fragments of contemporary poetry

HOMER'S SEEING-EYE DOG
Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked his bladder and stream
of dopey wake-up jokes. The one
about the wine-dark pee I hated instantly.
I stood at the ready, like a god
in an epic, but there was never much
to do. Oh now and then I'd make a sure
intervention, save a life, whatever.
But my exploits don't interest you
and of his life all I can say is that
when he'd poured out his work
the best of it was gone and then he died.
He was a great man and I loved him.
Not a whimper about his sex life --
how I detest your prurience --
but here's a farewell literary tip:
I myself am the model for Penelope.
Don't snicker, you hairless moron,
I know so well what faithful means
there's not even a word for it in Dog,
I just embody it. ... {excerpt}

"The Kefti come no more.
They bear us no more the oils
and the cedars for coffins.
Their sails are lost." This was their epitaph
along with the recorded black sky
and the ashfall.
Then Egypt forgot the gracious isle
of the olives
and the palaces of the seven kings
where athletes somersaulted
over the spread horns of bulls.
They died in one night, the pillars of the palace

buckling,
great stones cast down, the galleys
beached on the shore, ruin and ashes
assailing men from the sky.
Thera, the burst throat of the world, coughing fire

and brimstone
there to the north, its voice like the
bellowing of a loosed god
long propitiated to no purpose.
We have known it in our own lives--
the fear of the moving atoms, but
these people
endured the actual megaton explosion, and their
remnants
faded from history, while the timeless, practical
Egyptians
regretted a small loss of trade.
Civilizations die as men die, by
accident then. ... {excerpt from Knossos} *Kefti = Cretans

Logan-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua1&oref=slogin

--Urban Poet {a review by}



By WILLIAM LOGAN
Published: June 29, 2008 -- SELECTED POEMS

By Frank O’Hara.

Edited by Mark Ford.

265 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30. -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/bo...a1&oref=slogin

From the Elephants' Graveyard


Seeking its own level,
the circus elephant's memory
seeps from the mound
that was its body, cooling
in a borrowed barn in Georgia.

Days of rain, days of no water.
Rumbling pleasure, misery, slow healing.
Smells. Routines. The beloved others.
One man's face, tipped into her weak eyes
over and over for years.

An unseen rivulet,
thick as tar distilled
from a forest's record of rings,
it slips through the straw
and the tired farmyard clay,

through compacted layers of marl and schist,
crystal ribs of lizards
and limestone caverns nursing echoes,
and it joins the oily stream
from the elephants' graveyard-- ... {excerpt, from cavewall press}

.....Although I knew the way music can fill a room,
even with loneliness, which is of course a kind
of company. I could swelter through an August

afternoon -- torpor rising from the river -- and listen
to Stan Getz and J. J. Johnson braid variations
on "My Funny Valentine" and feel there in the room

with me the force and weight of what I couldn't
say. What's an emotion anyhow?
Lassitude and sweat lay all about me

like a stubble field, it was so hot and listless,
but I was quick and furtive as a fox
who has his thirty-miles-a-day metabolism

to burn off as ordinary business.
I had about me, after all, the bare eloquence
of the becalmed, the plain speech of the leafless

tree. I had the cunning of my body and a few
bars -- they were enough -- of music. Looking back,
it almost seems as though I could remember --

but this can't be; how could I bear it? --
the future toward which I'd clatter
with that boy tied like a bell around my throat,

a brave man and a coward both,
to break and break my metronomic heart
and just enough to learn to love the blues. {excerpt from "the blues"}

A DISTANCE OF A SHOUT

We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of the winds
as they drove all things before them.

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating that was
the year no one ate river fish.

There was no book of the fores,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died. ... {excerpt}

Prayer



Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. ... {excerpt}

Anodyne

I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river. ... {excerpt}

from COMPAÑERA
(Ana Mendieta)
Compañera
We should have bolted you down like
a piece of iron sculpture and
pointed you in another direction
but you were busy looking for love
in the wrong dictionary
looking for a sweet papa
in the wrong encyclopedia

& now I say to myself
Ana is dead
not alive
not returning
what would she think of that

She arrived in the Apple
to jog around the park
have lunch with friends
create sculpture
install exhibitions
& get intellectual stimulation..... ...{excerpt}

{excerpts from long "list" poem}
Entry Forbidden



[Selections from the International Mail Manual,

"Country Conditions for Mailing," May 2005, U.S.

