Knowing our love is salty makes me think:
In ocean towns, love is part of the weather,
the wide hands of the breeze fanning it in from the sea.
In ocean towns, love gets inside your mouth when you yawn,
until you have to brush your teeth again, and it hangs in the air
above your food, and you can smell it in your clothes,
and somewhere are smells of crab meat and suntan lotion,
but you can’t find them because all the love’s around.
And the salt hangs like a love letter on the fridge,
reminding you so much that the charm gets as redundant as the waves.
And you wish to God that for just one minute of your saline life
you didn’t have to be so damn happy!
But our love stays next to the pepper, and near it are smells
of shoes and cat hair so thick our eyes water.
Our love is contained. We keep it in a porcelain sailboat and take it
in small sprinkles with French fries and watermelon because it gags us straight.
But there are times when you come in from the wet air of July,
I can taste love on you, like drinking from the ocean.
And there’s the smell of hair, and the smell of shoes,
and of watermelon and French fries and the wet air of July.
And we all crawl in bed, seasoning it, shoes underneath,
and the cat curled like a seashell near the window, unaware he is an ingredient.
Source: www.poetry.com, 2004.
8 Apr 2013
Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child – Darcy Cummings
[American]
One summer afternoon, I learned my body
like a blind child leaving a walled
school for the first time, stumbling
from cool hallways to a world
dense with scent and sound,
pines roaring in the sudden wind
like a huge chorus of insects.
I felt the damp socket of flowers,
touched weeds riding the crest
of a stony ridge, and the scrubby
ground cover on low hills.
Haystacks began to burn,
smoke rose like sheets of
translucent mica. The thick air
hummed over the stretched wires
of wheat as I lay in the overgrown field
listening to the shrieks of small rabbits
bounding beneath my skin.
Source: Cummings, D 2006, The Artist as Alice: From a Photographer’s Life, Bright Hill Press.
One summer afternoon, I learned my body
like a blind child leaving a walled
school for the first time, stumbling
from cool hallways to a world
dense with scent and sound,
pines roaring in the sudden wind
like a huge chorus of insects.
I felt the damp socket of flowers,
touched weeds riding the crest
of a stony ridge, and the scrubby
ground cover on low hills.
Haystacks began to burn,
smoke rose like sheets of
translucent mica. The thick air
hummed over the stretched wires
of wheat as I lay in the overgrown field
listening to the shrieks of small rabbits
bounding beneath my skin.
Source: Cummings, D 2006, The Artist as Alice: From a Photographer’s Life, Bright Hill Press.
27 Mar 2013
Keeping Things Whole – Mark Strand
[1934–current, born Canada, has lived in North, South and Central Americas]
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Source: Strand, M, 2002, Selected Poems, Random House.
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Source: Strand, M, 2002, Selected Poems, Random House.
One Art – Elizabeth Bishop
[1911–1979, American]
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Source: Bishop, E 1983, The Complete Poems 1927-1979, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Source: Bishop, E 1983, The Complete Poems 1927-1979, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.
The Bad Thing – John Wain
[1925–1994, English]
Sometimes just being alone seems the bad thing
Solitude can swell until it blocks the sun,
It hurts so much, even fear, even worrying
Over the past and future, get stifled. It has won,
You think; this is the bad thing, it is here.
Then sense comes; you go to sleep, or have
Some food, write a letter or work, get something clear.
Solitude shrinks; you are not all its slave.
Sometimes just being alone seems the bad thing
Solitude can swell until it blocks the sun,
It hurts so much, even fear, even worrying
Over the past and future, get stifled. It has won,
You think; this is the bad thing, it is here.
Then sense comes; you go to sleep, or have
Some food, write a letter or work, get something clear.
Solitude shrinks; you are not all its slave.
Then you think: the bad thing inhabits yourself.
Just being alone is nothing; not pain, not balm.
