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On The Raw Edge Of The Year   Sunday, January 21, 2007

The big news here this week, other than the Spurs collapse into a loser heap, was the freeze of 07, experienced by many, but not with the combination of joy, anticipation, excitement, dread and panic as here in San Antonio.

You should expect to see a ice picture or two as you continue reading this, "Here and Now" number II.1.4.




We open this issue with the first appearance in "Here and Now" of S. Thomas Summers, whose manuscript Death settled well won Shadows Ink Publications 7th Bi-annual Chapbook Competition and was released in September 2006.

He lives in New Jersey with his wife and children and is a teacher of English at Wayne Hill High School. He can be reached at scottsummers1@hotmail.com.

A lover of history and poetry, he hopes to publish a volume of Civil War poetry in the near future. Here are two poems from his Civil War series. We expect to feature more poems from this series in the weeks ahead.


Orders

We pile arms and legs
like Willy and me piled wood
near ma's tomatoes.
Blood seeps from 'em like sap.

Hardest to stomach are the toes.
General Longstreet ordered me
to pull off boots and shoes
before I buried the lot.

Toes stick out here and there,
pointing ways they shouldn't.
Made me think of rows
of slaughtered hogs.

Funny thing is they still reek
like fusty feet - like Pop
just kicked off his shoes
and is sittin' here with me.


Gettysburg: The Wheatfield

Billy Yank

Flies circle his head
like a black halo,
lay their eggs near the bullet
lodged in the meat of his brain.

Scattered among the trampled blades,
like broken pottery-
fragments of skull.

Before the colonel
gave the order to advance,
he pinned a note to his uniform.

"My name is Jonathan Victor
and I love my mother."

He imagined her proudly smiling
as the morning sun darted
off the golden buttons
that adorned his blue coat.

Johnny Reb

A scrap of Confederate flesh
burdens the flaxen head of a wheat stalk
that arches toward the ground
like a cricket leg
the moment before it springs.

Back home, a little girl, dirt
creeping over her feet
like a pair of old socks,
scratches her name in the mud
behind the pig trough.

S A R A H

Smart as she is, Pa will hug
her good and tight
once the war says
he can go home.







San Antonio was iced in for the better part of two days. It finally started melting this afternoon.


cold winds strip the morning bare

cold winds strip
the morning bare
then cover it
with ice,
the chill weight
of its clutch
bending oak limbs
to the ground,
encasing blooms
fooled by false spring

the city
stops,
except for a few
hardy fools
like me, slip-sliding
down the road
in search of a newspaper
that I can read with
morning coffee, looking
out the kitchen windows
to the frozen grass
and the woodpile
covered white
and the icicles hanging
long and sharp
from the lip of my
chiminea

both dogs, pushed
out against their will,
stand shivering
at the door until
I am overcome
by their misery
and let them in,
hoping
they left the patio
long enough
to take care of
business








Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City in 1953. After receiving her B.A. from Princeton University in their first graduating class to include women, she went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. Her books of poetry include After, Given Sugar, Given Salt, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Lives of the Heart, The October Palace, Of Gravity & Angels, and Alaya.

She is also the author of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and has also edited and translated works by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu..

Her honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, Columbia University's Translation Center Award, the Commonwealth Club of California Poetry Medal, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets,

In addition to her work as a freelance writer and translator, Hirshfield has taught at UC Berkeley and University of San Francisco, and has been Elliston Visiting Poet at the University of Cincinnati. She is currently on the faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars.

Bukowski once wrote that he tried to write the way he liked to read. I like Bukowski just for that reason, he writes like I like to read. Heshfield does the same. Here is the first of several of her shorter poems from Of Gravity & Angels.


The Song

The tree, cut down this morning,
is already chainsawed and quartered, stripped
of its branches, transported and stacked.
Not an instant too early, its girl slipped away.
She is singing now, a small figure
glimpsed in the surface of he pond.
As the wood, if taken too quickly, will sing
a little in the stove, still remembering her








Several short pieces from Octavio Paz


Writing

I draw these letters
as the day draws its images
and blows over them
          and does not return


Concord
for Carlos Fuentes

Water above
Grove below
Wind on the roads

Quiet Well
Bucket's black     Spring water

Water coming down to the trees
Sky rising to the lips


Exclamation

Stillness
         not on the branch
in the air
         Not in the air
in the moment
               hummingbird


Distant Neighbor

Last night an ash tree
was about to tell
me something - and didn't.


Daybreak

Hands and lips of wind
heart of water

          eucalyptus
campground of the clouds
the life that is born every day
the death that is born every life

I rub my eyes
and sky walks the land


Nightfall

What sustains it,
half-open, the clarity of nightfall,
the light let loose in the gardens?


(Poems translated by Eliot Weinberger)







I happened to be driving near Lackland Air Force Base a couple of evenings ago. I had my 22nd birthday there, about half way through Air Force basic training. Living not far from the base now, I pass by often and can never help but think of years past and the years since.

I was working for a newspaper in a small town near Houston when I received my draft notice right before Christmas, 1965, upon which receipt I quickly joined the Air Force, making me some kind of draft dodger, I guess.

"Greetings" was the salutation of all draft letters and, the times being what they were, the simple phrase achieved a kind of cult status notoriety. It seems I even remember of movie with that as its title.


greetings

on this day
forty-one years ago,
newly shorn
and uniformed
in the middle
of another
bloody,
losing war,
I was in
my fourth day
of learning
the arts of combat,
which seemed,
at that early
point,
to be mostly
about getting up
in the very dark
of morning,
and marching,
always marching,
in godawful winter
weather
to places we did not
care to go

many of us
would soon learn
more advanced
and terrible
lessons
while others,
like me,
would find safe
haven
in specialties
that involved
neither shooting
nor being shot
at

veterans
now
of the they-also-serve-
who-only-stand-and-wait
brigade, we
honor those
who fought
then
and those
who fight now
and thank
god
again
we are not
them







Bharat Shekhar is from India. He is 45 years old and lives in New-Delhi where he works as a freelance instructional designer. He has two young children ages seven and four of whom he is very proud.

He says he dreams of a time when he might be able to earn a living through his writings. I hope he succeeds. In the meantime, I read his poems frequently on a couple of workshop forums and particularly liked this one.


Spinning a Spell

Axis slightly askew,
the morning earth turns,
spins itself forward
to let the sun peep,
and then climb into
the houses and hopes
of those with houses and hopes.

A dim light beckons celestial rays.
They glimpse the early worm
as the bird begins its dive
axis slightly askew.

