Bring me the sunset in a cup,

Reckon the morning’s flagons up

And say how many Dew,

Tell me how far the morning leaps —

Tell me what time the weaver sleeps

Who spun the breadth of blue!

Write me how many notes there be

In the new Robin’s ecstasy

Among astonished boughs —

How many trips the Tortoise makes —

How many cups the Bee partakes,

The Debauchee of Dews!

Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,

Also, who leads the docile spheres

By withes of supple blue?

Whose fingers string the stalactite —

Who counts the wampum of the night

To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban House

And shut the windows down so close

My spirit cannot see?

Who’ll let me out some gala day

With implements to fly away,

Passing Pomposity?

--Emily Dickinson, No. 140 (1860)

 

Cocoon above! Cocoon below!

Stealthy Cocoon, why hide you so

What all the world suspect?

An hour, and gay on every tree

Your secret, perched in ecstasy

Defies imprisonment!

An hour in Chrysalis to pass,

Then gay above receding grass

A Butterfly to go!

A moment to interrogate,

Then wiser than a “Surrogate,”

The Universe to know!

--Emily Dickinson, No. 142 (1860)

 

As if some little Arctic flower

Upon the polar hem —

Went wandering down the Latitudes

Until it puzzled came

To continents of summer —

To firmaments of sun —

To strange, bright crowds of flowers —

And birds, of foreign tongue!

I say, As if this little flower

To Eden, wandered in —

What then? Why nothing,

Only, your inference therefrom! 

--Emily Dickinson, No. 177 (1860)

 

 

......[ Summer ; Alphonse Mucha (1896) ]

 

 

Haiku- Spring 2021

vernal equinox

morning songbird songs

a thousand miles wide

day in day out, yet

the unknown calligraphy

from dirty dog paws

slow rain alley music softening rust

clouds pass a little

rainy somewhat sunny-

just wasting time

red light green light,

the dog barks and morning sun

unfolds the tulips

allergy attack, 

no apologies required

from this floating world

 

Open

An observant pace in the afternoon's

scribbled thoughts from adequate

material welling up the horizon,

rhythmic spring, that energetic

pulse more bluntly, humbling light

unfurling the sallow to yellow

accents kindled with pigment, aloud

over some darkened roots revealed

now again through temperate air

without consensus, shifting hours

brought through each daily limb newly

sung in daybreak's widening chorus,

angelic as well as why not, heckling

chuckles, such thoughts abandoned

on winds over a yearly settlement

that went astray, of what was never

anymore what can be beforehand,

or anything other than just now,

fuchsia deep, embedded, stemmed,

for other possibilities always known

from those forgotten tastes in full

bloom, which is aromatic sense

spindled with rain falling down

in cadence of our hellos, goodbyes,

as it can never be truly as wished,

closed, but beside dreamed in sunlight,

forgivably piqued while left undone. 

 

 

[ Pastime Paradise ; Chick Corea ]

p - Chick Corea

orig. by Stevie Wonder

 

SONGBIRD

--John Brehm

Even though I have not seen it,

I know how it could be,

how when the skylark flees

from a falcon's quick pursuit

it will turn sometimes and begin

to sing, as if to say, "Being

eaten by a falcon is the last thing

in the world I'm worried about.

You cannot catch me, Tra, la, la.

I've got breath enough to waste

on a song like this, which you

may as well enjoy before I vanish

into air." And the raptor knows

it's true, knows that anyone

foolish enough to sing in such

a circumstance is quite beyond

ever being caught, and that for all

his hunger he'll be given just

a song, tumbling through the air,

as the body he desires disappears.

 

Layabout

--John Brehm

Do nothing and everything will be done,   

that's what Mr. Lao Tzu said, who walked   

around talking 2,500 years ago and   

now his books practically grow on trees   

they're so popular and if he were   

alive today beautiful women would

rush up to him like waves lapping   

at the shores of his wisdom.   

That's the way it is, I guess: humbling.

But if I could just unclench my fists,   

empty out my eyes, turn my mind into   

a prayer flag for the wind to play with,

we could be brothers, him the older one   

who's seen and not done it all and me   

still unlearning, both of us slung low

in our hammocks, our hats tipped   

forwards, hands folded neatly,   

like bamboo huts, above our hearts.

 

 

Something and Nothing

--John Brehm

       

There's something to be said

for having nothing to say,

though I don't know what

that is, or isn't, just as

there's something to be

known about not-knowing,

which I would tell you

if I could. There must be

something to be gained

by losing, a seed of victory

buried in every failure,

else I would not be here.

Clearly, there's something

to be desired about being

beyond desire, as the sages

never tire of telling us,

and nothing more fulfilling

than emptying yourself out—

no ground beneath your feet,

nothing to hold onto, no handrail,

no belief, only this bright self-

sustaining air, and a falling

that feels like floating.

