel

sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is

an error of depressives, identifying

with a tree, whereas the happy heart

wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for

the part, not the whole.

 

Snowdrops

--Louise Glück

Do you know what I was, how I lived?  You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

 

[ Apple Blossoms ; Octav Bancila ]

 

 

Were the endlessly dead

to awaken some symbol,

within us, to indicate

themselves, they might

point to the catkins

dangling from the leafless

branches of the Hazel trees.

Or speak in drops of rain

falling to dark earth

in early spring.

Then we,

who have known joy

only as it escapes us,

rising to the sky,

would receive the

overwhelming benediction

of happiness descending.

--from Tenth Duino Elegy; Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Robert Hunter)

 

 

 ......even the most visible

of joys cannot be seen

until transformed-within.

Nowhere, beloved, does any

world exist save that within.

Life spends itself in

the act of transformation,

dissolving, bit by bit,

the world as it appeared.

Where stood a solid house

now stands a mental construct,

entirely conceptual, as though

its rafters supported a

rooftop in the very brain.

The spirit of our time has raised

storehouses of infernal powers,

edifices shapeless as the primal force

he wrenches from creation.

Temples are unknown to him.

It is we who try in secret

to perpetuate such wasteful

luxuriance of the heart.

Yes, if one thing survives

before which we genuflected,

which we served or worshiped,

it passes intact into the invisible.

Many, perceiving it no more,

fail to seize the chance to

build it up anew, with greater

pillars and more commanding statues

than in days of yore-within!

--from Seventh Duino Elegy; Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Robert Hunter)

 

Who are these rambling acrobats,

less secure than even we;

twisted since childhood

(for benefit of whom?)

by an unappeasable will?

A will which wrings, bends,

swings, twists and catapults,

catching them when they fall

through slick and polished air

to a threadbare carpet worn

ever thinner by their leaping:

lost carpet of the great beyond,

stuck like a bandage to an earth

bruised by suburban skies.

--from Fifth Duino Elegy; Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Robert Hunter)

 

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke; from The Selected Poetry Of Rainer Maria Rilke: Bilingual Edition [trans. by Stephen Mitchell]

[ Spring Call ; Xu Beihong (1938) ]

 

 

Haiku- Winter 2025/2026

that freight train driving

an obliviousness through

clouds of icy cold

what's brighter than all

the holiday christmas lights,

December's full moon

slowly oh slowly

the garbage can is filling

fresh with white snowfall

my mom's birthday--

all those branches holding strong

the weight of the snow

 

    Let It Be Song

As It Can Be Known

Outside With Yesterday

Snow as a rhythm

of color for the cold,

pale blue tone

that rests the ground 

of a prior time

that had a path

that is now blown

pointless direction,

side-to-side waiver, 

is such a dance, bound

to downward matter.

 

Inside With Today

Every word, each song

to a moment, flutters

this sheltered place 

with fabric emotion

from the cubbyholed

heart and its beating

codes of expression

which, being exaggerated,

also is all awhile waiting

upon a simplification

of silent starlight.

 

A Future With Tomorrow

Leave it to glow slowly

crepuscular, matutinal

and vespertine both,

a depth measured

not by numbers but

abundant light years

fathomed widely as

murmuring sounds,

applaused by shadows,

a distant forever 

timed in with color.

 

[ Melting ; Laszlo Mednyanszky ]

The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog

--Robert Bly

I never intended to have this life, believe me—

It just happened. You know how dogs turn up

At a farm, and they wag but can’t explain.

It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll notice

Your face has become deranged trying to adjust

To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.

That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.

Even your parents can’t believe how much you’ve changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you’ve ever held one, all feathers,

Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.

You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can’t quite get back to the winter sparrow.

Your life is a dog. He’s been hungry for miles,

Doesn’t particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.