In a ritual almost universal,
dreams check their flight.
Resigned to awakening,
sleeping forms stir,
some to arousal,
others to break lonely wind
that no familiar nose will smell
but their own,
axis slightly askew.

Something shines. Tinged with crimson,
it recalls the colors of the day, slowly.
Slowly thoughts rediscover their sounds in words.
Men reinvent their substance from shadows
axis slightly askew.

The atheist wraps his uneasy belief,
in the certitude of lack,
the believer his lack of certitude,
in the certainty of his belief.
Poles that had collapsed, huddled
in the secret uncertainty of the night,
now spring apart-scornful, bristling,
axis slightly askew.







Danish poet Jane Roken is back this week with two poems. This is the first.


Dreamscape: a journey, a dream

The first thing that comes to my mind
is a shed with the roof caved in and no door,
it carries the smell of memory:
cinnamon roses, towering mullein
and the wild lilac jimsonweed
tempting the wayward breeze
to carry its heady fragrance
abroad, afar, and very close
as if a ghost caressed me as I walked by

I am wet eyes and empty hands,
I am crowned with the stars,
wordless in a sea of letters,
look up o'er the marsh, the world is full
of foxfires, revelations:
the blue-winged teal, the snakebird
the golden-eyed hawk from the north

We got some strange weather blowing up
the crumbling garden wall
leaning into the hillside
the wind-washed roofs,
moss, woodruff crouching deeply,
paths running through the grass
where always the wind blows
and every station on the road
shall be my native home

And I will roam through unnamed towns
streets lit with burning rushes and links,
smudges of memory across my face,
the purplish taste of gunpowder
burning in my eyes:
I could never abandon my dreams
to the surface currents







Audre Lorde on bees


Production

100,000 bees make a sturdy hive
ready    three days after the moon is full
we cut honey.

Our hot knives slice the caps of wax
from each heavy frame
dark pollened richness drips
from the laden combs.

Sadig loads the extractor
Curtis leveling the spin.
Sweet creeps like bees
through each crack of hot air.

Outside the honey house
hungry drones cluster
low-voiced and steady
we strain the flow    laughing
drunk with honey

Before twilight
long rows of bottles stand
labeled and waiting.

Tomorrow we make a living
two dollars at a time.







And now, a second poem by Jane Hirshfield.


For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down -
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest -

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.





photo by Jessica Reyna


Jessica Reyna returns with more photos


It seems Jessica was out on Wednesday, as was I, looking for icicle pictures before they all melted.



Photo by Jessica Reyna



Photo by Jessica Reyna



Photo by Jessica Reyna


Keep on chasing those pictures, Jessica.







Leopole Sedar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, author and dictator who served as the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). Senghor also happened to be the first African to sit as a member of l'Academie francaise. He was also the founder of the political party called the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. Said to be more popular in France than in Africa, he is seen as the perfect symbol of Franco-African relationships, or, according to some, of France new colonialism. Born in 1906, he died in 2001.


To New York

           (for jazz orchestra and trumpet solo)

New York! At first I was bewildered by your beauty,
Those huge, long-legged golden girls,
So shy, at first, before your blue metallic eyes and icy smile,
So shy. And full of despair at the end of skyscraper streets
Raising my owl eyes at the eclipse of the sun.
Your light is sulfurous against the pale towers
Whose heads strike lightning into the sky,
Skyscrapers defying storms with their steel shoulders
and weathered skin of stone.
But two weeks on the naked sidewalks of Manhattan....
At the end of the third week the fever
Overtakes you with a jaguar's leap
Two weeks without well water or pasture, all birds of the air
Fall suddenly dead under the high sooty terraces,
No laugh from a growing child, his hand in my cool hand,
No mother's breast, but nylon legs. Legs and breasts
Without smell or sweat. No tender word, and no lips,
Only artificial hearts paid for in cold cash
And not one book offering wisdom.
The painter's palette yields only coral crystals.
Sleepless nights, O nights of Manhattan!
Stirring with delusions while car horns blare the empty hours
And murky streams carry away hygienic loving
Like rivers over flowing with the corpses of babies.

II
Now is the time for signs and reckoning. New York!
Now is the time for manna and hyssop.
You have only to listen to God's trombones, to your heart
Beating to the rhythm of blood, your blood.
I saw Harlem teeming with sounds and ritual colors
And outrageous smells -
At teatime in the home of the drugstore-deliveryman
I saw the festival of Night begin at the retreat of day.
And I proclaim Night more truthful than the day.
It is the pure hour when God brings forth
Life immemorial in the streets,
All the amphibious elements shining like suns.
Harlem, Harlem! Now I've seen Harlem, Harlem!
A green breeze of corn rising from the pavements
Plowed by the dancers bare feet,
Hips rippling like silk and spearhead breasts,
Ballets of water lilies and fabulous masks
And mangoes of love rolling from the low houses
To the feet of police horses.
And along sidewalks I saw streams of white rum
And streams of black milk in the blue haze of cigars.
And at night I saw cotton flowers snow down
From the sky and the angels' wings and sorcerers' plumes.
Listen, New York, O listen to your bass male voice,
Your vibrant oboe voice, the muted anguish of your tears
Falling in great clots of blood,
Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart,
The tom-tom's rhythm and blood, tom-tom blood and tom-tom.

III
New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.
Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life
Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.
Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,
The reconciliation of Lion and Bull and Tree
Idea links to action, the ear to the , sign to meaning.
See your rivers stirring with musk alligators
And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.
Just open your eyes to the April rainbow
And your ears, especially your ears, to God
Who in one burst of saxophone laughter
Created heaven and earth in six days,
And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep.


(Translated by Melvin Dixon)







Here's a second piece from Jane Roken.


soothsayer's lullaby

Will you know the truth? she said,
there's not much to it really,

the question is the answer:
push your luck a little further
break new frontiers
into unknown fields

All things pass, one way or other:
even dreams -
some pass into other things
some pass into oblivion
some may even pass into reality

All things want to open:
the pale mirrors
the murky trapdoors
the deep-bellied ships
the roses in the hedgerow

All things keep faith:
any combination of civilized talk
and raw emotion
will be a landscape of its own,
an astral forge, a monument
to the vertical dimension

All things change:
the shenanigans of our cognitive systems,
purest cinnamon, ginger and clove,
for ever processing, developing
crystals, rainbows, tinctures, sounds
of prismatic strings, heraldic dragonflies

All things will ultimately lose
their power to scar and scare:
even in blackest night
you will not be alone, but
the knives are out
the cards are packed -
will you know the truth?







