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Paris, October 1936
(translated from the Spanish by Daniel Bosch)
I alone leave all this behind.
I leave this bench, I leave my pants,
the things I’ve done, my “big chance,”
my number split through side to side,
I alone leave it all behind.
From the Champs Elysées or the turn
of the moon’s strange, narrow street,
my death leaves town, my cradle too,
and, alone, cut loose, others at every turn,
the one most like me completes his turn
and dispatches his shadows, singly, discrete. ...{excerpt}
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/bo...html?ref=books ---- Five Poets Seasoned by Life ---- --- By DANA JENNINGS
Published: May 29, 2011
"One of the great pleasures of poetry is catching a good poet in midcareer. Reading a savvy verse veteran is like watching Sandy Koufax paint a 1-0 shutout in his prime — some pure high heat here, a paralyzing curve there, then a little deliberate deception way down in the dirt." ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/bo...ef=bookreviews --- SÔNG I SING, by Bao Phi. 110 pages. Coffee House. $16. --- TRES, by Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Laura Healy. 173 pages. New Directions. $24.95. --- SEEING STARS, by Simon Armitage. 77 pages. Knopf. $25. -- --- HAPPY LIFE, by David Budbill. 119 pages. Copper Canyon. $16 --- THE BEST OF ARCHY AND MEHITABEL, by Don Marquis. 223 pages. Everyman’s Library. $13.50.
Quasi... good to see you again. I got your e-mail... but I've been so tied up with work... and my work... that I forget to get back to you. Hope things are going well with you and yours. Send me another e-mail when you can.:wave:
from the nytimes book review... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/books/17maslin.html
NATIVE TREES
By W. S. Merwin
Neither my father nor my mother knew
the names of the trees
where I was born
what is that
I asked and my
father and mother did not
hear they did not look where I pointed
surfaces of furniture held
the attention of their fingers
and across the room they could watch
walls they had forgotten
where there were no questions
no voices and no shade { http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171876 }
THE COMPLETE POEMS
By Philip Larkin
Edited by Archie Burnett
729 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40. --- { http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/bo...ef=bookreviews }
The Gypsy and the Wind
Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.
Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.
Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.
Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.
The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.
(excerpt... http://boppin.com/lorca/gypsy.html )
Welcome back Quasimodo, that's a nice poem - almost enough to encourage me to learn Spanish, but not quite just yet (maybe once I am 40).