ARCHIVE: CLARICE LISPECTOR ~

 

C L A R I C E     L I S P E C T O R

The Apple in the Dark

New Directions

2023

SUSAN HOWE ~

R E A D      M E

New Directions 2007

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In the house the house is all

house and each of its authors

passing from room to room

Short eclogues as one might

say on tiptoe do not infringe

I want my own house I'm

you and you're the author

You're not all right you're

all otherwise it appears as

if you don't care who you

are — if you count the host

Don't worry I go with the

house your living's where

you walk or have walked

I'd rather read than hurt a

hair of you listen to me

Premeditated twilight this

house a nearest wrapped

bundle of belonging idle

slip back through grasses

dabble our bare feet in

Poets have imagined you

whoever you are implicit

melody familiar metaphor

bawdy tapestries archaic

pillage love patience the

scales the dogs the boots

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( a selection from

"118 Westerly Terrace")

FERLINGHETTI ~

New Directions

2017

edited by Nancy J. Peters

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Rough Song of Animals Dying

(Lawrence Ferlinghetti)





In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream of the reality of existence
inside the ultimate computer
which is the universe
in which the Arrow of Time
flies both ways
through bent space
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream of all the animals dying
all animals everywhere
dying & dying
the wild animals the longhaired animals
winged animals feathered animals
clawed & scaled & furry animals
rutting & dying & dying
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of creatures everywhere dying out
in shrinking rainforests
in piney woods & high sierras
on shrinking prairies & tumbleweed mesas
captured beaten strapped starved & stunned cornered & traded
species not meant to be nomadic
wandering rootless as man
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of all the animals crying out
in their hidden places
in the still silent places left to them
slinking away & crawling about
through the dense underbrush
the last Great Thickets
beyond the mountains
crisscrossed with switchbacks
beyond the marshes
beyond the plains & fences
(the West won with barbed-wire machines)
in the high country
in the low country
crisscrossed with highways
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of how they feed & rut & run & hide
In a dream within a dream I saw
how seals are beaten on the ice-fields
the soft white furry seals with eggshell skulls
the Great Green turtles beaten & eaten
exotic birds netted & caged & tethered
rare wild beasts & strange reptiles & weird woozoos hunted down for zoos
by bearded blackmarketeers
who afterwards ride around Singapore
in German limousines
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of the earth heating up & drying out
in the famous Greenhouse Effect
under its canopy of carbon dioxide
breathed out by a billion
infernal combustion engines
mixed with the sweet smell of burning flesh
In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of animals calling to each other
in codes we never understand
The seal and steer cry out
in the same voice
as they are clubbed
in Chicago stockyards & Newfoundland snowfields It is the same cry
The wounds never heal
in the commonweal of animals
We steal their lives
to feed our own
and with their lives
our dreams are sown
In a dream within a deam I dreamt a dream
of the daily scrimmage for existence
in the wind-up model of the universe
the spinning meat-wheel world
in which I was a fish who eats his tail
in which I was a claw upon a beach
in which I was a snake upon a tree
in which I was a serpent's egg
a yin-yang yolk of good and evil
about to consume itself 


F E R L I N G H E T T I