And a third by Jane Hirshfield


The Other Earth

At first we embrace trees.
Lie with the swan, the bull, become stars.
Blackbirds form bridges across the sky:
we pass, lightly placing our feet.
The god enters our rooms in a shower of gold.
Into the intricate maze a white thread,
a woman, a fish come to guide our way out.
Docile as horses, we go.

When the plain world comes,
with its explanations
smooth and cool as a marble statue's skin,
we go, rising out of the dark.
Being careless and proud, we look back
towards the other earth:
how it wavers and goes out,
like a girl with an errand to do in another room.







This is the third I've written this week. A good week.


interesting company

I know people
who believe that if
Sadamm
had just whispered the
three
little words,
Jesus,
save me,
as the noose
tightened
on his neck
he could have
spent eternity
strolling
in heavenly fields,
amidst all the popes
and preachers
and holy roller
derby servants
of the son

too
bad, he didn't

and Gandhi, too,
such a simple thing,
three
words
spoken quickly
as the bullets
pierced his flesh
and he could have been
in the clover forever
and ever and even
evermore

but, he didn't
either
and it's too late now,
for both, so
Sadamm
and Gandhi,
brothers
of the eternal fire,
are ever roasting
in hell, right now,
even as we speak

now this doesn't
make any sense to me
but who am I to question
such holy folk
as claim it to be true
and,
anyway,
there is an upside
to the whole affair:

at least
I can count
on interesting
company
when the time
of my roasting
comes







Rod Jellema is professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland. He has published four books of poetry, A Slender Grace, The Eighth Day, The Lost Faces, and Something Tugging the Line.


Four Voices Ending on Some Lines from Old Jazz Records

(1)     "any little woman"

The red neon sign
makes jumps like knuckles
and I almost forget how blood
moves soft inside.
Hearing it now, the beat.

I don't care a dime
how they can shoot and rock out
all the lights in the street
long as I sit here alone.
The walls lean firm and big

and I hear the long trucks
slipping west out highway twenty-two
to nowhere I've ever seen
but know that the land's tucked flat
and I ain't going

already been where I'm going
one man after another
I've hit enough good times
and listen, "I can't stand more trouble
than any little girl my size."

(2)     "riffin'"

the tell me to settle down
like mellow is a job
I have to retire from.
It's like they want to give me
a gold watch on a chain
a railroad watch
one I can rise and set
in & out of a dark vest pocket
rocking on a porch
thinking the track really ends
where I see the two rails pinch
long before they hit old Memphis town.
Hell, I been there, plenty.
But right here I got a woman
in a headlights-yellow blouse,
two friendly shoes that lay a shine
on every street that they walk "and boy
if I ain't riffin' tonight I hope sumtin'"

(3)     "get the hell off my note"

Out in the smoke of every gig I play
I pinpoint orange specs
of their cigarettes,focus on how
ice and splinters of gin
cut through fog

I'd paint if my hand didn't shake.
Tonight is what -
the sound is what these blinks
and shapes are for
and Maxie's cornet holds

a phrase just straight enough
for me to lean in lights
and work it out
and look out Brunis
"get the hell off my note."

(4)     "I wouldn't be a Methodist"

This morning
before it was sky
was a far child
back of the trees
shy in a pale green dress.
Now my kitchen's full
of yellow, yes Lord,
and the spoon fits my hand,
Jesus cares and the branches
clap along rivers of light
and "I wouldn't be a Methodist
to save me."

the sources:

(1) Mama Yancey
(2) Louis Armstrong
(3) Pee Wee Russell
(4) Fats Waller







Wen Yiduo was from the Hubei province. After receiving a traditional education he went on to continue studying at the Tsinghua University. In 1922 he traveled to America to study fine arts and literature in the Art Institute of Chicago. It was during this time that his first collection of poetry, Red Candle, was published. In 1925 he traveled back to China and took a university teaching post. In 1928 his second collection, Dead Water was published. In the same year he joined the Crescent Society and wrote essays on poetry. He also began to publish the results of his classical Chinese literature research.

At the outbreak of the War of Resistance, he became politically active. His outspoken nature led to his assassination by secret agents of Kuomintang in 1946.


The End

Dewdrops are sobbing in the hollows of bamboos,
    The green tongues of plantaqins are licking the windowpanes,
The four walls are receding -
   Alone I cannot fill this empty room.

I build a fire in my heart
   and wait quietly for the guests from afar.
I strike it with cobwebs and rat droppings
   and mottled snake scales.

Roosters hurry me when ashes lie in the fireplace.
   A cold wind sneaks up and touches my lips -
So the guest has arrived.
   Closing my eyes, I follow him out.


(Translated by Michelle Yeh)







Bukowski takes stock.


hymn from the hurricane


paid my dues in Macon, went crazy in Tennessee,
found the love of God in St. Louis,
got the hell out of there.
found the whore with the heart of gold in Glendale,
ran away from that.
floundered awhile along the Mason-Dixon Line,
came to my senses in New Orleans.
mailed a letter home, and got knocked on my ass in Houston.
started sitting at the center of the bar instead of at the end.
got rolled 3 times in a row somewhere near the Appalachians.
married a woman with a crippled neck who died unclaimed in India.
name of the first horse I ever bet on was Royal Serenade who died
long ago.
what glistens best from me is the first drink of the night
I still hear forever the wheels of the Greyhound buss carrying me
     to nowhere
J. Cash sang "I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die" as the
cons cheered.
celled with public enemy no. one in Moyamensing Prison (he
snored at night).
my women tell me that I am insane because of my parents.
sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
my favorite color is yellow and my backbone is the same.
nine-tenths of Humanity embraces self-pity and the other tenth
makes them look pitiful.
the rat and the roach are the most powerful reminders of
     enduring life.
what was always best for me was seeing fear in the eyes of the
     bully.
the saddest thing was old women wagering geraniums at 2 p.m.
and what I learned was to do it now in spite of the consequences.
and what I also learned was that something once said could
quickly become untrue.

I paid my dues in Macon and went crazy in Tennessee,
found myself on the 2nd floor of a hotel in Albuquerque (the bed
bugs ate well).
found myself on a track gang going west and didn't yearn for
a seat in Congress.
I remember a girl who showed me her panties when I was 8
     years old.
I remember the red streetcars, and the vacant lots between
the houses in Los Angeles.
I remember that the girl who showed her panties to half the town
     had
showed me first.
I was always a coward who didn't care.
I was always a brave man who didn't try to win.
I found that screwing women was a social duty like making
     money

I paid my dues in Tennessee and went crazy in Macon.

