VI. A Stranger World Arrives

 

READING POETRY

 

They are reading poetry

      aloud

 

igniting the magic

 

trying to work the

miracle

 

and sometimes

        a moment takes off!

 

And sometimes

      The day    grows    wings

 

         And hovers over

The date

                                                     — Sabina Messeg (tr. EC)

 

 

 

Enter the World

                  Remove your personal self from the work

                                  and enter the world like a continent.

                                        Ted Hughes, Letter to Olwyn Hughes

 

As a prelude to the actual entrance,

neither a skip nor a hop

will get one any closer.

A scramble, though it may provide

the needed element of rush,

will not be sufficient either.

To gain full entry into the world

as guardian of place and tribe,

crash and bang at the door

crying that there is so much more

to the sojourn, which is immanent.

 

Such a method is also reliable

if distance is what one is after, distance

being the dominant consideration

by which a thought is cast into the universe.

 

An extra heartbeat here, a word murmured there —

until the entry fee climbs.

Who among us has not felt a bolt of lightning

aimed right at the psyche

once it is understood that mortality has its limits

and age does its utmost to antagonize

one who has already entered the world,

one whose arrival was a rare jubilee,

one who interprets that life is more than an unrefined

spin with a trickle of substance.

 

Accompanied by the bold music

of trembling stars and charged auroras,

enter the searing glamor of the stratosphere.

Mind not to hurry the music along before the light changes

and a stranger world arrives in its contrary way.

                                                                                           —Irene Mitchell

 

ONE OF THE THIRTY-SIX

 

He comes to me from time to time. Dragging through the streets
A shopping cart full of books. His clothes give off
a smell of chlorine and latrines. Always hungry, emaciated like a refugee. Refuses handouts
of food or other items. Rings the doorbell furiously, demands
new poems, craves long cycles (when desperate settles for
drafts and scraps). I don‘t know
where he sleeps, where he spends stormy days and rainy nights.
I don ‘t have a single fresh sentence
To feed him tonight, maybe
Two or three words. Now
He is roaring in the stairwell, pounding
On the banister, terrifying my wife, waking my children.
With his bare hands he slaughters book bindings on the threshold,
tosses pages. Keys are turning in locks, shouts
are heard, neighbors are gathering, threatening to call the police.
 
I let him in.
He breathes heavily down my neck, gurgling, salivating,
I hastily write on the kitchen table, not bothering with details, hoping he finds this poem
tasty. In this city live many sick
writers, poets –
I send him to persecute others.

                                                   —Amichai Chasson (tr. EC)

 

 

 When I Turned Sixteen

 

I found the demon in the temple

my grandmother, snoring, now deceased,

had warned me about in her hard dreams

although she resented my existence

as evidence of her daughter ‘s marriage

to a man who loved music more.

 

It grinned. It spat out my name

as though I were a cunning word

someone playing Scrabble might find

in a lucky deal of small pale squares

laid out hidden from a rival

who needed to prove themselves more.

 

I stroked the marble of the walls.

I gazed into its purple eyes.

I knew who I was but it

still tried to seep into my soul.

I write poems I firmly claimed.

How dare you ask for More?

                                                       —Katharyn Howd Machan

 

 

 Soon the Moon Will Slip from Its Mooring, Ride the River of Night Alone*

 

except for me, day‘s sun in my pocket,

hiding warm light from the stars

that would steal it, swallow it,

lick hungrily at all its edges

to feed their cores‘ black dust.

I ‘m a trickster, a traveler

known for my shenanigans

wherever a bell rings a little too loud

or three kids are born to a nanny.

Storytellers think they know my name

but—aha!—I keep changing its sound.

I exist to fool the wise and laugh

up my thrice-folded sleeve. No, not the devil,

not a coyote or spider or fox with full tail.

I‘ve been alone since the dragon bellowed.

Watch me now as I climb and grab

that rope of light that swings down.

