Month: April 2018

hedgehog jammed

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An odd convergence of thoughts and imagery appears. That which appears in this Larkin poem (a hedgehog jammed into the lawnmower blades), that which I conjure up when I think of the Czech poem “Half a Hedgehog” and the dual thought of a Nemerov poem referring to “power mowers” and a book I read that dealt with language misunderstanding/mishearing (in which someone had misunderstood and written the term “paramour” as “power mower”).

Oddly, as irreverent as it may seem, I discovered this poem the same day as someone close to me lost a very close friend suddenly. I was preparing it to include here when I heard the news of this shocking death, and suddenly these words had new and urgent relevance: “the first day after a death, the new absence/Is always the same; we should be careful/Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time.”

The Mower
–Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Photo by Tadeusz Lakota on Unsplash

hedgehogs

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Half a Hedgehog
–Miroslav Holub
The rear half had been run over,
leaving the head and thorax
and the front legs of the hedgehog shape.

A scream from a cramped-open
jaw. The scream of the mute is
more horrible than the silence after a flood,
when even black swans float
belly upwards.

And even if some hedgehog doctor were
to be found in a hollow trunk or under the leaves
in a beechwood there’d be no hope
for that mere half on Road E12.

In the name of logic,
in the name of the theory of pain,
in the name of the hedgehog god the father, the son
and the holy ghost amen,
in the name of games and unripe raspberries,
in the name of tumbling streams of love
ever different and ever bloody,
in the name of the roots which over-grow
the heads of aborted foetuses,
in the name of satanic beauty,
in the name of skin bearing human likeness,
in the name of all halves
and double helices, or purines
and pyrimidines

we tried to run over
the hedgehog’s head with the front wheel.

And it was like guiding a lunar module
from a planetary distance,
from a control centre seized
by a cataleptic sleep.

And the mission failed. I got out
and found a heavy piece of brick.
Half the hedgehog continued screaming. And now
the scream turned into speech,

prepared by
the vaults of our tombs:
Then death will come and it will have your eyes.

Photo by Piotr Łaskawski on Unsplash

“cloud where he was hidden”

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The Recognitions
–Irving Feldman
Not the god, though it might have been,
savoring some notion of me
and exciting the cloud where he was hidden
with impetuous thunder
strokes of summoning
—
it was merely you who recognized me,
speaking my name in such a tone
I knew you had been thinking it
a long, long time, and now revealed yourself
in this way. Because of this, suddenly
who I was was precious to me.

Photo by Medena Rosa on Unsplash

 

power mower

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Suburban Prophecy
–Howard Nemerov
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Screen Shot 2018-04-02 at 11.40.12

Photo by Christopher Groff on Unsplash

discovered cure

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Cure
–Marin Sorescu
When the cure for a disease is discovered
those who have died of the illness
ought to rise again
And go on living
All the rest of their days
Until they fall sick with another disease
whose cure has not yet been discovered.

Photo by Matt Briney on Unsplash

strange fate of mannequins

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It is no secret that I have always been a bit afraid of mannequins. They continue to freak me out.

To the Mannequins
–Howard Nemerov
Adorable images,
Plaster of Paris
Lilies of the field,
You are not alive, therefore
Pathos will be out of place.

But I have learned
A strange fact about your fate,
And it is this:

After you go out of fashion
Beneath your many fashions,
Or when your elbows and knees
Have been bruised powdery white,
So that you are no good to anybody—

They will take away your gowns,
Your sables and bathing suits,
Leaving exposed before all men
Your inaccessible bellies
And pointless nubilities.

Movers will come by night
And load you all into trucks
And take you away to the Camps,
Where soldiers, or the State Police,
Will use you as targets
For small-arms practice,

Leading me to inquire,
Since pathos is out of place,
What it is that they are practicing.

trembling

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WHOSE SCENE?
—Ruth Stone

I crawl up the couch leg feeling
Your blond hair, your bloomy skin.
What do I want from you, giant?
I am afraid. But I laugh; I enjoy.
You fabricate. The words and music tremble
And thunder my thin blood.
The air is heated; odor of indian oil.
Trussed bed where bodies grapple; arms, legs,
Breasts, balls; the giants copulating.
I crawl up a wall and open my wings
And flutter down in borrowed ecstasy.

