'frogs sat around a puddle'

Frogs sat around a puddle
And gazed at heavens high
Frog teacher pounding into skulls
The science of the sky.

He spoke about the heavens
Bright dots we see there burning
And men watch them, 'astronomers'
Like moles they dig for learning.

When these moles start to map the stars
The large becomes quite small
What's twenty million miles to us
They call one foot, that's all.

So, as those moles did figure out
(If you believe their plan)
Neptune is thirty feet away
Venus, less than one.

If we chopped up the Sun, he said
(Awed frogs could only stare)
We'd get three hundred thousand Earth's
With still a few to spare

The Sun helps us make use of time,
It rolls round heaven's sphere
And cuts a workday into shifts
'Forever' to a year

What comets are is hard to say
A strange manifestation
Though this is not a reason for
Some idle speculation

They are no evil sign, we hope
No reason for great fright
As in a story we got from
Lubyenyetsky, great knight

A comet there appeared, and when
It rays were seen by all
The cobblers in a tavern
Began a shameful brawl

He told them how the stars we see
So many, overhead
Are actually only suns
Some green, some blue, some red

And if we use the spectroscope
Their light tells, in addition
Those distant stars and our Earth
Have the same composition

He stopped. The frogs were overwhelmed.
Their froggy eyeballs rolled.
'What more about this universe
Would you like to be told?'

'Just one more thing, please tell us sir'
A frog asked, 'Is it true?
Do creatures live there just like us
Do frogs exist there too?'


          Jan Neruda  (Czech poet of the May group)

            trans.   D P  Stern

Draft 37: Praedelle

Hard. The dure of tradurre.
wide low arcdeep fields,
houses dotted, ho detto,
with shadow. And sun stark.

Stone and flesh, worry wort
no subtle word, true St. John’s Wort.
Grab a bite at their Fat Lamb Inn.
Unstatable. The what?

Crumbling. “White plenitude”
Red boots, sea frets, wool smell
blanket wet with interior dew.
Close eyes. To See well.

Bring this from there,
this from here, that d’étrangère,
and something else, ormer,
gives long hoots from elsewhere.

One place cool and wide, second
hot and dry, third a salty isle.
With simple travelling steps–praedelle–
mix, shift and cambiare sides.

Assembling stagione
stations and stages
shades of unspeakable iotas
seasons and ages.

Steep fell end becks
and calls to pasta–macaronic–
the “speech” of the sites,
in places tectonic.

Brough, pronounced Bruff
in the hard hills, on the scarp bares
Apt in two sites. Bones’ slough.
Lark adds arc to aires.

Paglia e fieno
green and yellow tawdry
twine nests of edible color
hay listeth towards straw.

“High high high” : name fits
phonemes diversi, threaded lects,
words org. in threes. Solve Riddles?
“Well, it’s a fookin ‘ill, ain’t it”

Farfalle scamper and rise.
Kiting float. Stonewater jars
long peach lines of orrery
sunset orbitic law.

Bean of the sea-wall
chicken of the tree-well
lattice stripe language
high wind vowels

Chiaroscuro, and know why;
footnooted data, hypnic jerk
on the other side of verso
wads of salt grass lurk

Dream in the dream
of unspeakable Italian
cactus melon, due lingue
mixup round the homonym

Seameadow seagrass
pradera de Thalassia
She first thought watermelon
translated to acqua melone

Mite speaking.
Mote spoken.
Babble out the syllables
Présilly Hoboken.

Still-life with dishware
cooked earth meister-mixed
elbow on it, triple L.
attachments to fancy, nixed.

Dried lavender smells like tea.
Earl Grey and boxed milk
hot in a greenclad bowl.
Something definite so to speak.

Syntax built up
clarification matte;
mutes–cardboard, copper
black rubber and tin hat.

Dream sounds: was there somebody?
Dream thought: sentence about,
uh, language. Dream– damn.
No memory gets the sentence out.

Living alongside borders
A house called “Two Ways”
Rachel and Leah, why the choice?
in whose eyes?

Stand on the porch
between words and the speechless
as two female triangles
hug by pinkish arches.

Folds fall in laban-notation
from one to the other
striping the absolute
excitabilities of their billow.

They embrace and warm
shutters ope, windows wide
hearts terremoto pitter pat
pulse gold-white light.

In stucco corner where
four tonalities meet
they scatter origami foldits,
dream-awake or dream-asleep.

Wing-steep pitches folden valleys
ortolan quindi–
vantageless voice
of the brown feathery.

Postmemory l’altro ieri
or are there two or more
alongside that very where
darkened statue niches roar.

If one is saying yes, well then
t’other must say no.
Orphery, porphery.
There’s just one way to go?

Win them; neither’s a wrong one.
I love them both, even unseen
who’d eaten out of campo
the wild serrated green.

Dewy shadows of one caught
transfixed on the path
envelopments of instantaneous
black pitch, blank patch.

Name of the one for whom I named her
crepuscular twists of page
in éclairissage before a storm,
O range or rage.

Cooling down in grigio silence
Rime figures parlay soon.
The path (pith) coated with-white
by today-full moon.

Panned-in praedella, another quad
where moon and volcano
silver flames and gold. The ore, ecco,
that rifts claim.

Load eerie rift
with or, yes, what was he saying;
Keatskill to pack in smeltings
back to where they came from.

Rock gold into the open.
Stuff it into roll and rift
Impossible geology
of the gift.

Mined stuff into open earth.
Scrissi orto
verso ringaleaveo
recto on the straightaway, no dearth.

So I loaded the riffs
with terrific zaum
Itched thru the night
wandered the Raum.

Loaded them with either
then with or and both (“both both”)
over the gravel rutted road
where “I”–they–walked.

Ciao Rachel, ciao Leah,
who brought to each the other.
Under keystone bridges found
Long-once dream of a double river.

The or of every rift is ore
the eithers also ores
There are twin rivers rushing wide
that flow apart to lodestar shores.

       - Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Links Blues

There are worse things than being in a bunker
I think to myself as I walk across the fairway
to that familiar tan valley.

On getting a bit closer, I correct myself:
There are worse things than being in a bunker
with a downhill lie.

One hundred and ten yards to the pin
and with equal parts hope and fear
I select the seven iron.

In an explosion of sand,
a low line drive hits the lip of the trap,
and bounces back to my feet.

There are worse things
there are...
worse things

than being in a bunker
with a downhill lie,
in soft sand.

But right now,
I can't think of even one.

      prof. Stu Kurtz - phd.

Joachim du Bellay (16th century)

Now that her starry chariot plies,
She who brings silence and sleep again,

I’ll loose the bridle, to relieve my pain

And welcome tears, and cries, and sighs,

O Earth! O liquid Element! O Skies!

O winds! O woods! Rock, plain, and mountain,

All desert land, each riverbank and fountain,

All that is full and all that empty lies,

O demigods! O nymphs of the trees!

O water-nymphs, and every creature,

If ever you have felt true sympathy,

Deign sorrowfully to hear my sad pleas,

Since my faith, my verse, and my amour,

Can in my Lady find no trace of pity.

       A. S. Kline  -  trans.