HAN SHAN ~

 

Cold Mountain Poems

1.

These days

    Men who saw Cold Mountain

In person

Thought him crazy.

    

    Unseemly,

        The face apart,

Body in rags & things

    Like you shouldn't notice.

What I said

He didn't hear.

What he said

I won't repeat.

Yet

    Go on, I tell

    Those to come

All ye

Go on

To the Cold Mountain.

2.

Out of clothes? Go find yours.

Don't get a fox to take off his coat.

Wanting food? Pick our own.

Don't trick a goat into providing for you.

To ask for a loan of the pelt

& flesh as well

Is to hold with their sadness & misery,

regrets all around.

The force for good is gone

From the world.

Food & clothing not where they should be.

3.

The poor donkey is short one measure

Of fodder,

The rich dog has three inches of bed straw to spare.

If poverty is not evenly distributed

Wealth and hardship will not meet in the middle.

Just when you begin to provide for the donkey

You make the dogs feel deprived.

Think on this, will you —

It even makes me feel depressed.

4.

Heaven is high, endless.

The earth thick

    Thick without end.

Living in between

At the mercy of these powers,

Creatures

    Butting heads

For food & warmth,

Eyeing each other's morsels

Would scheme to kill

        Heedless

        The while.

Why should

A blind child

Wonder about the color of milk?

5.

I saw dogs, by the hundreds

A wild bunch,

                        Scruffy curs,

The reclining ones happy to lie low

The ones up & about are happy too,

Throw a bone in their midst

& all changes

Everyone begins to growl,

Baring their teeth at each other

Alas, not that there were too few bones

But there were so many dogs

How to share it out?

6.

Pity the mortals

Their feeling habit

Eating at every meal

    Never tire

Steamed pork, stir in the garlic paste

Broiled duck

Dip in peppered salt

For a delicate fish broth

Pull out the backbone of a fish

                For tenderness

                Serve the cheek warm

    Its skin on

    The bitterness of other things

    Others can keep

We get on with

What is sweet

7.

Children, I tell you,

Leave the burning house now

Three carts are at the door,

        One to flee the self,

                One to save another,

        & one more for the way.

Come away,

Children, everyone.

Homeless you shall not be

Abiding by your vehicle.

& if perchance carried alive to

                The marketplace

There left to sit empty,

Before

            The big sky

You will learn

The ten directions

Have no ups

Nor downs,

Coming or going,

East

Or west, neither

Should prevent you.

8.

People ask the way

To Cold Mountain.

No

Road goes there.

In summer

The ice

Will not shift.

In daylight

Mist

Is all one sees

& how did you

Get there?

How did I?

But your heart is hardly

Like mine,

When it is

There is here.

_________________________

In the Same Light

200 Poems for Our Century

translated by Wong May

The Song Cave, 2022

    

  

HENRI COLE ~

 

Land of Never-Ending Holes

I don't want you to leave.

I don't want you to leave this place I so love, where

    underbrush, jackrabbits,

        and the desert press in on us.

Waiting under a date palm, with a suitcase and cell phone,

        listening for the train whistle—this is how I picture you.

Don't strut or you will stumble.

Make your mess into a message.

Make your roof tight and your cothing sufficient,

        and you shall never be wanting if you value "the best

            property of all —

        friends" (Emerson)

Remember the Zen axiom: Nothing lasts, nothing is finished,

    and nothing is perfect.

Out there is a land of never-ending holes, where brown is the

    new green.

Out there are omnivorous, dazzling human voices—coarse

    cries, air falsettos, heady

        blues, soul, and solemn low rumbles—speaking and

            teaching.

It is never useless to say something or teach someone.

The obscure human soul—it is sad and happy at once.

Men sweep and stir up the dust, but women sprinkle water and

    settle it,

        sweetening the air.

Out there, it is swarming, venal, frivolous, vexing, crude, and

    hypocritical,

        but you must never cease to listen, look, and feel.

If you love a zebra, do not settle for a tapir.

Think of all you have so far as a shelter made of tarp and rope,

    and build

            something marvelous.