I had no idea of the black-white game and
sat in the back of a streetcar in New Orleans.
I hate politics and I hate the obvious answers.
I paid my dues in East Kansas city.
I beat hell out of a 6-foot-4 240-pound guy in Philly.
I stayed on the floor in Miamiafer after a 150-pound guy decked me
with his first punch.
the state of the mind is the State of the Union.
what you want to do and what you've got to do is the same thing.
I once watched a sailor fight an alligator and the alligator quit.

only boring people are bored.
only the wrong flags fly.
the person who tells you they are not God really thinks otherwise.
God is the invention of failures.
the only hell is where you are.

passed through Dallas and rammed through Pasadena.
I never paid my dues because there was nobody to collect them.
I've smashed two full-length mirrors and they are still looking for
     me.
I've walked into places where no man should ever go.
I've been mercilessly beaten and left for dead.
I have lumps all over my skull from blackjacks and etc.
the angels pissed themselves in fear.
I am a beautiful person.

and you are.
and she is.
as is the yellow thumping of the sun and the glory of the world.







A couple of years ago, I set myself the challenge of writing a series of 26 poems, each poem having a woman's name in the title. I haven't made if all the way from A to Z yet, but since I didn't set a time limit for myself, the project can be termed "ongoing," rather than "incomplete."

Here's one of the first ones I did. It's in my book, Seven Beats a Second.


lying in the sun with susan

quiet bay

no sound but the light rustle
of march grass in the gulf breeze

she
lies on the deck, legs spread,
as if to thrust herself
at the summer sun

sweat glistens
on the inside of her thigh
and my tongue aches
for the taste of her







More Octavio Paz

Concert in the Garden
(Vina and Mridangam)
for Carmen Figueroa de Meyer

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it, we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say "body," it answers "wind."
If I say "earth," it answers "where?"

The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.


East Slop

All the branches,
conquered by the weight of birds,
lean toward the darkness.

Pure, self-absorbed moments
still gleam
on the fences.

Receiving night,
the groves become
hushed fountains.

A bird falls,
the grass grows dark,
edges blur, lime is black,
the world is less credible.


(Poems translated by Eliot Weinberger)







Allen Ginsberg, me, myself and I, a forever fascinating trio


Objective Subject

It's true I write about myself
Who else do I know so well?
Where else other blood red roses & kitchen garbage
What else has my thick heart, hepatitis or hemorrhoids -
Who else has lived by seventy years, my old Naomi?
and if by chance I scribe U.S. politics, Wisdom
meditation, theories of art
it's because I read a newspaper loved
teachers skimmed books or visited a museum







Two from Langston Hughes

Merry-Go-Round

Colored child at carnival:

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down south where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we'd put in the back -
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?


Third Degree

Hit me! Jab me!
Make me say I did it.
Blood on my sport shirt
And my tan suede shoes.

(Faces like jack-o'-lanterns
In gray slouch hats.)

Slug me! Beat me!
Scream jumps out
Like blow-torch.
Three kicks between the legs
That kill the kids
I'd make tomorrow.(Bars and floor skyrocket
And burst like Roman candles.)

When you throw
Cold water on me,
I'll sign the
Paper.....







Before my South Texas friends get too involved in creating urban legends about the great freeze of naught 7, they should look at the photo below, sent to me by friend and poetJane Roken. She calls it "Snowboat."

Jane's poetry is also featured earlier in this issue.



photo by Jane Roken







William Meredith, soft spoken poet has something to say


A Mild-Spoken Citizen Finally Writes to the White House


Please read this letter when you are alone.
Don't be afraid to listen to what may change you,
I am urging on you only what I myself have done.

In the first place, I respect the office, although one night
last spring, when you had committed (in my eyes)
criminal folly, and here was a toast to you, I wouldn't rise.

A man's mistakes (if I may lecture you), his worst acts,
aren't out of character, as he'd like to think,
are not put on him by power or stress or too much to drink,

but are simply a worse self he consents to be. Thus
there is no mistaking you. I marvel that there's
so much disrespect for a man just being himself, being his errors.

"I never met a worse man than myself,"
Thoreau said. When we're our best selves, we can all
afford to say that. Self-respect is best when marginal.

And when the office of the presidency will again
accommodate that remark, it may be held by better men
than you or me. Meantime I hear there is music in your house.

your women wear queens' wear, though winds howl outside,
and I say, that's all right, the man should have some ease,
but does anyone say to your face who you really are?

No, they say "Mr. President," while any younger person
feels free to call me voter, believer, even causer
And if I were also a pray-er, a man given to praying,

(I'm often in fact careless about great things, like you)
and I wanted to pray for your office, as in fact I do,
the words that would come to me would more likely be

"god change you" than "god bless the presidency."
I would pray, "God cause the President to change."
As I myself have been changed, first my head, then my heart,

and that I no longer pretend that I don't swindle or kill
when there is swindling and killing on my nation's part.
Well. Go out into your upstairs hall tonight with this letter.

Generous ghosts must walk that house at night,
carrying draughts of the Republic like cold water
to a man parched after too much talk and wine and smoke.

Hear them. They are elected ghosts, though some will be radicals
and all may want to tell you things you will not like.
It will seem dark in the carpeted hall, despite the nightlights

in the dull sconces. Make the guard let you pass.
"If you are the President," a shade with a water glass
will ask you (and this is all I ask), calling you by name,

himself perhaps a famous name, "If you are the President,
and things in the land have come to all this shame,
why don't you try something new? This building rose,

laborious as a dream, to house one character:
'man trusting man anew.' That's who each tenant is
- or an impostor, as some of us have been."

1969


And that's all for this issue of "Here and Now." See you next week.

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Cold Winds Strip The Morning Bare   Sunday, January 14, 2007

Welcome, again, to "Here and Now" Number II.1.3. We'll start right off with a new year's travel diary.




Big Bend National Park on the Texas/Mexico border is a great place to visit, with over 200 miles of both desert and mountain hiking trails and lots of opportunities for camping, primitive or otherwise, There is also a lodge complex high in the Chisos Basin, with a restaurant, commissary, and motel style accomodations, as well as cottages set apart a bit from the lodge area that are mighty attractive to those of us who've slept outside on the ground all we want for the rest of our life. Isolation and quiet are also draws for some of us, though for me, two to three days of isolation and quiet is about all I can take.

