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Black (and white) Friday
Sunday, November 29, 2009 IV.12.1. Stuck, now, in that trough between Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone around me seems manic-depressive, Christmas-frantic one moment, Christmas-gloomster the next. I'm doing my best to ignore it. Here's the line-up. Hope you enjoy. May 27 June 1 June 5 June 6 June 8 Me watcing Reba sniff the grass Marina Tsvetaeva From Poem of the End, Sections 1-4, 14 Sue Clennell Angry young girls Juan Felipe Herrera Giraffe on fire Me my front porch cat is a ham e. e. cummings Several sections from Part III of etcetera - the unpublished poems Jan Napier Looted Gary Soto A Simple Plan Me clocking in Dan Gioia Los Angles After the Rain Jan Napier Harsh White Light Wendy Cope Advertisement On Finding An Old Photograph Me Cave Men Sue Clennell Hades in the suburbs Me a soldier in the cause Jan Napier Country Communion Me redhead clowns Ku Sang Springtime Dances Spring Washing Me i might just do it  I'm starting this week with poems by David Lehman from his book, The Daily Mirror, A Journal in Poetry, published by Schribner Poetry in 2000. I've been accused of relying to much on "diary poems," telling people through my poems way more than anyone wants to hear about the experience of being me. Poet and editor Lehman, currently on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and The New School, goes me one further with a book that is literally a day to day diary in verse. He also has a much more interesting life than mine, providing himself more of an excuse for the diary than me. Here are several poems, starting on May 27th of his life and moving forward for a couple of days. May 27 Movies are meant to be seen when you're alone especially when you're living in England and wishing you were in France so you go to Le Bonheur and memorize the dialogue then you go to France and see American films and study the French subtitles which teach you how to behave it's enjoyable to make global generalizations on the basis of haphazard observations the English value gardening over cooking ergo their idea of wickedness is bad manners while the French idea of wickedness is bad taste and in the movies the man kissing the woman says "don’t believe me though I never lie" I've always wanted to say that to a girl if I tell you I love you don't believe me June 1 The new day (a gray streak of light) begins with the bubbles still in last night's soda water in my glass by the bed I've got to pack pick up a rental car load it and drive up to Ithaca it'll be good to be in the big house but I don't want to leave hard as it is to live in this city I'm still a sucker for the lights of Amsterdam Avenue the bright yellow of taxis in snow I feel like a runner with a big lead off first base who slides into second and when the catcher's throw skips into center field he hustles to third his uniform streaked with dirt he's safe June 5 If I write another poem about Ithaca let it be called "Chance of a Shower" no Korean restaurant dispenses cherry lime rickeys here but if you bring the white creme de menthe I'll meet you halfway with brandy and make us stingers you saw an osprey a kingfisher two red-tailed hawks and four blue herons in the Dryden wetlands Renee you've become quite a birdwatcher and if a friend calls and says "we've got to talk" it can mean one thing only you haven't won the lottery June 6 No two are identical though they begin from the same point in time the same point in the dream when the radio shuts itself off in the middle of "Just in Time" (Sinatra version) the curtains are blowing in and the driver of the hearse outside looks up and says "Room for one more" and now you know what kind of hospital you're in and you must escape from it by acting "normal" pretending there isn't a conspiracy against you as Dead of Night shifts into Shock Corridor there are a dozen versions of this dream I keep thinking of what Ashbery said about escapism he said we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn't going to be enough June 8 It's three days from my birthday I think I'll rent Doctor Zhivago tonight (Hilton Obenzinger said he liked the music) and read the novel today and write a poem tomorrow about the Russian Revolution as performed by the students of Columbia College in 1967 Michael Steinlauf had a beard David Shapiro a mustache Les Gottesman went to Poland for the summer and Hilton Obenzinger bought a pound of ground chuck and walked to Hamillton Hall where a class on Plato was in progress he threw the meat into the room yelled "Meat" and ran away  I got into a kind of pet-centric mood last week and wrote several poems that began with one or more of the animals that