Uplift, transformation, radiance—when you turn the old horse

    toward them,

        he will always pick up his step.

See those bulbous clouds forming over the small San Gabriel

    Mountains?

They are greater than any tanks or armored vehicles.

See out there beyond the ash, avocado, lemon, and peppertrees,

        a little trail ends at a highway leading to spin rooms and

            war rooms,

        but also there are bee spawn, motion dazzle, and

                maple syrup.

I don't want you to leave.

Out there, in the land of never-ending holes,    

        may those who love you love you, as in the proverb,

        but may God turn the hearts of those who cannot love you,

        and if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles,

        so you will know them by their limping.

_________________

Henri Cole

Blizzard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2021

    The finest poem in this fine book,

first published as a Claremont McKenna College

commencement poem. I would have liked to

been in the audience. 

[ BA ]

LITTLE WILLIE JOHN / JAMES BROWN ~

 

J.G. BALLARD ~

 

R E A D    M E

  MIT Press 2023

JAZZ POEMS ~

 

I believe now in its thirteenth printing —

a classic work of musicians, poets,

and an editor with a clean eye

to bring in the chorus.

Excellent.

{BA}

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

_________________

LEWIS ALLAN

(Made famous by Billie Holiday)

Alone

A friend told me

He'd risen above jazz.

I leave him there.

______________________

MICHAEL S. HARPER

The Fantastic Names of Jazz

Zoot Sims, Joshua Redman,
Billie Holiday, Pete Fountain,
Fate Marable, Ivie Anderson,
Meade Lux Lewis, Mezz Mezzrow,
Manzie Johnson, Marcus Roberts,
Omer Simeon, Miff Mole, Sister
Rosetta Tharpe, Freddie Slack,
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Teagarden,
Max Roach, Paul Celestin, Muggsy
Spanier, Boomie Richman, Panama
Francis, Abdullah Ibrahim, Piano
Red, Champion Jack Dupree,
Cow Cow Davenport, Shirley Horn,
Cedar Walton, Sweets Edison,
Jaki Byard, John Heard, Joy Harjo,
Pinetop Smith, Tricky Sam
Nanton, Major Holley, Stuff Smith,
Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan,
Mr. Cleanhead Vinson, Ruby Braff,
Cootie Williams, Cab Calloway,
Lockjaw Davis, Chippie Hill,
And of course Jelly Roll Morton.

_______________

HAYDEN CARRUTH

If somebody told me I had only one hour to live,

I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

MILES DAVIS

SARRAUTE ~

 

R E A D   M E

Princeton, 2020

WOMEN OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY ~

 

R E A D   &   W A T C H

RODEL TAPAYA ~

 

Published in collaboration with Arndt Agency / Matthias Arndt.

 

Rodel Tapaya (b. Montalban, Philippines, 1980; lives and works in Bulacan, Philippines) is one of the most promising visual artists of his generation. His prominent position on the Southeast Asian scene was confirmed in 2011, when he received the renowned Foundation Signature Art Prize. 

 

European audiences and the Western art world, by contrast, have hardly taken notice of his paintings, sculptures, and installations. So this book--a survey of the complex narrative oeuvre he has built over the past eight years--has long been overdue. Our lives and thinking are under ever-growing pressure to adapt to an incessant flow of jarringly inconsistent information. Tapaya has honed the skill of isolating particular aspects and arranging them in dramatic combinations. At the same time, he seems to view the world through the eyes of an ancient storyteller. His works explore the meanings of the dynamic and inexhaustible symbolism of archaic Philippine myths and legends and connect them to the modern world. Rodel Tapaya's paintings--many are in large formats, almost like murals--cast a spell with their fascinating wealth of forms and motifs, but they always also blaze trails through the undergrowth of everyday life.

— Jack Bell Gallery

Skira 2021

CESAR AIRA ~

 

R E A D    M E

pure delight —

every Aira title is better

than the last, better

than the first!

There is no way to

go wrong with this New Directions

Storybook Series — simply

walk into your bookstore or

library and look for the tall narrow silver

strip that runs down the spine.

You've found a treasure.

