Franz Wright - Flight

[a-human-bean.livejournal.com]

 

1
That glass was it filled with alcohol, water, or light

At ten
I turned you into a religion

The solitary
four-foot priest of you, I kept
the little manger candle
burning, I
kept your black half-inch of
scripture
in the hiding place

Destroyer of the world

That empty

glass

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Michael Ondaatje - Wells

[tristanskye.livejournal.com]

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

 

Wells

 

 

i

 

The rope jerked up

so the bucket flies

into your catch

 

pours over you

 

its moment

of encasement

 

standing in sunlight

wanting more,

another poem please

 

and each time

recognition and caress,

the repeated pleasure

 

of finite things.

Hypnotized by lyric.

This year’s kisses

 

like driving a hundred times

from a moving train

into the harbour

 

like driving a hundred times

from a moving train

into the harbour

 

 

ii

 

The last Sinhala word I lost

was vatura.

The word for water.

Forest water.  The water in a kiss.  The tears

I gave to my ayah Rosalin on leaving

The first home of my life.

 

More water for her than any other

that fled my eyes again

this year, remembering her,

a lost almost-mother in those years

of thirsty love.

 

No photograph of her, no meeting

since the age of eleven,

not even knowledge of her grave.

 

Who abandoned who, I wonder now.

 

 

iii

 

In the sunless forest

of Ritigala

 

heat in the stone

heat in the airless black shadows

 

nine soldiers on leave

strip uniforms off

and dig a well

 

to give thanks

for surviving this war

 

A puja in an unnamed grove

the way someone you know

might lean forward

and mark the place

where your soul is

--always, the say,

near to a wound.

 

In the sunless forest

crouched by a forest well

 

pulling what was lost

out of the depth.

 

 

(from Handwriting: Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000)

 

 

 

(no subject)

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

My Beggarly Heart.

When the heart is hard and parched up,
Come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life,
Come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din
On all sides shutting me out from beyond,
Come to me, my lord of silence,
With thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched,
Shut up in a corner,
Break open the door, my king,
And come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind,
With delusion and dust,
O thou holy one, thou wakeful;
Come with thy light and thy thunder.

Rabindranath Tagore

The Highwayman

[a-human-bean.livejournal.com]

The Highwayman      

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding- riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter, The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-

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