LONGHOUSE BIBLIOGRAPHY 2019-2020

T H E     L O N G H O U S E 

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

2019 ~ 2020

2019 ~

 

2019. Bob Arnold. Woodlanders. Longhouse 2019

Susan has broken her left ankle, surgery tomorrow, it’s late February 2020 and time to write up a few things for the bibliography heading us to almost 50 years of Longhouse. Woodlanders is a sequence of short poems that makes one long poem and I’m quite happy to have it looked over and cared for by Ian Hamilton Finlay’s back cover quote.

2019. Reza Saberi and Robin Magowan, edited and translations. A Rose Garden of Persian Poetry from the 10th Century to the Present. Longhouse 2019. 

We have now published quite a few of Robin Magowan’s translation titles and this book, a team effort for Robin, is the largest and most expansive of all the books. Time to delve deeply into the 10th century and come forward.

2019. Guy Birchard. Ishmael. Longhouse 2019. Postcard. 

How it often happens, a friend, a poet, someone sends me something in the mail that hits me squarely between the eyes and I simply want to publish it at that moment, and often do. Guy’s poem here is no exception and I designed it into a postcard for easy handling and postage. Give the postal carrier, always, something good to read.

2019. Bobby Byrd. What’s It Like Not Being Here? Longhouse 2019.

Like Guy, Bobby’s poem came through the mail from Bobby as a poem to share. I wanted to then share it, so printed it up as a longer postcard poem complete with a background relief photograph of the Organ Mountains and other ranges close to Bobby. Ted Enslin used to write me, splendidly, of his winters away from Maine spent in the Organ Mountains.

2019. Gary Hotham. 23. Longhouse 2019

It wasn’t that long ago but I already forget if Gary sent me poems or I asked him for poems, I believe the latter now that it’s upon me, and Gary complied. He sent a few more than 23 but that’s the number of poems I came up with after my reading and I said to Gary, “Why not call the gathering “23”? Gary agreed. Susan and I made the 23 poems into a foldout booklet with a wrap around band.

2019. Louise Landes Levi. The Madness of Kazuko Shirashi, The Poet's Domain. Longhouse 2019.

Louise has forever been a friend of Longhouse. She writes here as she spans the globe as the itinerant self she is, either playing as a musician or reading as poet she is a one-woman band. Lately she has taken up brief residencies in Japan, mostly in Tokyo but her heart is in Kyoto and I still await poems from Kyoto that I can consider for a booklet. This booklet is all Tokyo, with a homage to Japan’s own wonder Kazuko Shirashi. Louise knows how to treat this.

2019. Gerry Loose. In Which. Longhouse 2019. 

Gerry is one of my favorite poets of the wild, particularly all that land of the old Great Britain, Scotland, and elsewhere pathways, even to Vietnam. His sentences land with care, keen observation and a manual laborer’s touch for how to make something work. Work well. This one does. A larger postcard sending through the mail.

2019. Joseph Massey. Backroad Scroll. Longhouse 2019. 

Joe was visiting family in his native Delaware and wrote saying he had some new work he was immediately fond of and because we have published a finger food amount of small booklets by Joe, would we care to see these new poems for a possible booklet. We would. Joe sent them and we did them up in a foldout booklet that works with the pace of a fine long walk.

2019. J. D. Whitney. My. Longhouse 2019

J.D. and I have been writing one another, each day, without fail, for years. Sometimes a poem gets tucked into a letter, all emails, and this poem I just couldn’t help myself and wanted to publish it that same night. It spills down the page not as a spill but as water stone to stone to stone, or bird to bird calling. Here is a poet and a poem who knows what he is hearing, listening for and giving to us. Lucky us. Designed into one very long slip.

