World Poetry Day Redux

Lake and Maple, by Jane Hirshfield

I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its blue-green depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart,
that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born —
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egret reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
this water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake, Lalla Ded sang,
no larger than one seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.

As today is the date of the Sharpeville Massacre (about which I have a post at Religious Left Law), I thought this poem would be appropriate:

Our Sharpeville

I was playing hopscotch on the slate
when the miners roared past in lorries,
their arms raised, signals at a crossing
their chanting foreign and familiar,
like the call and answer of road gangs
across the veld, building hot arteries
from the heart of the Transvaal mine.

I ran to the gate to watch them pass.

And it seemed like a great caravan
moving across the desert to an oasis
I remembered from my Sunday school book:
olive trees, a deep jade pool,
men resting in clusters after a long journey,
the danger of the mission still around them,
and night falling, its silver stars just like the ones
you got for remembering your Bible texts.

Then my grandmother called from behind the front door,
her voice a stiff broom over the steps:
“Come inside; they do things to little girls.”

For it was noon, and there was no jade pool.
Instead, a pool of blood that already had a living name
and grew like a shadow as the day lengthened.

The dead, buried in voices that reached my gate,
the chanting man on ambushed trucks,
these were not heroes in my town,
but maulers of children,
doing things that had to remain nameless.

And our Sharpeville was this fearful thing
that might tempt us across the well swept streets.

If I had turned I would have seen
brocade curtains drawn tightly across sheer net ones,
known there were eyes behind both,
heard the dogs pacing in the locked yard next door.

But, walking backwards, all I felt was shame,
at being a girl, at having been found at the gate,
at having heard my grandmother lie
and at my fear her lie might be true.

Walking backwards, called back,
I returned to the closed rooms, home.

By Ingrid de Kok

How the Pope is Chosen

Any poodle under ten inches high is a toy.
Almost always a toy is an imitation
of something grown-ups use.
Popes with unclipped hair are called “corded popes.”
If a Pope’s hair is allowed to grow unchecked,
it becomes extremely long and twists
into long strands that look like ropes.
When it is shorter it is tightly curled.
Popes are very intelligent.
There are three different sizes.
The largest are called standard Popes.
The medium-sized ones are called miniature Popes.
I could go on like this, I could say:
“He is a squarely built Pope, neat,
well-proportioned, with an alert stance
and an expression of bright curiosity,”
but I won’t. After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he’s the new Pope.
He is then fully armed and rides through the wilderness alone,
day and night in all kinds of weather.
The new Pope chooses the name he will use as Pope,
like “Wild Bill” or “Buffalo Bill.”
He wears red shoes with a cross embroidered on the front.
Most Popes are called “Babe” because
growing up to become a Pope is a lot of fun.
All the time their bodies are becoming bigger and stranger,
but sometimes things happen to make them unhappy.
They have to go to the bathroom by themselves,
and they spend almost all of their time sleeping.
Parents seem incapable of helping their little popes grow up.
Fathers tell them over and over again not to lean out of windows,
but the sky is full of them.
It looks as if they are just taking it easy,
but they are learning something else.
What, we don’t know, because we are not like them.
We can’t even dress like them.
We are like red bugs or mites compared to them.
We think we are having a good time cutting cartoons out of the paper,
but really we are eating crumbs out of their hands.
We are tiny germs that cannot be seen under microscopes.
When a Pope is ready to come into the world,
we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
Some of the full-bodied popes are a million times bigger than us.
They open their mouths at regular intervals.
They are continually grinding up pieces of the cross
and spitting them out. Black flies cling to their lips.
Once they are elected they are given a bowl of cream
and a puppy clip. Eyebrows are a protection
when the Pope must plunge through dense underbrush

in search of a sheep

— James Tate (1943-2015)

At the San Francisco Airport
BY YVOR WINTERS
To my daughter, 1954

This is the terminal: the light
Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
The metal glitters, deep and bright.
Great planes are waiting in the yard—
They are already in the night.

And you are here beside me, small,
Contained and fragile, and intent
On things that I but half recall—
Yet going whither you are bent.
I am the past, and that is all.

But you and I in part are one:
The frightened brain, the nervous will,
The knowledge of what must be done,
The passion to acquire the skill
To face that which you dare not shun.

The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently. The score:
There comes what will come. The expense
Is what one thought, and something more—
One’s being and intelligence.

This is the terminal, the break.
Beyond this point, on lines of air,
You take the way that you must take;
And I remain in light and stare—
In light, and nothing else, awake.

What the CLOUD does
the MAN sees
the CLOUD knows not.

What the MAN does
GOD sees
knows the MAN aught?