 

 

........[ Popeye ; Beatriz Milhazes (2008) ]

 

 

Leaving the Earth

--Vinod Kumar Shukla

Leaving the earth,

mounting the air,

does the bird know

that it’s the earth it is leaving?

To fly above it,

you really have to go high.

And when they return

to settle on trees

do birds know

that it’s the earth they’ve returned to?

I don’t have wings.

There’s a small yellow butterfly

flying above the earth.

 

 

I Ride Upon a Tiger,

--Kirun Kapur

my bones are made of whales,

and when whales die, their songs.

My eyes are pits

of mangos, scraped clean of sweet.

From my feet plunge fifty streams—

the rush, the cold

exposes underworlds of fear.

Four stomachs cannot explain my hungers.

I have devoured myself. I tread upon my loves.

I have been strung with a necklace

of hummingbirds, my hair

in braids, my braids are tongues.

Atop my head, a crown of forty

languages, spoken all at once.

My breastplates gleam and thrum,

two armies, marching on. You,

who extracts the marrow and the light.

You, who sucks the sun and leaves

the bone eroded colder—Demon, disease,

dear fated one. Do you hear? I will come

to you on the back of a tiger.

Author’s Note

Years ago, I saw a tiger in a game preserve in India. I’d been driving down a jungle road, when, suddenly, there she was, lying in tall grass, sunning herself on a bluff. Her size, her suddenness, the lush gloss of her coat, the way she radiated well-being and power have never left me. Sometimes, when I’m falling asleep at night, I see her again, just for a second. In Hindu mythology, the goddess Durga is often pictured with a tiger. As a child, my aunt would sometimes take me to the temple on Friday, Durga’s day, to say a prayer. I was awed by both lady and beast. This poem began with that mix of myth, memory and dream. I wrote it at a time when I found myself in circumstances I couldn’t avoid or control–it’s an effort to summon an interior ferocity and majesty. I suppose I wanted to imagine a way to ride right down the throat of fear.

 

Deathwish

--Vivek Narayanan

I want to be sweet and clear and free, as half a line

of Auden, or an episode of the Powerpuff Girls;

I want to be dew, and honest with mine,

like Bob Marley, or Boesman the Boer.

I want to swing and get it right

at the speed of Pollock’s light,

I want to be deep like Zulu,

tight like Tamil,

and trust my sense of Sanskrit true

with little shame for its will.

I want to dabble in the fields

ignorant of what I was doing,

rub myself on the ruins

with a self-induced disease

and gleefully lapse

the hope to be heard. I want to fix

my favourite English words

into the forty-fifth century—

haw, for instance, or luminary—

hiding them in a snatch of prose…

passed over in silence

like Wittgenstein, no evidence

for myself or Laura Riding,

like Bharathiyar going mad composing,

I want to dissolve into our language

printing too little for my age;

I want to be obscure but not leaden,

flippant if I feel like it, then

I don’t mind being called poetically shitty

in a note from Manohar Shetty,

writing into the time we’ve borrowed,

singing from our utter boredom;

I want to hold in me the heat of my combustion

and leave this sweat-smear as a resurrection:

I want to be sweet and clear and free,

insouciant, insufferable, just like me.

 

 

..................[ Unknown ; Wu Guanzhong ]

 

 

Nothings A Gift

--Wisława Szymborska (trans.S Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)

Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.

I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.

I'll have to pay for myself

with my self,

give up my life for my life.

Here's how it's arranged:

The heart can be repossessed,

the liver, too,

and each single finger and toe.

Too late to tear up the terms,

my debts will be repaid,

and I'll be fleeced,

or, more precisely, flayed.

I move about the planet

in a crush of other debtors.

some are saddled with the burden

of paying off their wings.

Others must, willy-nilly,

account for every leaf.

Every tissue in us lies

on the debit side.

Not a tenacle or tendril

is for keeps.

The inventory, infinitely detailed,

implies we'll be left

not just empty-handed

but handless too.

I can't remember

where, when, and why

I let someone open

this account in my name.

We call the protest against this

the soul.

And it's the only item

not included on the list.

 

 

Advertisement

--Wisława Szymborska (trans. Stanisław Barańczak)

I’m a tranquilizer.

I’m effective at home.

I work in the office.

I can take exams

on the witness stand.

I mend broken cups with care.

All you have to do is take me,

let me melt beneath your tongue,

just gulp me

with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune,

how to take bad news.

I can minimize injustice,

lighten up God’s absence,

or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.

What are you waiting for—

have faith in my chemical compassion.

You’re still a young man/woman.

It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.

Who said

you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss.

I’ll cushion it with sleep.

You’ll thank me for giving you

four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul.

There are no other takers.

There is no other devil anymore.

 

 

No Title Required

--Wislawa Szymborska (trans. by S Baranczak/C Cavanagh)

It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree

beside a river

on a sunny morning.

