greatpoetry | Jun. 21st, 2011

Elegy in Joy [excerpt]
by Muriel Rukeyser

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer, or the look, the lake in the eye that knows, for the despair that flows down in widest rivers, cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace, all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves. The word of nourishment passes through the women, soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations, white towers, eyes of children: saying in time of war What shall we feed? I cannot say the end. Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed. This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love. Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey toward peace which is many wishes flaming together, fierce pure life, the many-living home. Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all new techniques for the healing of the wound, and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.

Wet Picture

by Jaroslav Seifert

Those beautiful days

when the city resembles a die, a fan and a bird song

or a scallop shell on the seashore

-- goodbye, goodbye, pretty girls,

we met today

and will never meet again.

The beautiful Sundays

when the city resembles a football, a card and an ocarina

or a swinging bell

-- in the sunny street

the shadows of passers-by were kissing

and people walked away, total strangers.

Those beautiful evenings

when the city resembles a rose, a chessboard, a violin

or a crying girl

-- we played dominoes,

black-dotted dominoes with the thin girls in the bar,

watching their knees,

which were emaciated

like two skulls with the silk crowns of their garters

in the desperate kingdom of love.

(Translated by Ewald Osers)

I Eat Poetry