at 4:19 PM  michi said...

ah, so many lovely words. thanks for the auden. i pass by the house where he died sometimes.

m

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Actually it's about three weeks before Christmas, but the picture reminded me of a crush of christmas shoppers crowding into Macy's the day after Thanksgiving. Whatever's going on at the mall, welcome to "Here and Now" number I.xxvi. anyway.







For the past year or so, as I bounce around the various on-line poetry forums, I've been seeing a lot of Frank Miller's work. I'm pleased that he is letting me use one of his poems here.

In describing himself, Frank says that if there's any thing interesting about him it must be in the poems he writes. He was born in Scotland and educated both there and in the US. He says he works in sales management way too many hours and writes when he can. He is an oft-published poet and is justifiably proud of a piece of his that was nominated for a Push Cart Award.


Mirrored

Last night I stepped upon a stool
to draw a sail on the steamy mirror
which mocks me in the morning
lifting up a freckled hand
as I lift mine to shave a stranger's face.
Done, I draw my boat in the misted mirror
turn away out beyond the safe bustle
of the harbor walls where I can see
the headland's stony straggle -
and the sea.







I'm not sure I've got this right, but.....

According to the Bards of the Hala gotra, king Shalvahan, the son of Gaj founded his capital at Sorath in present-day Gujarat, where the descendants of Sri Krishna had ruled for several generations.

In the tenth generation, there came a powerful king named Hala. For twenty-two generations thereafter, this country up to Nasik was ruled by this dynasty and was called Halar. The empire included Bengal, Karnataka, Gujarat, Sindh and Kashmir.

King Hala and his descendants are said to have been supporters of literature and the arts. There is/are a clay sanskrit volume or volumes of poems said to be from the Sattasai (collection) of King Hala.

Whatever the story (and it's confused the heck out of me), these short poems are from that collection.


Even He was Abashed

Even he was abashed and I laughed
and held him close
when he went for the knot
of my underclothes
and I'd already untied it.


These Women

These women
who can see their lovers
in dreams
are lucky

but without him,
sleep won't come
so who can dream?


Lone Buck

Lone buck
in the clearing
nearby doe
eyes him with such
longing
that there
in the trees the hunter
seeing his own girl
lets the bow drop.


The Newly Wed Girl

The newly wed girl, pregnant already,
asked what she liked about the honeymoon,
cast a glance at her husband,
but not at his face.


You Love Her

You love her, while I love you,
and yet she hates you, and says so.
Love ties us in knots,
keeps us in hell.


These Women Plunder My Husband

These women plunder my husband
as if he were plums
in the bowl of a blind man.
But I can see them, clear as a cobra

(Poems translated by Martha Ann Selby, Andrew Schelling, and David Ray)







Usually a poem leads me to an image


But, in this case, the image led me to, not one, but two poems. They are very similar, so similar, in fact that I couldn't decide which to use. Exercising my prerogative as the boss of me, I'm using both.

The two poems were written a couple of years apart. The second poem seems considerably darker than the first, perhaps due to the additional accumulation of cynicism and existential despair that comes with the passage of two more years and a 60th birthday.

The first poem was published in Planet Magazine in 2002 and the second in Poems Niederngasse in 2004. Both are included in my book Seven Beats a Second.


fleshware

blood and gristle
forged from trash
of exploding stars,
fragile, short-lived, prone
to sag and corruption,
helpless at birth,
pitiful in unremitting decay

such a poor use our body seems
of the eternal elements of creation

but lightening strikes within

tiny electric jabs that jump
from receptor to receptor,
creating art, imagining love,
finding courage, honor, theories
of our own origin, joy and laughter
to mock the truth of our condition

so much more than we appear to be

stardust

offspring of unimaginable light
seeking an antidote to dark


our place in the story of space and time

we are of the same stuff as stars,
made in the spasm of creation
that began all space and time,
electrical impulses,
static of the expanding universe,
positive and negative in influences
that form a thing we call matter
arranged in a manner we call me

our death
not the end,
but another reformation,
a recycling of the stuff that made us
so that we might become again
a star or a tree or another babe in arms
or just a speck of universal element
drifting for as long as there is time

until it will finally come
that all the pieces find their rest
and slowly fade away in the darkness
of never-light, never-time, never-space
never was and never will be again

from nothing came all
and to nothing it will all return






Here's another one we've all read.....