I’m faster than a sacred rat,

and I was born to sail.

 —Katharyn Howd Machan

 

(*This title is gratefully borrowed from the last line of “Residency,”a poem by Barbara Crooker in her collection from Pittsburgh University Press, Some Glad Morning.)

 

 

TURKEY

 

A king’s son is naked under the table, clutching

a turkey leg, gnawing it to the bone, throwing scraps

of skin on the floor, spitting feathers in his father‘s face,

in the face of the crown, wallowing in sawdust.

 

He calls loudly:

Cockadoodledoo!

I’m not an actor!

This is not a pipe!

This is not a table!

                                              — Amichai Chasson (tr. EC)

 

 

 

BALLAD TO KINNORIT

 

An opening in the sound of a dream

 

I have been trying to write for weeks

And days.

And there is no spirit in me

And there is no light in me

As if the world

Were lost. As if the world were waiting.

As if slowly

The days.

 

From the depths

At the end of the day I remembered her spirit.

At the end of the dream, as if air.

 

What is the goal.

What will her light

Bring, what discovery:

I clothed her in skin, gave her being

bone, flung away

life. Gave it to

her. Songs I scattered soul

from her mouth. Sang new life,

new creation.

 

The cause of causes, the source of degrees.

The goal of the inspiration she acquired.

 

And on that day

I called her.

 

And an aura: enchantment.

Coal of dawn.

I gave her

Her name.

 

Kinnorit.*

                          —Herzl Hakak (tr. EC)

 

*A new word, perhaps a feminine diminutive of kinnor (harp).

 

 

 

 

Poetry #I

Reading and Writing

 

 

I

 

 

 

Dream

     of

Being

 

In

     your

World

 

And

     of you

In mine

 

Since you

     are

Here

 

I

     am

There

 

And so

     like

The dream

 

But more

    than 

A dream

 

 

 

Suddenly

 

We

 

Are

                           —James B. Nicola

 

 

 

 In Memory of Zbigniew Herbert

 

In his late teens,

he fights in the underground resistance.

He witnesses with a calm, clear eye.

His poetry becomes lucid,

impervious to cant—

angel with a fiery sword

fighting against a huge spider

that spins its web over Poland.

 

Toward the end of the 70s,

among the American literati,

“Mr. Cogito” surfaces as the dernier cri.

Students go to classes

murmuring fragments of his verse.

He has broken through to the other side.

 

With the inexorable passing of years

his count of friends shrinks.

They go off in pairs, in groups, one by one.

Some, pale like wafers

lose earthly dimensions,

then suddenly or gradually

emigrate to the  sky.

He sticks around.

Continues to write in his fervent, dry,

whispering, breathless speech;

his diction dignified, ironic,

compassionate, reserved.

He is a classicist at heart.

He is idiosyncratic.

 

A perennial Nobel bridesmaid,

he becomes a poet once removed,

twice removed.

An Elegy for the Departure.

The academy is bothered by his austerity.

By his poem “Why The Classics.”

By his refusal to cave in.

 

In his final years, in Warsaw, he lives

with his cat in a one-room apartment–

kitchenette off to one side,

rudimentary bathroom. He lives in the company

of cold skulls, in the company

of ancestors: Gilgamesh. Hector. Roland.

 

                                                                          —Constance Rowell Mastores

 

 

Alt-Rap

(A response to Amanda Gordon ‘s “The Hill We Climb,” delivered at President Joe Biden ‘s inauguration, January 2021)

 

I‘m the youth of today and I ‘m here to say

That poetry ‘s totally relevant.

You bloodless scholars are rakin’ the dollars

But when it comes to rhyme and beatin’ the time

You’re completely outta your element.

 

I ain’t woke or PC

But even I can see

That rhythm and rhyme are the name of the game.

The Nobel Prize is only one kind of fame.

In your ivory tower, mangle prose by the hour

And call it “poetry. “

Yeah, chop it in fragments, go off on tangents,

Never makin’ sense, all a pretense,

A hamster wheel, a decadent spiel.

