Mick Imlah - Past Caring

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Past Caring

As a ship
Sees only the tip
Of the ice's pyramid
That has already scraped her bows,
We'd glimpsed that drink was something you overdid;
Now after the wreck I sift the damage you'd stowed in the house.

Eyes glazed
I fumble, amazed,
Through mounds of knickers and slips,
Extracting the bottles you'd buried there; these
I hump in their binbags, clashing against my knees
To the 'bottle bank', by the public baths; it takes four trips.

The gin!
No wonder you're thin;
Hundreds of bottles of gin;
And feeding them singly into the ring
My arms grow weary from shifting the bottles of gin;
A numbing collection of lots of exactly the same thing.

You were vain
As you went down the drain;
Why else would you lay up this hoard
If it wasn't one day to take stock as I'm doing
Of what an almighty amount you had taken on board?
And here I am turning your trophies to scrap at an illicit viewing!

A smear
Of lipstick, here -
Like the kiss on a valentine;
And sniffing the neck I feel suddenly near to you,
For what it gives off is your smell, if we kissed any time,
And it wasn't a cheap perfume - but the only thing properly dear to you.

Next week
If you're not past caring
They may let you out for an airing,
To slump in your armchair, too burgled to speak,
The fish out of water that stubbornly stays all the more fish:
Then how shall we drag the treasure you were back to the surface?

Middle Aged Lovers I | EricaJong

[sashay-away.livejournal.com]

Unable to bear
the uncertainty
of the future,
we consulted seers,
mediums, stock market gurus,
psychics who promised
happiness on this
or another planet,
astrologists of love,
seekers of the Holy Grail.

Looking for certainty
we asked for promises,
lover’s knots, pledges, rings,
certificates, deeds of ownership,
when it was always enough
to let your hand
pass over my body,
your eyes find the depths of my own,
and the wind pass over our faces
as it will pass
through our bones,
sooner than we think.

The current is love,
is poetry,
the blood beat
in the thighs,
the electrical charge
in the brain.

Our long leap
into the unknown
began nearly
a half century ago
and is almost
over.

I think of the
amphorae of stored honey
at Paestum
far out-lasting
their Grecian eaters,
or of the furniture
in a pharoah’s tomb
on which
no one sits.

Trust the wind,
my lover,
and the water.

They have the
answers
to all your questions

and mine.

                                            —Erica Jong

Going crazy searching!

[oisea.livejournal.com]

So I was deeply moved by a poem I read online in what I believe was this community, but I was drunk and I didn't save it or memorize it, only sobbed uncontrollably. I've gone back through the history as far as Sept. 2011, and I can't find it.
Details I remember:

1) The author was describing his flaws with what seemed like acceptance, resignation and a bit of misery. Maybe regret. Overall tone is: "This is who I am. I suck. I understand these things about myself and you should too."
2) It didn't come off as pathetic as it sounds.
3) The author was male- I'm pretty sure not English or American. I think he had a foreign name (to me, I'm American).
4) Because of this, it may have been a translation. I think part of the reason I was crying was because it was so perfect in translation and I couldn't begin to comprehend how much better it would be in its native language.
5) It wasn't long. I seem to remember the shape of three stanzas on the screen, maybe five lines each. Perhaps this is because those were the three that stood out to me, but I guarantee you it wasn't long.

If anyone could help I'd be REALLY really grateful. I feel like an idiot for not saving something this precious.

Poem for your time!

The Oven Bird - Robert Frost
( clickme )