Tuesday, June 29, 2021

CID CORMAN ~

 

Cid Corman

                                             June 29, 1924 ~ March 12, 2004

_______________



for all

poets


At the shrine

on the altar

not one relic


but in one way

or another

I remain.





A LORD will dismount

at the imperative of

the cherry blossoms.





DON'T LET the poet

get you down

when he rages


His letter kills but

his spirit

resuscitates.





AN


effulgence

a glory

a subtle


insistent

falling a

lucid rain


a torrent

guttural

clear and shrill


a run of

color con-

fused and con-


fusing a

sky full of

them! Alone


on the downs

on a bright

windless day





NOTRE DAME


Where Roman law made aliens bend

Stands a church, original, vital,

Like Adam once, all nerve and mettle,

Muscles aquiver at the end.


From outside you see the inner plan:

Flying buttresses forestalling

That mass from breaking against those walls

Upholding the vault's outstretching strain.


Labyrinth, impenetrable wood,

Soul of Gothic's rational abyss,

Egyptian might and Christian meekness,

By slim reed  oak, by plumb line — lord.


But the more, fortified Notre Dame,

I studied your immense example,

The more I thought: one day I too will

Build from meaningless a dream.





TU FU is long dead.

Leaves have fallen —

leaves will fall.


Every

thing in his words

on a far lookout.





MAKING

of rock. Letting as

Michelangelo


does the prisoner

becoming the rock

escape.





MOVED — three blocks up

and around in

a row of old


houses under

the bells of St

Stainslas and


cherry blossoms.

Must go get a

sink stopper and


a curtain rod —

if life is to

be tenable.





HERE I am

like a leaf

falling or


fallen. Point-

less as one —

as any —


all. Holding

mother's hand

though she's gone.





WE COME out

in the end

at the end


beginning

to see where

the stars are.





THE HILL

beyond the

gate


the temple

almost

mist.




__________________________

from TU

Cid Corman

The Toothpaste Press

1983





Saturday, June 26, 2021

GEORGE KALAMARAS ~

 



Below Buffalo Willows



Give us a kiss.  Goodbye, dear.  The buffalo

willows were full of hurt, and then the fire died.

Kiss the neck,  the nape, the cheek.  Somehow we survive

all the depths of deaths living gifts us.  I have cried.

I am not a we, but you are me,

and we are here.  Whenever we die.  Wherever

we had lived before,  with the sheep,  the cattle,

all the long grass long as a ribbed rib of sleep.

Yes, there was dust.  We slept the animal.

We slipped back and forth many times until

we got it right.  The woman the man hoped

to be was scarred.  The man she bled, hurt.

Say some touch or other.  The way we hold

a hand grieves us tough gusts that beat us

back.  A kiss.  Give it.  Grieve it.  Give us a way.

This mouth or that,  we are all tick-tonguing

our way around the tree bark of the heart.  Say something.

This time.  Anything.  Nothing would be enough.



_________________________


GEORGE KALAMARAS

We Slept the Animal

(Letters from the American West)

Dos Madres Books

2021





Friday, June 25, 2021

LEONARD CROW DOG ~

 




L E O N A R D     C R O W     D O G


Aug. 18, 1942,  Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota ~

June 5, 2021, Rapid City, S.D.





JAMES LAUGHLIN ~

 





A Letter to Hitler



Last winter we were

short of firewood and


it was good and cold

so we used a lot of


old books that were

in the attic just old


novels nobody would

ever want to read but


we found they made

plenty of heat and


twice they set the

chimney afire when


a burning page went

up with the draft and


we found they would

smoulder a long time


after you thought the

fire was all out and


then suddenly burst

into flame & another


thing they made ashes

that wouldn't stay in


the grate but floated

out all over the room!




______________________


JAMES LAUGHLIN

Some Natural Things

New Directions

1945






Sunday, June 20, 2021

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

RAVEN'S WITNESS ~

 



Nothing like an authorized biography

which should come in good time

and more gleanings selected by a

Lentfer, a close friend with Nelson,

from the anthropologist and explorer's

private journals, well trail-

blazed and revealing.

Go read Richard K. Nelson's

 The Island Within.


Mountaineers Books

2020

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Friday, June 11, 2021

ROLF JACOBSEN ~

 





Guardian Angel



I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,

and your closest friend, whom you can never know,

blossoms that light up for the blind.


I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,

and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.

The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day

and makes you feel so fantastically happy.


I am the one you have loved for many years.

I walk beside you all day and look intently at you

and put my mouth against your heart

though you're not aware of it.


I am your third arm, and your second

shadow, the white one

whom you cannot accept,

and who can never forget you.




Moon and Apple



When the apple tree blooms

the moon comes often like a blossom,

paler than any of them

shining over the tree.


It is the ghost of the summer,

the white sister of the blossoms who returns to drop in on us,

and radiate peace with her hands

so that you shouldn't feel too bad when the hard times come.

For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,

on the star tree,

pale and with luminous

ocean leaves.




Sssh



Sssh the sea says

sssh the small waves at the shore say, sssh

not so violent, not

so haughty, not

so remarkable.

Sssh

say the tips of the waves

crowding around the headland's

surf. Sssh

they say to people

this is our earth

our eternity.



__________________________

Twenty Poems

Rolf Jacobsen

Translated by Robert Bly

Seventies Press 1977