share my life. This is the first one watching Reba sniff the grass a clear cool day, too good not to be out in, so Reba and i took a little longer with our walk than usual usually Reba slows down a bit after her initial excitement, but today, this beautiful day, she was frisky and eager from start to finish, her nose buried deep in the grass, her nostrils twitching, delicate little shivers, as she makes minute adjustments, pushing the grass this way and that, searching for the clearest scent like a jeweler bent over a fine gem, loop to unblinking eye, studying each facet, looking for a purity that will make him draw back his breath in wonder i watch and wonder, too, how it must be to be so open to sensation, to be so filled in the morning with such joy of discovery ahh, success, a tiny bit of something dead, or, in her lexicon, food  One should not look for humor from Russian poets; even the cyrillic alphabet looks harsh and foreboding. But then the last hundred years of Russian history is not likely to produce much humor, except of the blackest kind. Marina Tsvetaeva, born in Moscow in 1892, is not an exception to the rule. She wrote her long narrative poems while in and out of exile most of her life, eventually committing suicide in 1941, at the onset of World War II. Poem of the End is her most acclaimed work. Consisting of 14 sections, some quite long, it is not a poem I can include in its entirety here. Instead, I'm presenting several sections from the beginning and the final, ending section of the poem. You'll have to find the poem yourself to find out what happens in between. The poems in the book, published by Ardis Publishing, were translated by Nina Kossman. Poem of the End 1 In the sky, rustier than tin, Is a lamppost like a finger. He rose at the appointed place, Like fate. "Quarter to. Have I kept you...?" "Death cannot wait." Exaggerately smooth, The doffing of his hat. In every eyelash, a challenge. The mouth, contorted. Exaggeratedly low, His bow. 'Quarter to." "On the dot?" His voice lied. My heart - fell. (What's with him?) My brain: a signal. __________ Sky of bad omens. Rust and tin.He waited at the usual spot. Six o'clock. This soundless kiss: The stupor of the lips. Thus - empresses' hands are kissed Thus - dead men's hands... A hurrying laborer Elbows my side. Exaggeratedly dull, The train-whistle howled. Howled - yelped like a dog, On and on, angrily. (The exaggeration of life, In the final hour.) What yesterday was waist-high Suddenly reaches the stars. (Exaggerated, that is: To its full height.) Thinking: darling, darling. "The time?" "Seven." "To the movies, or?" (Exclaiming) "Home!" 2 Gypsy brotherhood - This is where it led! Like thunder on the head, Or a naked blade, All the terror Of anticipated words, Of a house collapsing, That word: home __________ A lost spoiled child Wailing: Home! A one-year-old: "Give me! Mine!" My brother in sin, My fever and fervor. The dream of running away The way you dream of home. _________ Like a horse jerking at its tether - Up! - and the rope in shreds. "But we have no home!" "Ah, but we do. Ten paces away. The house on the mountain." "Not higher up?" "The house at he top of the mountain, The window under the roof." "Burning not only with the light Of dawn?" "So we start over again?" "The simplicity of poems!" Home means: out of the house And into the night. (Oh, whom shall I tell My sorrow, my grief, Horror, greener than ice?...) "you've been thinking too much." Pensively: "Yes." 3 The embankment. I keep to the water - A dense thickness. The hanging gardens of Semiramis, There they are! The water - a steely strip of it, Deathly pale. I stay with it like a singer Sticks to the score; like a blind-man Sticks to the edge of a wall...You won't turn me back? If I bend down, will you hear? I stay with it, the quencher of all thirsts, Like a sleepwalker sticks to the edge Of a roof... Oh, but it's not the water That makes me shiver - I was born a naiad. To hold onto the river, like holding hands When your lover's here and faithful. The dead are faithful. Yes, but not all in the same casket... On my left side, death; on my right - You. My right side seems dead. A vivid sheaf of light Laughter, like a toy tambourine. "We need to have a ..." (shivering). "Will we be brave?" 