In the past, we've timed our visits to Big Bend for Spring or Fall. You would have to beat me with a big stick to get me there in the summer, when the desert temps get well into triple digits and we haven't been in the winter before because, good old South Texas boy that I am, I know a lot about mud but ice on a highway scares the crap out of me.

The midwinter visit this time worked out though. Both the 425 miles up and the 425 miles back were under clear, blue skies. The weather for the one full day we were there was awful, which was great for me, since it gave me good excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway, that is, sit in a corner, drink coffee and read and write. Dora, who sometimes gives evidence of mountain goat heritage, was disappointed. She had been looking forward to trying a couple of new trails.

Oh, darn, I said, as she set off to hiking despite the weather, You go ahead, I'll just stay right here and keep the cabin warm.

And I did stay and I did write a poem, this one, chronicling our visit.


three winter days at Big Bend

1/2/07



the long drive
from our hill country home
ends as the moon,
rising in the high, clear air,
welcomes us to our journey's end



a bobcat is caught in our lights
as we drive slowly
up the narrow lane to our cabin

long and sleek,
lean like a marathon runner,
with a long tail
that stretches straight behind,
she stops, turns,
and with feline grace
leaps into the brush alongside the road

a second, half a second,
then gone

indelible

1/3/07



just as the sun begins to wake
a winter storm
pours over the surrounding crests
in clouds like fine spun cotton fluff
that settle in the basin,
wrapping
soft around us



by midmorning
the rain starts, then sleet
that hits the roof of the cabin
like pebbles thrown down
from the mountain top

an icy sheen
builds on the slope below us

above
remnants of last night's snow
lie white
in rocky crevices



sitting near the restaurant
under cleared skies at noon,
I notice animal droppings on the sidewalk,
like two little cigarillos dropped
by a grifter on a midnight stroll

looks like bear,
I say to Dora,
a very, very small one

she laughs and so do I

but we watch

there are bears here
and probably not so small



and the weather changes again
at mid-afternoon

becomes overcast with high clouds,
but the earlier fog has cleared
so visibility at our level is good,
so good that from our cabin I can see
through the mountain pass they call the window
to the desert below



wet, but clear,
visibility fifty to one hundred miles,
then clouds like waves on a rising tide
wash over the mountains and across the basin,
white billows, like heavy surf,
moving across the basin ten to fifteen miles per hour
until they cover all,
visibility dropping, in minutes, to twenty feet or less

I am cocooned in the moment

1/4/07



morning comes bright and cold,
as clear as the day before was closed

the moon sets between the craggy mountain peaks,
still bright over the desert below,
covered this morning with a frothy blanket of fog





the rising sun casts a silver halo
over the Emery Peak to the east
while the mountains lying past the western desert
are purple in the fresh light



high grass lays a bright carpet
across the basin,
trees
are green islands
in the dry yellow sea



we leave under blue skies,
driving carefully down the steep twisty road
until we reach the eastern desert floor
and begin the seventy mile drive to the interstate,
the sharp line of mountains
diminishing behind us

planning already the stops
between us and home







A modern Indonesian poet

W.S. Rendra is said to be Indonesia's most celebrated poet, playwright, and theater director. He continues to be a politically activist and was a thorn in the side of the Sukarno regime.

I wonder if there is any other feature of this universe that has drawn more poetic inspiration than the moon. I doubt it.


The Moon's Bed, The Bride's Bed

The moon's bed, the bride's bed:
An azure blue sky
Held up by ancient hands;
A cricket flutters about,
Shrilling a love song to the net.

The moon's bed, the bride's bed:
A Chinese Junk with a thousand sails
Crossing the sea of sleep;
Stars fall one by one,
Yawning with sweet visions.

The moon's bed, the bride's bed:
A kingdom of ghosts and spirits,
Drunk with the flavor of incense;
Dreams scatter, one by one
Cracked by brittle truth.







A series of short poems from Portuguese poet Eugenio De Andrade


Earth's Script

Kerkira

Like the smell of linen
that only shoulders gently touched possess
the earth is white

Rome

It was late on a summer afternoon that,
like Hadrian or Virgil or Marcus Aurelius,
I entered Rome along the Via Appia
and by Autinous and all the love on earth
I swear I saw light turn to stone.

Lisbon

This fog upon the city, the river,
seagulls of another day, boats, people
in a rush or with all the time in the world,
this fog where the light of Lisbon begins,
rose and lemon upon the Tagus, the light of water,
I wish for nothing else as I climb from street to street.

Mediterranean

As in the Whitman poem, a little boy
came up to me and asked: What is the grass?
Between his look and mine the air ached.
In the shade of other afternoons I spoke to him
of bees and thistles close to the ground

House in the Rain

Rain, once again the rain on the olive trees.
I do not know why it has returned this afternoon
since my mother has already gone away,
no longer comes out on the balcony to watch it fall,
to ask: Do you hear it?
I hear it, mother, once again the rain,
the rain upon your face

Paestum, With New Moon

In the sky of Paestum
columns
rise to the
pitiless height
of the new moon and the soul.
To the hoarse, abandoned
music of the cicadas.
To the unexpected fragrance
of a rose.

Cacela

It's on the side of summer
where in the early morning
boats pass, surrounded by whitewashed walls.

It has the perfection of deserted dunes,
the murmur of pigeons,
the difficult transparency of light
and all its rigor

At the Airport in New York

A quick glance, an invitation
I did not accept, the promise of pleasure
now would fall to less exhausted eyes,
but for a moment I had caught a glimpse
of a morning field of clover covered in dew.

(Translated by Alexis Levitin)








San Antonio is home now to more than a million people. Growth in the city's outer rings is such that trees and meadows disappear, literally, on a month to month basis. Vistas that a year ago featured green rolling hills have disappeared, leaving behind waves of slate gray rooftops. I spent 30 years as a soldier in the "war on poverty," working with employment security, job creation and economic and community development programs and projects. Even understanding as I do the great need in this city and this region, for years the poorest in the state, the cost of development sometimes seems too much to bear.