(traditional)

Helen Grown Old

We have forgotten Paris, and his fate.
We have not much inquired
If Menelaus from the Trojan gate
Returning found the long desired
Immortal beauty by his hearth. Then late

Late, long past the morning hour,
Could even she recapture from the dawn
The young delighted love? When the dread power
That forced her will was gone,
When fell the last charred tower,

When the last flame had faded from the cloud,
And by the darkening sea
The plain lay empty of the armed crowd,
Then was she free
Who had been ruled by passion blind and proud?

Then did she find with him whom first she chose
Before the desperate flight
At last repose
In love still radiant at the edge of night,
As fair as in the morning? No one knows.

No one has cared to say. The story clings
To the tempestuous years, by passion bound,
Like Helen. No one brings
A tale of quiet love. The fading sound
Is blent of falling embers, weeping kings.

Janet Lewis (1899–1998)

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,
And of your herte up-casteth the visage
To thilke god that after his image
Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

Chaucer, from the palinode of the Troilus…

Ditch of Dead Water

Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water.
No breeze can raise a single ripple on it.
Might as well throw in rusty metal scraps
or even pour in left-over food and soup in it.

Perhaps the green on copper will become emeralds.
Perhaps on tin cans peach blossom will bloom.
Then, let grease weave a layer of silky gauze,
and germs brew patches of colorful spume.

Let the dead water ferment into jade wine
covered with floating pearls of white scum.
Small pearls chuckle and become big pearls,
only to burst as gnats come to steal this rum.

And so this ditch of hopelessly dead water
may still claim a touch of something bright.
And if the frogs cannot bear the silence—
the dead water will croak its song of delight.

Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water—
a region where beauty can never reside.
Might as well let the devil cultivate it—
and see what sort of world it can provide.

-Wen Yiduo (1928)

The ‘ditch of dead water’ is of course China (a point, rather unbelievably, that some of the internet commentators seem to miss) but it’s also, equally obviously, the modern world in its totality.

In 2017 it seem prescient.

I’ve just stumbled across this Australian poet, with whom I’m quite taken:

Woman and Child
BY JUDITH BEVERIDGE

They listen to the myna birds dicker in the grass.
The child’s blue shoes are caked with
garden dirt. When he runs, she sees the antics
of a pair of wrens. She works the garden,

a pot of rusting gardenias has given off its ales
and infused the danker germinations of her
grief. She watches her son chase pigeons,
kick at the leaves piled high. Now, a magpie

adds to his cascades of laughter as he runs with
the hose, pours a fine spray, happy to be giving
to the grass this silver courtship. She sighs,
watches the drops settle in. Today, who

can explain the sadness she feels. Surely this
day is to be treasured: the sun out, the breeze
like a cat’s tongue licking a moon of milk;
her son expending himself in small, public

bursts, happy among clover where bees hover,
and unfold centrefolds of nectar. Today,
who can explain the heaviness in her head, as if
all her worries were tomes toward a larger work,

one she knows she will never finish, but to which
she must keep adding, thought by thought.
She sweeps the petals, smells their russet imprint.
Soon dusk will come with an envoy of smoke

and her son outlast her patience by a rose.
Already he is tiring, puling at the flowers.
It won’t be long before they’ll go in, listen
to the jug purr comfort. He’ll sleep and she’ll

lie back, or get up to unhook the cry of her cat
from the wire door. Now, a few cicadas are idling,
giving each other the gun and a cockatoo calls,
a haughty felon. She sighs, knowing she won’t

escape her mood today, the turned earth
or its rank persuasions; her child’s petulance
flaring like an orchid, or a cockatoo’s unruly crest.
Today, she knows she will need to consider

her unhappiness, of what she is a prisoner – if not
the loss of hope’s particulars. Her son soaks
the path, rinses the sky of its featureless blue.
He is giving that water, now, to everything.

Judith Beveridge, “Woman and Child” text from Wolf Notes, Giramondo Publishing, 2003; audio from Cut By Stars, Audio CD, 2007, by permission of River Road Press and the poet. Copyright © 2003, 2007 by Judith Beveridge.
Source: Wolf Notes (Giramondo, 2003)

Here’s mine for the day.

One Memory

One memory I’ve returned to about us
So many times is that one day
With Randy at the little pub, was it
The Fishing Hole in Sherwood?
That little place in the woods with
Nice chicken sandwiches and squeaky
Deep-fried cheese sticks
And plenty of Leinie’s Red to wash it all down—
It was in the parlor next to the bar,
With the old-style pinball machine
That we played, and played pretty well,
That you stood next to the machine
And touched my hand
As the ball spun and banked and flew
From the flippers that I bent your way
And gave you a kiss as the ball
Slipped past my vigilance
And drained right to the bottom
And we laughed the love of loss
That doesn’t matter, long before
The losses that we loved through
Drained us by mattering so much.
That moment is ours as long
As we matter, and will not drain
Into the fishing hole of time.

