(no subject)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_honeyspider/]

From an Atlas of the Difficult World
Adrienne Rich


I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

"Zerogarden" by Andrew Zawacki

[wicked-sassy.livejournal.com]

"Zerogarden" by Andrew Zawacki

Within the horizon of gabardine

hills, raku-


fired as if forged in the kiln

of georgic Georgia mid-

July, the trees halloo Tallulah

Gorge, velarium & an event in

themselves, gouged by blunt per

-sephones of crimson & of green —gren -ache, wasabi, hen -na, Fanta, ferric, gren -adine—

& a few miles south

off 328, in Tugaloo State Park,

a beach that shouldn't

be there         is, the lake now

8 feet low, & fishing lures


& sinkers & bobbers are

snagged on roots of the

oak've eroded, & mica

speckling reddish clay where

one can walk beneath an

orphaned dock

are a trillion mini

mirrors among the mullions


composing, composting the bank,

to show the singular, macular

sun what it looks like—severally

As Mystic As Soldier, Siegfried Sassoon

[copper-kestrel.livejournal.com]

As Mystic As Soldier

I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?

Siegfried Sassoon

Autumn

[manifestress.livejournal.com]

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

--Ranier Maria Rilke (trans Bly)

Carol Ann Duffy - "Originally"

[elvenpiratelady.livejournal.com]

We came from our own country in a red room

which fell through the fields, our mother singing

our father's name to the turn of the wheels.

My brothers cried, one of them bawling Home,

Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,

the street, the house, the vacant rooms

where we didn't live any more. I stared

at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.

 

All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,

leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue

where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.

Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,

leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates, big boys

eating worms and shouting words you don't understand.

My parents' anxiety stirred like a loose tooth

in my head. I want our own country, I said.

 

But then you forget, or don't recall, or change,

and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only

a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue

shedding its skin like a snake, my voice

in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think

I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space

and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?

strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.