4 A wave of blond fog Like a gauzy flounce. Too much beathing, too much smoking, But mainly too much conversation! What's that smell? the smell of haste, Of connivance and petty sins, Of business secrets And ballroom powder. Family men who play the field, Beringed, respectable boys... Too much joking, too much laughing, But mainly - too much calculation! big notes and small ones, Keeping their noses clean. ...The smell of business deals And ballroom powder. (Aside - is this our house? I'm not mistress here!... One bent over his checkbook, Another over a kid-gloved hand, And that one working over A cute foot in patent-leather. ...The smell of business marriages And ballroom powder. A silver notch in the window - The Star of Malta! Too much stroking, too much groping But mainly - too much squeezing. (Yesterday's left-overs, But who minds the smell?) ...The smell of business swindles, And ballroom powder. The chain's too short? At least it's platinum, not steel! Their triple chins shaking, Like calves they eat their Veal. Over a sweet neck - The devil, a gaslight. ...The smell of business failures And of a certain powder - Manufactured by Bertold Schwartz, a man of many gifts, And a benefactor of mankind. "We need to have a talk." Will we be brave? 14 the descent like a sheep - Path. City noise. Three tarts come towards us. Laughing. at your tears. They laugh, their wombs like ripe noon, Their swelling crests of waves , They laugh at your unseemly, Disgraceful, male - At your tears, visible Through the rain like welts; Like pearls, shameful On a warrior's bronze. At your first and last Tears - Let them flow! At your tears, the pearls In my crown! I won't lower my eyes. I stare through the downpour. Stare, puppets of Venus, Stare! This bond Is closer than Luring and laying. Even the Song of Songs Yields to our speech. To us, obscure little birds, Even Solomon bows, For our weeping together Surpasses a dream. So, into the hollow waves Of darkness - hunched over - Without a sound, without a trace, As a ship sinks. Prague, 1 February 1924 - Ilovisci, 8 June 1924  We have several poem this week from two more of our Australian friends, both, in this case, from Western Australia. The first of the two is Sue Clennell. She has two poems; this is the first. Its initial publication was in Speedpoets. Angry young girls Angry young girls come out at night to bury the bogey man, buy houses bite necks gatecrash glass ceilings with back lane ladders write graffiti on boys' hearts. Chic to the bone they taste of ginger salt and sand, wind snakes around wrists dip their toes in stock markets and keep love letters in kitchen drawers next to the corkscrew.  My next piece is by Juan Felipe Herrera, from his book Giraffe On Fire, published by The University of Arizona Press in Tuscon in 2001. Luckily, I don't believe in labeling things because, if I had to label what Herrera does, I wouldn't have a clue what to call it. And, the truth is, I also only have a vague idea of what Herrera is talking about most of the time, but his images are so bright and unexpected and vivid that knowing what he's saying seems unimportant. The title piece of the book is a long, multi-part narrative, much too long to use in its entirety here. Instead, here's the first section. Giraffe on Fire 1 I sit on a gold vestibule. It isn't me. This wavy swan to my naked left comes up to my bad eye. My dead eye. Catalonia, in its sacred and tiny voyage under the tectonic plates of Dali's edible sea. Swan's talons. Cobalt blue and geometric. Gold pearls and an inverted eggshell. My childhood, my little red daily missal, my edge of Plexiglas water. My breasts and my shoulders are sculpted and small. I raise my leg as I hold an invisible oblong figure in front of me. It is my gaze. Naked as Gala, Dali's lover: I know nothing. Nothing of Spain or its green- mantled skies. I live in a split sky. Yellowish without a sun, yet the sun envelops the firmament. The bottom is blue, then convex with a woman at the center. Mexico, Cortez, Malinche. East Los Angeles. San Francisco. El Paso, yes, the gate of all Mexican dreams - this soft animal, jagged with ragged dots behind its back that leads to a holy shrine. A wax cross always before me. I sit upright. Floating, my head tilted to the left. This is the proper stance in America, an adequate sexual crust that I eat as I ascend into the sky. It is not necessary to understand what is below me. You must open your legs. You must figure that the hard orange colors from your bill, then the black protrusion. This is innocence. I was born there. A fortune was discovered on my skin. My mother took me away one night. An egg was delivered, then tossed over a bridge. It cut into the waters, a shape of a man with tinted skin and a jelly heart. What could he do? He was alone inside the small canoe. What did he have? He had paints and a loaf of pumpernickel. He wanted to reach down into the water. The belly below him, floating up. Gala in white, in seaweed, in parables from Ezekiel and Port Ligat. Gala was elsewhere. Above him, as always. In front of him. As always. In a shrunken room dug into the bowels of a West Coast barrio. The barrio was insignificant. The fragrance was central to his existence. This is my language. There are no codes. she sits there. That is all. In eclips. In fission. Hiroshima, Iraq. The San Joaquin Valley. In leather rubies and grape pesticides. Alive and willing, still. She is traveling sideways, onto Desolation and Desire. Avenues, voyages ripped from Cadiz and Cadaquez. Moors and Jews come to her. This was my beginning. In the fields, lost in the deserts of California. Many years ago.  