But then not open ended as it ought to be;
The beer, the refrigerator, the dull
Sequel shrinks to five rooms
In a treeless suburb. And cockroach that I am,
I go behind the baseboard to fornicate and spread
Myself, ancient as the ovulum and sperm.

Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash

speed of darkness

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The Speed of Darkness
–Muriel Rukeyser

I

Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis
Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt
Whoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child.

Resurrection music, silence, and surf.

II

No longer speaking
Listening with the whole body
And with every drop of blood
Overtaken by silence

But this same silence is become speech
With the speed of darkness.

III

Stillness during war, the lake.
The unmoving spruces.
Glints over the water.
Faces, voices. You are far away.
A tree that trembles.

I am the tree that trembles and trembles.

IV

After the lifting of the mist
after the lift of the heavy rains
the sky stands clear
and the cries of the city risen in day
I remember the buildings are space
walled, to let space be used for living
I mind this room is space
this drinking glass is space
whose boundary of glass
lets me give you drink and space to drink
your hand, my hand being space
containing skies and constellations
your face
carries the reaches of air
I know I am space
my words are air.

V

Between between
the man : act exact
woman : in curve senses in their maze
frail orbits, green tries, games of stars
shape of the body speaking its evidence

VI

I look across at the real
vulnerable involved naked
devoted to the present of all I care for
the world of its history leading to this moment.

VII

Life the announcer.
I assure you
there are many ways to have a child.
I bastard mother
promise you
there are many ways to be born.
They all come forth
in their own grace.

VIII

Ends of the earth join tonight
with blazing stars upon their meeting.
These sons, these sons
fall burning into Asia.

IX

Time comes into it.
Say it. Say it.
The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.

X

Lying
blazing beside me
you rear beautifully and up—
your thinking face—
erotic body reaching
in all its colors and lights—
your erotic face
colored and lit—
not colored body-and-face
but now entire,
colors lights the world thinking and reaching.

XI

The river flows past the city.

Water goes down to tomorrow
making its children I hear their unborn voices
I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

XII

Big-boned man young and of my dream
Struggles to get the live bird out of his throat.
I am he am I? Dreaming?
I am the bird am I? I am the throat?

A bird with a curved beak.
It could slit anything, the throat-bird.
Drawn up slowly. The curved blades, not large.
Bird emerges wet being born
Begins to sing.

XIII

My night awake
staring at the broad rough jewel
the copper roof across the way
thinking of the poet
yet unborn in this dark
who will be the throat of these hours.
No. Of those hours.
Who will speak these days,
if not I,
if not you?

Photo by Calwaen Liew on Unsplash

this is futile

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Futility
–Ante Popovski
Words are not life, and therefore they are eternal.
Surely there must have been a serious reason
Why among all the languages of the world
Only the Gypsy language
Has no word for “to have”.
I make a note of that. But this is futile.
You can’t write on your soul using a pen.

Photo by MJ S on Unsplash

finally it’s everything

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A Love Letter
–Julio Cortázar
Everything I’d want from you
is finally so little

because finally it’s everything

like a dog going by, or a hill,
those meaningless things, mundane,
wheat ear and long hair and two lumps of sugar,
the smell of your body,
whatever you say about anything
with or against me,

all that which is so little
I want from you because I love you

May you look beyond me,
may you love me with violent disregard
for tomorrow, let the cry
of your coming explode
in the boss’s face in some office

and let the pleasure we invent together
be one more sign of freedom.

Original

Una carta de amor
Todo lo que de vos quisiera
es tan poco en el fondo
porque en el fondo es todo,

como un perro que pasa, una colina,
esas cosas de nada, cotidianas,
espiga y cabellera y dos terrones,
el olor de tu cuerpo,
lo que decís de cualquier cosa,
conmigo o contra mía,

todo eso es tan poco,
yo lo quiero de vos porque te quiero.

Que mires más allá de mí,
que me ames con violenta prescindencia
del mañana, que el grito
de tu entrega se estrelle
en la cara de un jefe de oficina,

y que el placer que juntos inventamos
sea otro signo de la libertad.

Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash