Written by
Andrei Voznesensky |
My doc announced yesterday :
"You may have talent, though it's hidden,
your beak, however, is frost-bitten,
so stick at home on a cold day".
The nose, eh?
As irretrievable as time,
conforming to the laws of medicine,
your nose, like that of any person,
keep growing
steadily,
with triumph!
The noses of celebrities,
of guards
and ministers of ours
grow, snoring restlessly like owls
at night, along with plants and trees.
They're cool and crooked, resembling bills,
they're squeezed in doors,
get hurt by boxers,
however, our neighbour's noses
screw into keyholes, just like drills!
(Great Gogol felt by intuition
the role they play in man's ambition.)
My friend Bukashkin who was boozy
dreamed of a nose
that grew like crazy:
above him, coming like a bore,
upsetting pans and chandeliers,
a nose
was piercing
the ceilings
and threading
floor upon the floor!
"What's that? -- he thought, when out of bed.
"A sign of Judgement Day -- I said --
And the inspection of the debtors!"
He was imprisoned on the 30th.
Perpetual motion of the nose!
It's long, while life is getting shorter.
At night on faces, pale as blotter,
like a black hawk, or pumping hose,
the nose absorbs us, I suppose.
They say, the Northern Eskimos
kiss one another with the nose
It hasn't caught on here, of course.
© Copyright Alec Vagapov's translation
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Written by
David Lehman |
We have too much exhibitionism
and not enough voyeurism
in poetry we have plenty of bass
and not enough treble, more amber
beer than the frat boys can drink but
less red wine than meets the lip
in this beaker of the best Bordeaux,
too much thesis, too little antithesis
and way too much New York Times
in poetry we've had too much isolationism
and too few foreign entanglements
we need more Baudelaire on the quai
d'Anjou more olive trees and umbrella pines
fewer leafless branches on the rue Auguste Comte
too much sociology not enough Garcia Lorca
more colons and dashes fewer commas
less love based on narrow self-interest
more lust based on a feast of kisses
too many novels too few poems
too many poets not enough poetry
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Written by
Gary Snyder |
Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you. Your poems, your life.
The author's my student,
He even quotes me.
Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.
All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more archive,
One more shaky text.
But life continues in the kitchen
Where we still laugh and cook,
Watching snow.
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Written by
Robert Frost |
A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth? -
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?
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