Here's another of the pet poems, this one about the young cat that guards my front door. my front porch cat is a ham front-porch kitty, named Billy Goat because of a little black patch under her chin that looks like a goatee, always runs out to meet me every time i drive up, not, it seems, because she wants to be petted, but only because she wants me to watch as she eats now it's not that she wants me to give her food, since, because she doesn't seem to want to eat without an audience, some of the food i put out in the morning is usually still there in the evening i'm worried that if we decide to go away for a week or two and i'm not there to watch her eat several times a day, she'll starve to death and, speaking of watching others eat, i'm having lunch today with a long-absent friend and since we haven't seen each other in thirty years and since just about everybody we ever both knew is dead, it's likely we're not going to have a lot to talk about and i'm thinking lunch is mostly going to be about watching each other eat though i'm not expecting to enjoy it as much as Billy Goat appears to, not being nearly the ham she is  Next, I have e. e. cummings, from the collection Etcetera - the Unpublished Poems, two poems from section III of the book. III 8 look my fingers,which touched you and your warmth and crisp littleness -see?do not resemble my fingers. My wrists hands which held carefully the soft silence of you(and your body smile eyes feet hands) are different from what they were. My arms in which all of you lay folded quietly, like a leaf or some flower newly made by Spring Herself,are not my arms. I do not recognise as myself this which i find before me in a morror. I do not believe i have ever seen these things; someone whom you love and who is slenderer taller than myself has entered and become such lips as i use to talk with a new person is alive and gestures with my or it is perhaps you who with my voice are playing. 9 when of your eyes one smile entirely brings down the night in rain over the shy town of my mind when upon my heart lives the loud alive darkness and in my blood beating and beating with love the chuckling big night puzzles asquirm with sound when all my reaching towers and roofs are drenched with love my streets whispering bulge my trembling houses yearn my walls throb and writhe my spires curl with darkness then in me hands light lamps against this darkness(hands here and there hands go thither and hither in my town) carefully close windows shut doors  Now here's Jan Napier, our second poet from Western Australia this month. Jan travelled the length and breadth of Western Australia for 20 years, working in Side Show Alley (the Oz term for Midway). Her experiences are summed up in her book All The Fun Of The Fair, and now she has turned her attention to poetry. Her poem was first published in Speedpoets. Looted Dreams of elsewhere and blue fires clove hitched to bad mirrors reflect pickled images of a far off hearth and his swell bellied welcome. Bars shriek to the sailor seagull the dock lamp the deeps follow the tobacco and fish gutted stars. Cross pendulum oceans of cat's eye and sin singed with a language unsullied by mercy. Map a port hyphenated by umbral arrivals upon a tide poppied with cutlass and crimson. Hiss the bone burn of a door ajar. Kitchen and cot have southerly swung flies hymn and church the cold worm curl. Its seams untacked tomorrow yaws  I'm back this week with another piece by National Book Award finalist Gary Soto from his book a simple plan. The piece is the book's title poem. A Simple Plan To get rid of A dog, you put on Your brother's shoes, Slip into a shirt Hanging on a nail In the garage, Smack dad's hair oil Into your dirty locks, The scent of confusion. You call, Let's go, boy, And with the Dog's neck in A clothesline noose, You follow your skinny shadow Down the street And cut through A vacant lot, Same place Where you stepped On a board with a nail and whimpered home, The board stuck like a ski to your shoe. You walk past The onion field, Little shrunken heads Hiding hot, unshed tears, And stop at the canal. The dog laps water, Nibbles a thorn from his paw, And barks at a toad In the oiled weeds. The sun's razor Is shining at your throat, and