POETS WHO SLEEP (The Book) ~ #5

all drawings
copyright 2020
Bob Arnold

CID CORMAN and MIKE DOYLE 1967-1970 ~

R E A D      M E

Happy Birthday, tomorrow, Cid!

LATE SONG ~

Late Song




Long evening at the end of spring

with soft rain falling and flowing

from the caves into the broken

stone basin outside the window

a blackbird warning of nightfall

coming and I hear again

announcing that it will happen

darkness and the day will be gone

as I heard it all years ago

knowing no more that I know now

but once more I sit and listen

in the same still room to the rain

at the end of spring and again

hear the blackbird in the evening




_________________

W. S. Merwin
The Pupil
Knopf
2001

TOM SEXTON ~

At Fort Egbert

    Eagle, Alaska




In a field where weary soldiers once stood

breathing cold river mist at reveille,

I watched a woman and child filling

a large pail with strawberries as small

as the tip of the child's little finger.

She said they were brought to Eagle

over coastal mountains from Valdez

by a cavalry officer's young wife

who wrapped them in wet straw and burlap

when her steamer saild for Seattle.

She had found them deep in the woods

in ruts once cut by wagon wheels.

This story was told her by a woman

whose grandfather was stationed here.

The evening air was cooling as she spoke

with an accent slightly soft and Southern.

I knew the strawberries were wild.

A few were growing in my garden,

and I had seen them near the cemetery, as well.

Still I listened without saying a word.

Her story would comfort them when December's

gruel of thin light shivered in her daughter's spoon.





____________________
Tom Sexton
World Brimming Over
Brooding Heron Press
2003

JOEL FELIX ~

On Pharmakos Farm

                                     for Tom

Join my song

flossing loopholes

'neath this spiny tree

for time has difficulty

rolling uphill  —

nothing consecutive

on this cloud-initiated mountain:

cluster and

clearing

blue flashes

on the backs of birds

the sound of cinnamon

all you get

till you're picked

on pharmakos farm

no cooling herb

from bloodless flowers

at the bottom of summer's

paper hearts

________________

Joel Felix

Limbs of the Apple Tree Never Die

Verge Books

2013

FRANKLIN BRAINARD ~

Song For A Widow's Marriage




Husband, I come to you, no girl,

but a woman earthed from North Dakota.

I have known the farm,

have milked cows,

have forked manure

into the spreader,

have smelt the deep ammonia

of horse urine.

I have borne the womb burden;

I have borne and bear

the woes of children,

woes that hang as unaccountable

as moon dogs or a dry dipper.

I come to you no girl

but I come rich

with peasant blood

and warm as sun-dug potatoes.

You shall have me warm beside you

when winter turns over the roof's edge;

you shall have me

like something held for winter

coming live with flavor

from the double-doored root cellar;

and, when I take the pies

from the oven

and when I take the bread

that yeasted all the kitchen

in the afternoon,

come, kiss my neck

and walk with me

through the late garden.




_____________________
Franklin Brainard
Raingatherer
Minnesota's Writer's Publishing House
1973

DAVID TOOP ~

Goldsmiths

U.K.

2019

POETS WHO SLEEP (The Book) ~ #4

FOR HARDCORE FRNs ~

Susan and I traveled this route in 1979

DRUMMOND HADLEY ~

Though you've forgotten who you were. . .

     though you've forgotten who you were

     when she told you her songs to sing,

though you've forgotten who you were

     who sang her songs to the air,

though you've forgotten who you were

     who could make her sing her songs,

though her arms ache for you and you want

     to come to her and you sit there

     waiting to hear her song,

the wind blows on past you over the ranges

    of blue mountains and carries her

    into the blue distances where

    your eyes can't see.







Oh thinking, feeling people:


     Laborers, presidents, blue collar workers,

     vice-presidents of governments and businesses,

     kids in blue jeans waiting out the summers,

     working in gas stations and cafes,

     smoking dope under the noses of the police,

     or screeching your tires on the roads,

     long-haired people living in leantos and old

     adobe houses spiritually resettling the land. . .



     bring to the children of the years to come

     that Indian vision of the Earth's old family

     Old vision of the Earth's old family

     Old vision of the whiteman we lost long ago

     that Homer tells was ours.


                                                              1972


____________________________
Drummond Hadley
Vision
A Curriculum of the Soul
1972





MORE!

WILLIAM WITHERUP ~

Orange Sunshine Acid Poem



1


We rode towards the stars on a crest

of marble, gneiss and schist

and were caught in the cold sweeping searchlight of eternity





2


You were the Snow Queen and I was Boris

I fought the Russians in the snow with my large red hands

As they fell on my knife their blood froze into jewels





3


I came to you and you loved me, Scheherezade

your breasts smelling of musk

and the wind in the tents





4


I can't tell you anything of love

except that it is a young woman

picking the dry rose-colored madrone leaves from her hair.





____________________

William Witherup
Love Poems
Peters Gate Press
1971

TU FU ~

T U     F U

New York of Review Books

PRIMO LEVI ~

In the Beginning



Fellow humans, to whom a year is a long time,

A century a venerable goal,

Struggling for your bread,

Tired, fretful, tricked, sick lost:

Listen, and may it be mockery and consolation.

Twenty billion years before now,

Brilliant, soaring in space and time,

There was a ball of flame, solitary, eternal,

Our common father and our executioner,

It exploded, and every change began.

Even now the thin echo of this one reverse catastrophe

Resounds from the farthest reaches.

From that one spasm everything was born:

The same abyss that enfolds and challenges us,

The same time that spawns and defeats us,

Everything anyone has ever thought,

The eyes of every woman we have loved,

Suns by the thousands

And this hand that writes.

13 August 1970






__________________________

Primo Levi
Collected Poems
translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann
Faber & Faber

LIN HE-JING ~

Living
As A Recluse
On The Lake


Lakewater

Comes into the yard.

Mountains

Wind round my hut.

A recluse

Should avoid the world.



Normally shut,

The unused door's turned blue with moss.

Guests arrive,

Frightening white birds to flight.

Selling herbs,

I almost hate to price them,

Love watering the garden

According to nature.



And how about

India Road

Through the woods,

Still reaching deep autumn

In a distant,

Blue dream?


________________
Lin He-Jing
Recluse-Poet of Orphan Mountain
Brooding Heron Press 1993
translated by Paul Hansen