on the 7th day of christmas

From Hymn 8                                                               

Blessed is the Messenger who came bearing
a great peace.  By the mercy of His Father,
He lowered Himself to us.  Our own debts
He did not take up to Him.  He reconciled
[His] Lordship with His chattels.

Refrain: Glory to Your Dawn, divine and human.

Glorious is the Wise One Who allied and joined
Divinity with humanity,
one from the height and the other from the depth.
He mingled the natures like pigments
and an image came into being: the God-man.
O Zealous One who saw Adam
who became dust and the accursed serpent
eating him.  Reality dwelt
in what had lost its flavor.  He made him salt
by which the cursed serpent would be blinded.

 Blessed is the Compassionate One Who saw, next to paradise,
the lance that barred the way
to the Tree of Life.  He came to take up
the body that would be struck so that by the opening in His side
He might break through the way into paradise.


                                 Ephrem the Syrian

a medieval beatitude

Happy, indeed, is she whom it is given to share this sacred banquet,
to cling with all her heart to Him
Whose beauty all the heavenly hosts admire unceasingly,
Whose love inflames our love,
Whose contemplation is our refreshment,
Whose graciousness is our joy,
Whose gentleness fills us to overflowing,
Whose remembrance brings a gentle light,
Whose fragrance will revive the dead,
Whose glorious vision will be the happiness of all the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.


                                                  St. Clare of Assissi  (  Francis' girlfriend )

see the woman

See the Woman
She has a young face
An old face
She carries herself well
In all ages
She survives all man has done

In some tribes she is free
In some religions
She is under man
In some societies
She's worth what she consumes

In some nations
She is delicate strength
In some states
She is told she is weak
In some classes
She is property owned

In all instances
She is sister to earth
In all conditions
She is life bringer
In all life she is our necessity

See the woman eyes
Flowers swaying
On scattered hills
Sundancing calling in the bees

See the woman heart
Lavender butterflies
Fronting blue sky
Misty rain falling
On soft wild roses

See the woman beauty
Lightning streaking
Dark summer nights
Forests of pines mating
With new winter snow

See the woman spirit
Daily serving courage
With laughter
Her breath a dream
And a prayer 





     John Trudell      + 8 Dec. 2015











...

Depression

So proudly she came into the subway car
all who were not reading their newspapers saw
the head high and the slow tread—
coat wrinkled and her belongings in a paper bag,
face unwashed and the grey hair uncombed;

simple soul, who so early in the morning when only the
poorest go to work,
stood up in the subway and outshouting the noise:
'Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I have a baby at home who
is sick,
and I have no money, no job;' who did not have box or cap
to take coins—
only his hands,
and, seeing only faces turned away,
did not even go down the aisle as beggars do;

the fire had burnt through the floor:
machines and merchandise had fallen into
the great hole, this zero that had sucked away so many years
and now, seen at last, the shop itself;
the ceiling sloped until it almost touched the floor a strange curve
in the lines and oblongs of his life;
drops were falling
from the naked beams of the floor above,
from the soaked plaster, still the ceiling;
drops of dirty water were falling
on his clothes and hat and on his hands;
the thoughts of business
gathered in his bosom like black water

in footsteps through a swamp;
waiting for a job, she studied the dusty table at which she sat
and the floor which had been badly swept—
the office-boy had left the corners dirty;
a mouse ran in and out under the radiator
and she drew her feet away
and her skirt about her legs, but the mouse went in and out
about its business; and she sat waiting for a job
in an unfriendly world of men and mice;

walking along the drive by twos and threes,
talking about jobs,
jobs they might never get and jobs they had had,
never turning to look at the trees or the river
glistening in the sunlight or the automobiles
that went swiftly past them—
in twos and threes talking about jobs;

in the drizzle
four in a row
close to the curb
that passers-by might pass,
the squads stand
waiting for soup,
a slice of bread
and shelter—
grimy clothes
their uniform;
on a stoop
stiffly across the steps
a man
who has fainted;
each in that battalion
eyes him,
but does not move from his place,
well drilled in want.



                    - Charles Reznikoff












.

felize navidao

Para isso fomos feitos:
Para lembrar e ser lembrados
Para chorar e fazer chorar
Para enterrar os nossos mortos –
Por isso temos braços longos para os adeuses
Mãos para colher o que foi dado
Dedos para cavar a terra.
Assim será a nossa vida:
Uma tarde sempre a esquecer
Uma estrela a se apagar na treva
Um caminho entre dois túmulos –
Por isso precisamos velar
Falar baixo, pisar leve, ver
A noite dormir em silêncio.
Não há muito que dizer:
Uma canção sobre um berço
Um verso, talvez, de amor
Uma prece por quem se vai –
Mas que essa hora não esqueça
E por ela os nossos corações
Se deixem, graves e simples.
Pois para isso fomos feitos:
Para a esperança no milagre
Para a participação da poesia
Para ver a face da morte –
De repente nunca mais esperaremos…
Hoje a noite é jovem; da morte, apenas
Nascemos, imensament  


                                  Vinícius de Moraes-                           





trans.