wind ruffles Your splayed hair, Where a hatchet Would fit nicely - You feel the sharpened edge of guilt. Come on, boy You say and leap On slippery rocks Set in the canal. You stop to Look inside an abandoned Car with a pleated grill - Three bullets holes in the door On the driver's side. You think, Someone Drove this car Here and killed it. You brave another mile. When you arrive The dog prances with Joy. What is it? A jackrabbit in The brush? Feral cat Or stink birds? You pick up A board, one just a little Smarter than the one That nailed you with pain. With all your strength, You hurl it end over End. The dog knows What to do. He runs After it. Time for you to spin On your heels and, arms Kicked up at your side, Lungs two bushes Of burning fire, Get back home. That night it's steaks On a grill, a celebration Because someone In the family won A two-hundred-dollar lottery. You eat to the bone And then nearly Choke on the gristle. You drag your full Belly to the front Yard, and stake Yourself on the lawn. The neighbor's porch light Bursts on, and a shooting Star cuts across the sky - You touch your throat and think, something just died. You lay with hands Laced behind Your closed eyes You see him, a nail In his bloody paw, A board in his mouth, And shooting stars Passing over the curves Of his wet pupils. If you were a better person, You would stab Your own foot And let him pick up a scent Back home.  Now it's back to Reba for this one. clocking in in the little town where i grew up we had Sheriff Jake Kane, well-oiled 45 on his hip, tall, broad-shouldered, craggy-faced under a wide-brimmed stetson, who slept through the night just like all the rest of us, except for the town's night watchman, an 88-year-old guy who made his rounds downtown, clocking-in at his check points, seeing to the security of the city through the dark hours, unless there was some kind of shooting or knife fight at one of the bars out by the tracks that required waking the sheriff to go out and knock some heads together i think of those days and that old watchman as i walk Reba in the morning, taking our normal route where she has her clock-in points all along the way, places where, everyday, she stops and sniffs, checking out whatever it is she checks out when she stops and sniffs (i imagine a kind of telegraph offices where messages are sent and received day to day) and like the watchman there is no lollygagging between points, as, with her gaze intently directed ahead and her step quick and precise, we advance the tour according to her own schedule our route never varies, except for one time i took the tour backward, beginning where we usually finish, ending where we usually start, and she kept looking up at me the whole way, her expression clearly showing her disgust with the way i was screwing up the whole thing like the watchman she is intent and loyal to her route, unless, like the watchman she sees something out of place along the way, a piece of paper, lets say, that wasn't there yesterday, because, like the watchman, all things of a suspicious nature was be investigated it's part of the job  The next poem by Dana Gioia, from his book The Gods of Winter, published by Graywolf Press in 1991. Gioia was born in Los angeles in 1950. He received his B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University. He also has an M.A. Comparative Literature from Harvard University. At the time he published this book, he was a business executive in New York. He has since set aside his business career, devoting his full time to writing and the arts, and just this past year, completed a full, and successful, term as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Los Angeles After the Rain Back home again on one of those bright mornings when the city wakes to find itself reborn. The smog gone, the thundering storm blown out to sea, birds frantic in their joyous cacophony, and the mountains, so long invisible in haze, newly risen with the sun. It is morning snatched from Paradise, a vision of the desert brought to flower - of Eve standing in her nakedness, immortal Adam drunk with all the gaudy colors of the world, and each taste and touch, each astounding pleasure still waiting to be named. The city stirs and stretches like a young man waking after love. Sunlight stroking the skin and the promiscuous wind whispering "Seize the moment. Surrender to the air"s irrefutable embrace. Trust me that today even seduction leads to love." Too many voices overhead. Too many scents commingle in the stark perfume of green winter freshened by the rain. This is not morning for decisions. A day to ditch responsibility, look up old friends, and dream of quiet love, impossible resolutions.  