[ Untitled ; Stanley Boxer (1958) ]

 

[spring!may--]

--e.e. cummings

spring!may--

everywhere's here

(with a low high low

and the bird on the bough)

how?why

--we never we know

(so kiss me)shy sweet eagerly my

most dear

(die!live)

the new is the true

and to lose is to have

--we never we know--

brave!brave

(the earth and the sky

are one today)my very so gay

young love

why?how--

we never we know

(with a high low high

in the may in the spring)

live!die

(forever is now)

and dance you suddenly blossoming tree

--i'll sing

 

 

[i thank You God for most this amazing]

--e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

[i am a little churrch(no great cathedral]

--e.e. cummings

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying

– i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing

birth and glory and death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic

world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature

– i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to

merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) 

 

 

[ In the spring in the park, near the children's

pendulum ; Alfred Freddy Krupa (1992) ]

 

Hell

--Donald Justice

R. B. VAUGHN speaks:

“After so many years of pursuing the ideal

I came home. But I had caught sight of it.

You see it sometimes in the blue-silver wake

Of island schooners, bound for Anegada, say.

And it takes other forms. I saw it flickering once

In torches by the railroad tracks in Medellín.

When I was very young I thought that love would come

And seize and take me south and I would see the rose;

And that all ambiguities we knew would merge

Like orchids on a word. Say this:

I sought the immortal word.”

                              So saying he went on

To join those who preceded him;

                              and there were those that followed.

 

Poem [“This poem is not addressed to you”]

--Donald Justice

This poem is not addressed to you.

You may come into it briefly,

But no one will find you here, no one.

You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,

You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.

The poem will go on without you.

It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.

Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.

It prefers to remember nothing.

Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.

Night is the sky over this poem.

It is too black for stars.

And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.

Listen, it comes without guitar,

Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.

And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.

You will forget the poem, but not before

It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.

It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!

Nor is one silence equal to another.

And it does not matter what you think.

This poem is not addressed to you.

 

Variations on a Neo-Classical Theme

--Donald Justice

It's not a landscape from too near.

Like sorrows, they are require some distance

Not to bulk larger than they are.

The risk is, backing off too far.

But finger trees are hand from here,

The wounds of mines, the growth of pines

Both appear and disappear.

There's but a shagginess remains,

An olive or a purple haze,

The nice unshaven atmosphere

Of average faces, average hills.

Whatever goats are dancing there,

Being all invisible,

Animate objects of a will

Contemplative without desire,

Suffer no vertigo at all

But dance until our spirits tire,

Or dine forever, or until

The speculative garbage fail--

Tin cans and comic books-- which small

Imaginary campers there

Forgot against this very hour.

[ Galloping Horse ; Xu Beihong (1937) ]

With Horse

--Rae Gouirand

In the dream, matter was mine.

The muscle, the teeth, the breath rushing

out of burned throat and through

those teeth into air, where it became

indistinguishable. On my legs, I raced,

the machinery of my animal syncing

lift and drop between front and back,

the pairs oddly right, as though

I've had them in waking, as though I've

known a horse's run from inside.

But that wasn't the plot. Just

as I knew I was that, just as I could

hold it in my mind at the same time

I could simultaneously express

I was born to move like this,

I felt concrete beneath

my landings, and the approaching

vibration of metal wheels faster

than I could make my mind

my legs, and those, those red roads

under me, those fine bones under

the balance of my animal, entered

the field of what could undo them,

were subject to what could undo them ,

and their running turned—and

there was my heart, racing for

the red cave where I had lived,

no longer a place I could rest

my word for myself. There are

two ways a horse can run: from

accord, and from will. One is

the way a living thing runs.

Flaneuse, Spring Cleaning

--Rae Gouirand

Now where are all my new recipes?

Now where is my smoother leather?

Now where is my little breeze? I have

been keeping these straps up far too long.

Time to upright the shelves

of references. I'll hide the remains.

I'll fling open this window & wave

geraniums above the avenue. Set my eyes

on the night & get caught up in it.

Reminder of the stitches to be removed.

Reminders of devotions. Let's not neglect

the long dusty lines settled into the carpets. Let's

pretend to be putting it all back

where it came from. I'll be signing

my name at the bottom of these letters.

Doyenne of a mind. Surrounded on all sides.