This anger and frustration of watching this happen lead to this poem, written several years ago.


gentrification

you can't get away
from this damn city
and its corruption
stretching
like a gray balloon
across the hills
and valleys all around

lie down
some spring afternoon,
on top of a green hill
in the shadow
of an oak spread wide
by a rocky meadow
bright with wildfire color

take just a moment
of clean country sleep,
then awake to the smell
and sound of Wal Mart
shopping carts crashing
on an asphalt parking lot,
the hill leveled,
the oak pulled from the ground,
wildflowers paved over,
creatures that rustled
through the brush
now smashed, broken,
blood-splattered roadkill
by the steaming parking lot
that stinks of big women
and hot tar and exhaust
and baby shit diapers
left by the new owners
of paradise






Music from the mean streets

Edward Kamau Brathwaite was born in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1930. He is a Barbadian writer, poet and dramatist who seeks to explore the African and Caribbean roots of his country.

In 1955, he traveled to Ghana, shortly after independence, where he worked for the Ministry of Education until 1962. Then he moved to Kingston in Jamaica where he taught history at the University of the West Indies and established Savacou the journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement. Currently, he teaches comparative literature at New York University.


Naima

         for John Coltrane

Propped against the crowded bar
he pours in the curved and silver horn
his old unhappy longing for a home

the dancers twist and turn
he leans and wishes he could burn
him memories in ashes like some old notorious emperor

of rome. but no stars blazed across the sky when he was born
no wise men found his hovel, this crowded bar
where dancers twist and turn

holds all the fame and recognition he will ever earn
on earth or heaven. he leans against the bar
and pours his old unhappy longing in the saxophone







Dancing with the stars

Dave Ruslander and I have been reading each other's poems for several years on different workshop forums. His book, Voices In My Head, came out about the same time as mine. It's filled with good poems, exceptionally illustrated. This poem is from the book.

You will find more information on Dave's book by clicking on the link on the right.


Wasted

I am a soft-shoe wastrel.
See me dancing
through the
puddles.
Take care, beware;
I aim to pull you in.







Samar Sen was a Bengali poet and journalist from an illustrious family of intellectuals and artists. Sen, born in 1916, gave up poetry early and devoted the balance of his life to Marxism and journalism. He was editor of the leftist newspaper Frontier which was banned during the period of the Indian Emergency (1975-1977) declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.


Solitary

Embarrassed presently,
    stumbling through the future:
I sometimes wonder
if you and I should escape together
from this unpleasantly truthful earth
    to where
the blue skies descend on the waters
        lovingly
and in some lonely wolf-infested village
    build our small home -
there will be milk, eggs and corn
    all produced in the home
and at night
we will listen to the song of mosquitoes
    from the bamboo fields
        nearby
and in the afternoon
    the bride will come
        with sad bovine eyes
    to the moss-green lakes
to fetch water,
    absentminded, lonely
knitting an ancient sorrow in the wind.

(Translated by Pritish Nandy)







I've reached the age when I'm not surprised anymore at all that's changed, but, instead, at the very few things that haven't. This poem is also a couple of years old and is included in my book, "Seven Beats a Second."


olden times

another year comes
like all the ones before
and everyone slows down,
takes a breath, pauses
to let the year past settle

all those minutes and seconds
and hours of joy and pain,
desperation, longing,
all the human wants and fears
that abide through all our time,
they all fade together

so much they meant
when they were fresh
and real and part of the flesh
and spirit of our being,
already they begin to fade,
just a part of the past,
far away from us now
as the day we were born,
untouchable and ancient
as the day the walls of Jericho
fell to the trumpets of the Lord,
yesterdays ancient as the day
warrior's ships sailed to the siege of Troy,
primordial as the day our ancestors ten
thousand generations gone swung
from the safety of the highest branches
to walk upright on the ground

past is past, all is unreachable,
fading in the shadows of memory,
it's all olden times,
your life from today and mine







Fables


Zbigniew Herbert, one of the spiritual leaders of the anti-communist movement in Poland, was known both for his poetry and his little prose poem allegories. Here are several of those stories.


Bears

Bears are divided into brown and white, also paws, head, and trunk. They have nice snouts, and small eyes. They like greediness very much. They don't want to go to school, but sleeping in the forest - that, yes, very much. When they don't have any honey, they clutch their heads in their hands and are so sad, so sad, that I don't know. Children who love Winnie-the-Pooh would give them anything, but a hunter walks in the forest and aims with his rifle between that pair of small eyes.

A Button

The best fairy tales of all are about us, how once we were small. I like most the one about how I swallowed an ivory button. My mother was crying.

Cat

He is all black, but has an electric tail. When he sleeps in the sun he is the blackest thing one can imagine. Even in his sleep he catches frightened mice. One can see this in the little claws that are growing from his paws. He is terribly nice and naughty. He picks birds off the trees before they are ripe.

Country

At the very corner of this old map is a country I long for. It is the country of apples, hills, lazy rivers, sour wine, and love. Unfortunately a huge spider has spun its web over it, and with sticky saliva has closed the toll gates of dreams.

It is always like that: an angel with a fiery sword, a spider, and conscience.

Drunkards

Drunkards are people who drink at one gulp, bottoms up. But they make a face, because at the bottom they see themselves again. Through the neck of the bottle they observe faraway worlds. If they had stronger heads and more taste, they would be astronomers.

(Translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter)







Bukowski on speed


straight on

there's nothing quite like driving the
hairpin curves on the Pasadena Freeway at 85
m.p.h.
hung over
checking the rearview mirror for officers of the
law
while peeling and eating tangerines that
sometimes
choke you with their
pulp, acid, seeds
as
your eyes fill with tears
your vision blurs
and you drive from memory
and on instinct
until
things get clear again.
finally you reach Santa Anita, that most beautiful race-
track,
and glide into the parking lot,
get
out, lock it, walk
in.
being 68 years old feels better than
30.
especially 30, that was the most depressing
birthday: you figured that the gamble had been
lost.
what an awful
mistake you made then
38 years ago, about the time when they built
the
Pasadena Freeway







I read somewhere (probably the weekly Times science section) that there is only so much water in the world and that amount has remained constant throughout all the eons. Like everything else that is, it constantly cycles through its various forms, ultimately back, unchanged, to its liquid presence. That thought led to write this poem. So far as I can remember, it's never been published.


consider

consider

all the water
there is today
is all the water
that ever was

sky
to earth
to sea to sky,
the great cycling
ever on,
ever transforming
and re-using

some small part
of the bottled water
you bought today
was drawn in an earlier day
from the great well of Jerusalem

just as your bath this morning
in some small part
bathed the queens of the Nile

and when Jesus wept
his human tears
became a part of every sea

so it is with all the elements
of our lives, even to
the flesh and blood and bone
that carry us through
the solid stages or our time

all there is
has been used before
and will be used again
to some dark or glorious purpose
we will never know

we are temporary custodians
of all we have and and all we are

nothing less
and nothing more









Loose lips sink ships, including friendships

Gary Blankenship returns with the next in his series of poems drawn from the Ten Commandments.

