on the table

https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/5-januar-5722














…..

to the core

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
    Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
    Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'










…...from Stratford on avon














….

hims and hymns

'Tis said of Watts before his prime
That frequently, not all the time,
His wont was to discourse in rhyme
In daily conversation.


His father, naméd Isaac, too
Decreed he must such speech eschew.
Presumably, it caused undue
Paternal consternation.


Young Isaac, moved for papa's sake,
Cried, "Father, do some pity take,
And I will no more verses make."
thus ease exacerbation








….

where land and sea copulate

    POEM                                              

The Island, the River, the shore,

the Stage Heads, the land, itself,

isolated, encased on three sides by

the sea and water

on the 4th side, Eastern Point an arm

such as Enyalion’s to protect

the body from the onslaught of

too much and give Gloucester

occasion, give her Champlain’s channel

in and out (as her river

refluxes), a body of land, hard on granite yet

arched by such skies favored by such sea and

sweetened in the air so briar-roses grow

right on her rock and at Brace’s Cove kelp

redolents the air, jumps the condition and strain locus

falls or emerges as the rain on her or the sun

                                    Charles Olson

.

visions from the blue-plane window

In the round little window, everything is blue, land bluish, blue-green, blue (and sky) everything is blue blue lakes and lagoons blue volcanoes while farther off the land looks bluer blue islands in a blue lake. This is the face of the land liberated. And where all the people fought, I think: for love! To live without the hatred of exploitation. To love one another in a beautiful land so beautiful, not only in itself but because of the people in it, above all because of the people in it. That's why God gave us this beautiful land for the society in it. And in all those blue places they fought, suffered for a society of love here in this land. One patch of blue looks more intense... And I thought I was seeing the sites of all the battles there, and of all the deaths, behind that small, round windowpane blue all the shades of blue.




Fr. Ernesto Cardenal + 1 March 2020









......

of things phantasmic

  That I Saw the Light on Nonotuck Avenue          

That every musical note is a flame, native in its own tongue.

That between bread and ash there is fire.

That the day swells and crests.

That I found myself born into it with sirens and trucks going by
out here in a poem.

That there are other things that go into poems like the pigeon,
cobalt, dirty windows, sun.

That I have seen skin in marble, eye in stone.

That the information I carry is mostly bacterial.

That I am a host.

That the ghost of the text is unknown.

That I live near an Air Force base and the sound in the sky is death.

That sound like old poetry can kill us.

That there are small things in the poem: paper clips, gauze, tater
tots, and knives.

That there can also be emptiness fanning out into breakfast rolls,
macadam, stars.

That I am hungry.

That I seek knowledge of the ancient sycamore that also lives in
the valley where I live.

That I call to it.

That there are airships overhead.

That I live alone in my head out here in a poem near a magical
tree.

That I saw the light on Nonotuck Avenue and heard the cry of a
dove recede into a rustle.

That its cry was quiet light falling into a coffin.

That it altered me.

That today the river is a camera obscura, bending trees.

That I sing this of metallic shimmer, sing the sky, the song, all of
it and wonder if I am dying would you come back for me?

                                                      Peter Gizzi

//

from Donelaitis - the seasons

From THE CARES OF WINTER

... the winter's scowling wraths are already returning,
And again the bristling north wind is flying to scare us.
Look, how everywhere on pondwater panes are appearing
Just as, in that house, a glazier is putting in windows.
And the fishes' home, where bullfrogs saluted the summer,
Puts its armor on, because of the quarrels of winter,
Sending all its animals to sleep in the darkness.
There, the northern wind has frightened the fields with its scolding
So that bogs and swamps are shrinking, contracting themselves to
Stop the puddles of mud from their usual splashing and gurgling.
Listen, how the road, when skipping wheels try to strike it,
Rattles — having frozen — like a well-tightened snaredrum
So resounding that its sound keeps echoing in you.
Thus the world begins again to welcome the winter.
Well, I guess it's time: it won't be long'till Christmas
Holiday begins, and Advent wants to end by tomorrow.
Fall, that elephant, too painfully annoyed us,
Rudely spattering the mud it wallowed around in.
All who had to put some shoes on, bast or wooden,
Cursed the autumn for its works and its sloppy messes.
Gentlemen, who fly around on splendid stallions,
Going visiting each day in the finest of garments,
Also cursed the filthy autumn when the mud splashed.
Therefore all the people turned their faces northward,
Most impatient for a winter of dryness, complaining.

Then, while everyone lamented, a glow started spreading;
Soon, across the sky, the fluttering winds of the winter
Chased the stormy weather to the south, where the stork sleeps.
Later, thrusting out her head from the clouds, the winter
Quarreled like a shrew about the dungs of the autumn,
And, with frosts, she burned away its oozing labors;
Once she'd shoveled up the fall's manures, the winter
Built us all a road upon the horrible mudflats,
Teaching how to skate and fly again with sledges.
Now, where formerly we celebrated the springtime,
Gaily plucking for our use his herbs and his petals,
And where later warmer pleasures ended with summer,
There have risen drifts of snow with hillocks of whiteness,
And the flowers of the winter, that winter has woven.
It is wonderful to see how the forests of pinetrees
Show up everywhere, with curly crests, and bearded,
And, like powdered dandies, stand with elbows akimbo .,.

                                                  (Theodore Melnechuk) translator

                                                     -from Lithuanian

......