Curfew
–Carolyn Forché
The curfew was as long as anyone could remember
Certainty’s tent was pulled from its little stakes
It was better not to speak any language
There was a man cloaked in doves, there was chandelier music
The city, translucent, shattered but did not disappear
At the hour between the no longer and the still to come
The child asked if the bones in the wall
Belonged to the lights in the tunnel
Yes, I said, and the stars nailed shut his heaven
upon reading a critical review
–Charles Bukowski
it’s difficult to accept
and you look around the room
for the person they are talking
about.
he’s not there
he’s not here.
he’s gone.
by the time they get your book you
are no longer your
book.
you are on the next page,
the next
book.
and worse,
they don’t even get the old books right.
you are given credit for things you don’t
deserve, for insights that aren’t
there.
people read themselves into books, altering
what they need and discarding what they
don’t.
good critics are as rare as good
writers.
and whether I get a good review or a
bad one
I take neither
seriously.
I am on the next page.
the next book.
Small Moon
–Howard Nemerov
Coming home on a summer night
To the empty house – it’s like being
On colorless TV, on the stage set
For Return of the Grand Insomniac;
It is to watch your life as it would be
Without you: the old druggist in the darkroom
Developing someone else’s negatives.
Reminding me of an old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode in which the entire crew went crazy for some reason, and Captain Sisko becomes obsessed with a clock, exclaiming emphatically at one point, “It’s a clock!”
Old Clocks
–Rolf Jacobsen
Original
Gamle ur
Explorers Cry Out Unheard
–Marie PonsotWhat I have in mind is the last wilderness.
I sweat to learn its heights of sun, scrub, ants,
its gashes full of shadows and odd plants,
as inch by inch it yields to my hard press.And the way behind me changes as I advance.
If interdependence shapes the biomass,
though I plot my next step by pure chance
I can’t go wrong. Even willful deviance
connects me to all the rest. The changing past
includes and can’t excerpt me. Memory grants
just the nothing it knows, & my distress
drives me toward the imagined truths I stalk,
those savages. Warned by their haunting talk,
their gestures, I guess they mean no. Or yes.
A Life
–Henrik Nordbrandt
You struck a match and its flame blinded you
so you couldn’t find what you were looking for in the darkness
before the match burned out between your fingers
and pain made you forget what you were looking for.
Original
Et liv
Du strøg en tændstik, og dens flamme blændede dig
så du ikke kunne finde, hvad du søgte i mørket
før den brændte ud mellem fingrene på dig
og smerten fik dig til at glemme, hvad det var.
Swept Away
–Charles Simic
Melville had the sea and Poe his nightmares,
To thrill them and haunt them,
And you have the faces of strangers,
Glimpsed once and never again.Like that woman whose eye you caught
On a crowded street in New York
Who spun around after she went by
As if she had just seen a ghost.Leaving you with a memory of her hand
Rising to touch her flustered face
And muffle what might’ve been something
She was saying as she was swept away.
Field Guide
–Tracy K. Smith
You were you, but now and then you’d change.
Sometimes your face was some or another his,
And when I stood facing it, your body flinched.
You wanted to be alone—left alone. You waded
Into streets dense with people: women wearing
Book bags, or wooden beads. Girls holding smoke
A moment behind red mouths then pushing it out,
Posing, not breathing it in. You smiled
Like a man who knows how to crack a safe.When it got to the point where you were only
Him, I had to get out from under it. Sit up
And put my feet on the floor. Haven’t I lived this
Enough times over? It’s morning, but the light’s still dark.
There’s rain in the garden, and a dove repeating
Where? Are? You? It takes awhile, but a voice
Finally answers back. A long phrase. Over
And over. Urgently. Not tiring even after the dove
Seems to be appeased.
On a Shaker Admonition
–David Barber