2020 ~

2020. Bob Arnold. non(e). Longhouse 2020.

I woke up one morning of the full moon and had all these lines wanting to be said and maybe even put onto paper and I had a letter owed to my friend Peter Garland in Maine, so Peter got all those words coming as a Sam Fuller horse stampede, that cinematic in my mind, which then became a document or long poem of how to love our country, keep our country, be our country. It worked best to share the document as one of our bus-tickets, folded into quarters and tucked into regular mail letters. Not as many but some still get them.

2020. Bob Arnold. How Wars Begin. Longhouse 2020

This poem, from an older book but pertinent for these times, I thought should be seen again in a postcard design with an old woodcut fabric to go along with the poem and the sharing. People have some weird idea all rural people are conservative and voters for dizzy autocrats. They may be sometimes dizzy, often conservative, even weird, but the real quality of rural people is seeing the forest for the trees.

2020. Cid Corman. The aim is a poetry. Longhouse 2020.

Here is Cid Corman, photo as a young man, looking backwards and forging ahead. Good ol’ Cid. I have a prose piece on one of Cid’s favorite subjects: poetry, the original one page manuscript, with brief corrections and date when written as the inside of the bus-ticket, ideal to frame, and it is likewise decorated with many poems from Cid’s seldom seen last book of poems of, the many hundreds of poems from volumes 4 and 5. I’m giving you a good dozen.

2020. António Osório. Translated from the Portuguese by Susan Margaret Brown and Patricio Ferrari. THE AFFECTIONATE ROOT. Selection from António Osório

I believe Patricio Ferrari came our way via Louise Landes Levi and Patricio (from Argentina) stayed spry and lively all through our correspondence setting up some plan to showcase the debut in America of António Osório’s poems. No doubt Patricio welcomed one of our foldout booklets but I saw far too many gems in this manuscript to curtail the amount of richness that would be snugged up into a booklet. A bus ticket was the way to go — tall and airy and very light to send the poems around the world considering the tax that now comes with overseas mailing. We send this one out as a letter from home. 

2020. Norman Schaefer. Bear Lessons. Longhouse 2020.

All true. And Norman is the modest and sharp-eyed trailblazer to write the real bear story, without the usual hyperbole that comes with bear and fish yarns. You read the little book and look around to see if you are safe, and if you are, you’re glad.

2020. Andrew Schelling. After The Cricket. Longhouse 2020.

Decades now Andrew and I have traded what we call pony express correspondence, actual letters off an old keyboard and sent on paper and gotten there by all sorts of US postage stamps showing Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, old trains, birds of prey, Henry David Thoreau. Remember postage stamps when we were kids. They’ve gotten much better. Letters are great to write and receive. Sometimes Andrew sends poems with the letters, or one poem taste and I ask for more and  more then come and I see a foldout booklet evolving and that’s how this one happened. A beautiful title.

2020. John Phillips. Hourglass Longhouse 2020.

I’ve been publishing John Phillips for almost twenty-five years. He came to me out of the blue from his native Cornwall, or he may have already been living in his favored other native habitat of Slovenia where his wife Jasna is from. They live there now, maybe settled for good? Many fine poems are being written by John and every so often I get the feel for another booklet of poems, big enough to be a small book of poems, always complete and nourishing from John, and this is one more. Turn the hourglass over.

_______________________________________

M O R E     T O       C O M E

_________________________________________

SUSAN COMES UPON A WOODCHOPPER ~

once in vermont films



 

THE LONGHOUSE ARCHIVE ~

Here it is December, firewood stacked by the door, and way back in May, thin blouses and skirts,

The University of Vermont
(Special Collections)

set up on their blog, nicely, but we never heard a word, this showcase of Longhouse

now part of their special collections. You can go to the library and view. One friend did such a thing. He mailed to us a brochure from his visit.

Since we pick up our mail in town, ten miles away, once every

week or two weeks (time passes slowly up here in the mountains) we just received the brochure and a note to the blog showing and that we were indeed up and running

on the Internet and in Vermont. Home sweet home. 
This roundabout way

has always been the middle name of our press.