Escape, into poem, into pub, wanting a friend
Is not avoiding the bad thing. The high shelf
Where you stacked the bad thing, hoping for calm,
Broke. It rolled down. It follows you to the end.
Just being alone is nothing; not pain, not balm.
Escape, into poem, into pub, wanting a friend
Is not avoiding the bad thing. The high shelf
Where you stacked the bad thing, hoping for calm,
Broke. It rolled down. It follows you to the end.
Source: Wain, J
1956, A Word Carved on a
Sill, Routledge & K Paul.
26 Feb 2013
Scene from a Marriage - Richard James Allen
[1960-current, Australian]
you are my context
without you
i’m a picture
wandering out
of its frame
a blotch of colours
a mess of sky
Source: Allen, RJ 1995, The Air Dolphin Brigade, Paper Bark Press, Brooklyn, NSW. Retrieved 26 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/allen-richard-james/scene-from-a-marriage-0162019
you are my context
without you
i’m a picture
wandering out
of its frame
a blotch of colours
a mess of sky
Source: Allen, RJ 1995, The Air Dolphin Brigade, Paper Bark Press, Brooklyn, NSW. Retrieved 26 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/allen-richard-james/scene-from-a-marriage-0162019
The Koala Motel Dream -- S. K. Kelen
[1956-current, Australian]
It’s a dog all right the nurse told you
your wife has just given birth to a beautiful
bouncing afghan hound you must decide
either to hand out cigars and carry on
or tell them at the office fuck something
burn down your nice house
starting with the carport so you flew south
for the winter freer than a dream
& on the way picked up a hippy girl
hitching out of Albury if only the
boys at the office then she feeds
you blue hallucinogens on the way
to the Koala Motor Inn at
Wangaratta, Victoria.
Source: Kelen, SK 1991, Atomic Ballet, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Retrieved 26 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/kelen-s-k/the-koala-motel-dream-0086031
It’s a dog all right the nurse told you
your wife has just given birth to a beautiful
bouncing afghan hound you must decide
either to hand out cigars and carry on
or tell them at the office fuck something
burn down your nice house
starting with the carport so you flew south
for the winter freer than a dream
& on the way picked up a hippy girl
hitching out of Albury if only the
boys at the office then she feeds
you blue hallucinogens on the way
to the Koala Motor Inn at
Wangaratta, Victoria.
Source: Kelen, SK 1991, Atomic Ballet, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Retrieved 26 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/kelen-s-k/the-koala-motel-dream-0086031
Blue Mountains recluse -- Dorothy Porter
[1954–2008, Australian]
I came for the quiet
I don’t mind the cold
but thick mists
thick neighbours
and involuntary celibacy
are as inducive to hard drinking as diesel fumes, high rent
and corrupt cops
I don’t like bush walks
or Devonshire Teas
I can’t remember what adrenalin
tastes like
I need Sydney
I need a new job.
Source: Porter, D 1994, 'Blue Mountains recluse', The Monkey’s Mask, Arcade Publishing. Retrieved 25 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/porter-dorothy/blue-mountains-recluse-0129003
I came for the quiet
I don’t mind the cold
but thick mists
thick neighbours
and involuntary celibacy
are as inducive to hard drinking as diesel fumes, high rent
and corrupt cops
I don’t like bush walks
or Devonshire Teas
I can’t remember what adrenalin
tastes like
I need Sydney
I need a new job.
Source: Porter, D 1994, 'Blue Mountains recluse', The Monkey’s Mask, Arcade Publishing. Retrieved 25 February 2013 from www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/porter-dorothy/blue-mountains-recluse-0129003
25 Feb 2013
Computer Games -- Philip Salom
[1950-current, Australian]
— you’ve come halfway through the matinee,
have to carry dames, or slap guys’ faces
— it’s either platinum or sharp moustaches.
Which means you’re too soon or thirty years
too late to make the moves convincingly.
