(no subject)

[clasps.livejournal.com]

Sonnet XLII
by Pablo Neruda; translated by Stephen Tapscott

Radiant days rolling on the water, intense as the inside
of a yellow rock, its splendour like honey:
that wasn't damaged by all the turmoil.
That kept its four-square purity.

Yes: the daylight crackles like a fire, or like bees,
getting on with its green work, burying itself in leaves:
till up at the top the foliage reaches
a bright world that flickers and whispers.

Thirst of fire, scorch and multitudinousness of summer,
which builds an Eden with a few green leaves -- :
because the dark-faced earth does not want suffering;

it wants freshness -- fire -- water -- bread, for everyone:
nothing should separate people
but the sun or the night, the moon or the branches.

"Simmering" by Raud A. Kennedy

[mexcine.livejournal.com]

 

Frustration simmers like

The chili on the stove.

Another birthday days away

And still living in an apartment

Where the floor slants

Like the deck of a ship in a storm.

Self made barriers lay in my way.

Laziness, depression, addiction.

With luck, I’ll boil over.

Letter to the Saddle Thief

[childecleon.livejournal.com]

My only felon, you chose wrong that raftered morning in the tack room. Trespass needs but a gullet and a dusty shirt. No one noticed when the wife you meant to make of me went missing.

-Cecily Parks

A perfect poem for June.

[birdcages.livejournal.com]

The Truth the Dead Know

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

-Anne Sexton