Poetry, Opinion, and General Verbosity

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Among the poets I like are Rainer Maria Rilke, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Charles Bukowski, Tom Clark, Ted Hughes, Maggie Estep, Francis Ponge, Akiko Yosano, Hitomaro, Gary Snyder, Li Po, Tu Fu, Steve Dalachinsky, Yuko Otomo, Henry Rollins, Paul Semel, Ruth Platt, and John S. Hall. Dipping into their works would make anybody a slightly better person. Here are a few examples.


Francis Ponge

Rain

In the yard where I watch it fall, the rain comes down at several different speeds. In the middle it is a delicate and threadbare curtain (or a net), an implacable but relatively slow descent of quite small drops, a simpiternal precipitation lacking vigor, an intense fragment of the pure meteor. A little away from the walls on each side heavier drops fall separately, with more noise. Some look the size of a grain of corn, others a pea, or almost a marble. On the parapets and balustrades of the window the rain runs horizontally, and on the inside of these obstacles it hangs down in convex loops. It streams in a thin sheet over the entire surface of a zinc roof straight below me--a pattern of watered silk, in the various currents, from the imperceptible bosses and undulations of the surface. In the gutter there, it flows with the contention of a deep but only slightly inclined stream, until suddenly it plunges in a perfectly vertical thread, quite thickly platted, to the ground, where it breaks and scatters in shining needles.
Each of these forms has its own particular manner of moving; each elicits a particular sound. The whole thing is intensely alive in the manner of a complicated mechanism, both precise and precarious, like a piece of clockwork in which the activating force is the weight of a mass precipitated from vapor.
The ringing of the vertical threads on the pavement, the gurgling from the gutters, the miniature gong-chimes, multiply and resonate together in a consort which avoids monotony, and is not without delicacy.
And when the pressure is relaxed, some of the clockwork continues to function for a while, getting slower and slower, until the whole machine stops. Then, if the sun comes out again, the whole thing is quite soon effaced--the shiny apparatus evaporates: it has been raining.

(translated from the French by Peter Riley; taken from The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry, edited by Paul Auster: Vintage Books, 1984)


Gary Snyder

from Four Poems for Robin

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

(taken from The Back Country: New Directions, 1968)


Tom Clark

Clemente (1934-72)

won’t forget
his nervous
habit of
rearing his
head back
on his neck
like a
proud horse

(taken from Blue: Black Sparrow Press, 1974)


Steve Dalachinsky

Like Wildflower

i look at myself in
your mirror
& am disappointed again

the windfall
like waterfall
(turned ice on my roof)
& my tongue like roses
frozen

picked me like a number
a birthmark
me ocean of
topsy-turvy canned
goods empty &
obsessed
slip on your
pallet &
rust
your mirror
i look and am dis
appointed
again

turn me over
& weave me like a
basket
with your ungloved cold
cold fingers
i
bottled up a
bottle of frozen
jissum unsolved &
wondering

ski on my hair
cut cut me
down like so much live
tart a
sweet tart filled with
weather

imprison me
throw away the key
no need to lock the door
i won't leave
lock me in your mirror
throw away the
glass

no one to skate on
my stomach i am
jack lantern aflame &
gone out

ridicule my forecast

no one really knows how
crazy anyone
really
is

i suffer the reality of artists &
feast on the unlit
coils

a stove
white
its oven door open to the
draft
feet deep in the ice of a bowery
day
names burnt into the surface of

the ice
& the light that grows from the
branches of the tree
is wet & smooth & hard
& clear

the pods of the jimson weed
are covered by near zero
temperature
they seem sick of
dead
they droop stem deep in the
no-thaw

skid on my face i'll
catch you with my
mouth

inside
the seeds are forming
unpassionately & will spring forth
& reform again

slide down my chest
over my hump & off my
ass
like a downhill racer &
i'll fall at your feet
while you save me with your eyes
& with crutches discarded
steadily
we'll lift us
with our arms.