but e.e. cummings is always fun to read again.


what if a much of a which of a wind

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars away?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend blow space to time)
- when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
- whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't; blow death to was)
- all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live







I didn't know he was a poet


I've always been interested in history. Almost as soon as I could read, I was in the encyclopedia reading about all the English kings and Roman emperors. (When I was a kid, I loved memorizing that kind of stuff, useless lists that time has mostly erased from the hard drive. At one point I could list all the books of the St. James version Old Testament. These days I can't get past Ruth, except that I know it's the first and second books of somebody.) As a twelve-thirteen year-old, I loved historical novels. I did a whole month, I think, with the Hornblower series, was always ready for anything with pirates and buccaneers of the Spanish Main and loved historical fiction based on the French Revolution.

One of my most favorite writers of this kind of fiction was Frank Yerby.

Yerby was born in Augusta, Georgia and was originally noted for writing romance novels set in the Antebellum South. In mid-century he began a series of best-selling historical novels (my favorites) ranging from the Athens of Pericles to Europe in the Dark Ages. In all he wrote 33 novels. In 1946 he became the first African-American to publish a bestseller with The Foxes of Harrow. That same year he also became the first African-American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio, when 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes. Ultimately the book became a 1947 Oscar-nominated film starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara.

It wasn't until many years later that I learned he was also a well known and respected poet.

Yerby left the United States in 1955 in protest against racial discrimination, moving to Spain where he remained for the rest of his life.


The Fishes and the Poet's Hands

     I

They say that when they burned young Shelley's corpse
(For he was drowned, you know, and washed ashore
With hands and face quite gone - the fishes had,
It seems, but small respect for Genius which
Came clothed in common flesh) the noise his brains
Made as they boiled and seethed within his skull
Could well be heard five yards away. At least
No one an hear mine as they boil; but then
He could not feel his burn; and so I think
He had the best of it at that. Don't you?

     II

Now all the hungry broken men stand here
Beside my bed like ghosts and cry: "Why don't
You shout our wrong aloud? Why are you not
Our voice, our sword? For you are of our blood:
You've seen us beaten, lynched, degraded, starved;
Men must be taught that other men are not
Mere pawns in some gigantic game in which
The winner takes the gold, the land, the work,
The breath, the heart, and soul of him who loses!"
I watch them standing there until my brain
Begins to burn within my head again -
(As Shelley's burned - poor, young dead Shelley whom
The fishes ate) then I get up and write
A very pretty sonnet, nicely rhymed
About my latest love affair, how sad
I am because some dear has thrown me for
A total loss. (But Shelley had me there,
All his affairs turned out quite well indeed;
Harriet in the river drowned for love
Of him; and Mary leaving Godwin's house
To follow where he led - quite well - indeed!)

     III

You see this is ironical and light
Because I am so sick, so hurt inside,
I-m tired of pretty rhyming words when all
The land where I was born is soaked in tears
And blood, and black and utter hopelessness.
Now I would make a new, strong, bitter song,
And hurl it in the teeth of those I hate -
I would stand tall and proud against their blows,
Knowing I could not win, I would go down
Grandly as an oak goes down, and leave
An echo of the crash, at least, behind.
(So Shelley lived - and so at last, he died.
The fishes ate his glorious hands; and all
That mighty bulk of brain boiled when they burned him!)







I'm excited


I've been working, nonstop, since mid-September. For a guy twice retired, that's a lot of work. But the tunnel has a light and it is that there's only five more days to project completion. Having worked now more than I want to for a while, that's exciting.

