A Longhouse Birdhouse

Monday, February 18, 2019

HEAVEN LAKE (21) ~

Visitors

No one visited all winter

No one —

Everyone decided

There was too much ice

From the road to the house

We’d see squirrel tracks

Cat tracks

Fox tracks

In the lightest snow

They came

Town Rain

Isn’t it great

When it rains —

Suddenly everyone is running!

Beauty Queen

The old cat

Is deaf —

Purrs louder

Lilacs

come to

them be-

fore it

is too

late

Problem Solver

I saw the face of god today —

now having lost half my readers because of the

word god, no hard feelings, let’s continue

as I was saying I saw the face of god

in fact his whole body and soul

he was walking towards us in an old Rangers team jacket

cap, shorts, he maybe even had his god beard, I believe he did

the sun returned after five straight days of rain and

no one showed up on the park bench right

outside of the grocer’s

but the two of us

and how good does it get

when god speaks to you

as we rise to leave walking the side-

walk toward this bearded transient

waving confidently one arm in the air

shouting these very words —

“You guys are the salt of the earth —

(pointing) I hate those other people”

what a

god

—————————————

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Written In My Hermitage
On A Snowy Evening

For more than seventy years, I have been making

Myself dizzy observing men.

I have abandoned trying to penetrate men's good and bad actions.

Coming and going is a sign of weakness.

Heavy snow in the dead of night —

Under the weather-beaten window, once incense stick.

Light rain — the mountain forest is wrapped in mist.

Slowly the fog changes to clouds and haze.

Along the boundless river bank, many crows.

I walk to a hill overlooking the valley to sit in zazen.

After spending the day begging in town,

I now sit peacefully under a cliff in the evening cool.

Alone, with one robe and one bowl —

The life of a Zen monk is truly the best!

_____________________

Ryokan
One Robe, One Bowl
translated by John Stevens

Friday, February 15, 2019

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI ~

Mandelstam in Theodosia

Let me go; I wasn't made for jail.

—OSIP MANDELSTAM

(arrested in Theodosia in 1920

Mandelstam was not mistaken, he wasn't made

for jail, but jails were made

for him, countless camps and prisons

waited for him patiently, freight trains

and filthy barracks, railroad switches and

gloomy waiting rooms kept waiting

till he came, secret police in leather

jackets waited for him and party

hacks with ruddy faces.

"I will not see the famous Phaedra,"

he wrote. The Black Sea didn't shed

black tears, pebbles on the shore

tumbled submissively, as the wave desired,

clouds sailed swiftly across the inattentive earth.

July

July, the blackbirds have stopped singing.

I sit on a bench by the bank of a slow river,

I hear the hate-filled quarreling of lovers,

whom I don't know and never will.

Sweaty athletes run along the avenue.

The morning sun shines indifferently

on the calm dark water

that is apathy personified.

A little boy carries a plastic bag

bearing the garish logo Men's Health,

souls almost never meet,

bodies do battle cloaked in darkness.

A rain frail as haiku arrives in the night.

Light bells mumble at dawn.

While we're alive.

Sandals

The sandals I bought many years ago

for twenty eros

in the Greek village of Theologos

on the island of Thassos

haven't work out at all,

they're just like new.

I must have gotten,

quite accidentally,

a hermit's, a saint's sandals.

How they must suffer

carrying an ordinary sinner.

__________________________

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

Asymmetry

translated from the Polish

by Clare Cavanagh

Farrar, Straus and Giroux2018

Thursday, February 14, 2019

POLISH IMMIGRANTS ~

Polish Immigrants

how do they break away from the land

where even stones take root

how do two languages share one mouth

like two women in one kitchen

how do they bring their bloody bodies

wrapped in accordions instead of bandage

through Security

do new hotels remind them

of boxes of german chocolate

is it true that their pillows

are stuffed with soil

softer than any feather

their faces differ from the locals'

by the number of wrinkles

as if they started

sculpturing something new out of their skin

but then stopped having changed their minds

and never finished their reincarnation

the tiny wrinkles in the corners of their eyes

twisted and shiny from sweat

like bonbon wrappers

but when you look into those eyes

you are looking down the barrel of a gun —

what do you need

in the territory of their city

painted on the wall of the restaurant

Taste of Europe

and there

that very taste

fills your eyes with saliva

————————————

Valzhyna Mort
Factory of Tears
Copper Canyon Press
2008