random sample

 






   



      182   -   THE PUNY MIND

Factory for tears and cover letters

with a dried-out gin for picking seeds

of talent fruit fallen from the playoff.

Picking seeds from tongues and teeth

and something sharp as optic fiber

starts to blur in grey circles. Ahead

holds the wrinkle in its little manner,

leaves before us felt and feeling numb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                      ceej

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 EARLY AUTUMN:   AT THE POOL OF SPRINKLING WATER

 

 

 

 

BY CHAO TI OF HAN, THE "BRIGHT EMPEROR"

 

 

 

 

 

IN Autumn, when the landscape is clear,

       to float over the wide, water ripples,
To pick the water-chestnut and the lotus-flower 

            with a quick, light hand!
The fresh wind is cool, 

          we start singing to the movement of the oars.
The clouds are bright; they part before the light of dawn;

      the moon has sunk below the Silver River.
Enjoying such pleasure for ten thousand years –
Could one consider it too much?

.

giveth taketh

                





                  Crop





The crop failed, first one year
and then the next.

Driven from family fields by hunger
they moved to towns
and then took ships across the water.

The Great Migration of an Island people
who sought relief from poverty.

In their ravaged, weakened frames,
they journeyed to another place.

An overwhelming emptiness
was left languishing in a deserted land.
Now in our present time
a new hunger harrows the land.

O Eucharistic Christ remain
to ease the growing doubt
and endless pain.



          Chris McDonnell










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things are desperate in afghanistan too

A poet's job is not
                to write about love.
A poet's job is not
             to write about flowers.
A poet must write
about the plight
and pain
 of
the people.

         Matiullah Thurab      ( shouting from afghanistan )









no my friend you are mistaken
let the loud mouthed prophet
wrail against social injustice
it is your task to put into words
the language of love
the language of flowers
only then will you know
the pain of other people
don't drop love
from your pallette









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Wading at Wellfleet




In one of the Assyrian wars
a chariot first saw the light
that bore sharp blades around its wheels.
 
That chariot from Assyria
went rolling down mechanically
to take the warriors by the heels.
 
A thousand warriors in the sea
could not consider such a war
as that the sea itself contrives
but hasn’t put in action yet.

          This morning’s glitterings reveal
the sea is “all a case of knives.”
Lying so close, they catch the sun,
the spokes directed at the shin.

          The chariot front is blue and great.
The war rests wholly with the waves:
they try revolving, but the wheels
give way; they will not bear the weight.


-Elizabeth Bishop




















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