Month: December 2020

the cats will know

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The Cats Will Know

–Cesare Pavese

Rain will fall again
on your smooth pavement,
a light rain like
a breath or a step.
The breeze and the dawn
will flourish again
when you return,
as if beneath your step.
Between flowers and sills
the cats will know.
There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday’s parties.
You too will make gestures.
You’ll answer with words—
face of springtime,
you too will make gestures.
The cats will know,
face of springtime;
and the light rain
and the hyacinth dawn
that wrench the heart of him
who hopes no more for you—
they are the sad smile
you smile by yourself.
There will be other days,
other voices and renewals.
Face of springtime,
we will suffer at daybreak

instructions to vampires

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Instructions to Vampires
–Fleur Adcock

I would not have you drain
with your sodden lips the flesh that has fed mine,
and leech his bubbling blood to a decline:
not that pain;

nor visit on his mind
that other desiccation, where the wit
shrivels: so to be humbled in not fit
for his kind.

But use acid or flame,
secretly, to brand or cauterise;
and on the soft globes of his mortal eyes
etch my name.

.Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

for the stranger

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For the Stranger
–Carolyn Forché

Although you mention Venice
keeping it on your tongue like a fruit pit
and I say yes, perhaps Bucharest, neither of us
really knows. There is only this train
slipping through pastures of snow,
a sleigh reaching down
to touch its buried runners.
We meet on the shaking platform,
the wind’s broken teeth sinking into us.
You unwrap your dark bread
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm.
We listen to mothers scolding
children in English as if
we do not understand a word of it–
sit still, sit still.

There are few clues as to where
we are: the baled wheat scattered
everywhere like missing coffins.
The distant yellow kitchen lights
wiped with oil.
Everywhere the black dipping wires
stretching messages from one side
of a country to the other.
The men who stand on every border
waving to us.

Wiping ovals of breath from the windows
in order to see ourselves, you touch
the glass tenderly wherever it holds my face.
Days later, you are showing me
photographs of a woman and children
smiling from the windows of your wallet.

Each time the train slows, a man
with our faces in the gold buttons
of his coat passes through the cars
muttering the name of a city. Each time
we lose people. Each time I find you
again between the cars, holding out
a scrap of bread for me, something
hot to drink, until there are
no more cities and you pull me
toward you, sliding your hands
into my coat, telling me
your name over and over, hurrying
your mouth into mine.
We have, each of us, nothing.
We will give it to each other.

Photo by Victor He on Unsplash

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late-night inquiry

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Late-Night Inquiry
–Charles Simic

Have you introduced yourself to yourself
The way a visitor at your door would?
Have you found a seat in your room
For every one of your wayward selves
To withdraw into their own thoughts
Or stare into space as if it were a mirror?
Do you have a match you can light
To make their shadows leap on the wall
Or float dream-like on the ceiling
The way leaves do on summer afternoons,
Before they take their bow and the curtain drops
As the match burns down to your fingertips?

 

Photo by Maik Garbade on Unsplash

lobsters

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The Story Behind Lobsters
–Clementine von Radics

The story behind lobsters
is that they weren’t thought of as cuisine
until the nineteenth century. Before that
they were considered peasant food
and most often served in prisons.

The story behind diamonds
is that they were just rocks until 1938
when a marketing campaign
forever linked them with love.

The story behind us
is that you said I won’t wait forever
and I didn’t really listen.

The story behind art
is that no one calls it a masterpiece
until it has already been bought,
until it is hanging on the wall
in someone else’s home.

The story behind us
is that until I lost you I had no idea
what you were worth.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

solitude

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Solitude

–Caroline Caddy

It’s something they carry with them
                      – explorers  night shifts  seamen –
like a good pair of binoculars
or a camera case
                perfectly and deeply compartmented.
It has a quiet patina
that both absorbs and reflects
                           like a valuable instrument
                                                you have to sign for
 – contract with alone –
                     and at the end of the voyage
                                                          you get to keep.
Sometimes it’s very far away.
Sometimes so close
               at first you think the person next to you
is picking up  putting down
                                 a personal cup
                                    a book in another language
before you realise what
– when talk has moved off
                               leaning its arms
                                       on someone else’s table –
is being
handed to you.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

feeling of the world

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Feeling of the World
–Carlos Drummond de Andrade

I have just two hands
And the feeling of the world,
But I am teeming with slaves,
my memories are streaming
and my body yields
at the crossroads of love.

When I get up, the sky
will be dead and plundered,
I’ll be dead myself,
my desire and the songless
swamp dead.

My comrades didn’t tell me
that a war was on
and I needed
To bring arms and food.
I feel scattered,
before the borders,
and I humbly beseech
your pardon.

When the bodies pass
I’ll remain alone
unraveling the memory
of the herald, the widow and the microscope man
who lived in the tent
and were missing
the next morning

that morning, more night than night itself.

Translation

Sentimiento do mundo

Tenho apenas duas mãos
e o sentimento do mundo,
mas estou cheio de escravos,
minhas lembranças escorrem
e o corpo transige
na confluência do amor.
Quando me levantar, o céu
estará morto e saqueado,
eu mesmo estarei morto,
morto meu desejo, morto
o pântano sem acordes.
Os camaradas não disseram
que havia uma guerra
e era necessário
trazer fogo e alimento.
Sinto-me disperso,
anterior a fronteiras,
humildemente vos peço
que me perdoeis.
Quando os corpos passarem,
eu ficarei sozinho
desfiando a recordação
do sineiro, da viúva e do microscopista
que habitavam a barraca
e não foram encontrados
ao amanhecer esse amanhecer
mais noite que a noite.

Photo by Ira Huz on Unsplash

vertigo

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Vertigo

–Les Murray

Last time I fell in a shower room
I bled like a tumbril dandy
and the hotel longed to be rid of me.
Taken to the town clinic, I
described how I tripped on a steel rim
and found my head in the wardrobe.
Scalp-sewn and knotted and flagged
I thanked the Frau Doktor and fled,
wishing the grab-bar of age might
be bolted to all civilization
and thinking of Rome’s eighth hill
heaped up out of broken amphorae.
When, anytime after sixty,
or anytime before, you stumble
over two stairs and club your forehead
on rake or hoe, bricks or fuel-drums,
that’s the time to call the purveyor
of steel pipe and indoor railings,
and soon you’ll be grasping up landings
having left your balance in the car
from which please God you’ll never
see the launchway of tires off a brink.
Later comes the sunny day when
street detail whitens blindly to mauve
and people hurry you, or wait, quiet.
Photo by fan yang on Unsplash

the time of love

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The Time of Love
–Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Translation

Amor e seu tempo

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

memory of grief

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Memory of Grief
–Laura Kasischke

I remember a four-legged animal strolling through a fire. Poverty in
a prom dress. A girl in a bed trying to tune the AM radio to the voices
of the dead. A temple constructed out of cobwebs into which the
responsibilities of my daily life were swept. Driving through a Stop
sign waving to the woman on the corner, who looked on, horrified. 
 
But I remember, too, the way,
loving everyone equally because each of us would die,
I walked among the crowds of them, wearing
my disguise.
And how, when it was over, I found myself
here again
with a small plastic basket on my arm, just 
 
another impatient immortal
sighing and fidgeting in an unmoving line.
 
Photo by Wim Arys on Unsplash