A Longhouse Birdhouse

Thursday, June 11, 2020

TALK ~

T U C S O N, May 30

Josh Galemore

Arizona Daily Star

Getting Over the Distance Between Us

Sometimes I think it's true that territory

Is only how far we're willing to go

To get to the girl or boy next door.

Geography is really all we have to talk about.

I want you the names of three rivers, I say.

She mentions softly two ranges of mountain.

Over the hugest most western rock, I complain.

She answers with ocean, tides, storms, miles of sand.

I'm reminded of the fault between us.

Of the ups and downs of differently shifting plates.

The tendencies of continents to drift apart.

She is unmoved.

Though again and again I fold my maps, go home

To be among familiar birds and flowers

She knows what latitude and longitude

I'm set on. What long-sought passage.

The trail of abandoned lives and furniture

That follows the heart of discovery.

Another life. Another country.

It always begins at the border.

Arcata / Capetown / Petrolia

________________

Jerry Martien
Pieces in Place
Blackberry Books
1999

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

NAZIM HIKMET ~

About My Poetry

I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,

no inheritance to live on,

neither riches nor real estate —

a pot of honey is all I own.

A pot of honey

red as fire!

Mu honey is my everything.

I guard

my riches and my real estate

— my honey pot, I mean —

from pests of every species.

Brother, just wait. . .

As long as I've got

honey in my pot,

bees will come to it

from Timbuktu. . .

To Vera

A tree grows inside me —

I brought it as a seedling from the sun.

Its leaves quiver like fish, like flames,

and its fruits sing like birds.

Spacemen have already landed

on the star inside me.

They speak the language I heard in my dream:

no bossing, boasting, or whining.

A white road runs through me,

open to ants carrying grains of wheat

and trucks of merrymakers screaming past

but closed to all hearses.

Inside me, time stands still

like the sweetest red rose.

That it's Friday, tomorrow's Saturday,

or the end's in sight — I couldn't care less.

15 January 1960
Kislovodsk

I'm Getting Used To Growing Old

I'm getting used to growing old,

the hardest art in the world —

knocking on doors for the last time,

endless separation.

The hours run and run and run . . .

I want to understand at the cost of losing faith.

I tried to tell you something, and I couldn't.

The world tastes like an early morning cigarette:

death has sent me its loneliness first.

I envy those who don't even know they're growing old,

they're so buried in their work.

12 January 1963

Autobiography

I was born in 1902

I never once went back to my birthplace

I don't like to turn back

at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo

at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University

at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest

and I've been a poet since I was fourteen

some people know all about plants some about fish

I know separation

some people know the names of the stars by heart

I recite absences

I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels

I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food
I haven't tasted

at thirty they wanted to hang me

at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize

which they did

at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year

at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24

in '61 the tomb I visit is his books

they tried to tear me away from my party

it didn't work

nor was I crushed under falling idols

in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death

in '52 spent four months flat on my back with abroken heart

waiting to die

I was jealous of the women I loved

I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit

I deceived my women

I never talked behind my friends' backs

I drank but not every day

I earned my bread money honestly what happiness

out of embarrassment for others I lied

I lied so as not to hurt someone else

but I also lied for no reason at all

I've ridden in trains planes and cars

most people don't get the chance

I went to the opera

most people haven't even heard of the opera

and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit

mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers

but I've had my coffee grounds read

my writings are published in thirty or forty languages

in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned

cancer hasn't caught up with me yet

and nothing says it will

I'll never be prime minsiter or anything like that

and I wouldn't want such a life

nor did I go to war

or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night

and I never had to take to the road under diving planes

but I fell in love at almost sixty

in short comrades

even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief

I can say I've lived like a human bing

and who knows

how much longer I'll live

what else will happen to me

East Berlin 11 September 1961

__________________________
Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)
Poems of Nazim Hikmet
translated from the Turkish by
Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
Persea Books

Hikmet, the greatest of modern Turkish poets, was a political prisoner in Turkey for eighteen years and spent the last thirteen years of his life in exile.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

BRILLIANT SARAH COOPER ~

EDOUARD GLISSANT ~

November

And the oar is rooted in its waiting for a new land. Love for you,
Oceania, is a rag tied to a mast, a coconut palm of fog at your side,
Oceania in your shadow which is like a cathedral commemorating
the uncivilized and I tame the waves of your robes Asia and Europe in our childhoods Asia a coral polyp living and feeding on itself, between sky and battle, which Europe is a field of nails. No longer hearing the rusted stream of wild butterflies on a thick day. Ever more fierce, the elections of assassins in the beautiful cancerous rain. O the loveliest rain in which to pile up our skins, the loveliest O fingers of lianas in the brush of the ringing desert Africa. The final mission was to mislead the word through the rich deafness of scorched Tropics. Like a summation of memory—intoxicated fruits in the mute desire of the banana trees.

____________
Edouard Glissant
The Collected Poetry
University of Minnesota Press
2005