Mark Strand, 'The New Year'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The New Year

It is winter and the new year.
Nobody knows you.
Away from the stars, from the rain of light,
you lie under the weather of stones.
There is no thread to lead you back.
Your friends doze in the dark
of pleasure and cannot remember.
Nobody knows you. You are the neighbor of nothing.
You do not see the rain falling and the man walking away,
the soiled wind blowing its ashes across the city.
You do not see the sun dragging the moon like an echo.
You do not see the bruised heart go up in flames,
the skulls of the innocent turn into smoke.
You do not see the scars of plenty, the eyes without light.
It is over. It is winter and the new year.
The meek are hauling their skins into heaven.
The hopeless are suffering the cold with those who have nothing to hide.
It is over and nobody knows you.
There is starlight drifting on the black water.
There are stones in the sea no one has seen.
There is a shore and people are waiting.
And nothing comes back.
Because it is over.
Because there is silence instead of a name.
Because it is winter and the new year.

by Mark Strand

Notes on the Sea’s Existence - Agha Shahid Ali + request

[kairia.livejournal.com]

Request: I'm looking for poems that dwell on the aftermath of your first sexual experience. The tenderness, the laughter, the ecstasy - all of it.

Notes on the Sea's Existence
It pulls me to itself,
the reflection, no, not mine:
I know the water’s fidelity,

its utter transparence. The sea
becomes me like nothing
else: I wear it like skin.

Who pulls me with such
ease? A dead ancestor,
a lost friend, or

the shell’s hollow cry?
The weeds wrap me, like arms.
I’m pulled down, down, to the tip of the sky.

I hold the world as I drown.
Agha Shahid Ali