I look forward to a few days like the one described in this poem, written about this time last year when I was a poorer but wiser man.


back in the flow

idling
through a cool
December afternoon
under a clear sky
pierced here and there
by bits and pieces of city skyline,
gray buildings reaching into the blue

the flow of time has broken here

trees, even in mid-December
still hold tight to most of their leaves

those few that have fallen are blown into the air
by heavy traffic on South Alamo,
an old street bustling with last minute hustle,
each shiny car with its flume of red and gold leaves
like in a bubble of harried time passing through
the drift of this afternoon's syrup-slow hours

but time is life, it's passage like the flowing blood,
a pulse we can slow but cannot stop if we want to live

so I finish my coffee and hand the cup to pretty little Allie,
keeper of the quiet afternoon, and slip like a repentant thief
back into the flow, another bubble now in time's passing







Playing a cold hand

Jude Goodwin and I have been bumping into each other on a number of poetry forums for several years. I've always liked her work.

Her poems can be found in various print and online journals. She lives in BC, Canada and makes a living as editor and designer for websites and small magazines. More of Jude's poetry can be found on her new website at www.judegoodwin.com



The Flat Hand of Winter

A passing neighbor waves his white hand
as if lifting a fish. The roadways are thick
with the scales of death, and shine
beneath a gutterless moon. The windows
weep and freeze, weep and freeze.
Even the cottonwoods
hiss as they rise from the river ice,
scrape the ceiling of night
with their brittle combs. November sulks
in a dark room with the TV flickering.
December is drinking scotch
and rubs his lips with rough fingers.







I know this feeling


But, unlike Bukowski, I keep the stuff and make believe.


a simple kindness

every now and then
towards 3 a.m.
and well into the second
bottle
a poem will arrive
and I'll read it
and immediately attach to it
that dirty word -
immortal.

well, we all know that
in this world now
that
immortality can be a very
brief experience
or
in the long run:
non-existent.

still, it's nice to play with
dreams of
immortality
and I set the poem aside in a
special place
and
go on with the
others

- to find that poem again
in the morning
read it
and
without hesitation
tear it
up.

it was nowhere near
immortal
then
or
now

- just a drunken piece
of sentimental
trash.

the best thing about self-
rejection
is that it
saves that obnoxious duty
from being
somebody else's
problem.







The wife of a traveling man


Bukowski was a great admirer and kindred soul of Li Po, the great 8th century Chinese poet and lover of liquor who is said to have died by drowning when he fell out of his boat trying to embrace the moon's reflection in the water.

Unlike Bukowski, he was a rich man who traveled extensively. In his poem he imagines the wife of a traveling man like himself.


The Ballad of Long Bank

Number Two

I remember when I was a single girl
And knew nothing of the smoke and dust of the world.
But now having married a Long Bank man,
I'm at Sandy Point to check on the wind.

In the Fifth Month when the south wind rises,
I think of you coming down from Pa-ling.

In the Eighth Month when the west wind starts,
I worry about you departing from Yang-tzu.

With this coming and going, what is my heartache?
There is little of seeing and too much of parting.
You'll be reaching Hsiang-t'an in how many days?
In my dreams I leap over the wind and the waves.

Last night, a wild wind went by;
It blew down trees by the riverside.
Everything dark and water without edges.
Where was a place for a traveler to be?

Visitors from the north have included real nobles,
And the whole of the river was filled with red robes.
Evenings they came along shore for their lodging,
And wouldn't move eastward for several days.
I pity myself at fifteen or so,
I had a pink face with peach blossom skin.
Who would be the wife of a merchant man,
To grieve about water and grieve about wind?

(Translated by Elling O. Eide)







Just as much fun as cummings.....


is the quirky world of William Carlos Williams


the red wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chicken


Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning







Which reminds me of this.....


It seems to me William's red wheel barrow must have been stirring in some back corner of my mind as I was writing this.


something simple

dark
thoughts
have dimmed
my day

something
simple
is what I need

so it's time
now
to play the
fool

imagine red
balloons







What I like about the Casa Chiapas Poetry Table idea.....


.....is that it is interactive. Rather than reading in a formal setting, it allows poets and others to sit around a table and respond to each other, to feed off each other so that one poem leads to another, not from some set reading list, but organically, as one poet's poem reminds another poet of one of theirs, just as Williams' red wheel barrow led me to my red balloon which led me to a poem by Don Schaeffer written in response to a reader's response to an earlier poem.

Don is from Winnipeg, Canada and identifies himself as a chronic contributor to the internet forum communities. I have been reading him for a couple of years now on several of those communities and enjoyed his work, usually short and often enigmatic.



