THE FINAL TOAST

Like it or not
We’re given only three choices:
The past, the present and the future.

And not even three
For the philosopher tells us
The past has passed
It’s ours only in memory:
From the rose stripped of her petals
Another petal can’t be drawn.

There are only two cards
In the deck:
The present and the future.

And not even two
Because everyone knows
That the present doesn’t exist
But in the way it becomes the past
And that’s passed…
Like youth.

To make a long story short
We’re being left only with the future:
I make a toast
For that day which never comes
But is the only thing
Really left in our control.

                                   Nicanor Parra  +2018  ( age 103 )






......

ALEXANDER BLOKUS 1807-1867 EVIDENTLY A RUSSIAN PEASANT POET

"Igor" - (translated by Elsie von Vinyasent)

Needle in my shirt
my left arm is hurt
cat caught a mouse
I want potatoes for dinner

(Igor's eyes are like the sea after a storm)
That cat ate a moth
Muddy boots
(His young arms strong, tanned and muscled
from days of working in the fields)

Pie is good
I like beer, too
(Slow falls the sweat of his brow,
and I watch, breathless, as it drops
like spring rain on the handle of his ax)
I have to pee











......

TO A SONNET WITH LOVE

Now, you great stanza, you heroic mould,
Bend to my will, for I must give you love:
The weight in the heart that breathes, but cannot move,
Which to endure flesh only makes so bold.

Take up, take up, as it were lead or gold
The burden; test the dreadful mass thereof.
No stone, slate, metal under or above
Earth, is so ponderous, so dull, so cold.

Too long as ocean bed bears up the ocean,
As earth's core bears the earth, have I borne this;
Too long have lovers, bending for their kiss
Felt bitter force cohering without motion.

Staunch meter, great song, it is yours, at length,
To prove how stronger you are than my strength.

                                              Louise Bogan

...

                                       

gotta sing

the train ride from hell

I look at the faces
and lift my head
above the roar
only the vision
the smile
the knowledge
few men know
I salute you rebel
born rebel
above factories
above the whips of dead men
above cemeteries
lets sing to the flower
here on earth
wherever it may be
I sing to the flower
in the jailhouse full of blues
in the coffin without courage
I sing to you
you who never forget to smile
no matter how hard
no matter how your fist
clenched in anger
you smiled at me
that was the flame
for I am richer than
all the moneybags in heaven
I sing for you
a flower
rebel of choice
I sing to you

                        Jack   Michiline













......

THE MOON

       to María Kodama

There is so much lonliness in that gold.
The moon of every night is not the moon
That the first Adam saw.
The centuries
Of human wakefulness have left it brimming
With ancient tears. Look at it. It is your mirror.

                                Jorge Luis Borges

                                   trans.  Mezey

.....Hay tanta soledad en ese oro.

La luna de las noches no es la luna

que vio el primer Adán. Los largos siglos

de la vigilia humana la han colmado

de antiguo llanto. Mírala. Es tu espejo.

.......

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

                                                                          Gabbert/Rooney...trans.

..

a tune from long ago

I heard a bird at break of day 
   Sing from the autumn trees 
A song so mystical and calm, 
   So full of certainties, 
No man, I think, could listen long 
   Except upon his knees. 
Yet this was but a simple bird, 
   Alone, among dead trees. 


                    William Alexander Percy







...