Have a look! 


http://blog.uvm.edu/uvmsc-specialcollections/?p=131

CARSON ARNOLD'S NEW BOOK ~

NEW FROM LONGHOUSE!

click onto image to enlarge

________________________________________________________________


Carson Arnold comes from a place where poetry is dignity and where nature
defines all. As any teenager will attest, you either scowl or smile away the
purity of realism, and in Carson’s case he expressed this dynamic in a
dialogue with music, primarily rock n roll and all its offspring. Owing to
nada, but going for the gold, and dreaming towards radical awareness. 
And the kid done grown up.

— Thurston Moore

__________________________________________________________________

Carson Arnold

If I Blinked Through These Windows

 Music Essays & Interviews

Longhouse 2014

  456 pages

$18

$3.95 shipping (USA)

International orders please inquire

ORDER NOW!
By credit card, check
or
with easy to use Paypal ~

For International orders, please inquire as to shipping

Email : poetry@sover.net

 AFTERWORD TO THE BOOK

_______________________________

Most of the essays and interviews on Track and H(ear) can be found at the website: www.LonghousePoetry/hear.html

There were a few longer interviews with the musicians Dredd Foole and Peter Siegel — too long to manage in print — that are not in this collection but can be found at the same website.

The postcard series LISTEN! is shown here in facsimile copies, but there are real copies, in limited edition, available from Longhouse.

This book publication was made by Bob Arnold, with great help from Susan Arnold, the mother of the lode. One day, Bob said, he walked into Carson's music store and saw a young man busy at work helping customers with their requests and keeping good cheer with his fellow employees. It was the ultimate tribal experience of record stores around the world. The groove. You know one when you're in one.

He also saw that this young man had gone through some struggles. That this treasure chest of writing had been done, and while some from his website readers had sent back hurrahs and salutations (music energy is beautiful) there was something missing in his hands, and it may be this book.

So over one of the coldest and snowiest winters in the backwoods, or anywhere else, for years — two~hands set to work to compile a book and have this ready for Carson’s 29th birthday in June. Same birth date as Che Guevara's; same day as Flag Day —  just to show you how much of a Gemini this young fellow is.

Age 29.

Not yet 30.

You can still trust him.     

— Levi Rose

  photos © susan arnold

JEFFERY BEAM READS BOB ARNOLD ~

Hello! A rare posting by Susan on an ice cold day and a sunny walk along our river, to return home and receive a cue from Bob's friend John Phillips in England — take a look at this! Forget the deep freeze, and feeding the wood fires —  I'd rather share Jeffery Beam's loving generous essay at Oyster Boy Review 21, now gathered here below for you. While Bob's books may be found on Amazon, they are available locally here at Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers. With much appreciative thanks to Jeffery ~ 

                                                                      