Sensible Guy

I have the answers to these questions.
I know the answers as facts.

I mean with all my perversity
I am a sensible guy and
I live in the world.

But I'm not happy with the answers.
I wish they were not so.
And I wonder anyway.







Country nights in China

Bei Dao is the pen name of Zhao Zhenkai, born 1949 in Beijing. He took the alias to hide his identity while publishing an underground magazine. He joined the Red Guard when he was seventeen and, upon becoming disillusioned with the Cultural Revolution, was sent to the countryside to work as a construction worker from 1969 to 1980 while being reeducated (what a scary word, with all its implications, that word has always seemed to me). Upon his return his name and poetry became closely associated with the Democracy Movement, with his early poems a source of inspiration to the young people involved in that movement. At the time of the Tianamen Square massacre, he was out of the country at a writers' conference. He has remained in exile since, teaching at several major American universities.

Ironically,his education and literary influences came from books stolen from intellectuals while raiding their homes as a member of the Red Guard.


Country Nights

The sunset and distant mountains
innerleaf a crescent moon
moving in the elm woods
an empty bird nest

a small trail encircles the pond
chasing a dog with dirty coat
then runs into the mud wall at the end of the village
hanging bucket swaying lazily over a well
a bell as silent
as the stone roller in the yard
scattered uneasy wheat stalks
the chewing noise in a horse stall
is redolent with threat
someone's long shadow
slips across the stone doorsteps
firelight from a kitchen range
casts a red glow on a woman's arms
and a chipped earthenware basin

(Translated by Tony Barnstone and Nwn Lim)







Continuing with this mellow mood, I close this issue with this poem


I wrote the poem in 2001 and it was published d in Eclectica in 2002. It's one of the poems I included in Seven Beats a Second


cinnamon dreams

in the dim light
at end of day
I watch you sleep
    still damp
    from the shower
curled on your side
    tangled
in white linen
    pink
    like the center
of a fresh sliced peach
    floating
in a bowl of sweet cream

your foot moves
    slowly
brushes softly against mine

with a quiet rush
    of warm air
    you sigh
the sweet breath
of cinnamon dreams


Attaway me!


I haven't been sending much of my stuff out, been too busy. But, one of the pieces I sent out earlier this year is in the new Hiss Quarterly at http://www.hissquarterly.com/. The title of the poem is "invisible" and it's in the Rear View Mirror section.







Hold the presses, the rant beast is knocking


It being the season of good cheer, I wasn't planning to include any kind of rant this time around, but the news of SoonTo-Be-Former Defense Secretary Rumsflake's junket to Iraq to say farewell to the troops he and his criminal bosses haven't killed yet, is more than I can accept, even this close to Christmas.

How much is this going to cost us (taxpayers, all)? Transportation, security, in-flight koolaide, and all has to be in the $5 to $10 million range. All this, paid by you and me, so this arrogant, dumb-ass fool can stoke his ego by going to the one place in the world where everyone he meets will be required by their oath of service to pretend he is not, in fact, the arrogant, dumb-ass fool they all know him to be.

Merry Christmas, Donnie boy.

bueno-bye

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Where The River Flows, Unrestrained   Sunday, December 03, 2006

Most every picture you ever see of the San Antonio River is of the Riverwalk. Nice, but not in any sense "real." So I decided, for no particular reason, to start this "Here and Now" issue number I.xxv. with a photo (above) of the San Antonio River as it probably looked several hundred years ago, before there was a Riverwalk or a San Antonio.








Acrosticity

We begin this month with a couple of acrostics from frequent contributor, California short story writer and poet Alice Folkart. For some who may not know, an acrostic is a poem in which the first letter of each line spell out a particular word or phrase. Alice is a whiz at doing them.



January

Just as I was getting comfortable,
along comes a brutish beast, a monster,
not your ordinary under-the-bed bogey man,
unless you're counting heads, claws and snouts.
Alas, he was so terrifying that he scared himself
right into my dreams, lending them an acrid taste.
You know the rest.


