August 29, 1935 ~
August 1, 2021
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Inventory
This is my cap,
this is my coat,
here's my shaving gear
in a linen sack.
A can of rations:
my plate, my cup,
I've scratched my name
in the tin.
Scratched it with this
valuable nail
which I hide
from avid eyes.
In the foodsack is
a pair of wool socks
and something else that I
show to no one,
it all serves as a pillow
for my head at night.
The cardboard here lies
between me and the earth.
The lead in my pencil
I love most of all:
in the daytime it writes down
the verses I make at night.
This is my notebook,
this is my tarpaulin,
this is my towel,
this is my thread.
____________________
Gunter Eich
Valuable Nail
translated from the German by
Stuart Friebert, David Young & David Walker
Field, 1981
Sunapee Mandala
Leave your shadow here
on the long memory of rock
that you may number among
the friends of the planet:
we are one
in summer woods
overflowing with wings,
in the fires kindled by orange lily
struck against fern flint,
one with the music of wind
played on icy birch bones,
and the promise pollen spells
across the watery mirrors
of our future.
_______________________
Marie Harris
Desire Lines
Hobblebush Books
2019
The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee
I am a feather on the bright sky.
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain.
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water.
I am the shadow that follows a child.
I am the evening light, the luster of meadows.
I am an eagle playing with the wind.
I am a cluster of bright beads.
I am the farthest star.
I am the cold of dawn.
I am the roaring of the rain.
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow.
I am the long track of the moon in a lake.
I am a flame of four colors.
I am a deer standing away in the dusk.
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche.
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky.
I am the hunger of a young wolf.
I am the whole dream of these things.
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth.
I stand in good relation to the gods.
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful.
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte.
You see, I am alive, I am alive.
___________________________
N. Scott Momaday
from When the Light of the
World Was Subdued, Our Songs
Came Through, edited by Joy Harjo
Norton, 2020
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
__________________________
Robert Hayden
African American Poetry
250 Years of struggle & song
Kevin Young, editor
Library of America
2020
Is the sea there? Tell it to come in.
Bring me
the great bell, one of the green race.
Not that one, the other one, the one that has
a crack in its bronze mouth,
and now, nothing more, I want to be alone
with my essential sea and the bell.
I don't want to speak for a long time,
silence! I still want to learn,
I want to know if I exist.
______________________
PABLO NERUDA
translated by William O'Daly
THE SEA AND THE BELLS
Copper Canyon Press 2002
Occupational Hazards
Butcher
If I want to go to pieces
I can do that. When I try
to pull myself together
I get sausage.
Bakers
Can't be choosers. Rising
from a white bed, from dreams
of kings, bright cities, buttocks,
to see the moon by daylight.
Tailor
It's not the way the needle
drags the poor thread around.
It's sewing the monster together,
my misshapen son.
Gravediggers
To be the baker's dark opposite,
to dig the anti-cake, to stow
the sinking loaves in the unoven —
then to be dancing on the job!
Woodcutter
Deep in my hands
as far as I can go
the fallen trees
keep ringing.
_________________
David Young
The Names of a Hare in English
Pittsburgh 1979
The Animals
They do not live in the world,
And not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.
For with names the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With names was built and walled,
Line and circle and square,
Dust and emerald;
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.
But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memorized day.
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifith great day of God,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.
On the sixth day we came.
______________________
Edwin Muir
One Foot In Eden
Grove 1958