What was that game we all played in elementary school, "telephone," I think it was, where a secret was whispered to a first person, who then whispered it to a second person, all the way, one person after another, until the very last person learned the secret. The fun of the game was to see how the secret had changed as it was passed from person to person.

This commandment is not, as Gary points out, just about lying or making false charges, as it is often thought, but also about gossip.


Commandment IX

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

a truth passed from one friend
to another about a third
told with such inflection
knitted brow
shrug
hands clenched but not
so as to magnify the story
beyond its true importance

a minor criticism passed
around the evening's camp circle
among the card players
the bocce ball spectators
with such nuance
it becomes a capital event
near the end of its journey
unrecognizable
from its causally flung beginning

worthy of one friend's
punishment
by acquaintances
no longer worthy
to be called

friend

I haven't mentioned this in a while, but Gary has a really excellent book out, A River Transformed: Wang Wei's River Wang Poems as Inspiration. Information on the book should be available on his website, which can be reached using the link on the right.







Another unknown soldier

I wrote a poem sometime ago called invisible. It is now appearing in the current issue of The Hiss Quarterly. It's about the people all around us who struggle everyday, mostly unseen or noticed, to keep their lives and families together.

Writer, cabaret artist and actor Norman Nawrocki writes, with great force and passion, about those same people. Here's a poem about one in particular, Mr. John Clark.


John Clarke

By 6am
the first Monday
of every month
John Clarke,
an 82 year old diabetic
walks 6 blocks
to the bus stop,
catches 3 buses,
waits in line
for 3 hours
for the Food Bank handout of
a loaf of bread
a tray of biscuits,
peanut butter,
canned corn,
peas and beans,
instant pudding,
and a few apples and oranges
"Luckily I know how to get by"
he says
"But it's awful tough
for a lot of old people"









Another short piece from Dave Ruslander


Sanctuary

I am sanctuary:
chip a piece from me
whenever you need.







An "Angry Young Man"

Born in 1935, Dhoomil was known as the angry young man of Hindi poetry in the 1970's. Despite publishing only one volume of poetry before his death in 1975, his social consciousness and avant garde technique is said to have greatly influenced younger generations of Indian poets.


The City, Evening, And An Old Man: Me

I've taken the last drag
and stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray,
and now I'm a respectable man
with all the trappings of civility.

When I'm on vacation
I don't hate anyone.
I don't have any protest march to join.
I've drunk all the liquor
in the bottle marked
FOR DEFENSE SERVICES ONLY
and thrown it away in the bathroom.
That's the sum total of my life.
(Like every good citizen
I draw the curtains across my windows
the moment I hear the air-raid siren.
These days it isn't the light outside
but the light inside that's dangerous.)

I haven't done a thing to deserve
a statue whose unveiling
would make the wise men of this city
waste a whole busy day.
I've been sitting in a corner of my dinner plate
and leading a very ordinary life.

What I inherited were citizenship
in the neighborhood of a jail
and gentlemanliness
in front of a slaughterhouse.
I've tied them both to my convenience
and taken them two steps forward.
The municipal government has taught me
to stay on the left side of the road.
(To succeed in life you don't need
to read Dale Carnegie's book
but to understand traffic signs.)

Other than petty lies
I don't know the weight of a gun.
On the face of the traffic policeman
doing his drill in the square
I've always seen the map of democracy.

And now I don't have a single worry.
I don't have to do a thing.
I've reached the stage in life
when files begin to close.
I'm sitting in my own chair on the verandah
without any qualms.
The sun's setting on the toe of my shoe.
A bugle's blowing in the distance.
This is the time when the soldiers come back,
and the possessed city
is now slowly turning its madness
into windowpanes of lights.

(Translated by Vinay Dbarwadker)







Here's another product of the Times science section, with maybe a dash of Al Gore.

I'd probably live a much more comfortable life if I just stuck to the comics in the local paper.


fire in flood in a time of warming

I see a forest burning

ancient trees,
thick roots as deep
as a city building rises,
dry and burning

ways of life,
unchanged for millennia,
disappearing, along
with the river
that sustained them

I see rising of the deeps

another flood coming,
cities drowned
while lands, dry
for ten thousand years,
are covered again
by the oceans' return

I see the earth, like
a sleeping dog awakened,
shaking dust from its hide,
settling back for another eon's
lazing under a long-fading sun








Time and tides

Aleda Shirley is a Mississippi poet currently living in Jackson, Mississippi. Her Chinese Architecture won the Poetry Society of America's 1987 Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second book Long Distance was published in 1996. She spent more than five years teaching creative writing to young students in the Jefferson County Public School system and became a Millsaps writer-in-residence.


21 August 1984

She thinks at first it is rain,
or memory. Perhaps his hand,
heavy with warmth
at the nape of her neck.
But it is neither lunar nor clairvoyant.
The shimmering is the lawn
across which three raccoons are walking.
Their spines arch softly as they disappear

into the grating under the curb.
She thinks about timing,
that rare angle that transforms incident
to magic. What does it mean
to have perfect pitch,
a green thumb,
to be in the right place at the right time?
Not everything can be explained by numbers.

The breeze smells of mown grass,
the streetlights hum and brighten
while, in the cafe, a guitarist plays harmonics.
Consider the chemistry that, out of the blue,
snaps between a man and a woman
who've passed each other at parties
for years. "Hello, how are you,"
they've said, perhaps a dozen times;

they say it again, for the thirteenth.
That these things have nothing to do
with love is not yet clear
to her, who only now understands
why the dates of jazz sessions
are listed on the liner notes:
it matters that we know
when the improvisation occurred.





Painting by Nina Itz


Joy in the doing


My mother began painting when my father died. His was a long, hard, lingering death that required her almost constant presence over a period of several years.

When it finally came, his passing caused her great and lasting grief, but it was also meant, after the years of confinement with him, a great release into freedom. With that new freedom, came a burst of energy and new activities, volunteer work, flower arranging, travel, organ lessons and, most of all painting.

The painting above is her first, copied from a photo I took in Indiana many years before. She gave it to me, with great pride, on my birthday.

Now my mother was not an artist and, just as in the case of my poetry, no one is going to mistake her work for "art." But, then, she never claimed she was making art. She was happy with just the joy she found in the doing of it and, even though she never made enough money to do much more than cover expenses, going to arts and crafts shows and selling her paintings brought her a great sense of accomplishment and validation.