Mice in the Mattress

Drat the little darlings
eating every feather in the pillow,
chewing holes in the bolsters,
engineering new tunnels in the
mattress, mousies need housies I know,
but couldn't they live in the sofa,
every night I have to reconfigure myself,
rewind myself and the clock to fit.








FREE BOOK AND CD

Yes, it's true. Like the crackerjax box, there's a prize in this week's "Here and Now."

And here it is. I will send a free book (Seven Beats a Second of course) and a free CD (chimeras, ideals, errors! by the Ray-Guhn Show Choir, of course) to the first six (6) "Here and Now" readers who e-mail me at allen.itz@gmail.com before December 15th, with my best wishes for a merry holiday of your choice.

Cheers.








Speaking of the book

Here's a poem from the Seven Beats a Second. It also appeared in Poems Neiderngasse in 2002.



did you ever watch a pigeon walk

notice the way its head thrusts
forward then back with each step

validation
I think at first
of the advice often given that
to get ahead
you have to stick your head out

then a closer look reveals that
though they walk with such purpose
they don't really go anywhere
but in circles, which makes me wonder
about the whole concept of risk and reward

perhaps better to be the jay
who sits in the tree and shits on my car

he goes nowhere
but still leaves his mark on the world








What is poetry?

Perhaps it's a good time, after the pigeon piece, to ask this question. This is what John Ashbery has to say about it.



What is poetry

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful Images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it

As we believe it. In school
All the thoughts got combed out:

What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?








Curses, foiled again!

There are people who know how to curse and there are people who know how to curse. One of them, for sure, was Achilochus a Greek poet from about 650 B.C. Look at this, and be glad he's not one of your enemies.



May He Lose His Way On The Cold Sea

May he lose his way on the cold sea
And swim to the heathen Salmydessos,
May the ungodly Thracians with their hair
Done up in a fright on the top of their heads
Grab him, that he know what it is to be alone
Without friend or family. May he eat slave's bread
Laced about with the nasty trash of the sea.
May his teeth knock the top on the bottom
As he lies on his face, spitting brine,
At the edge of the cold sea, like a dog.
And all this it would be a privilege to watch,
Giving me great satisfaction as it would,
For he took back the word he gave in honor,
Over the salt and table of a friendly meal.

(Translated by Guy Davenport)


Apparently Mr. Achilocus also had a firm fix on the important things in life.


Mercenary

I don't give a damn if some Thracian ape strut
Proud of that first-rate shield the bushes got.
Leaving it was hell, but in a tricky spot
I kept my hide intact. Good shields can be bought.

(Translated by Stuart Silverman)








And, from a different war


Anonymous

A woman visiting her son remembers what she has
read on the front page of her newspaper the week
before, a conversation between a bomber, in flames
over Germany, and one of the fighters protecting it.
Randall Jarrell

Little Friend

"Then I heard the bomber call me in:
'Little Friend, Little Friend,
I got two engines on fire.
Can you see me, Little Friend?'
I said, 'I'm crossing right over you.
Let's go home.'"








brrrrrrr

We had our first real touch of winter here last week, with the overnight temps falling to the high twenties.

To appreciate that, you have to understand that people in South Texas get out their woolies anytime the temps go below fifty-five. When it gets into twenties, people build fires in their backyards, then race out on the crosstown expressway to find any ice patch larger than an ice cube so that they can run into each other.

It's a South Texas thing, not totally such a bad thing, since it brings some excitement to town, building up to the Stock Show and Rodeo in January.

But, as that north wind blows over the cedar covered hills to the north of San Antonio, all the little cedar pollens get picked up and blown right straight up the noses of people like me. Locally, it's called cedar fever. At this moment, for example, my eyes are watering so badly, I can hardly see what I typing.

The overall result is as described in this little poem, written during this season several years ago.



winter winds

winter winds
sweep
the north hills
cloud
the city
with cedar pollen
that leaves me
gasping
like a blowfish
on a stroll down Grand Avenue


But there's another side to those winds, as with this second poem, written about the same time as the first.


first frost

first frost
and leaves fall
soft and slow
like red and yellow
snowflakes
drifting in the sun


We don't often get real snow here, so we have to settle for what we can get.








Except when.....

