peering into the valley of the shadows

                         THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW




















There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces un-regarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.


There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.


There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
Demonstrating the fulfillment of unalterable schemes,
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.


And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes;
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.


There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves—
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.


There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.


And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.

Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.


So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.






                                                              Edwin Arlington Robinson














































...                            

on ontological dilutions

       








           CONFRONTING THE JEW








My mother never spoke a phrase as true.
Recalling their blind date, she said she thought
My father "was an Arab or a Jew."
Politely vicious aunts and uncles fought
Suggestions of this sort for generations,
But lost. There were no other explanations.
Spanish ancestors crossed the Pyrenees,
And found in France the safety that they sought.
Though they survived, the Torah was not taught
For long; in far and fractured colonies,
>Their baptized children wear their butchered name.
I cannot guess the onslaughts they withstood,
Or things they loved. With nothing to reclaim,
I still would say a kaddish if I could.










                                            Mike Juster














......

gimp vers

heat

 

                        past sunshine

 

                            vibrations of air

                                    spiders, then birds, settle

 

                        reflexive

                                          man

                            bringing what he can

 

                        interest

 

                                          in

 

                            the quickening run-though

 

                                    one thing at a time

 

                                        tides, a large motion

 

                                          small waves give boats (air 25)










                                                                   ....Larry Eigner










...suffered from cerebral palsy all his life managed to type out some words

yuletide truths a la advent

Talk to all who need talking to
those who came before you
those still with you now
Those who fly between, carry the word

Talk to eagles, talk to crows,
talk to wind, talk to lightning,
talk to mountains, talk to trees,
talk to rivers, talk to rain

Under & over & all around
This is where it all begins

Give gifts to all who should have them
give gifts to keep things as they are
give gifts to make things change
Give gifts because you want to

Give gifts for the sun, gifts for the moon,
gifts for lightning, gifts for thunder
gifts for the moist mother
gifts for the ancients burning fires

Under & over & all around
This is where it all begins.






           James Koller
                                        +  12-10-2014

Open Ghazal

Kiss the hand and cheek, kiss the lips that open.
Kiss the eyes and tears, kiss the wounds that open.

The nuclei of our atoms are so small, we are mostly nothing.
Whoever did this made our stone walls out of windows always open.

In a thicket: A bag too dark to see, too big to lift, too familiar to walk away from. 
God grant me strength to drag it into the open.

6:10, stuck on the freeway again.
Love is singing with window and throat wide open.

My friend refused to greet the stranger in black,
was brought to the surgeon, who cut his heart open.

Go ahead, I dare you, take another breath.  Each one is full
of what 14 billion years ago blew this world open.

We safecracker poets sand fingertips, pass long nights on our knees.
All to feel those clicks that mean the door will spring open.

Len says, I love the night sky, but I adore the Milky Way:
It is the edge of Her robe.  See how gently it opens.








                                        Len Anderson












......

a little visit to maximus

   














John Burke did not rise




when Councilman Smith, nor had he signed


the complimentary scroll....


Staring into the torsion

Of his own face Burke


sat solid in

refusal (as,


in matters of the soul a private man


lives torn


by inspection


and judicium, the judge


or mischievous woman


who make hob


of us) sweat, Burke




sweat, indubitoubly,


in his aloneness-or he'd not have said,


"I am no hypocrite"


Against the greased ways


of the city now (of the nation) this politician


himself a twisted animal


swelling of mouth, followed


by squirrels as pilot fish


himself a shark will not


tolerate
the suave / the insolence


of agreement


     








               Charles Olson

Dreaming Winter

             

Don't ask me if these knives are real.
I could paint a king or show a map
the way home—to go like this:
Wobble me back to a tiger's dream
a dream of knives and bones too common
to be exposed. My secrets are ignored.


Here comes the man I love. His coat is wet
and his face is falling like the leaves,
tobacco stains on his Polish teeth.
I could tell jokes about him—one up
for the man who brags a lot, laughs
a little and hangs his name on the nearest knob.

Don't ask me. I know it's only hunger.
I saw that king—the one my sister knew
but was allergic to. Her face ran until
his eyes became the white of several winters.
Snow on his bed told him that the silky tears
were uniformly mad and all the money in the world
couldn't bring him to a tragic end. Shame
or fortune tricked me to his table, shattered
my one standing lie with new kinds of fame.


Have mercy on me, Lord. Really. If I should die
before I wake, take me to that place I just heard
banging in my ears. Don't ask me. Let me join
the other kings, the ones who trade their knives
for a sack of keys. Let me open any door,
stand winter still and drown in a common dream












                                    James Welch










.....

matt says

An opposing earth

What kind of mere essence

is this?

That ivory boy has

 no retrospection for anyone

Opposing smile beside you

on an earth

A trifle is slow,

their hand little with disgrace

They are too mighty;

 the trivial heat

recollects their wealth












                                    forgodot.com










....still waiting












....

veiled catholic allusions

                      








              


                    




                        ARTIFACT   




















 For three years you lived in your house
just as it was before she died: your wedding
portrait on the mantel, her clothes hanging
in the closet, her hair still in the brush.
You have told me you gave it all away
then, sold the house, keeping the confirmation
cross she wore, her name in cursive chased
on the gold underside, your ring in the same

box, those photographs you still avoid,
and the quilt you spread on your borrowed bed —
small things. Months after we met, you told me she had
made it, after we had slept already beneath its loft
and thinning, raveled pattern, as though beneath
her shadow, moving with us, that dark, that soft.






                                             Claudia Emerson     -     died  late  autumn 2014

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.



The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.



The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.



Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.



She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.



I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.  










                                 Mark Strand      +December 2014       






















......                  

Psalm

No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,
no-man spirits our Dust.
No-man.





Praise to you, No-man.
For love of you
we will flower.
Moving
towards you.



A Nothing
we were, we are, we shall
be still, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.



With
our Pistil soul-bright,
our Stamen heaven-torn,
our Corolla red
with the Violet-Word that we sang
over, O over
the thorn.














       Paul Celan




               -I'm afraid I don't know who translated this from the german
















......










.