Her nose is thin and Streepish, his is not
Latin American, more Latin Ahollywood,
down to virtuoso later scenes, without make-up,
— you’ve come halfway through the matinee,
have to carry dames, or slap guys’ faces
— it’s either platinum or sharp moustaches.
Which means you’re too soon or thirty years
too late to make the moves convincingly.
Her nose is thin and Streepish, his is not
Latin American, more Latin Ahollywood,
down to virtuoso later scenes, without make-up,
when love’s gone looking for another Oscar.
You spend a day in bed, her legs always
brown and way apart for quivering bum-shots of him
but that’s not what you press there for.
You can be him, or you can be her. You can
press for Bond and Pinochet, one phone call away
people like pale wires fed by a magneto
until the wires fairly scream.
By six o’clock you will too. You press:
a shower scene gothic with groovy breasts
and lower down, there’s lots of fluids, male
and shiny nozzles — desire’s like hotel soap,
show many times you can use it.
You press — it’s raining streets at night, water
from the ultimate of roses, water is drinking light
from bleeding and bleeping neons. Her head
shifts against your shoulder as you gasp relief
hoping, in a way you hope for Glass on soundtrack,
this will keep on, the easy, melancholy fall
upon the cars, rain enough to keep the peace
in ways the law-men and the daytime can’t.
You hear yourself saying to another bloke
you’re in on this too and he: been at it for years.
Looking for one chance, that’s all.
Then his eyes: Know what I’ve just found?
Funny how you never find out what, and how
like the laziest schizophrenic ever seen
your head’s a TV set with channels
no flicking back on the remote can find again.
The older bloke, tanned, fiftyish, a little
overweight, but strong. But he dies.
And the woman who simmered in the car
beside him, staring at her fingernails
as if she longed to be elsewhere…
She’s dead too. They looked so well.
But they’re gone. This happens all your life.
Who are these people? Where do they come from?
You press ‘custard’ by mistake, get
children, two boys and a girl, who look just
like Dustin Hoffman. Everything too smiley, too earnest.
You press — sunlight in Mexico, mescal, you press
alcoholic dazes, fumbling in the cupboards
for the next. You press lawyers, divorce,
the afternoon falls on you like a salesman.
There are people roaming and why do they roam
and why does this new love who seems so real
let you down, even as she leaves now
through the rain, and you turn away hurting
plainly, in a way no one will notice,
hurting not only to find this so, but how
thoroughly the public dreams are trash, computed.
How slow or fast, the speed’s irrelevant
when all of it’s confusing. Which is often now,
unless you drift, not pressing but dumbly
being pressed, knowing at least how quite
alone you are. There is no Hollywood in Heaven,
it must at best be Limbo, tilting to Escape
or Reconciliation, two states the demagogues
forgot to postulate, and both like cars
you can’t afford — repossessed.
Playing on, you have to answer:
Why is AIDS real? Are books worth writing? Do you feel?
You merge still shots, each face joyous, serious, aghast.
War breaks out but twice as kinky, voyeuristic
like prisoners or diseases, or the mad.
Who are all these people? Where do they come from?
Are they still inside you? Ending painfully
as kidney stones, or Stallones (Rocky 1 to 5)
— you press to pass.
Source: Salom, P 1998, 'Computer Games', New and Selected Poems, Fremantle Arts Centre Press Retrieved 25 February 2013, poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/salom-philip/computer-games-0076102
You spend a day in bed, her legs always
brown and way apart for quivering bum-shots of him
but that’s not what you press there for.
You can be him, or you can be her. You can
press for Bond and Pinochet, one phone call away
people like pale wires fed by a magneto
until the wires fairly scream.
By six o’clock you will too. You press:
a shower scene gothic with groovy breasts
and lower down, there’s lots of fluids, male
and shiny nozzles — desire’s like hotel soap,
show many times you can use it.