For that were we made:
To remember and be remembered
To weep and make weep
To bury our dead –
That is why we have long arms for farewells
Hands to receive what is given
Fingers to dig the earth.
Thus shall be our life:
One afternoon always forgetting
A star disappearing into the darkness
A path between two tombs –
That is why we must keep vigils
Speak in low voices, tread lightly, gaze
The night sleeping in silence.
There is not much to say:
A song over a cradle
A poem, perhaps, of love
A prayer for  those who leave –
But may that hour not forget
And may for this our hearts
Be left grave and simple.
For that were we made:
To have hope in the miracle
To take part in poetry
To see the face of death –
And suddenly we will no longer hope…
Today the night is young;
 of death we merely are
Born, immensely.






......

THE STREET'S KISS

Poetry is news from the frontiers of consciousness

A poem is a mirror walking down a high street full of visual delight

Poetry is the shook foil of the imagination. It should shine out and half blind you

It is the sun streaming down in the meshes of morning

It is the white nights and mouths of desire

It is made by dissolving halos in oceans of sound

It is the street talk of angels and devils

It is a sofa full of blind singers who have put aside their canes

A poems should arise to ecstasy somewhere between speech and song

A poem must sing and fly away with you or it's a dead duck with a prose soul

Poetry is the anarchy of the senses making sense

Poetry is all things born with wings that sing

Like a bowl of roses a poem should not have to be explained

Poetry is the voice of dissent against the waste of words and the mad plethora of print

It is what exists between the lines

It is made with the syllables of dreams

It is far far cries upon a beach a nightfall

It is a lighthouse moving its megaphone over the sea

It is a picture of Ma in her Woolworth bra looking out a window into a secret garden

It is an Arab carrying colored rugs and birdcages through the streets & a great metropolis

A poem can be made of common household ingredients. It fits on a single page yet it can fill a world and fits in the pocket of a heart

A poet is a street singer who rescues the alleycats of love

Poetry is pillow-thought after intercourse

It is the distillation of articulate animals calling to each other across a great gulf

It is a pulsing fragment of the inner life an untethered music

It is the dialogue of naked statues

It is the sound of summer in the rain and of people laughing behind closed shutters down an alley at night

It is a bare lightbulb in a homeless hotel illuminating a nakedness of minds and hearts

Let the poet be a singing animal turned pimp for an anarchist king

Poetry is the incomparable lyric intelligence brought to bear upon fifty-seven varieties of experience

Poetry is a high house echoing with all the voices that ever said anything crazy or wonderful

Poetry is a subversive raid upon the forgotten language of the collective unconscious

Poetry is a real canary in a coal mine and we know why the caged bird sings

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations

It is the voice of the Fourth Person Singular

It is the voice within the voice of the turtle

It is the face behind the face of the race

Poetry is made of night-thoughts if it can tear itself away from illusion it will not be disowned before the dawn

Poetry is made by evaporating the liquid laughter of youth

Poetry is a book of light at night dispersing clouds of unknowing

It hears the whisper of elephants and sees how many angels dance on the head of a pin

It is a humming a keening a laughing a sighing at dawn of a wild soft laughter

It is the final gestalt of the imagination

Poetry should be emotion recollected in emotion

Words are living fossils. The poet should piece the wild beast together and make it sing

A poet is only as great as his ear. Too bad if it is tin

Poetry is perpetual revolt against silence exile and cunning

The poet a subversive barbarian at the city gates constantly challenging our status quo

He is the master ontologist constantly questioning reality and reinventing it

He mixes drinks out of the insane liquors of the imagination and is perpetually surprised that no one staggers

He should be a dark barker before the tents of existence

Poetry is what can be heard at manholes echoing up Dante's fire escape

Poetry is religion. Religion is poetry

It is the humming of moths as they circle the flame

It is a wood boat moored in the shade under a weeping willow in the bend of a river

The poet must have wide-angle vision each look a world glance and the concrete is most poetic

Poetry is not all heroin horses and Rimbaud
it is also the powerless prayers of airline passengers
fastening their seatbelts
for the final descent

Poetry is the real subject of great prose

It speaks the unspeakable it utters the unutterable sigh of the heart

Each poem is a momentary madness and the unreal is realist

A poem should still be an insurgent knock on the door of the unknown

A poem is its own Coney Island of the mind its own circus of the soul its own Far Rockaway of the heart

Let a new lyricism save the world from itself








                                    Lawrence Ferlinghetti






















.....

o sweet decadence

California Plaza                                                                                                

I have seen the weakest martyrdom

scrawled into the margins of a ledger,

seen tear stains on a checkbook

where wet paper bends the balance more sharply than

my skinny elbows on a midnight library railing.