It's an insignificant event

and won't go down in history.

It's not battles and pacts,

where motives are scrutinized,

or noteworthy tyrannicides.

And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.

And since I'm here

I must have come from somewhere,

and before that

I must have turned up in many other places,

exactly like the conquerors of nations

before setting sail.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,

its Friday before Saturday,

its May before June.

Its horizons are no less real

than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.

This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.

The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.

The path leading through the bushes

wasn't beaten last week.

The wind had to blow the clouds here

before it could blow them away.

And though nothing much is going on nearby,

the world is no poorer in details for that.

It's just as grounded, just as definite

as when migrating races held it captive.

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.

Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.

Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,

but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.

Ants stitching in the grass.

The grass sewn into the ground.

The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.

Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air

on wings that are its alone,

and a shadow skims through my hands

that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.

When I see such things, I'm no longer sure

that what's important

is more important than what's not.

[via the beauty we love]

 

.[ Giverny, le jardin de Monet ; Pedro Roldán Molina ]

[via dreaming in the deep south]

 

In Perpetual Spring

--Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and the lamb cuddling up.

The snake and the snail, kissing.

Even the prick of the thistle,   

queen of the weeds, revives   

your secret belief

in perpetual spring,

your faith that for every hurt   

there is a leaf to cure it.

 

Bon Courage

--Amy Gerstler

Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears

to a young girl one morning as she combs

the dreams out of   her hair. The trees rustle

and whisper, shimmer and hiss. The forest

opens and closes, a door loose on its hinges,

banging in a strong wind. Everything in the dim

kitchen: the basin, the jug, the skillet, the churn,

snickers scornfully. In this way a maiden

is driven toward the dangers of a forest,

but the forest is our subject, not this young girl.

She’s glad to lie down with trees towering all around.

A certain euphoria sets in. She feels molecular,

bedeviled, senses someone gently pulling her hair,

tingles with kisses she won’t receive for years.

Three felled trees, a sort of chorus, narrate

her thoughts, or rather channel theirs through her,

or rather subject her to their peculiar verbal

restlessness ...    our deepening need for non-being intones

the largest and most decayed tree, mid-sentence.

I’m not one of you squeaks the shattered sapling,

blackened by lightning. Their words become metallic

spangles shivering the air. Will I forget the way home?

the third blurts. Why do I feel like I’m hiding in a giant’s nostril?

the oldest prone pine wants to know. Are we being   freed

from matter? the sapling asks. Insects are well-intentioned,

offers the third tree, by way of consolation. Will it grow

impossible to think a thought through to its end? gasps the sapling,

adding in a panicky voice, I’m becoming spongy! The girl

feels her hands attach to some distant body. She rises

to leave, relieved these trees are not talking about her.

 

Lost In the Forest

--Amy Gerstler

I’d given up hope. Hadn’t eaten in three

days. Resigned to being wolf meat ...

when, unbelievably, I found myself in

a clearing. Two goats with bells

round their necks stared at me:

their pupils like coin slots

in piggy banks. I could have gotten

the truth out of those two,

if goats spoke. I saw leeks

and radishes planted in rows;

wash billowing on a clothesline ...

and the innocuous-looking cottage

in the woods with its lapping tongue

of a welcome mat slurped me in.

In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex

is barely discernible pours a glass

of fraudulent milk. I’m so hungry

my hand shakes. But what is this liquid?

“Drink up, sweetheart,” she says,

and as I wipe the white mustache

off with the back of my hand:

“Atta girl.” Have I stumbled

into the clutches of St. Somebody?

Who can tell. “You’ll find I prevail here

in my own little kingdom,” she says as

she leads me upstairs—her bony grip

on my arm a proclamation of ownership,

as though I've always been hers.

 

 

.....[ The Reminiscent Ghost;  Francis A Willey ]

 

When You Lift the Avocado to Your Mouth

--Troy Jollimore

What matters is that when you lift the avocado to your mouth

you bend all your senses toward it, yet

allow a sliver of its flavor to escape

your lips—not into the muffled ether

of radio static that deadens the air

around us, but into the nearly real lips

of those who have gone before us, the pale

blue shadow-forms of the ancestors

who no longer have bodies to touch or to taste with,

to sing or to fuck with, but who still recall

what it is to touch or taste or sing or fuck

and who long for it and, in their longing, attach

themselves to the living, incarnated ones,

in the hope of feeling, once more, by a process

that must be mostly imagination, some spark

of sensation, the thinnest, outermost layer

of the experience of hearing the ocean,

of watching the moon rise over a city,

of kissing a woman, of stroking the fur

of a cat as it stretches to meet your palm,

of holding a pen, of smelling the pine-scented

breezes at dusk, of gazing deep into

a fire, a well, the eyes of a lover,

of tasting a teardrop, of tasting avocado.