 

 

Blood and Stone

--Rae Gouirand

What if: stone is what

you get. A gun of stone. What if

the table beneath it were:

& the walls catching the sound. What

if no one knew: you were

around. If people came: from stone

& found only that.

What if stones were: deaf & mute

& cold. What could be

warmed. What word would you hurl.

At what would you point

your blood. Of what is a stone:

composed: what holds what

to itself. What is there to break it

& why when it goes does it

go only: to smaller ones. A stone

has no center but itself. It only

breaks; it does not change. It only

goes from one to many. Stones

always exist. Stones always exist.

Stones always exist. Stones

always exist. There is no way out of this.

[ Gray Morning ; Henry Villierme ]

 

Why Did It 

--William J. Harris

Why did it

take all

day

to get nothing

accomplished

Why, I could

have started

at noon

& saved a lot

of time

 

On Wearing Ears 

--William J. Harris

As long as people

continue to wear

ears

there won’t

be much

peace and quiet

in this world.

 

City Pastoral 

--William J. Harris

Garbage trucks

Groaning

Garbage cans

Banging

Car alarms

Sounding off

Noisy pushy

Birds

Waking me at

Dawn

With their

Smartass songs

 

[ Rhythmic Composition ; Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1951) ]

 

Over and Under

--John Brehm

       

So sexy to slide under-

neath a river,

to sit inside this

snakelike sub-

marine-like

subway car and

freely imagine

the world above—

the Brooklyn

Bridge invisibly

trembling with the

weight of its

own beauty,

the East River

still guided by

the grooves

Walt Whitman's

eyes wore in it,

the bulldog tug-

boats pushing the

passively impressive

broad-bottomed

barges around,

and the double-

decker orange

and black Staten

Island Ferries,

with their aura

of overworked

pack-mule

mournfulness,

and beyond them

the Atlantic Ocean

which I lately learned

was brought here

by ice-comets three

billion years ago,

which explains

a few things, like

why everybody

feels so alienated,

and of course

the thoughts being

thought by every

person in New

York City at

this moment—

vast schools of

undulating fish

curving and rising

in the cloud-swirling

wind-waved sky,

surrounded by

the vaster emptiness

of nonthought

which holds them

and which they try

not to think

about and you

lying in bed in

your sixth-floor

walk-up sublet

on St. Mark's Place—

such a breath-

taking ascension!

imagining me

rising now to meet you.

 

Something and Nothing

--John Brehm

       

There's something to be said

for having nothing to say,

though I don't know what

that is, or isn't, just as

there's something to be

known about not-knowing,

which I would tell you

if I could. There must be

something to be gained

by losing, a seed of victory

buried in every failure,

else I would not be here.

Clearly, there's something

to be desired about being

beyond desire, as the sages

never tire of telling us,

and nothing more fulfilling

than emptying yourself out—

no ground beneath your feet,

nothing to hold onto, no handrail,

no belief, only this bright self-

sustaining air, and a falling

that feels like floating.

 

 

My Emotions Are Like Fish

--John Brehm

Mostly they live in the dark

underwater weed-slithering

currents and worry about

being swallowed up by their

more furious brethren.

Some of them have eyes

perched atop long thin stems

like flowers. And some

have forty or fifty arms

pocked with suction cups

to help them stick to things

and will squirt black

clouds of ink to keep

themselves concealed. Others

resemble subtropical

dottybacks or scaleless deepsea

gulper eels, with their

velvety bodies, zipper teeth,

and whip-like tails. The fearsome

dragonfish—likewise the

viperfish, hatchetfish,

and bristlemouth—all find their

corollaries in the Red Sea

of my heart. Even

the phantom glass catfish,

entirely translucent except

for its intestines,

is no stranger to my feelings.

The unforthcoming among them

behave just like shovelnose

stingrays who flop right down

in the bottom-ooze and flick

the muck up over them.

But some of them, when they

swim too near the surface,

find themselves suddenly

exalted, lifted and flying

through the air, wind-filled,

sunlight-sharpened sky

expanding around them, high

above their proper element— 

birdclaws sunk into their backs.

 

 

[ Memory of a Dream March 15, 1919 ; Charles Burchfield ]

 

A Little Language

--Robert Duncan

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says   

that animals have no need of speech and Nature   

abhors the superfluous.   My cat is fluent.   He   

converses when he wants with me.   To speak

is natural.   And whales and wolves I’ve heard   

in choral soundings of the sea and air

know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs   

my mind and heart—they touch the soul.   Here

Dante’s religion that would set Man apart   

damns the effluence of our life from us   

to build therein its powerhouse.