This is the sixth in the 10 commandments series by Gary Blankenship. This is the one everyone agrees on, except when this or except when that. As is often the case with Gary's work, we are led to think in this poem in ways we might have avoided before.



Commandment VI

You shall not murder.

Does it count when you destroy yourself
in a myriad of miniscule ways
over a decade of lifetimes -

smokes
booze
drugs of every color
eating disorders
mental addictions
sins left unsaid

but to let a slight fester
for twenty
twenty-five
thirty years

and then explode
in a Lancaster schoolroom
with the blood of teenage girls

no more aware slight
or the true sin
than you were

Does it count when you
murder yourself
after you have slaughtered
innocents

as if a Twenty-first century pharaoh








And, as is often the case, Gary's poem reminds me of one of my own

This poem was first published in 2003 in Poems Neiderngasse and was later included in my book Seven Beats a Second



anti-war poems are easy

the heart of the matter
is that
the heart of the matter
sometimes
doesn't matter much

anti-war poems are easy
since, in our hearts,
we all know the logic of war
that says I will kill strangers
until a stranger kills me
is insane

and who can deny
that in our hearts
we all know
a human fetus,
no matter how small
and misshapen
and incomplete,
is a human-in-waiting,
holding within is tiny bounds
all the capacity for love and laughter
as any of us

and who,
among even the most aggrieved
of us, could, without tremor
of hand and heart,
push the button
that drops the cyanide pellet
ending the life
of even the bloodiest
of our murdering kind

yet we kill those strangers
who might have someday
been our friend

we erase from the future
the love and laughter
of those who we decide will never be

and we murder the murderers
with prescribed writ and ceremony

all these terrible things we do
because our hearts cannot guide us
in choosing the lesser of evils

it is our lizard brain
we must turn to
when the heart of the matter
does not matter enough








A modern Chinese poet

I need to make an index or something to help me remember what poems I've used here. I've considered this poem, I know, but I don't think I've used it. In case someone recognizes it as a rerun, I apologize.

Duo Duo is the pen name of Li Shizheng. He was born in 1951 and, as a journalist for the Peasant Daily, witnessed the Tianamen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. Like many Chinese writers, he chose after that to leave China and stay in the West.

He began writing poetry during the Cultural Revolution, assuming that, because of the political climate, he would never be a published writer. Despite that, he began to achieve some public acceptance in the 1980's, only to find himself, in the end, a writer in exile. His books have appeared in English in two collections, Looking Out From Death and The Boy Who Catches Wasps: Selected Poems of Duo Duo.



Bell Sound

No bell had sounded to awaken memory
but today I heard
it strike nine times
and wondered how many more times.
I heard it while coming out of the stables.
I walked a mile
and again I heard:
      "At what point in the struggle for better conditions
      will you succeed in increasing your servility?"

Just then, I began to envy the horse left behind in the stables.
Just then, the man riding me struck my face.

(Translated by John Cayley)








A Chinese poet from the first millennium

Not much is known of Zhang Ruoxu except that he lived in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. He became in modern times a famous poet on the basis of this one poem, one of only two of his works to survive the thousand-plus years since he wrote them.



Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night

The tide in the spring river meets the flat ocean.
On the sea a bright moon is born from the tide
and shimmers waves for the thousands of miles.
Nowhere on the spring river is without bright moon.

The river meanders through fragrant fields
and in the flowering woods moon makes everything snow,
until even frost flowing in space is invisible
and on the shores white sands disappear in light.

River and sky merge in one dustless color.
Bright, bright sky, with only the moon's wheel.
Who first saw the moon on this riverbank?
What year did this river moon first shine on men?

Generations keep passing without end,
but the river moon looks the same year after year.
I don't know for whom the river moon is waiting;
I only see the long river seeing off the flowing water.

One scarf of white cloud fades into distance,
leaving unbearable sorrow in the estuary's green maples.
Whose husband is drifting away in a flatboat tonight?
Who is missing her lover in a moonlit tower?

What a pity, the moon wandering through the tower;
it should light the mirror stand of the traveler.
She cannot roll it up in the jade door's blinds,
or wipe it from the rock where she beats clothing clean.