[BA]

DOC WATSON & FRIENDS ~

 

SPRING-BOARDING, WEST CANADA ~

 

     Western Canada Red Cedar Tree Felling

LASZLO KRASZNAHORKAI ~

 

R E A D    M E

    New Directions, 2022

ARCHIVE ~ NOAM CHOMSKY ~

 

FADY JOUDAH ~

 

    Democracy Now

     9 November 2023

SAMUEL DELANY ~

 

R E A D    M E

photo: James Hamilton

2015

AMIT CHAUDHURI ~

 

Our Parents

How embarrassing they are!

Some of their views

can be extraordinary.

Increasingly, we were torn

between protecting and

disowning them

for at least fifteen minutes.

In the end, when they left,

it had little to do with us.

They don't stick to a plan.

On one level, so focussed

on organising our lives,

on another, as it turns out,

unreliable in their departure.

The Writers

                On constantly mishearing "rioting"

                        as "writing" on the BBC

There has been writing for ten days now

unabated. People are anxious, fed up.

There is writing in Paris, in disaffected suburbs,

but also in small towns, and old ones like Lyon.

The writers have been burning cars; they've thrown

homemade Molotov cocktails at policemen.

Contrary to initial reports, the writers

belong to several communities: Algerian

and Caribbean, certainly, but also Romanian,

Polish, and even French. Some are incredibly

young: the youngest is thirteen.

They stand edigly on street-corners, hardly

looking at each other. Long-standing neglect

and an absence of both authority and employment

have led to what are now ten nights of writing.

                                                                                                                                2005

______________________________________

Amit Chaudhuri

Sweet Shop

New and Selected Poems, 1985-2023

NYRB, 2023

READ: "The Agony of a Ceasefire That Never Comes" ~

 

Mosab Abu Toha

  R E A D     M E

RANDALL KENAN ~

 

R E A D    M E

Norton, 2022

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY : LETTERS ~

 

R E A D    M E

Yale 2023

ANDRE WILLIAMS ~

 

ARCHIVE : AGNES DENES ~

 

A G N E S    D E N E S

The Shed, 2020

ROQUE DALTON ~

 

Like You

Like you I

love love, life, the sweet smell

of things, the sky-blue

landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up

and I laugh through eyes

that have become the buds of tears.

I believe the world is beautiful

and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don't end in me

but in the unanimous blood

of those who struggle for life,

love,

little things,

landscape and read,

the poetry of everyone.

El Salvador Will Be

El Salvador will be a pretty

and (without exaggeration) serious country

when working class and peasantry

fertilize and comb and talc it

cure the historical hangover

clean it up reconstruct it

and get it going.

The problem is that today El Salvador

has a thousand rough edges and hundred thousand pitfalls

about five hundred thousand calluses and some blisters

cancers rashes dandruff filthiness

ulcers fractures fevers bad odors.

You have to round it off with a little machete

sandpaper lathe turpentine penicillin

sitz-baths kisses and gunpowder.

translated by Jack Hirschman

_________________

Roque Dalton

Clandestine Poems

introduction by Margaret Randall

Solidarity Publications, 1984

IDA VITALE ~

Trees

Is this Orlando's oak or are these oaks from Austin?

Is this Hudson's ombu or the one beside the car

that dragged Julio-my-almost brother from life?

Paz's banyan tree, that was also Shakuntala's?

The willows of Garcilaso? The one that I myself planted?

Poplars of love, or that one in winter

from which half-dead birds fell at my feet?

Trusty figs, among the dust and gardens?

That axis in the tropism of infinite moons,

a pale eucalyptus of perfumed down?

Those with lacquer-red flowers under fiery suns?

The birch/abedul I imagined black, for the ebony/abenuz,

until I touched its white, ringed bark?

The essential tree of Goethe's imagination?

Or the one in whose shade I lost the world

that was itself a murmur of friendly voices

and I see a river flow that is the same always,

whereas I watch it and am no longer the same?

________________

Ida Vitale

Time Without Keys

Translated by Sarah Pollack

New Directions, 2023

Happy Birthday!