Susan

Plain-Spoken Love Books by Bob Arnold Jeffery Beam Gentleman. Bob Arnold. Woven/Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2011. 39 pages, $20 (paperback). ISBN: 1929048106. Buy at Amazon. Yokel: A Long Green Mountain Poem. Bob Arnold. Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2011. 139 pages, $18 (paperback). ISBN: 1929048090. Buy at Amazon. I'm in Love with You Who Is in Love with Me. Bob Arnold. Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2012. 151 pages, $18 (paperback). ISBN: 1929048114 (Library of Congress). Buy at Amazon.   ___________________ There's nothing imagined about Bob Arnold, and yet his whole life has been the product of imagination, and imaging a life that is as forceful as a wood chop, as clear as a woodpecker's call, as circular and varied as tree rings, as fragrant as a strip of cedar wood. Arnold's a master stonemason; a builder in the old ways of form, function, and perfect fit; a friend to chainsaws, pick-up trucks, stonecutter's tools, rivers, and grosbeaks; a lover of women (one woman in particular for over forty years); and a man's man—meaning the kind of man that knows himself and who you are (male and female or whatever new way you define yourself) and welcomes whatever that is with equanimity and generosity round the campfire. But Arnold's also one of the finest poets writing in America, one of the cleanest and purist, and without self-aggrandizement. Although he's been published by some of the finest small presses around, and at this point in his life is probably well known in the poetry world beyond his close cadre of admirers, he still keeps himself whole and wholesome in his country Vermont retreat, with wife and soul-mate Susan. You won't find him bandied about by the academic world or the slick world of poetry celebrity, and he still publishes many of his books himself, but Arnold is the real thing. The thing that lasts. That sticks. That will be as solid a long time after the celebrity poets have slipped into storage stacks. Arnold, too, has earned a deep appreciation from many poets and writers, including myself, for his Longhouse poetry publishing projects and his blog postings about poetry, literature, art, culture, and politics. His poetry reflects the kind of respect for the language, and for the world and the people and things in it, that's quite rare. It's a poetry laid down with as fine a mind and hand as the walls he builds—responding always to the lay of the land. Simple and spare when required. More discursive and filled with storytelling verve and kick when necessary. Always, however, ringing in the mind with spiritual light, the sound of a thing well-said and carefully thought-out, both visceral and enlightened, tender and spot-on, good-humored, patient, loyal, and resolute. There's a charismatic human spirit behind this work, that appeals because its charm is sincere and without airs. Each poem is a hot cup of tea on a below freezing morning, or a tumbler of cool spring water when the heat's got at you. I've never met Arnold, although I will name him as a friend, a mentor, and an inspiration for close to a decade now. So, you can take my words with a grain of salt if you want, but seek out two interviews in Jacket magazine, follow his care-taking of the estates of Cid Corman and Lorine Niedecker, and read the work. You can't disagree. The latter two of these books are part of a trilogy. Bob's words (I'll call him Bob now that I've revealed myself as one of his devotees): "The trilogy is called Woodlanders. The first two books are Yokel and I'm in Love with You Who Is in Love with Me. I'm the idiot, certainly not you, having to tell you these titles but I have to get in the groove. The third book, forthcoming, is titled The Woodcutter Talks. The trilogy covers poems and life over 40 years in the same place in Vermont, home, marriage, building work, stonework, woods river, and that psych-folk son." The Woodcutter Talks, the third book, is just out. Get it. There's no preferred order. Like the tree-rings, their order is circular. A handful of poems in the small chapbook Gentleman reappear in I'm in Love for it was published as a tribute (as many of Bob's books are) to Susan. It's a lovely thing to hold, and would make a sweet gift book to a beloved, or to a nature enthusiast. For some reason the poems herein remind me of James Laughlin's poems. I think it's the off-hand charm, the small ironies and little twists of thought and language that take the reader to a place not only pleasantly in the Now but also so richly sensual. "To have every bird in the woods / Finally sing and I am known to it / Is all the morning I ask // To see the flower garden / Move as a dress on your body / Is all the