Postal Service]

Albania
Extravagant clothes and other articles contrary to

Albanians' taste.
Items sent by political emigres.

Algeria
Funeral urns.
Saccharine.

Azerbaijan
Cutting and stabbing arms, knuckledusters, stiletto

blades, balls of paralyzing fluid.
Antlers, and the horns of the species Cervidae .

Bahamas
Radioactive materials.
Skimmed milk in tins.

Bangladesh
Quinine, colored pink.

Belarus
Metallized yarn made with or made of gold thread.
Opium.

Botswana
Honey and preparations of honey including royal

jelly, preserves sweetened with honey, and flypaper.
Prison-made goods.

-------------------------------------------------------

Lesotho
Eau de cologne.
Military uniforms.
Printed matter relating to football pools.

Liechtenstein
Mini-spies (miniature wireless transmitters).

Luxembourg
Postcards embellished with fabrics, embroidery,

spangles, except in sealed envelopes.

Malawi
Aphrodisiacs.
Correspondence concerning fortune telling.

Malaysia
Harpoons.

Maldives
Gunpowder.
Weapons of war.
Intoxicants.
Poisons.
Nitrates.
Pork.
Statues used for worship.
Pornographic material.

Pakistan
Arms, ammunition except when sent on behalf of

the government.

Panama
Pastries.

Paraguay
Tomato juices.
Socks except those made of jersey.

Peru
Underwear.
Communist propaganda.
Contraceptive products.
Dolls.
Waxes and creams for shoes.

San Marino
Albums of any kind (of photographs, postcards,

postage stamps, etc.).
-------------------------------------------------------

Vatican City
Human remains.
Live animals.

Vietnam
Invisible ink, codes, ciphers, symbols or other types

of secret correspondence, and shorthand notes.
Used mosquito nets.
{from the publication, Jubilat}

THE POEM CAT
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
who has run
under the house
& lurks among slugs,
roots, spiders' eyes,
ledge so long out of the sun
that it is dank
with the breath of the Troll King.

Sometimes the poem
darts away
like a coy lover
who is afraid of being possessed,
of feeling too much,
of losing his essential
loneliness-which he calls
freedom.

Sometimes the poem
can't requite
the poet's passion.

The poem is a dance
between poet & poem,
but sometimes the poem
just won't dance
and lurks on the sidelines
tapping its feet-
iambs, trochees-
out of step with the music
of your mariachi band.

If the poem won't come,
I say: sneak up on it. ... {excerpt}

A Few Words on the Soul

(translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty. ... {excerpt}

IN TEMPORE SENECTUTIS
When I am old
I will not have you look apart
From me, into the cold,
Friend of my heart,
Nor be sad in your remembrance
Of the careless, mad-heart semblance
That the wind hath blown away
When I am old.

When I am old
And the white hot wonder-fire
Unto the world seem cold,
My soul's desire
Know you then that all life's shower,
The rain of the years, that hour
Shall make blow for us one flower,
Including all, when we are old. {first two stanzas of this poem}

.....I have loved my God as a child at heart
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest,
I have loved my God as a maid to man—
But lo, this thing is best:

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil;
To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale.

I have played with God for a woman,
I have staked with my God for truth,
I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed—
His dice be not of ruth.

For I am made as a naked blade,
But hear ye this thing in sooth:

Who loseth to God as man to man
Shall win at the turn of the game.
I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet
But the ending is the same:
Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose
Shall win at the end of the game.

For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil.
Whom God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail. -- {excerpt from "Ballad for Gloom"}

Poetry April 2008 Atlantic Monthly




The Day I Saw the Emperor’s Clay Soldiers

The day I saw the emperor’s clay soldiers
I thought I understood the end of things—
blank faces staring back from 2,000 years.
A farmer found them; I found the farmer
in my father, grandfather, lost since
the Depression days of hominy pots.

My lost fathers are clay now too,
contained, kept from me by a wine-velvet
rope sagging between brass stanchions.
If I reach across, will the alarm sound,
lights flash, uniformed guards push me back?
I thought I understood the end of things.

The day I saw the emperor’s clay soldiers
I wanted to be the electrician who
installs lights above the exhibits.
I know my father’s best side, or knew,
though it makes me dizzy to remember.
I’ve never understood the end of things.

We’re hollow men too, my fathers and I.
We never talked, even when we had
the chance—maybe afraid of the echo.
But 2,000 years is a long time
to wait, even for still, curt clay soldiers
who surely understand the end of things. ... {excerpt, from the Atlantic}