Here's a second poem for this week from our Western Australia friend Jan Napier, first published in Tamba. Harsh White Light Out in this harsh white light secrets sear shrivel scatter like kangaroos before the rifle. Shadows sharp as scalpels cut out the indefinite article define edges separate the infinite from matter subject to laws corporeal excise or expose imperfection in a paranoia of normality the way hot blood sucks into sand. Radiation insists on revelation. Transition slices the instant each detail etched in high relief like the sirrush and rimi incised upon Babylon's Ishtar Gate. There are on grey areas out in this harsh white lite.  Next I have two short poems by Wendy Cope, from her book Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, a tiny book published by faber and faber in 1986. Cope was born in Kent. After university she was for fifteen years a primary school teacher in London. In 1987, after publishing this, her first book, she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light verse. Advertisement The lady takes The Times and Vogue. Wears Dior dresses. Gucci shoes. Puts fresh-cut flowers round her room And lots of carrots in her stews. A moss-green Volvo, morning walks, and holidays in guadeloupe; Long winter evenings by the fire With Proust and cream of carrot soup. Raw carrots on a summer lawn. Champagne, a Gioconda smile; Glazed carrots in a silver dish For Sunday lunch. They call it style. On Finding An Old Photograph Yalding, 1912. My father in an apple orchard, sunlight patching his stylish bags; three women dressed in soft, white blouses, skirts that brush the grass; a child with curly hair. If they were strangers it would calm me - half-drugged by the atmosphere - but it does more - eases a burden made of all his sadness and the things I didn't give him. There he is, happy, and I am unborn.  And then, there's Kitty Pride, who showed up at our back door years ago and stayed since. She is now a retired cat and does only retired-cat things. Mostly that means she sleeps all day on my recliner. It doesn't bother her if I'm already in the chair - she just sleeps on top of me. cave men Kitty Pride, my old, going on ancient, Calico, being like all cats of French heritage with a C'est la vie attitude about all the things that drive dogs crazy with worry, didn't do much when she was young and does next to nothing now that she's old, getting up twice a day from the little cave i make out of pillows for her in the morning, waddling, with hanging belly flaps wagging side to side, once a day to the food dish and once a day to the litter box, the rest of the time a happy little feline asleep in the dark and quiet of her cave safe, she knows, from all the ills and interruptions that might otherwise plague an old cat's life like those people so frightened by the threat from evil terrorists if we try and execute the creatures responsible for flying into the towers on that day in September right there in New York where they committed their crime against us - so much safer they say if we hide this all away in that cave we have on that faraway island run by those people we don't like so who cares about them, anyway fearful people, like Kitty Pride, hiding in the dark of their cave cowardly people, eager to fight any war as long as it's at least 3,000 miles from their cave and they don't have to go there  And now, my second poem this week from our friend Sue Clennell. Hades in the suburbs In the background Santana plays Smooth. It's hot and people are bursting like grapes. There's blood on the bus stop for lack of cigarettes, for fury flares like a match in this eye of a cyclone waiting to happen. Thirty eight, thirty nine, forty, and still counting. When a city is hot the snakes come out. In a city without guns, cricket and baseball bats, knives and broken bottles, king hits predominate. Shoppers pick up half-price Christmas cards with scenes of snowmen and robins. Fish and chips, vinegar or salt, sour cream or tomato sauce, sticky date pudding, and on such nights you see that the stars really do glitter. People walk by the smell of the sea listen for thunder.  