At this moment, they see the same moon, but cannot hear each
  other.
She wishes she could flow with the moonlight onto him.
The wild goose flying off cannot escape this light.
When fish and dragons leap and dive I read patterns in the waves.

Last night she dreamed of fallen petals in a still pool;
what sorrow with spring half over, the man hasn't returned.
The current has almost washed the spring away
and the setting moon tilts west again in the river pool.

The slanting moon sinks deep, deep into the sea fog.
Between Brown Rock and Xiang River is a long way
and I don't know how many people ride the moonlight home.
The setting moon fills the river trees with shivering emotion.

(Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping)








Shall we count the days?

Philip Larkin asks the question



Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.

They are to be happy in;
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.








How to spot a reader

C. K. Williams suggests one way


Reading: Winter

He's not sure how to get the jack on - he must have recently
    bought the car, although it's an ancient
impossibly decrepit, barely holding-together Chevy; he has to
    figure out how each part works,
the base plate, the pillar, the thing that hooks to the bumper,
    even the four armed wrench,
before he can get it all together, knock the hubcap off and
    wrestle free the partly rusted nuts.
This all happens on a bed of sheet ice; it's five below, the
    coldest January in a century.
Cars slip and skid a yard away from him, the flimsy jack is
    desperately, precariously balanced,
and meanwhile, when he goes into the trunk to get the spare, a
    page of an old newspaper catches his attention
and he pause, rubbing his hands together, shoulders hunched,
    for a full half minute, reading.








Hands on

Portuguese poet Eugenio De Andrade considers his tools



Labors of the Hand

I begin to notice the hand
that writes these lines
has aged. It no longer loves the sands
of the dunes, afternoons of drizzling
rain, morning dew
on thistles. It now prefers the syllables
of its own suffering.
It's always worked harder than its mate,
a bit spoiled, a bit
lazy, but lovelier.
The hardest tasks
always fell to it: to sow, to reap,
to stitch, to scour. But also
to caress, that's true. Exigence,
rigor, finally exhausted it.
The end cannot be long now: please god
is nobleness be counted

(Translated by Alexis Levitin)








Come on feets.....

Here's a short piece from "Here and Now" friend Dave Ruslander found in his book Voices In My Head.



Down the Road

My straw hat tipped back,
suit jacket slung over my
shoulder,
the sun persuades me from the
west,
but I'm just following my feet








Serenity is a good thing

Shel Silverstein does not like noisy children



Screamin' Millie

Millie McDeevit screamed a scream
So loud it made her eyebrows steam.
She screamed so loud her jawbone broke,
Her tongue caught fire, her nostrils smoked,
Her eyeballs b oiled and then popped out,
Her ears flew north, her nose went south,
Her teeth flew out, her voice was wrecked,
Her head went sailing off her neck -
Over the hillside, 'cross the stream,
Into the skies it chased the scream.
And that's what happened to Millie McDeevit
(At least I hope all you screamers believe it).








Whee.....

Some poems are just for the fun of throwing words around to see where they stick and what kind of images result. Like this...written earlier this year.



erectile dysfunction

ergo

one-eyed cat
scratching on a cedar post rail

mewling
and yowling
and calling for rain
like a dog pissing
on a three dollar bill

ergo

ducks in a row
fish in a barrel and
that same damm cat
on a hot tin roof

yowling
and scrowling
like a fat man
in a skinny man's
cardboard suit

hearts afire
and ante up
or pee in the pot
with one-eyed
jacks yowling
and growling
like a calico cat
scratching on a cedar post rail

ergo







That's all for this time out, but do want to close with a reminder that this next Friday is the second Friday of the month, which means the Poetry Table at Casa Chiapas will be in session. If you write, bring some of your stuff to read and discuss. If you don't write, bring something from one of your favorite poets to read and discuss. If you don't write and don't want to read either, but have opinions about poetry, there's room at the table for you, too.

So come on down. We'll start somewhere in the vicinity of 7:30 at Casa Chiapas and 928 South Alamo. That's in Southtown/King Williams, south of Durango and half a block south of Rosarios.

And don't forget, the first six "Here and Now" readers to email me at allen.itz@gmail.com before December 15th will be sent a free book and CD.

attabye.

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