day I wish // To have the stars rise from the river / And you think of me not as crazy / Has to be the night ahead." ("To Have") There's a relaxed sexiness to these poems—I'm In Love bursts with it. Bob's love for the earth is just as vibrant and coyly robust as it is for Susan: "Early in the day / Building a house / Far from any town / With no other sound / But the river and the / Rhythm of nails pounding— / And once between raps of / The hammer I heard nearby / A woodpecker answer." ("Answer") That woodpecker sound is as naked and attractive and absorbed into the poet as Susan's body under her dress. I think of these poems as if Jean Follain might have written such if his world had not been one of such a magnitude of loss. I wrote Bob upon receiving and reading Yokel. "Dear Bob. Just a note to say how much I've enjoyed reading Yokel. The people are all drawn with such a clear plain love—a plain-spoken love drawing them out. They live on the page and, of course, remind me of many of the kind of folk with which I grew up in North Carolina country. It's the generosity and good humor of your portraits that's so compelling—and the ease with which you evoke your woodland community—and how it holds together even when the facts say it shouldn't. I love too the way you've strung the poems like a necklace of acorns around your life and the energies of Yokel, Sweetheart, Preacher, and Native making the strand. As always there are so many poems I love it would just mean listing the contents. Wisdom and storytelling all combined with your usual energy, grace, tongue-in-cheek, hand-on-hammer, hand-in-pocket, kiss on Susan's lips. I think it one of your major accomplishments." Yokel is a book about being human, how unlike and alike we are, and is built in praise of the colloquial. It's Our Town and Edwin Arlington Robinson and Frost and Whitman and Jonathan Williams' Appalachia, but not. Bob has taken his wide reading from Rimbaud to Asian poetry, from Woody Guthrie to H.D. and understands how the colloquial is the Classic, and the romance of the backwoods a philosophical inquiry into living. It's also about how Bob and Susan have, over their years in Vermont, become native, become local, while keeping their private intelligences to themselves, bringing them out for sharing with the right visitor or neighbor. Bob doesn't leave out the invasion of the modern into his idyllic countryside and a number of poems track the challenges of old colliding with the new. In "Earrings" Yokel who would "plow snow / all his life" recalls "from a heated / Cab tonight / Coffee thermos / Between his legs" seeing a pretty woman on a back road with "Four earrings in / Each ear and her / Friend had one / Stuck through / Her nose." Or as in "Old Town": "When proudly announced at town meeting / Cable was coming to the area / In the front row one old native raised an arm / Asking, Does that mean I have to get a TV?" I look forward to reading The Woodcutter Talks. I know it'll be full of pithy sayings and wise observations brought on my tree and storm and river, nail and roof and board. I'm In Love seems appropriate as middle volume for the trilogy. Susan sandwiched between their lives as neighbors and locals, and Bob's livelihood taking care of their and other's buildings and the landscape that nourishes their rural life. You got a flavor of the poems earlier. Suffice it to say, that if you are loved, or ever have been, or will be, Bob's kind of love is what you are after. Worshipful—but not to detriment, honest, playful, wise, tender, and with just the right amount of rubosto. He's Adam and Romeo, Orpheus and Odysseus, Shah Jahan and Rama. And he can build and fix whatever you want (and welcomes your help as well as a back rub), and is a perfect father too. Dante nor Petrarch loved no more: "They have been together and in love so long now / That when they think of an earlier life apart, it / Isn't possible. Or it seems another life entirely. / After all it was childhood only before they met." ("In the Land of Slush") That's the kind of forthright take-no-prisoners kind of adoration Laughlin writes too. "It was childhood only" a killer line. Everything in Bob's world is touched by Susan's presence—mittens, stray dogs, candy wrappers, and fireflies. It all evokes wonder and delight, and most of all, gratitude in Bob's eyes, manifesting in his words some of the most delightful, endearing, joyful, and spiritual rich love poems ever written. I could go on. Let Bob speak, I hear a voice tell me. It can be a big bad rotten / world out there— / find a leaf / hide under it / float upon it / clothe yourself. ("Make Do")  http://www.oysterboyreview.org/issue/21/  Oyster Boy Review Post Office Box 1483 Pacifica, CA 94044