Of course, no week can go by without a good rant. a soldier in the cause i never had any belief in god deeper than those sweet years when the conviction that Santa was coming sustained me through the dry South Texas summer i maintained all the forms of belief, going to church every Sunday like i had to, closing my eyes tight while everyone prayed, wondering what the big deal was growing up, non-belief was not a thing to talk about - i didn't meet a professed non-believer until i was a teenager - and for years my own views were not something i talked about - first, when i was young, out of fear of being different when different wasn't a good thing to be later, expressing my disbelief seemed impolite, a challenge to the most basic elements of another person's most enduring beliefs, a feeling that, while my own disbelief was no more important to me than my disbelief in elves and Tinkerbell, there were people whose faith was essential to their lives, people who were sustained by their faith and who, without the faith, would have been hollow at their core so for years i avoided talking about religion, not out of fear of losing an argument, but afraid i might win - until one day it came to me that by my reticence i was effectively apologizing for being sane and rational, enabling this culture of delusion that spreads so much of the evil in our lives believers now complain there is a war against religion - if there truly such a war, you can call me, in my own quiet and politely civilized way, a soldier in the cause of peace and reason and true brotherhood of the human kind - anti-religion at its most intense  Once more, here's Jan Napier, with her third poem this week. The poem first appeared in The Mozzie Country Communion Easy in snaffles the horses amble barebacked flyfretted. Country coloured ears flick back to our voices hymned with heat. Past eucalypts like unlit candles and clouds of cockatoos incensed by our advance, they carry us down to the river. Cattle devilhorned pew the banks. The sea of red parts. We relinquish altitude gather leathersweat reins kneel upstream of muzzle slurp and suck cup hands bow heads Akubra'd yet humble crow choired make our communion.  Well, someone has to bring in the clowns. redhead clowns burger and fries a cinnamon shake and a dog with a bone a cat on the phone and redhead clowns giggling in the diner welcome home Mr. Saturday Night  Here are two poems by Korean poet Ku Sang from the collection Wasteland of Fire, published by Forest Books in 1989. The book's poems were translated from Korean by Anthony Teague. Ku Sang was born in Seoul in a Catholic family. He grew up in North Korea and fled to South Korea before the Korean War. He has the distinction of having been oppressed as a poet and intellectual both by the communists in the north and the early corrupt dictatorship in the south. Springtime dances The old plum tree stump, wimpled in white, is dancing the dance of the crane. the towering pine trees, extending green parasols in either hand, are performing a waltz. Weeping willows sway in rhythms free, bony acacias rock leafless shoulders, while bamboos rubbing arms and legs step it out together. Along rthe wayside where snow meets the sun tiny blades of grass, already sprouting, gently sway. Seeds,roots, insects,frogs, that had only been peeping from underground windows now put on their springtime best, like actors in backstage dressing rooms. Now the breath of spring in the breeze comes gently brushing the naked flesh. Spring Washing Along the edge of a barley field weeping willow trees dip their tresses in stream. sunbeams beneath the water, turned to golden grains of sand, dance then pause, then flow again. Hunched like toads new crawled from the ground, the village women and girls attack the springtime washing. Slip-slop, slip-slop tacka-tacka-tacka, slosh-slosh, they beat away as if pounding out the rice-cake paste. chick-check, chick-chock, yick-yeck, yick-yock, hey-hey, hee-hee! The tongues wag away: Here's a baby girl born in the year of the horse! The father-in-law's not too pleased about that! and here's a mother-in-law too strict by half, or a cheeky student for a sister-in-law, but there a husband's gone back after leave, and as for the gangsters of a certain political party... In this pleasant scene there still remain shadows of personal pain like stains in the embroideries made by young widows.  What a great experience I had this afternoon! It will hang on a mental magnet on my mental refrigerator door for some time to come. The young man could not have picked two names that would please me more. I'll let the poem tell the story. i might just do it working on next week's blog at my current favorite coffee house i was interrupted by a fuzzy-bearded young student from the college down the road - had just read my book he said and thought it was great, a combination of Whitman and Bukowski, he said and i could have kissed him peach-fuzzy beard and all in fact if he comes back by i might just do it  Until next time, remember, all the material in this blog remains the property of those who created it. All the stuff I created is avaible to anyone who wants it. As owner and producer of this blog, I say, make it so. Just get my name right...that's allen itz if you don't mind. |
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