FEBRUARY CHILD ~

February Child



she shivers around the corner

where the wind is wild



I went around the corner



And I asked her come with me.

There's a yellow fire at my house

by a green cedar tree.



My wife will dry your shoes

The fire will warm your feet

My daughter will count your toes



And I'll look for your mother

In the wind and the sleet



_____________

Edward Dorn
Derelict Air:
From Collected Out 
Enitharmon (U.K.)

WIGGLE WOBBLE ~

PATRICIA SMITH ~

K A T R I N A


I was birthed restless and elsewhere



gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush,

broke through with branches, steel



I was bitch-monikered, hipped, I hefted

a whip rain, a swirling sheet of grit.



Scraping toward the first of you, hungering for wood, walls,

unturned skin. With shifting and frantic mouth, I loudly loved

the slow bones



of elders, fools, and willows.




__________________

Patricia Smith
Blood Dazzler
Coffee House Books
2008

W.S. GRAHAM ~

The Stepping Stones




I have my yellow boots on to walk

Across the shires where I hide

Away from my true people and all

I can't put easily into my life.



So you will see I am stepping on

The stones between the runnels getting

Nowhere nowhere. It is almost

Embarrassing to be alive alone.



Take my hand and pull me over from

The last stone on to the moss and

The three celandines. Now my dear

Let us go home across the shires.










The Night City



Unmet at Euston in a dream

Of London under Turner's steam

Misting the iron gantries, I

Found myself running away

From Scotland into the golden city.



I ran down Gray's Inn Road and ran

Till I was under a black bridge

This was me at nineteen

Late at night arriving between

The buildings of the City of London/



And then I (O I have fallen down)

Fell in my dream beside the Bank

of England's wall to bed, me

With my money belt of Northern ice.

I found Eliot and he said yes



And sprang into a Holmes cab.

Boswell passe me in the fog

Going to visit Whistler who

Was with John Donne who had just seen

Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green.



Midnight. I lost the moon

Light chiming on St. Paul's.



The city is empty. Night

Watchmen are drinking their tea.



The Fire had burnt out.

The Plague's pits had closed

And gone into literature.



Between the big buildings

I sat like a flea crouched

In the stopped works of a watch.








[ From the Sleeping Hand ]




Look down from a height on the long

Oystercatching shore of Loch

Long at first light with the tide

Streaming out between the pools

And you will see. Don't breathe

Or frighten me waiting to meet

My dear from the sleeping house coming

Over the shingle with her bare feet.




_____________________

W.S. Graham 
Selected by Michael Hofmann
New York Review of Books
2018

A.R. AMMONS ~

Salute



May happiness

pursue you



catch you

often, and



should it

lose you,



be waiting

ahead, making



a clearing

for you.




_____________

A R Ammons

(from a card nailed up
in my tool room) 

MICHAEL O'BRIEN ~

Out of the corner

of his eye the

other world, the one

that always seems like

real one, the one

without us



on the hill a

saddle of light.









He dreams he wakes

in his childhood

room, can't find the

light to write this

down, then wakes for

real, finds light and

paper, writes To

place back the stone

of origin

and enter the

world of end-time



pools of

moonlight



in the

fields.









A long way from the Andes

the sound of a wooden flute

rides up the escalator

at Lexington Avenue.



Sudden as birds

two girls' hands

break into conversation

across the car.









Under the snow the meadow

more like a river than the river.



Threadbare hillside, whose colors

go out as clouds gather.



Two crows cross the frozen lake

without a sound.









dusk, Ninth Avenue, face

bathed in a cellphone glow, cowboy

Narcissus, at his tasks



_______________________

Michael O'Brien
A V E N U E
Flood Editions 
2012

KAZUKO SHIRAISHI ~

Summer Time — The Full Moon 
Four Days After July 27th



my mother silently went to heaven       four days ago

and tonight       is the full moon

my mother quietly completed her work

                         the last penance called living

when she breathed in and exhaled       as though reaching

as far back as to the Inca Empire

                                          the thin river of her life

                                                          trembled like a thread



snow     everything is fine

she is     happier than the moon      she does not have to wander about

                                      among the dark clouds



she does not have to       shine serenely

                                   and slowly leave

she has obtained       the permanence

of her existence by not existing       ah

I forgot to say, thank you       because your leaving

this world was      too soon      and too quiet a sigh



what is called permanence is       transient

because it only exists inside me

in this finite inside

infinity       that is a permanence is       now

                                                                     floating

ah       full moon

                      please shine

on my beloved       my mother

                    please flutter

                like a spring breeze

            quietly over the repose of her soul

                       like

                               drops of light




——————————


Kazuko Shiraishi
MY FLOATING MOTHER, CITY
New Directions 2009
translated from the Japanese by
Yumiko Isumura & Samuel Grolmes

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

MAGIC SAM ~

SNOWSHOE COUNTRY ~

R E A D     M E

Cambridge

2018

BRUNO GANZ ~

B R U N O     G A N Z

(1941, Zurich ~  2019)

RYOKAN ~

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

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