Written by
Rainer Maria Rilke |
Suddenly from all the green around you
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window
in total silence.
From the nearby wood
you hear the urgent whistling of a plover
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice whose fierce request the downpour
will grant.
The walls with their ancient portraits glide
away from us cautiously as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.
And reflected on the faded tapestries now:
the chill uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.
|
Written by
Robert Browning |
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)
I
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
II
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
III
Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
- I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.
IV
But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
V
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive trees.
VI
Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
VII
Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in her conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!
VIII
All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.
IX
Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) "the skirts of Saint Paul has
reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.
"
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.
X
But bless you, it's dear—it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It's a horror to think of.
And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
|
Written by
Andrew Hudgins |
Despite the noon sun shimmering on Court Street,
each day I leave my desk, and window-shop,
waste time, and use my whole lunch hour to stroll
the route the marchers took.
The walk is blistering--
the kind of heat that might make you recall
Nat Turner skinned and rendered into grease
if you share my cheap liberal guilt for sins
before your time.
I hold it dear.
I know
if I had lived in 1861
I would have fought in butternut, not blue
and never known I'd sinned.
Nat Turner skinned
for doing what I like to think I'd do
if I were him.
Before the war
half-naked coffles were paraded to Court Square,
where Mary Chesnut gasped--"seasick"--to see
a bright mulatto on the auction block,
who bantered with the buyers, sang bawdy songs,
and flaunted her green satin dress, smart shoes,
I'm sure the poor thing knew who'd purchase her,
wrote Mrs.
Chestnut, who plopped on a stool
to discipline her thoughts.
Today I saw,
in that same square, three black girls pick loose tar,
flick it at one another's new white dresses,
then squeal with laughter.
Three girls about that age
of those blown up in church in Birmingham.
The legendary buses rumble past the church
where Reverend King preached when he lived in town,
a town somehow more his than mine, despite
my memory of standing on Dexter Avenue
and watching, fascinated, a black man fry
six eggs on his Dodge Dart.
Because I watched
he gave me one with flecks of dark blue paint
stuck on the yolk.
My mother slapped my hand.
I dropped the egg.
And when I tried to say
I'm sorry, Mother grabbed my wrist and marched me
back to our car.
I can't hold to the present.
I've known these streets, their history, too long.
Two months before she died, my grandmother
remembered when I'd sassed her as a child,
and at the dinner table, in midbite,
leaned over, struck the grown man on the mouth.
And if I hadn't said I'm sorry,fast,
she would have gone for me again.
My aunt,
from laughing, choked on a piece of lemon pie.
But I'm not sure.
I'm just Christian enough
to think each sin taints every one of us,
a harsh philosophy that doesn't seem
to get me very far--just to the Capitol
each day at noon, my wet shirt clinging to my back.
Atop its pole, the stars-and-bars,
too heavy for the breeze, hangs listlessly.
Once, standing where Jeff Davis took his oath,
I saw the Capitol.
He shrank into his chair,
so flaccid with paralysis he looked
like melting flesh, white as a maggot.
He's fatter now.
He courts black votes, and life is calmer than
when Muslims shot whites on this street, and calmer
than when the Klan blew up Judge Johnson's house
or Martin Luther King's.
My history could be worse.
I could be Birmingham.
I could be Selma.
I could be Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Instead, I'm this small river town.
Today,
as I worked at my desk, the boss
called the janitor, Jerome, I hear
you get some lunchtime pussy every day.
Jerome, toothless and over seventy,
stuck the broom handle out between his legs:
Yessir! When the Big Hog talks
--he waggled his broomstick--I gots to listen.
He laughed.
And from the corner of his eye,
he looked to see if we were laughing too.
|
Written by
Jerome Rothenberg |
I came alive
when things went
crazy.
I pulled the plug on
the reports of
sturm & drang
When someone
signaled I
left open
what I
could not close.
I broke a
covenant that
was more fierce
than murder.
I vent my wrath
on animals
pretending they will turn
divine.
I open up
rare certainties
that test free will.
I take from animals
a place in which
the taste of death
pours from their mouths
& drowns them.
I support a
lesser surface.
I draw comfort from
the knowledge
of their
being.
|
Written by
Jerome Rothenberg |
I have tried an altenstil
& dropped it.
My skin is blazing,
blazing too
the way I see your faces
in the glass.
With the circle of the sun
behind me
I exceed my limits.
My garments are
from the beginning
& my dwelling place
is in my self(J.
Dee)
It makes me want
to fly the stars
below the paradise of poets
lost in space.
I am the father of a lie
unspoken.
I can make my mind
go blank
then paw at you
my fingers in
your mouth.
I think of God
when fucking.
Is it wrong to pray
without a hat
to reject the call
to grace? I long to flatter
presidents & kings.
I long for manna.
I will be the first
to sail for home
the last to flaunt
my longings.
I will undo my garments
& stand before you
naked.
In winter
I will curse their god
& die.
|
Written by
Jerome Rothenberg |
I kill for pleasure
not for gain.
A man much more
than you my hands
find knives
& flash them.
I am guilty
in my works
while in their eyes
I seek redemption.
