now with the angel choir

      






                  Material                                                                



 1

 Listen: the even knocking of hammers,
so much their own,
I project on to the people
to test the strength of each blow.
Listen now: electric current
cuts through a river of rock.
And a thought grows in me day after day:
the greatness of work is inside man.
Hard and cracked
his hand is differently charged
by the hammer
and thought differently unravels in stone
as human energy splits from the strength of stone
cutting the bloodstream, an artery
in the right place.
Look, how love feeds
on this well-grounded anger
which flows in to people's breath
as a river bent by the wind,
and which is never spoken, but just breaks high vocal cords.
Passers-by scuttle off into doorways,
someone whispers: "Yet here is a great force."
Fear not. Man's daily deeds have a wide span,
a strait riverbed can't imprison them long.
Fear not. For centuries they all stand in Him,
and you look at Him now
through the even knocking of hammers.



 2

Bound are the blocks of stone, the low-voltage wire
cuts deep in their flesh, an invisible whip—
stones know this violence.
When an elusive blast rips their ripe compactness
and tears them from their eternal simplicity,
the stones know this violence.
Yet can the current unbind their full strength?
It is he who carries that strength in his hands:
the worker.



 3

Hands are the heart's landscape. They split sometimes
like ravines into which an undefined force rolls.
The very same hands which man only opens
when his palms have had their fill of toil.
Now he sees: because of him alone others can walk in peace.
Hands are a landscape. When they split, the pain of their sores
surges free as a stream.
But no thought of pain—
no grandeur in pain alone.
For his own grandeur he does not know how to name.




 4

No, not just hands drooping with the hammer's weight,
not the taut torso, muscles shaping their own style,
but thought informing his work,
deep, knotted in wrinkles on his brow,
and over his head, joined in a sharp arc, shoulders and veins vaulted.
So for a moment he is a Gothic building
cut by a vertical thought born in the eyes.
No, not a profile alone,
not a mere figure between God and the stone,
sentenced to grandeur and error.


                          Karol Jozef Wojtyla    +2005



.....

some rhythm and blues

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Donny Hathaway                                                                                                

listening to “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”




Lingering at the edge
of want, grasping how,
clawing, gripping again,
then leaping, spread-winged,
shape of wail, taking yes
to good night. Rivering,
ghosting in a slow-drag:
churching gravity. Praise
armed to hold bones, larynx
of soldered gold, soldier
for the blues coup, heaven
flung, for what’s coursing out.
Past the plunge of need, of we,
when salt-throat bears all
to the blood of undone.


                    Christian Campbell  ( bahamian poet )








....

rosily aroused

        Psalm                                                                       



No one kneads us again out of earth and clay
no-One summons our dust.
No one.
Blessed art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom. In thy
spite .
A nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the nothing-,
the No-One’s- Rose.
With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our corona red
from the purpleword we sang
over, oh over
the thorn.



                       Paul Celan

                                           trans. John Felstiner









.......












....

 

 

 

 

 

Deserted Farm                                                

 

 

                                       By Mark Vinz
 

Where the barn stood

the empty milking stalls rise up

like the skeleton of an ancient sea beast,

exiled forever on shores of prairie. 

 

Decaying timber moans softly in twilight;

the house collapses like a broken prayer.

Tomorrow the heavy lilac blossoms will open,

higher than the roofbeams, reeling in wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

it all revolves

APPRENTICED TO JUSTICE

---

 
The weight of ashes 
from burned out camps.
Lodges smoulder in fire,
animal hides wither
their mythic images shrinking
pulling in on themselves,
all incinerated
fragments
of  breath  bone and basket 
rest heavy 
sink deep 
like wintering frogs.
And no dustbowl wind
can lift 
this history 
of loss.

Now fertilized by generations—
ashes upon ashes,
this old earth erupts.
Medicine voices rise like mists
white buffalo memories
teeth marks on birch bark 
forgotten forms
tremble into wholeness.
And the grey weathered stumps,
trees and treaties 
cut down 
trampled for wealth. 
Flat potlatch plateaus
of ghost forests 
raked by bears
soften  rot inward
until tiny arrows of green
sprout 
rise erect
rootfed
from each crumbling center.
Some will never laugh 
as easily.