You press — it’s raining streets at night, water
from the ultimate of roses, water is drinking light
from bleeding and bleeping neons. Her head
shifts against your shoulder as you gasp relief
hoping, in a way you hope for Glass on soundtrack,
this will keep on, the easy, melancholy fall
upon the cars, rain enough to keep the peace
in ways the law-men and the daytime can’t.
You hear yourself saying to another bloke
you’re in on this too and he: been at it for years.
Looking for one chance, that’s all.
Then his eyes: Know what I’ve just found?
Funny how you never find out what, and how
like the laziest schizophrenic ever seen
your head’s a TV set with channels
no flicking back on the remote can find again.
The older bloke, tanned, fiftyish, a little
overweight, but strong. But he dies.
And the woman who simmered in the car
beside him, staring at her fingernails
as if she longed to be elsewhere…
She’s dead too. They looked so well.
But they’re gone. This happens all your life.
Who are these people? Where do they come from?
You press ‘custard’ by mistake, get
children, two boys and a girl, who look just
like Dustin Hoffman. Everything too smiley, too earnest.
You press — sunlight in Mexico, mescal, you press
alcoholic dazes, fumbling in the cupboards
for the next. You press lawyers, divorce,
the afternoon falls on you like a salesman.
There are people roaming and why do they roam
and why does this new love who seems so real
let you down, even as she leaves now
through the rain, and you turn away hurting
plainly, in a way no one will notice,
hurting not only to find this so, but how
thoroughly the public dreams are trash, computed.
How slow or fast, the speed’s irrelevant
when all of it’s confusing. Which is often now,
unless you drift, not pressing but dumbly
being pressed, knowing at least how quite
alone you are. There is no Hollywood in Heaven,
it must at best be Limbo, tilting to Escape
or Reconciliation, two states the demagogues
forgot to postulate, and both like cars
you can’t afford — repossessed.
Playing on, you have to answer:
Why is AIDS real? Are books worth writing? Do you feel?
You merge still shots, each face joyous, serious, aghast.
War breaks out but twice as kinky, voyeuristic
like prisoners or diseases, or the mad.
Who are all these people? Where do they come from?
Are they still inside you? Ending painfully
as kidney stones, or Stallones (Rocky 1 to 5)
— you press to pass.
A Little Bit About the Soul -- WisŁawa Szymborska
[1923–2012,
Polish]
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.
Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.
Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.
It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.
When we're filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it's usually given time off.
Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn't a given,
for it prefers silence.
When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.
It's choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.
It doesn't see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we're not sure of anything
and curious about everything.
Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.
It doesn't state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.
Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.
Source: Szymborska, W 2000 (July) 'A Little Bit About the Soul', Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved 25 February 2013 from www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/07/a-little-bit-about-the-soul/308563/
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.
Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.
Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.
It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.
When we're filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it's usually given time off.
Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn't a given,
for it prefers silence.
When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.
It's choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.
It doesn't see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we're not sure of anything
and curious about everything.
Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.
It doesn't state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.
Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.
Source: Szymborska, W 2000 (July) 'A Little Bit About the Soul', Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved 25 February 2013 from www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/07/a-little-bit-about-the-soul/308563/
7 Jan 2013
Ariadne – Jennifer Maiden
[1949–current, Australian]
There is a claret light, a flood
of chubby, meat-dark clouds, but you, intent,
at first are in your old scent-satchel mood.
Your hands are in the gliding mode,
balletic, suppliant, sisterly, spin
out grace in a web that love early
crumbled to a fragrance, tannin-dry,
but that dances now steadily, succulent,
in revels, reverberant where within
your threads and labyrinth you hold
confined to the drunken god.
Source: Maiden, J 1979, The Border Loss, Angus and Robertson, Australia.
There is a claret light, a flood
of chubby, meat-dark clouds, but you, intent,
at first are in your old scent-satchel mood.