BIRTHDAY CHEERS, SUSAN ~

"Susan - Happy Day of Birth and a beautiful new year for you!"

Cheers, Edie and Kathy

chalkie art ©  Edith Platt

ESTAMOS AQUI ~

Poems by Migrant Workers
translated by Janine Pommy Vega

Un Viaje Espantoso
Valentin Lucas


Fue muy sufrido el viaje
Veníamos en un trailer
y mucho calor en el trailer
Casi nos sentíamos personas
treinta y dos horas
Cubiertos y tapados
no había aire
no salia nadie para nada,
ni siquiera para ir al baño,
aguantábamos treinta y dos horas.

Hablábamos entre nosotros
que duro estaba
pero tuvimos confianza
que íbamos a llegar donde
queríamos.
Por la ambición de llegar
acá en los Estados Unidos,
tuvimos que aguantar.

Entonces
aire fresco, un pieblo chiquito
Llegamos.


A Dreadful Journey


It was a journey of suffering
We traveled inside a trailer
lots of heat in the trailer
We almost felkt we would die
A hundred and fifty people
thirty-two hours
Covered up, closed in,
no air
no one got out for anything,
not even to go to the bathroom,
we endured it for thirty-two hours.

We spoke among ourselves
about how hard it was
but we trusted
that we were going to arrive
where we were going.
Because of our ambition
to arrive here, in the United States,
we endured it.

Then
fresh air, little town.
We arrived.






Un Recuerdo
Artémio Morales Diaz


En el poblado Nuevo Amatenango,
municipio de Amatenango, allí vivo.
Compré un sitio con una casae
y la casa faltaba servico de agua
y de luz
pero yo ya lo instalé, yo y mi esposa,
y logré hacer esto por hacer
un dinerito.

Ahora la tengo enmayado con hierro
para proteger que no entran ladrones,
también tengo una esquinita allá
frente a la carretera, con jardín.

Tengo flores, buganvilla, tulipán,
y muchas flores de todos los colores,
pero la buganvilla es de color guinda.
la tengo armada con alhambre
para que sube las paredes en frente.

Cada año trabajo aquí
para no sufrir en tierras ajenas
cuando tengo cincuenta años,
volvere allí donde tengo todo.



A Memory


In the little village of Nuevo Amatenango,
in the municipality of Amatenango, I lived.
I bought a site with a house
and the house had no water
or electric
but I installed it, me and my wife,
and I managed to do this by making
a little money.

Now it's fenced in with wire
so that thieves can't enter.
Also, I have a little corner place facing
the highway, with a garden.

I have flowers—bouganvillea, tulips,
many flowers, all colors,
the bouganvillea is plum colored.
I have it strung up with wire
so it climbs the walls in front.

Every year I wotk here ensures
I will not have to suffer in foreign lands
when I am fifty years old
I will be in Nuevo Amantenango,
wgere I have everything.






Mi Canasta
Margarita Sierra


Mamita me ha dicho
que Dios me mandó
en esta canasta
que aqui tengo yo

Un angel la trajo
vestida de azul
un angel del cielo
no lo viste tú

Mil maripositas
vinieron con él
y mil pajaritos
vinieron también

Canasta llena
de rosas y solo
canasta en que vine
dormidita yo

¿Y saben lo que
he visto yo?¡

Que en mi canasta
compran el pan!



My Basket


My mother told me
that God sent me
in this basket
I have here

An angel brought it
dressed in blue
an angel from the sky
unseen by you

A thousand butterflies
came with him
and a thousand small birds
came too

Basket full
of roses and alone
basket that I came in
sleepy one

And you know what
I see now instead?
They're using my birth-basket
to buy bread!






Dos Brujas
Hosvaldo Mejia


Una vez fuimos en la noche de cacería,
mis amigos y yo,
caminábamos bastante por las praderas
no había animales para cazar,
y seguímos caminando hacia un arroyo
grande con dos cuervos
que se levantaban
Nos quedamos mudos de miedo.
Eran dos brujas soltando luces
como platillos voladores.
Corrímos y corrímos hasta llegar a casa.



Two Witches


One time we went hunting at night,
my friends and I, we walked
and walked through the fields
but there were no animals to hunt.
We kept on walking toward a big
ravine when two crows
flew up.
We were struck dumb with fear.
They were two witches, throwing off
light like flying saucers.
We ran and ran until we reached home.






Leyenda Maya La X-Tabay
José Maoro C.


