THE SECOND COMING


   
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



                          WB YEATS






















.

At the Quinte Hotel

I am drinking
I am drinking yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
while I watch with interest
A wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toilet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
“You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it”
So he says to me “Come on”
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is just a little guy)
and say reprovingly
“Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?”
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
“What kinda poems?”
“Flower poems”
“So tell us a poem”
I got off the little guy but reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for Literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
” – the poem oughta be worth some beer”
It was a mistake of terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beer or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man


           Al Purdy














.

perspective abounds

                      






                           


                           Crow's Theology



Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

And he realized that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation.

But what Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?

And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?

Crow realized there were two Gods-

One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.


                                    Ted Hughes














.

obscurity becomes him

“How Do You Make That Sound?”---------------------








It is both excruciating
  and astonishing.
   One mere human should not be capable
     of such diaphanous devastation.
      This tortuous cacophony penetrates my very being
       with its unceasing vibration.
        Like a porcine opera diva from hell
         you fill my mind, my soul, my body, my being
          with the never-ending snorts and sniffles of some
           supra-Machiavellian dis-utopia.
            Daphne.
             Daphne!
              Wake-up!




                                                        Mort Escanduleous










.

Changing Owners

               










                       The blue sky is more vivid
                    like dreams become more vivid
                    as we age. They have a smell
                   almost a dream scent somehow.
                  Calling coyotes, if all is right,
                  to yip and howl up the hill,
                   and when all are gathered,
                 rush through the wood, owned
                only by them, and into the deserted
                streets of this town; that thinks it’s
                  civilized, and is owned too, by
                   the darkness and the dim glow
                    of a streetlight moon, and the sound
                    of something, a cottontail maybe,
                     or maybe a cat, suffering
                      for a moment before
                        it dies.







                                     ........Larry Gavin











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sweep of wing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circles in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

~ Joy Harjo ~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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transtemporal communique'

                                                   




                                                       


                                                      Progress


 


                             Traveling west from the Mississippi
                               A highway now supplants
                                 The rutted oxen trail.

                           The railroad has straightened the highway;
                              The grain elevators have supplanted
                                 The derelict depot.

                              In front of the ethanol plant
                                   Forty -foot high piles of corn
                                     Have supplanted the grain elevators

                                Giant wind turbines
                                   Have supplanted the windmill
                                       Guarding an abandoned stock tank

                                      The water tower supplying the gas station
                                         And Molly's Cafe and Motel
                                             Squats beneath the cell tower

                            Which massages the brains of all the inhabitants
                              Until they too fall into the black soil
                                   Heaving her breast into the rain.





                                                           Jon Fagerson


















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Cathedral of the Prairie

               St. Anthony of Padua, Hoven, South Dakota

          I’ve come to the Cathedral of the Prairie,

           the work of Anton Zwack and Anton Dohmen,

          but first I wander through the cemetery

         where farmers sleep, and almost like an omen

          a dove bursts from a spruce tree. Holy Spirit,

        inspire my reading. Wake the dead to hear it.

      Behind the graves a field of waving barley

    bearded and golden, whispers when the wind blows,

   a perfect crop where spirits come to parley,

 to watch great-grandsons lay it down in windrows.

   Most of the men who built this church were German—

     Otto and Sigmund, Wilhelm, Helmut, Herman—

       but here’s a Timothy, and there’s a Kevin

        and twin spires reaching achingly toward Heaven.




                                                   Tim Murphy  (north dakotah poet)







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