Your hands are in the gliding mode,
balletic, suppliant, sisterly, spin
out grace in a web that love early
crumbled to a fragrance, tannin-dry,
but that dances now steadily, succulent,
in revels, reverberant where within
your threads and labyrinth you hold
confined to the drunken god.
Source: Maiden, J 1979, The Border Loss, Angus and Robertson, Australia.
My Friend Judge Not Me -- Anonymous
My friend, judge not me,
Thou seest I judge not thee;
Betwixt the stirrop and the ground,
Mercy I askt, mercy I found.
Source: Camden 1637, Remaines Concerning Britaine, p. 392.
Quoted by Dr. Hill on epitaph to a man killed by a fall from his horse. www.bartleby.com/78/450.html
Thou seest I judge not thee;
Betwixt the stirrop and the ground,
Mercy I askt, mercy I found.
Source: Camden 1637, Remaines Concerning Britaine, p. 392.
Quoted by Dr. Hill on epitaph to a man killed by a fall from his horse. www.bartleby.com/78/450.html
I Cannot Say -- Lynn Hard
[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]
I cannot say
what other men desire
in women,
what causes
the meetings beyond the first,
but I
am attracted
to the lady fading
With her beauty
like a dropped vase
and the seam
between glaze and clay
evident,
it is then,
if there is to be any style
beyond fashion,
and utility to the style
that it may be found.
It is then,
when she is deciding
on what to jettison
like an overburdened vessel
that she may most rewardingly
be boarded.
It is then,
midst all the confusion,
her vulnerability an innocence,
that one may want her
for her previous, ageing youth
or her present youthful age.
Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, pp. 16–17.
I cannot say
what other men desire
in women,
what causes
the meetings beyond the first,
but I
am attracted
to the lady fading
With her beauty
like a dropped vase
and the seam
between glaze and clay
evident,
it is then,
if there is to be any style
beyond fashion,
and utility to the style
that it may be found.
It is then,
when she is deciding
on what to jettison
like an overburdened vessel
that she may most rewardingly
be boarded.
It is then,
midst all the confusion,
her vulnerability an innocence,
that one may want her
for her previous, ageing youth
or her present youthful age.
Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, pp. 16–17.
Drifters -- Bruce Dawe
[1930–current, Australian]
One day soon he’ll tell her it’s time to start packing
and the kids will yell ‘Truly?’ and get wildly excited for no reason
and the brown kelpie pup will start dashing about, tripping everyone up
and she’ll go out to the vegetable-patch and pick all the green tomatoes from the vines
and notice how the oldest girl is close to tears because she was happy here,
and how the youngest girl is beaming because she wasn't.
And the first thing she’ll put on the trailer will be the bottling-set she never unpacked from Grovedale,
and when the loaded ute bumps down the drive past the blackberry canes with their last shrivelled fruit,
she won’t even ask why they’re leaving this time, or where they’re headed for
she’ll only remember how, when they came here
she held out her hands, bright with berries,
the first of the season, and said:
‘Make a wish, Tom, make a wish.’
Source: Dawe, B 1962, No Fixed Address, Cheshire, Melbourne.
One day soon he’ll tell her it’s time to start packing
and the kids will yell ‘Truly?’ and get wildly excited for no reason
and the brown kelpie pup will start dashing about, tripping everyone up
and she’ll go out to the vegetable-patch and pick all the green tomatoes from the vines
and notice how the oldest girl is close to tears because she was happy here,
and how the youngest girl is beaming because she wasn't.
And the first thing she’ll put on the trailer will be the bottling-set she never unpacked from Grovedale,
and when the loaded ute bumps down the drive past the blackberry canes with their last shrivelled fruit,
she won’t even ask why they’re leaving this time, or where they’re headed for
she’ll only remember how, when they came here
she held out her hands, bright with berries,
the first of the season, and said:
‘Make a wish, Tom, make a wish.’
Source: Dawe, B 1962, No Fixed Address, Cheshire, Melbourne.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)