PANTHEON, 2024
Don't hesitate
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
FADY JOUDAH (AGAIN) ~
[...]
I am unfinished business.
The business that did not finish me
or my parents
won't leave my children
in peace. In my right hand.
a paper. In my left, a feather.
To toss, to quill, to meet
my terminal velocity.
I forget Palestine
has a kind way of remembering
those who mark
it for slaughter,
and those it marks for life.
I write for the future
because my present is demolished.
I fly to the future
to retrieve my demolished present
as a legible past. To see
what isn't hard to see
in a world that doesn't.
[...]
They did not mean to kill the children.
They meant to.
Too many kids got in the way
of precisely imprecise
one-ton bombs
dropped a thousand and one times
over the children's nights.
They will not forgive the children this sin.
They wanted to save them from future sins.
Or send them wrapped lifetimes
of reconstructive
surgical hours pro bono,
mental anguish to pass down
to their offspring.
Will the children have offspring?
This is what the bomb-droppers
did not know they wanted:
to see if others will be like them
after unquantifiable suffering.
They wanted to lead
their own study, but forgot
that not all suffering worships power
after survival. What childhood does
a destroyed childhood beget?
My parents showed me the way.
________________
Fady Joudah
[...]
Milkweed Editions
2024
Monday, October 7, 2024
ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (2) ~
Winter (from three erotic poems)
I now think
disgracefully rarely
of my First Great Abandoned One
I carefully avoid
anything that might cause
a consternation of memories
—places we used to meet
—street corners
—landscapes
—benches
—benches
—trees
—the window where
our light burned
slowly but pitilessly
I forget
the color of her eyes
what
remains
now rests
in a cardboard box
photographic negatives
our faceless pictures
if someone ran a pointer finger
down the sharp edge of the frame
the heart's blood
would flow
a friend told me
that My First Great Love
now lives alone
not counting the sea's company
she is blind
and compares herself with weaving
what does she weave
on the dark loom
for me it's like
an empty platform
like absolute
irrevocability
like a pensive drowned man
with a hat firmly jammed
over his ears
who floats
with his head turned away
from the world
like night
in a mirror
____________________
Zbigniew Herbert
Reconstruction of the Poet
uncollected works
Ecco, 2024
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Saturday, October 5, 2024
Friday, October 4, 2024
Thursday, October 3, 2024
BLAS MANUEL DE LUNA ~
To Hear the Leaves Sing
Going down Highway 99, to Modesto,
I see an orange glow in the sky.
At first I think it is a fire, but, as I get closer,
it is the lights of a packinghouse,
where women work through the night,
giving up the fire of their lives,
to get the peaches to market.
Ten minutes later I pass
the Avenue 20 off-ramp, the ramp
that, in summers, would take me
to the peach fields of Madera,
where, as the sun rose to its peak
in the brilliant sky,
and the bitter dust
settled in my throat,
I would stand on a ladder,
my heavy sack pulling me down,
and throw peaches, as fast
as I could, into the trees,
to hear the leaves sing,
the tiny branches break.
________________________
BLAS MANUEL DE LUNA
from Latino Poetry
edited by Rigoberto Gonzalez
The Library of America, 2024
Blas Manuel de Luna (b. 1969) was born in Tijuana, Mexico,
raised and schooled in California and is the author of the poetry
collection Bent to the Earth (2005).
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Monday, September 30, 2024
KISS THE EYES OF PEACE (Tomaž Šalamun) ~
Folk Song
Every poet is a monster.
He destroys the voice and the people.
His singing builds the technology that destroys
the earth so that the worms don't eat us.
A drunkard sells his coat.
A scoundrel sells his mother.
Only a poet sells his soul
to separate it from the body that he loves.
________________________
Tomaž Šalamun
Kiss the Eyes of Peace
Selected poems 1964-2014
translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
Milkweed Editions, 2024
There are far calmer and elder photographs of Tomaž Šalamun
all over the Internet, but this is the photograph for this poem
Sunday, September 29, 2024
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, THE PILGRIM ~
K R I S K R I S T O F F E R S O N
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born on June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas ~
September 28, 2024, Maui, Hawaii
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Friday, September 27, 2024
Thursday, September 26, 2024
JOHN PHILLIPS ~
Spell
Listen
carefully
you may
hear a word
in the silence
thinking
to say
something not
said before
to make something
happen
that hasn't
happened before
one word
with the belief
changing silence
changes everything
This
for Nelson Ball
There is
a here
we aren't
close to
even if
it's where
we are
Stone
If you insist on being here
at least say something
Six
Lana asked
if cats
knew they
were animals
did they have
a language
to know
it in
Or did they
think we were
animals
wondering
if we had a
language
to know
ourselves
Seen
for Eva
crows above a field
will always be
Van Gogh's
_____________________
John Phillips
Language Being Time
Shearsman Books, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Monday, September 23, 2024
JANA PRIKRYL ~
Anonymous
Just in front of the porch steps, on a flat stone
that appears partially tucked under the porch,
a ficus in a clay planter. It produces
strange sounds. The silence that comes dressed
in not the past but conditional tense
may be quietest, it's endured the most.
_________________________
Jana Prikryl
No Matter
Tim Duggan Books, 2019
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Saturday, September 21, 2024
RECONSTRUCTION OF ZBIGNIEW HERBERT ~
So Much
How hard
to save a person
who loves
I always feel
your slender arm
heavy as a body
It runs through my fingers
like water
Your breath
my pallor
and care
How hard
to save a person
who trusts
I bend over your sorrow
I lift the weight of love
I lift you from earth in my arms
carry you on my lips
give you up to prayer
On the Repatriation of
Bruno Jasienski's Remains
When the thaw reached
the Far North
the poet's body emerged
from under the ice cap
his grave so shallow
body only half buried
a daisy in one ear
a little grass in the other
but taken all in all
he was in very good shape
so they freshened him up
wiped the mold from his lips
blew on him and slapped him
doused him with jasmine
farewell dear poet
off to your fatherland
his fatherland is happy
the academy overjoyed
no one says they killed him
they all say: he came back
they scream and shout
the crowd lifts him up
so you see my old pal
no need for living legs
at the author's evening
obedient comrades
whip him into shape
make blustery threats
and attached to his strings
the poet steps up to the mic
a little stiff but confident
he wants to read his poems
His hand in his wig
his voice makes the megaphone squeal
he grunts and gestures
and they all say: he's so alive
the poem ends with a shriek
he raises a hand and screams
the string snaps and the arm
drops woodenly on the table
so as to erase the image
the cry goes up: long life
and presidium and poet
go off to have a drink
his wife is at the reception
but she behaves differently
when looking at her husband
she sobs into a handkerchief
champagne caviar oysters
pineapples and wine
poor man no more will you
drink water or feed on clay
but the poet eats nothing
doesn't even clink glasses
pale he goes off to one side
begins to wind his shroud
but no one notices this
alcohol flows like a stream
and it's only near dawn
they yell: he's gone and died again
________________________
Zbigniew Herbert
Reconstruction of the poet
Ecco, 2024
Translated by Alissa Valles
Friday, September 20, 2024
AGNES VARDA ~
A new biography surveys the prolific and pioneering
career of the filmmaker Agnès Varda.
Norton 2024
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
CATHY MERRICK ~
Cathy Merrick, Advocate for Indigenous People in Canada,
Dies at 63
Ms. Merrick during a candlelight vigil outside a Winnipeg courthouse in April during the trial of a white man accused of killing four Indigenous women. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid tribute to her after she collapsed while speaking to reporters on Sept. 6. Sebastien St-Jean/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Monday, September 16, 2024
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