It’s in his animal communication Man is   

      true, immediate, and   

in immediacy, Man is all animal.

His senses quicken in the thick of the symphony,

      old circuits of animal rapture and alarm,

attentions and arousals in which an identity rearrives.

      He hears

particular voices among

      the concert, the slightest   

rustle in the undertones,

      rehearsing a nervous aptitude   

yet to prove his. He sees the flick

      of significant red within the rushing mass

of ruddy wilderness and catches the glow

      of a green shirt

to delite him in a glowing field of green

      —it speaks to him—

and in the arc of the spectrum color   

      speaks to color.

The rainbow articulates

      a promise he remembers   

he but imitates

      in noises that he makes,

this speech in every sense   

the world surrounding him.

He picks up on the fugitive tang of mace

      amidst the savory mass,

and taste in evolution is an everlasting key.

      There is a pun of scents in what makes sense.

      Myrrh it may have been,

the odor of the announcement that filld the house.

      He wakes from deepest sleep   

upon a distant signal and waits   

      as if crouching, springs

      to life.

 

The warble of melting snow is the river

--Emily Lee Luan

is the bleat of the sandhill crane

is the hush of the autonomous mind        of the flame above the canyon

is the cow drinking water from mud          is the cow and the word cow

is the deckled face in the overhang of stone

is the bone weathered into wood

is the wood weathered to stone

is the sentence

is the moment that longs to be the sentence hidden in a sentence

is the legislated road         is the grass is the grass

is the nerve that runs from socket to wrist

is the common knowledge of aperture and speed

is the hole to be yawned into         its origin         the stone that says

the impulse of water         is the moss against

is the growing in spite of

 

[The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes]

--Jay Wright

The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes.

Five is a difficult color—

not this green of reflected sky, nor the red

clamor of midnight riding by on a church bell.

Think of the Greek of it,

an Egyptian river,

the dry desert voice you hear in the cleansing.

All before this moment found its own measure,

an ingenious inganno, a blessure

occasioned by a consonant's turmoil,

a Germanic algebra brightly a-boil

through all the strings, a fortspinning always pure,

always a public shrine to a wood secure

in its origin.

                            White is a difficult

sound in the edowa above the tumult

fastened to the soul of widows, magnitude

that arms the darkest nebula. The rude

dead awaken to another baptism.

 

[ Untitled ; Pierre Roy ]

 

Haiku- Winter 2023/2024

a lack of sunshine

gradually again replaced

by rain and then snow

another new year,

all that sweet melancholy

is getting so old

hard arctic freeze-

my backdoor

froze shut

leaving the warm bed

unraveled and was perfect

for the winter blues

 

Delimitation

How was it? And how is it? The perpetual birthday of one

that is personally yours and yours to have as needed.

As many as you might like to fully arrive back to the brand new.

A clearing after replacing and forever losing the birthday

never asked for, the one that was the year's or theirs

and not to be much more, back when you were young but once.

Which is now gone. And now the choice to be old again,

again and again. What follows, what's held off, and waits

for experience to reveal those extended ages and then

the light that arrives as your air takes to breathe in the barren,

so you can say this is okay, while you walk in the midst of waking

through the no longer not too far off distance of evening, that arises

after the new year is never ever new but always instead, anew--

as lone wind is understood, when finally here as you always were.

 

[ Tree Trunks ; Léon Spilliaert ]

 

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium

--Chelsea Woodard

       

Wide-lobed threes of trillium leaves taped

and labeled, trifoliate veins, wrinkles dried

and finite as her penciled marks beneath.

My hands are attuned to the weight of pages pressed

long on such fragile anatomies—pistils of lilies,

cowslip petals, delphinium halos and bright spikes

of iris, ovaries and ovules tenderly picked,

patterned and splayed. I know the body

of desire could fill a book and still spill

out. It isn't a question of will, or killing

for pleasure, for beauty that's flattened and lasts past

the end of one season, where we've lived in bloom

and hate to leave. Late February casts

its defeatist light and I quit this reliquary now, this room.

 

ENVOI

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,

   To sleep for a season and hear no word

Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art,

   Only the song of a secret bird.

--from 'A Ballad of Dreamland'; Algernon Charles Swinburne