PASSING TIME

Your skin like dawn

     Mine like musk



 One paints the beginning

       of a certain end.



     The other, the end of a
        
            sure beginning.





MAYA ANGELOU    (recently deceased)














....

a purely human testimony

“I Just Can’t”



by

Mort Escanduleous


 


sleep    
 eludes
  me
   always
    never
    cannot
     sleep
     cannot
      escape
       the
       sound
        the
        droning
         ear
          plugs
           head
            phones
             white
              noise
               tv
                nothing
                 works
                  no
                   hope
                    no
                     end
                      no 
                        rest















.

after bathing, perhaps

            

 

 

 

 

 

                      Purity

 

 

 

 

 

Amazing solitude.
Only me and my cigarette,
and this tiny dragonfly
painted in Moldavian monastery blue.

 

Nothing threatens me,
not even the sun.
The sky is an immense cloud
made of mother-of-pearl.

The lake is an immense cloud
made of mother-of-pearl.
I am the mermaid of the lake.
– I am an infinite melody
like the murmur of the rain.  

 

And I am clean,
like the poem I’m writing.

 

 

 

 

                      Nina Cassian      +April 2014

                           Romanian poet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....

The Peace Of Wild Things

 

 

 

 

 

 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                    Wendell Berry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.........

a way of great success

              





                 The Donkey






When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.




                  G. K. Chesterton









......

with all the nuance

                       








                          

                           L'Albatros



 

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

 
À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

 
Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!

 
Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.






                               — Charles Baudelaire









.....

as in twelve serious tones

Poem in a Mode that Isn't Mine





to you, Rimbaud




My horse tripped over the semiquavers! The notes splatter up to the green sky of my soul: the eighth sky!


Apollo was a doctor and me I’m a pianist of the heart, if not in fact. It would be necessary, with the flats and all the bars, to unload the scribbled steamers, to collect the tiny battle flags to compose some canticles.


The minuscule, it’s huge! Whoever conceived Napoleon as an insect between two branches of a tree, who painted him a nose too large in watercolor, who rendered his court with shades too tender, wasn’t he greater than Napoleon himself, o Ataman Prajapati!


The minuscule, it’s the note!


Man bears upon himself photographs of his ancestors like Napoleon bore God, o Spinoza! Me, my ancestors, these are the notes of harps. God had conceived St. Helena and the sea between two branches of a tree. My black horse has a good eye, though albino, but he tripped on the harp notes.





                                                  Max Jacob



   ... trans...Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney






.