Trashin’ tradition, the modern affliction,

Declarin’ rhyme and form passé.

From my presidential inaugural podium

I‘ll tell you what‘s what, chum –

O say can you see?

MFA don‘t hold a candle to NYC.

 

You demote it to rap, but it‘s for me they clap,

Not your latest reader-less chap-book.

Small press or indie, you‘re always so windy,

Spewin‘ discontent, constant dissent,

America‘s got talent, but I‘ll tell you pal — it

Ain‘t you.

 

You doomers and gloomers, corrupted old Boomers,

Okay.

You deconstructed it, po-mo‘ed and mucked it

All into a semiotic game.               

Destroyed the family, created calamity,

No truth, no gender, all spun in a blender,

You struck us bereft, but still something‘s left:

The fact of the embodied mind.

The pact of the expected rhyme.

We‘re all built for beat, for emotional heat,

The presence of story, inclination for glory,

Not line-break obsessions or workshop pretensions.

We wanna be swept on a whirlwind of sound.

We wanna get the point the first time around.

That‘s where the hope for America lies.

Remembrin‘ our nature will restore our stature.

Your degenerate theories will cease to degrade us

As we acknowledge our essence, the way that G-d made us.

—Shaindy Gold

 

 

LONE PILGRIM 
  
Young sunlight laid like silk across the lake; 
The deformed images of seraphim 
That hurl the mind to God; and those dark nights 
 
Spent quietly hovering before a verse 
That trembles on the page. But silence fell: 
The glossy ibis splashed into the water 
 
Beside the toothache grass and looked around; 
My breathing clouded all my whispered words, 
The hungry paper made me turn a page.  
 
There was a time when all that silence far 
Beyond the stars would shyly come to us 
And let us hold it, kiss it, drink it down; 
 
Our bodies were all sleek with wisdom then, 
Our eyes were clear, the entire world was smooth 
As sweet bay leaves when mist has all burnt off 
 
And morning spreads its wings. But silence fell 
And pinched the tongue and kept it hard and dry 
Whenever love would venture tender names.  
 
They came in time, but with some others too, 
Rough ones that make us snatch at sticks and stones, 
Or have us fall in love just with ourselves, 
 
And silence went to hide, between two words; 
And always, lost to thought, the dirty sound, 
Still echoing, of some tremendous “No!” 
 
Like darkness settling as the day slows down, 
An ibis grunting as it flies back home, 
A frog‘s head hanging from its long sharp bill.  

                                                                                    —Kevin Hart

 

  

I scratch at the layers

 

search through sheaves

dig for my last stanza

in the hopes it will prompt a new one

 

but the backlog of two years

stacks against me

leaves of frail volumes stick together

blue black veins stain parchment

text escapes transparent vellum

 

the pandemic misfires the code of his kidneys

quarantine arrests my pancreas

we dance in jagged rhythm

 

the ragged edges of pages

one for each friend who died

demand a line:

when will his when will mine

be ripped from the tablet

will someone gather them

 

bury them like geniza

fragments of sacred text

impossible to read

too holy to burn

                                          —Judy Belsky

 

 

Acceptance Speech

 

the poem that begins my son dies wins first place

what will I say at the award reading?

 

my tablet slips from my hand

and crashes face down on the floor

the screen is shattered

ghostly lines hover over everything I write

 

when I run my finger over the weird calligraphy

a crystal shard pierces me

when I try to extract the glass 

I gouge a piece of skin

I peer into the pulsating mouth of an abandoned cave

 

it stings

but does not electrify me

it does not alter my circuitry

it stings

but nothing like the torch of live wire

that shakes me awake when I did not know I was sleeping

or the gale winds that hurl me to distant planets

where the grid that anchors syntax collapses

and words fall through

 

of the poem I will say

it was not death

it was not my son

                                              —Judy Belsky

 

_______________________