Allá por los pueblos antiguos
Donde existen las haciendas antiguas
Hay unas matas, unos árboles
Llamados ceíbo
Cuentan los antiguos que
Entrando la noche si pasa un hombre
A ese lugar, aparece una mujer chula,
Muy hermosa, bien peinada,
Bien arreglada
Seduce a los hombres que pasan allá
Embruja a los hombres con sus
Encantos, y después se los domina
Ellos pierden su voluntad
Y hacen lo que ella dice
Los Illeva a su cueva
Y los mata
Esas personas no regresan
Se llama X-Tabay



Mayan Legend of X-Tabay


There in the ancient villages
Where the old porperties are
There are shrubs  a kind of tree
Called ceibo
The old people say that when night
Enters, if a man passes that place,
A wild woman appears —
Very beautiful, flashily dressed,
Her hair beautifully combed
She seduces the men who pass that way,
She bewitches them with her charms,
And when she subdues them.
They lose their will
and hey do what she says.
She brings them to her cave
And kills them.
Those guys won't return
Her name is X-Tabay!






Aburrido
Balbino Silverio


De diez y nueve días aquí y hemos
trabajado cinco, a causa de la lluvia.
Estamos como en la cárcel
pues, que no pasa nadie por aquí,
ni una mosca.
No tenemos dirección. Nadie sabe
llegar aquí. El vecino está aquí
dos años. Tampoco tiene dirección.

No podemos conseguir
una muchacha
para quitar el mal pensamiento
que tiene uno.
Solamenta si uno tiene mujer
uno puede tranquilizarse.
Mejor que hablar de eso
o del otro
es platicar con ella.



Bored


Nineteen days here and we have
worked only five, because of the rain.
Well, it is like we are in jail —
no one passes by,
not even a fly.
We have no address. No one knows
how to ger here. Our neighbor has been here
two years. He has no address, either.

We can't find
a girlfriend
to take away the bad thoughts.
Only a woman
can make a man calm.
Better than speaking of this
or of that
is speaking with her.






En Un Instante
Rómulo Bernardo Cortez


hace ya varios años
que soñe te vi un instante
y solo te ví un instante
para después, seguir
soñando nuevemente.

Las ideas se revuelan
en mi mente y corazón
como paros dormidos
temerosos del viento

Las mariposas que juegan
a hacer al amor, en una
flor que estaba muriendo
sin marchitar su color
amarillo.

Las mariposas que juegan
a hacer el amor
mientras los pájaros
estan dormidos.

Una montaña que juega
con el atardecer
es un mundo nuevo, igual
que tus ojos verde claro
Y qué decir de la música
de tus labios.

Para decir te quiero
con un instante basta,
para decir te amo
la eternidad no alcanza.

Qué me importa
lo que tiene sentido,
si en cada frase que dices
encuentro un poema
que aún no escribo

A los pájaros dormidos
los has lanzado al vuelo
y revolotean en mi corazón
como verdaderos pájaros
en celo.




In An Instant


Several years ago
I dreamt I knew you
I saw you only an instant
and afterward continued
dreaming

Ideas turn around
in my mind and heart
like sleeping birds
afraid of the wind

Butterflies play
at making love
inside a dying flower
whose yellow color
is unfading.

The butterflies play
at making love
while the birds
are asleep.

A mountain that plays
with the late afternoon
is a new world, equal
to your light green eyes
And what to say of the music
from your lips.

To say I want you
one instant suffices
to say I love you
eternity is not enough time.

What do I care
what makes sense,
if in each phrase you speak
I find a poem
I still don't write

You have hurled into flight
the sleeping birds
and they flap in my heart
like read birds
in heat.


__________________________

Bowery Books, 2007
YBK Publishers
39 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10013



photo of janine pommy vega © susan arnold

BEAUTIFUL DAYS ~

Taking A Book Off The Shelf




The mystery or the irony
or whatever you wish to call it
may be this —

the writer you read
whom you consider great
may be a true son of a bitch
 
in real life, this life we live in,
he or she may have solid wisdom
in the pages, though is impossible

to live with, or to live, period —
but what must not be forgotten:
this great work that has for whatever

reasons made you feel great
is enduring
and you may be, too


___________________

Bob Arnold
from Beautiful Days
(Longhouse 2013) 

http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bobarnold.html 

photo © susan arnold