August 24, 2011

It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, “Don’t forget
Everybody must give something back
For something they get



Chris Martin, Ganges Sunrise Asi Ghat Varanasi, 2002

Building and Earthquake
-- Jane Hirshfield

How easy it is for a dream to construct
both building and earthquake.
Also the nine flights of wooden stairs in the dark,
and the trembling horse, its hard breathing
loud in the sudden after-silence and starlight.
This time the dream allows the building to stand.
Something it takes the dreamer a long time to notice,
who thought that the fear was the meaning
when being able to feel the fear was the meaning.


The End of It
-- Kim Addonizio

I have foresworn desire.
I am become as a stink bug.
Yea verily I am a roly poly.
No more for me the hanky panky.
I neither lick nor moan.
I neither swallow nor spit.
I'm through with all that.
Moonlight on the ocean
is as soap scum to me now.
Beavers of love,
build not your lodges in my waters.
Snails quit sliming your kisses
over the cabbages.
I have delivered up my clit
to be disarticulated.
Now I'm going to be very quiet
and wait for that little marble squirrel
set among the tomato vines
to run away.


Lost
-- Adam Zagajewski (translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

Lost, lost in gray hallways.
At night the lightbulbs hiss like signals of sinking ships.
We read books forgotten by their authors.
There is no truth, wise men repeat.
Summer evenings: festivals of swifts,
peonies erupting in the suburbs.
Streets seem abbreviated
by the heat, the ease of seeing.
Autumn creeps up surreptitiously.
Still sometimes we surface for a moment,
and the setting sun sometimes gleams
and a short-lived certainty appears,
nearly faith.

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