I’ve suckled a privilege so soured

with second-hand agony slobbered on by

someone in an apron or a star piece wedding ring

that every bite of café sushi tastes like a waste of time,

  

And 3 a.m. follows you around in an ink-stained hoodie and a

gas station snow hat until you’re forced to bed yourself in a sidewalk snowdrift

with nothing in your hands but your mother’s chain-linked fingers and

a plastic tally of an older man’s forgotten hamburgers and lab manuals,

And you squint upward through a soap scum

of halogens and bedroom windows at three or four runty stars

peppered with an acne of helicopters and spotlights,

begging for a reason to say

“Thank you,”

And no small eternity in those familiar kneelers

just ten steps off the cobblestones

can do more than ferry that rusty homesick plea

to its veiled harbor of resonance and burnished metal

until tomorrow’s tired eyes and debt-softened hands

ship more,

by lapfuls,

whole shoeboxes of

oil and

concrete and

glass,

tie them with neat bows of hourglass cursors and decimal points,

smile at you, assuring,

“You’ll need this,”

then unstaple their grins and in tears ask so urgently,

“But what in the world makes you think so?”

                              Dan McIlhon

....

inquiry tending to the serious

the erratic love of flan                                        








Tell me,
My avid, god-avenging friend,

You have never changed your mind, ever?
You have never abandoned, once even, what you held deep and true?
Maybe you loved chocolate ice cream once and then moved on to vanilla?
Strawberry?
Hating ice cream altogether?

Changing your mind ever happened to you?
Loving pencils and moving on to pens?
Loving rainy days until you saw the homeless, drenched, and now only wish for eternal warmth and sunshine? Or is that too sentimental?
How about loving Pepsi until discovering Coke? Well, try, if you haven't.

Are these you? The love of Coke and strawberry and pens?
Are they attached to your neck? To your left arm?

You can't even locate it.
It's somewhere in your mind, and only when awake (I take it you are always sober...).

Opinions are funny that way.
They are loose in the air, they come and go, settle and shatter.
They are a cross-section of your time. A mere moment in a mere mortal's life.
They don't last. They don't matter. They are erratic. And not attached to your body.

Would you erase my body if I loved vanilla ice cream?
Maybe I could change. Or even grow. Maybe the desire for ice cream would fade.
You don't know. You can't know.
Opinions are funny that way.

So tell me,
My avid, god-avenging friend,
May I keep my body if the faith has faded? If I turned against the faith? If I fight the faith?
If I have moved on to strawberry? Flan even?






      Sahar   Hooshdaran










..

options for a cold winter day

The Only Flag                                                   

Our mornings indict us.
I have seen it in your eyes,
stark as streets swarm
with sterile savages.

I have no one but you
& you none but me--
& Baby the mathematics of it
are frightening.

Let's go back to bed
lie down together
& forget our fears,
hearts pounding
to the rhythm of love

    & your flaming hair
our banner
for that brief moment.

    - William Hawkins   (  Ottawa poet  )

....

Entering The Virgin's Heart

A mother came to mould … limbs like ours.
                        — Gerard Manley Hopkins












She was born without hands;
her feet made music on harp strings,
each toe-pluck sounding with
the confidence of a dancer’s pose.


How quickly it was
she saw surety and beauty,
as she gazed upon the statue of Mary
and entered into the Virgin’s heart.


Afterward she insisted
that standing en pointe
on moss on the cliff’s craggy edge—
like the picture that hung in Grace’s kitchen,
but with rounded nubs
instead of the usual long, slender fingers—


is perfect worship.






                          Helen Losse












......

tools

Tell me, how do the manufacturers of tools
turn a profit? I have used the same clawed hammer
for forty years. The screwdriver misted with rust
once slipped into my young hand, a new householder's.
Obliviously, tools wait to be used: the pliers,
notched mouth agape like a cartoon shark's; the wrench
with its jaws on a screw; the plane still sharp enough
to take its fragrant, curling bite; the brace and bit
still fit to chew a hole in pine like a patient thought;
the tape rule, its inches unaltered though I have shrunk;
the carpenter's angle, still absolutely right though I
have strayed; the wooden bubble level from my father's
meagre horde. Their stubborn shapes pervade the cellar,
enduring with a thrift that shames our wastrel lives.










                                           John Updike


























.....