Will hide knives
silver as fish in their boots,
hoard names
as if they could be stolen 
as easily as land,
will paper their walls
with maps and broken promises,
scar their flesh
with this badge
heavy as ashes.
And this is a poem 
for those 
apprenticed 
from birth.
In the womb
of your mother nation
heartbeats 
sound like drums
drums like thunder
thunder like twelve thousand 
walking
then ten thousand
then eight
walking away 
from stolen homes
from burned out camps
from relatives fallen 
as they walked
then crawled 
then fell.
This is the woodpecker sound
of an old retreat.
It becomes an echo,
an accounting
to be reconciled.
This is the sound
of trees falling in the woods
when they are heard, 
of red nations falling 
when they are remembered. 
This is the sound 
we hear 
when fist meets flesh
when memories rattle hollow in stomachs. 
And we turn this sound 
over and over again
until it becomes 
fertile ground
from which we will build
new nations
upon the ashes of our ancestors.
Until it becomes 
the rattle of a new revolution
these fingers 
drumming on keys.





                             Kimberly Blaeser - (  metissienne  )

a shadow behind bucolica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         ABANDONED FARMHOUSE                                                 

 

 

 

 

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of his bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child, 

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves 

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole. 

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars 

in the cellar say he left in nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm - a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls.  Something went wrong, they say.

 

 

 

                                Ted Kooser

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....

incendiary musings

Before I Begin                                                                                    







To start again in the candelabra
of branches, that is, always to begin

Waking, to feel the fur of trees
bending toward the calendar,

tomorrow. Our children are filthy
and we salute as we pass the evidence

of today’s kitchen, happy
in our failures, awkwardly worrying

a key passage of Bach to death.
That chord of geese keeps thrumming

overhead, beating a runway to water.
We have not been kind

to our muscles, grouchy, anxious
to be touched another way.

We baked half a day on the unforgiven
beach. It’s not smart to peel

your chest; it’s too soon.
You swell in the night, banked

in hot folds, the sprawled children.
I’m itching to take off your skin

and touch you to see which I want more,
to be burned or to be the burning.




                               Mark Conway












//

gut memory

UPON SEEING THE SKULL AND BONES OF A WOLF                                 




How savage, fierce and grim!
His bones are bleached and white.
But what is death to him?
He grins as if to bite.
He mocks the fate
That bade, ''Begone.''
There's fierceness stamped
In ev'ry bone.
Let silence settle from the midnight sky—
Such silence as you've broken with your cry;
The bleak wind howl, unto the ut'most verge
Of this mighty waste, thy fitting dirge



                      Alexander Lawrence Posey
                          (   Creek Poet   )    +  1908

hard facts of life

Traffic                                                                                          





Choice is painful,
Occasion but a drag.

Poems are made by poets,
That’s no lie.

“What’s wrong with this town,"
A New York driver says,

“There’s too much art—and
Too many art lovers!”

“You an artist?”
“Nah, I just drive cab.”






                             Bill Berkson    (   + June 16 2016   )









..

THE WiSDOM OF CROWS

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I.     A black crow with a brown hangover sat on the side of a blue highway in silver rain. Don't fret it, he said to me as I drove by. I, of course, had no idea what the black crow with the brown hangover sitting on the side of the blue highway in silver rain could mean. That is until twenty minutes later I found myself lost and completely off course of the direction I thought myself to be traveling. Don't fret it, the crow had said. And so after a while I quit complaining and enjoyed the fog licking at the side of the mountains. II.     I heard cawing outside my bathroom window. There, in the dogwood tree, sat a huge shining crow. She flew to a taller tree to encounter a mockingbird trying to discourage her from landing. But the crow refused to leave until she had left her message for me. Three caws, then four, then three more. Louder and louder and louder. There are many memories coming. Explore them. I looked away, contemplating her message. When I finally understood I looked again and she was gone. III.     This morning a crow said, All I ever needed was for you to listen.                  MariJo  Moore ....

heart to heart

Love, let us live as we have lived, nor lose
 The little names that were the first night's grace,
 And never come the day that sees us old,
I still your lad, and you my little lass.
Let me be older than old Nestor's years,
And you the Sibyl, if we heed it not.
What should we know, we two, of ripe old age?
We'll have its richness, and the years forgot.