This is one of the lessons I took from my mother's later years. Reward is nice and validation is wonderful, but when you have a life to fill, the best way to fill it is with activities that simply bring joy in their doing. Once basic survival needs are met, that joy in doing is the base upon which a good life can be built.

Most of my mother's paintings were copied from the many art lesson books she had all around her house. She only developed the confidence to try original subjects near the end, as advancing age eventually made painting impossible for her

If she were still alive, her 88th birthday would be in several weeks. So, for her birthday, here is her "opening."



Painting by Nina Itz


Painting by Nina Itz


Painting by Nina Itz


Painting by Nina Itz

Happy Birthday, Mom.








The many ways of art

Yong-un Han is said to be Korea's finest Buddhist poet of the twentieth century and also one of the country's most influential political activists in the struggle against Japanese imperialism. Born in 1879, he died in 1944 in the midst of that struggle.

In this poem he speaks of the art of memory.


The Artist

I'm no artist, but in bed
I can paint with my fingertip
your breast your mouth and cheeks,
and surely that crooked smile
that floats around
your eyebrows as you sleep.

When the neighbors are gone
and even the crickets quiet
I am still too shy to sing
the songs you taught me
to the sleeping cat

I am not a poet but I can describe
your glance, your voice,
the way you walk in the garden
before coming to bed,
even each separate pebble
on the path that runs
the twenty steps from here to there.

(Translated by Bruce Taylor)







One more from Dave Ruslander


Drinking Jackson Pollock

I lie in the meadow at midnight,
looking through glazed eyes
at a Jackson Pollack sky.

Butterscotch, laya, and cobalt stars:
the abstract light pours
French champagne.






Shel Silverstein on friendship


Long-Leg Lou And Short-Leg Sue

Long-Leg Lou and Short-Let Sue
Went for a walk down the avenue.
Laughin' and jokin' like good friends do,
Long-Leg Lou and Short-Leg Sue

Says Long-Leg Lou to Short-Sue,
"Can't you walk faster than you do?
It really drives me out of my mind
that I'm always in front, and you're always behind."

Says Short-Leg Sue to Long-Leg Lou
"I walk as fast as I'm meant to do."
"Then I'll go walkin' with someone new,"
Says Long-Let Lou to Short-Leg Sue

Now Long-Leg Lou, he walks alone,
Looking for someone with legs like his own.
And sometimes he thinks of those warm afternoons
Back when he went walkin' with Short-Leg Sue.

And Short-Leg Sue strolls down the street
Hand in hand with Slow-Foot Pete,
And they take small steps and they do just fine,
And no one's in front and no one's behind.






I guess that's it for another week. Time to relax, think deep thoughts and keep and eye out for bears. Mostly, I think I'll just keep an eye out for bears.

Until next week, vaya con cornflakes.

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Winter Springs, Like A Caged Cat Suddenly Freed   Sunday, January 07, 2007

A new year has begun, with new adventures (not too exciting, I hope), new pictures to take and new poems to write.

I really enjoy going to zoos and watching the animals. I've been to very good zoos, like the very progressive Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, and to some really threadbare, god-help-the-poor-animals zoos, like the zoo I went to in Kabul, Afganistan in 1968. I've been to the San Antonio Zoo many times, beginning when I was a child, but hadn't been for a number of years until last week. It's a traditional zoo, struggling lately, to become more modern in its approach by improving its habitats and general living conditions for the animals. I had been wanting to visit again for a long time, but was always waiting for the perfect zoo day, not to hot, not to cold and, definitely, not too crowded. There finally was a good day last week and I went to visit the animals.

Since my life on any given day is mostly about of whatever happened to me the week before, you can expect to see some effect of that visit in this Number II.1.2. issue of "Here and Now."







Beginning softly with "Lady Midnight"

There are 117 known Zi Ye poems from the third-fourth centuries. It is uncertain whether there was an individual named Zi Ye who wrote the poems or if the Zi Ye poems represent a tradition including works by a number of poets. If the poet was a single individual, the sensual nature and sexual frankness of her work has led to the belief that she was a courtesan. Either way, the poems are said to have had a direct effect on the later development of Chinese poetry.


Three Songs

1
At sundown I step out my front door
and see passing by - you,
your face so dazzling, hair mesmerizing,
perfume filling all the road.

2
Last night I didn't comb my hair.
Like silk it tangles down my shoulders
and curls up on my knees.
What part of me is not lovely?

3
The night is forever. I can't sleep.
The clear moon is so bright, so bright,
I almost think I hear a voice call me,
and to the empty sky, I say Yes?


Four Seasons Song: Spring

Spring forest flowers are so charming.
Spring birds pour out grief.
Spring winds come with exuberant love -
they lift up my silk skirt.


Four Seasons Song: Autumn

She opens the window and sees the autumn moon,
snuffs the candle, slips from her silk skirt.
With a smile she parts my bed curtains,
lifting up her body - an orchid scent swells.

(Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping)







I like elephants

And even though those you see at a zoo are more like elephant shadows than their real, wild brethren, the fact is the zoo is the only way most of us can see them and other magnificent, often endangered, animals of the wild.

And how much would we care about them and their endangerment if we couldn't see them, even at this remove. A "tiger" has as much reality as a "unicorn" until you actually see one, with its huge head and teeth and paws and sleekly muscled flanks and cold cat eyes.

This poem about elephants first appeared in The Muse Apprentice in 2004. I included it in my book in 2005.


let's go shoot a big fat capitalist

the flack for the Safari Club
defends the sporting ways
of his wealthy employers

look

he begins
with a nod that says listen up

you tree
hugging
elephant
kissing
liberal
commie
nitwits

there are thousands and thousands
of elephants in Africa

shooting a few is no threat to the species

in fact, he adds

shooting elephants
is good for elephants

thins the herd,
you know

reduces overgrazing

insures sufficient resources
for those that remain

we love these elephants
you see
and only do what we must
for the good of the herd

hmmmmmmm.....
I say

of course.....

all for the good of the herd







From Puerto Rico.....

The vivid imagery of Victor Hernandez Cruz.


Christianity

Christianity
sparkling from pentecostal
Rhythm
Coming as if a mouth
Up from
Calle San Lazaro del Medio
Timbal and maraca with
tambourine inviting San Pedro
Horse to gallop
Through Hair and flesh
Like needles of chill
Pulling down Jehovah
with a singsong
T