I find myself
forgotten
angry at the thought
of bread.
I will not
eat my poem(A.
Artaud)
much less be raped
by it.
I have a home
but sit with others
shirtless, waiting
for the moon to rise.
I am a warrior
grown old.
The number on my ticket
tells the time.
I seldom wash
& wear a string
around my throat
until it crumbles.
See yourself for love
the fool advises
& the wise man murmurs
Spill it now!
Your glass is never
empty!
I see your arm
the color of
wild lilacs.
It is not too late
for memory.
Days together are
like days apart.
|
Written by
Randall Jarrell |
Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon.
Der heilige Hieronymus--his lion is at the zoo--
Listens, listens.
All the long, soft, summer day
Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot.
As the sun sets, the last patient rises,
Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away.
Often, to the lion, the saint said, Son.
To the man the saint says--but the man is gone.
Under a plaque of Gradiva, at gloaming.
The old man boils an egg.
When he has eaten
He listens a while.
The patients have not stopped.
At midnight, he lies down where his patients lay.
All night the old man whispers to the night.
It listens evenly.
The great armored paws
Of its forelegs put together in reflection.
It thinks: Where Ego was, there Id shall be.
The world wrestles with it and is changed into it
And after a long time changes it.
The dragon
Listens as the old man says, at dawn: I see
--There is an old man, naked in a desert, by a cliff.
He has set out his books, his hat, his ink, his shears
Among scorpions, toads, the wild beasts of the desert.
I lie beside him--I am a lion.
He kneels listening.
He holds in his left hand
The stone with which he beats his breat, and holds
In his right hand, the pen with which he puts
Into his book, the words of the angel:
The angel up into whose face he looks.
But the angel does not speak.
He looks into the face
Of the night, and the night says--but the night is gone.
He has slept.
.
.
.
At morning, when man's flesh is young
And man's soul thankful for it knows not what,
The air is washed, and smells of boiling coffee,
And the sun lights it.
The old man walks placidly
To the grocer's; walks on, under leaves, in light,
To a lynx, a leopard--he has come;
The man holds out a lump of liver to the lion,
And the lion licks the man's hand with his tongue.
|
Written by
Jerome Rothenberg |
All erasure of pain
is like the contrary of
dust that weighs
dark in my lungs
when I am
feckless with disgust.
I stroke & poke
my loins before
they tighten.
My feet stomp
fields of color
reminding me of
something I once knew.
Dying frees
the spirit
from the mind.
We plod along
regardless of
the pain.
Soon we grow
big & fat.
We stop
forgetting, far off
from whatever
binds us
mindlessly
to empty space.
Beginning here
we reignite
desire.
We will surrender
what is far from us
& call it love.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
The mule-skinner was Bill Jerome, the passengers were three;
Two tinhorns from the dives of Nome, and Father Tim McGee.
And as for sunny Southland bound, through weary woods they sped,
The solitude that ringed them round was silent as the dead.
Then when the trail crooked crazily, the frost-rimed horses reared,
And from behind a fallen tree a grim galoot appeared;
He wore a parki white as snow, a mask as black as soot,
And carelesslike weaved to and fro a gun as if to shoot.
"Stick up yer mitts an' freeze 'em there!" his raucous voice outrang,
And shaving them by just a hair a blazing rod went bang.
The sleigh jerked to a sharp stand-still: "Okay," drawled Bill Jerome,
"Could be, this guy who aims to kill is Black Moran from Nome.
"
"You lousy crooks," the bandit cried; "You're slickly heeled I know;
Come, make it snappy, dump outside your booty in the snow.
"
The gambling pair went putty pale; they crimped as if with cold.
And heaved upon the icy trail two hefty pokes of gold.
Then softly stepping from the sleigh came Father Tim McGee,
And speaking in his gentle way: :Accept my Cross," said he.
"For other treasures have I none, their guilty gold to swell .
.
.
Please take this crucifix, my son, and may it serve you well.
"
The bandit whispered in his ear: "Jeez-crize, you got me wrong.
I wouldn't rob you Father dear - to your Church I belong.
"
Then swiftly striding to the sleigh he dumped the gold back in,
And hollered: "On your knees and pray, you lousy sons of sin!"
"Praise God," said Father Tim McGee, "he made you restitution,
And if he ever kneels to me I'll give him absolution.
"
"I'll have you guys to understand," said Driver Bill Jerome,
"The squarest gunman in the land is Black Moran form Nome.
"
|
Written by
Jerome Rothenberg |
I am not a native of this palce.
(Yosimasu G.
)
nor yet a stranger.
With the rst of you
I hunt for shade
my boots half off
to let the air through.
My head is on my shoulders
& is real.
I plant cucumbers
twice a year
& count the bounty.
Often I read
the papers
standing.
I am clean & pure.
I carry buckets
from the pond
more than my arms can bear.
Under a full moon
fish appear
like flies in amber.
The words of foreigners
invade my thoughts.
The hungry hordes
surround me
wailing through their beards.
My fingers tingle
feigning speech.
I havea a feeling
that my tongue
speaks words
because my throat
keeps burning.
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