                               Ausonius  (  5th century convert )

not too much to wish

LAST WALK THROUGH THE CITY                                    





(to be read most perfectly aloud to bold rhythm jazz)

Before I die I want to stroll through the city one last time
let this be my last humble wish
to walk on my feet through my city
through the city of Copenhagen
as I’ve done so many times before
and I’ll know this is the last time
and I’ll choose my route with care

and I’ll walk down Isted Street or West Bridge Street
and walk down all the narrow sunless side streets with all their shutdown shops
and I’ll look at all the junk-shop displays of yellowed curtains and greasy gas rings
and I’ll rummage in the book boxes and I’ll buy nothing
and not because it’s the last time
but because I never rummage in the book boxes to buy anything
but to rummage in them and think how short and strange life is
and I’ll look at children playing in the small square stony windblown courtyards
and I’ll listen to them shouting to and at each other
and I’ll see their mothers lean out of kitchen windows
and call them in when dinner is ready
and out the windows clotheslines will hang with the family’s underwear
and it will flap in the wind

and I’ll walk through West Bridge’s poets quarter in the gloaming I’ll stroll along Saxo Street Oehlenschläger Street Kingo Street and I’ll stop in someplace in one of the serving houses maybe Café Golden Rain and savor a bitter and nothing else and then out and on I’ll wear my soles thin this last stroll in Copenhagen

I will say farewell to my city and I’ll walk on from West Bridge I’ll go in over the Central Station I’ll pass it in grey light and it will be lightly veiled it will as always resemble an old tear-streaked film and it will stab my heart as it always does

the usual alkies will sit there waiting for nothing
the young hitchhikers will stand with their backpacks and their cartons of milk
hurried and harried people will wait for their connections
families will come with suitcases and baby carriages to take a weekend with the family

in the country

and I’ll stand in a corner and be overwhelmed
and not be able to do anything about it and not want to either
just be overwhelmed by all that life and all that swarm
wet eyes without clear reason
and very very distant

and when I have pulled myself together I’ll shake the shoulders of my coat
shake the Central Station off as a dog shakes his wet fur
or as when you leave a theater after a movie
I’ll light a cigarette and go down West Bridge Street to the Town Hall Square
where everyone flutters around between buses and movie houses
and again I’ll just lean up against a poster-plastered pillar
and I’ll know that here somewhere on these stones lie my whole life and all my dreams
just like so many others’ lives and dreams

everything is so swift and fleeting
like your last stroll through the city
and I’ll walk down the Pedestrian Street like a shadow
and all the way down I’ll be accompanied by all my friends
and they will all be ghosts
and no one but me will see they are there but they are
and we say goodbye to everything and each other
and we are not sentimental
but the air is full of something no one knows what it’s called or is
and we walk there in silent conversation
and somewhere towards New Square they are gone again
and I myself fade out a little further down

My last stroll through the city is done
and a single shadow less frequents the street—


                            Dan Turell  - Danish poet

                     trans.  Thomas E. Kennedy










......this was a sort of a strange heist




....

no room for dualism

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.

                                                    Rumi

.






..

....in the dark pine wood

In the dark pine-wood
I would we lay,
In deep cool shadow
At noon of day.


How sweet to lie there,
Sweet to kiss,
Where the great pine-forest
Enaisled is!

Thy kiss descending
Sweeter were
With a soft tumult
Of thy hair.


O unto the pine-wood
At noon of day
Come with me now,
Sweet love, away.


          James Joyce




.....






...

lyrical truth

 

 

 

 

Things   of  Intrinsic  Worth                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember that sandrock on Emmells Crick
Where Dad carved his name in 'thirteen?
It's been blasted down into rubble
And interred by their dragline machine.
Where Fadhls lived, at the old Milar Place,
Where us kids stole melons at night?
They 'dozed it up in a funeral pyre
Then torched it. It's gone alright.
The "C" on the hill, and the water tanks
Are now classified, "reclaimed land."
They're thinking of building a golf course
Out there, so I understand.
The old Egan Homestead's an ash pond
That they say is eighty feet deep.
The branding corral at the Douglas Camp
Is underneath a spoil heap.
And across the crick is a tipple, now,
Where they load coal onto a train,
The Mae West Rock on Hay Coulee?
Just black and white snapshots remain.
There's a railroad loop and a coal storage shed
Where the bison kill site used to be.
The Guy Place is gone; Ambrose's too.
Beulah Farley's a ranch refugee.

But things are booming. We've got this new school
That's envied across the whole state.
When folks up and ask, "How's things goin' down there?"
I grin like a fool and say, "Great!"
Great God, how we're doin'! We're rollin'in dough,
As they tear and they ravage The Earth.
And nobody knows...or nobody cares...
About things of intrinsic worth.

                             Wallace McRae









......

thinking of a friend

At the still point of the turning world. 
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; 
 at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. 
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. 
 Except for the point,  the still point,
There would be no dance, 
and there is only the dance.


                                                 Thomas Stearns Eliot

                                               (from:   Burnt Norton -the 4 quartets)







...