It’s almost 20 years since Australian poet John Forbes passed away.

Ode to Karl Marx

Old father of the horrible bride whose
wedding cake has finally collapsed, you

spoke the truth that doesn’t set us free –
it’s like a lever made of words no one’s

learnt to operate. So the machine it once
connected to just accelerates & each new

rap dance video’s a perfect image of this,
bodies going faster and faster, still dancing

on the spot. At the moment tho’ this set up
works for me, being paid to sit and write &

smoke, thumbing through Adorno like New Idea
on a cold working day in Ballarat, where

adult unemployment is 22% & all your grand
schemata of intricate cause and effect

work out like this: take a muscle car &
wire its accelerator to the floor, take out

the brakes, the gears the steering wheel
& let it rip. The dumbest tattooed hoon

— mortal diamond hanging round the Mall —
knows what happens next. It’s fun unless

you’re strapped inside the car. I’m not,
but the dummies they use for testing are.

PatinIowa @ 20
In the category of Australian women poets named Judith (of which there are notable members) maybe you’d also like (or do like) Judith Rodriguez?

My sister gave me her poem ‘Eskimo Occasion’ when my children were young and I loved it, but I looked at it again today and was worried it was cultural appropriation. However it captures so well the time of transition in labour, when you are waiting, cold and fearful and alone (no matter how supported) – and the wild exhilaration of birth

“I will sing the song of my daughter-hunting,
Oho!
The waves lay down the ice grew strong
….
I waited by the water to dream new spirits
Hoo!
The water spoke the ice shouted
The sea opened the sun made young shadows
they breathed my breathing. I took them from deep water
I brought them fur-warmed home.
…”

The mother in your poem might have done well to read Judith Rodriguez perhaps, especially the assertion of self against all the primal nature of motherhood:

“It was I who waited cold in the wind break”

The whole poem is here https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/rodriguez-judith/eskimo-occasion-0553049

You Never Can Tell
Chuck Berry

Written while the author was in federal prison on conviction for transporting a teenager across state lines for “immoral purposes.” The evidence of “immoral purposes was a bit shaky, and the proceedings were marred by overt racism from the prosecution.

Love the Forbes and Kavanagh, by the way. Thanks for those.

This is a poem by Chase Twichell I’ve always liked, although the feeling is somewhat rarer and harder to conjure up than it was when I first read the poem almost two decades ago probably

Tea Mind

Even as a child I could
induce it at will.
I’d go to where the big rocks

stayed cold in the woods all summer,
and tea mind would come to me

like water over stones, pool to pool,
and in that way I taught myself to think.
Green teas are my favorites, especially

the basket-fired Japanese ones
that smell of baled hay.

Thank you, makers of this tea.
Because of you my mind is still tonight,
transparent, a leaf in air.

Now it rides a subtle current.
Now it can finally disappear.

Some more Australian poetry, this time from songwriters, and about summer and home when you’re not there

“The harbour’s misty in the morning love, oh how I miss December
The frangipani opens up to kiss the salty air”

From Winter in America, by Doug Ashdown
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AiegKW5UKgc

and

“I really like Christmas
It’s sentimental, I know, but I just really like it
I am hardly religious
I’d rather break bread with Dawkins than Desmond Tutu
To be honest

And yes, I have all of the usual objections
To consumerism, the commercialisation of an ancient religion
To the westernisation of a dead Palestinian
Press-ganged into selling Playstations and beer
But I still really like it

I’m looking forward to Christmas
Though I’m not expecting a visit from Jesus

I’ll be seeing my dad
My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum
They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun
…

And if my baby girl
When you’re twenty-one or thirty-one
And Christmas comes around
And you find yourself nine thousand miles from home
You’ll know what ever comes

Your brothers and sisters and me and your mum
Will be waiting for you in the sun
When Christmas comes
Your brothers and sisters, your aunts and your uncles
Your grandparents, cousins and me and your mum
We’ll be waiting for you in the sun
Drinking white wine in the sun
Darling, whenever you come
We’ll be waiting for you in the sun
Drinking white wine in the sun
Waiting for you in the sun
Darling, when Christmas comes
We’ll be waiting for you in the sun
Waiting

I really like Christmas
It’s sentimental, I know”

From White Wine in the Sun, by Tim Minchin https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q

‘The Good And The Clever’, by Elizabeth Wordsworth

If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.

But somehow, ’tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should;
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever, so rude to the good!

So, friends, let it be our endeavour
To make each by each understood,
For few can be good like the clever,
Or clever so well as the good.

H. Bow @34
Thanks for the ref to Wilbur.
Picked up his New and Collected Poems (1988) at a used bookstore today.

Here’s the opening of “First Snow in Alsace” from his first book The Beautiful Changes(1947):

The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

(The rest of the poem can be found online, I think.)