(taken from In the Book of Ice: self-published, 1995)


Paul Semel

untitled

a few words
were all it took
to kill him
again

(taken from Still Beating Heart: Mental Press, 1992)


William Carlos Williams

To a Solitary Disciple

Rather notice, mon cher,
that the moon is
tilted above
the point of the steeple
than that its color
is shell-pink.

Rather observe
that it is early morning
than that the sky
is smooth as a turquoise.

Rather grasp
how the dark
converging lines
of the steeple
meet at the pinnacle--
perceive how
its little ornament
tries to stop them--

See how it fails!
See how the converging lines
of the hexagonal spire
escape upward--
receding, dividing!
--sepals
that guard and contain
the flower!

Observe
how motionless
the eaten moon
lies in the protecting lines.
It is true:
in the light colors
of morning

brown-stone and slate
shine orange and dark blue.

But observe the oppressive weight
of the squat edifice!
Observe
the jasmine lightness
of the moon.

(taken from The Collected Earlier Poems: New Directions (no date))


Jasmine Faber

A Day in the Life...

Scurrying through the aisles
at a local supermarket
I throw thoughts of you into the
cold metal cart
along with the frozen peas and gallon of milk
and later in the day get the most intense erotic images
as I pull on the long hose at the gas pump
and insert that nozzle into my gas tank
almost weak-kneed when at last I replace
the dripping tip back into the slot.

As I search through rows of toys and
fragrances and grandpa sweaters
I smile at the thought of secret intimacies
and of presents already shared
unwrapped
enjoyed to the fullest
fullfilling all the expectations
that preceed the giving
It is Christmastime
a season to share
to surprise and please
to fullfill wishes
to express all the tenderness
and love
in one's heart.

(unpublished, 1996)


Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Sonnets to Orpheus

I, 3

A god can do it. But will you tell me how
a man can penetrate through the lyre’s strings?
Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing
of heart-roads, there is no temple for Apollo.

Song, as you have taught it, is not desire,
not wooing any grace that can be achieved;
song is reality. Simple, for a god.
But when can we be real? When does he pour

the earth, the stars, into us? Young man,
it is not your loving, even if your mouth
was forced wide open by your own voice--learn

to forget that passionate music. It will end.
True singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.

(translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell; taken from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke: Vintage Books, 1984)


Ruth Platt

Time on my hands.

It's been 13 days, 11 hours, and 22 minutes
since the last time I thought about you until now...

4 months and 3 days
since the last time I saw you...

The last time you touched me
was 5 months ago, a little after 6:30 pm.
I was watching the clock, thinking
'this is the last time I let him
make love to me again.'

I don't miss you
as much as I used to.

(unpublished)

Charles Bukowski

2 flies

The flies are angry bits of
life;
why are they so angry?
it seems they want more,
it seems almost as if they
are angry
that they are flies;
it is not my fault;
I sit in the room
with them
and they taunt me
with their agony;
it is as if they were
loose chunks of soul
left out of somewhere;
I try to read a paper
but they will not let me
be;
one seems to go in half-circles
high along the wall,
throwing a miserable sound
upon my head;
the other one, the smaller one
stays near and teases my hand,
saying nothing,
rising, dropping
crawling near;
what god puts these
lost things upon me?
other men suffer dictates of
empire, tragic love...
I suffer
insects...
I wave at the little one
which only seems to revive
his impulse to challenge:
he circles swifter,
nearer, even making
a fly-sound,
and one above
catching a sense of the new
whirling, he too, in excitement,
speeds his flight,
drops down suddenly
in a cuff of noise
and they join
in circling my hand,
strumming the base
of the lampshade
until some man-thing
in me
will take no more
unholiness
and I strike
with the rolled-up paper--
missing!--
striking,
striking,
they break in discord,
some message lost between them,
and I get the big one
first, and he kicks on his back
flicking his legs
like an angry whore,
and I come down again
with my paper club
and he is a smear
of fly-ugliness;
the little one circles high
now, quiet and swift,
almost invisible;
he does not come near
my hand again;
he is tamed and
inaccessible; I leave
him be, he leaves me
be;
the paper, of course,
is ruined;
something has happened,
something has soiled my
day,
sometimes it does not
take a man
or a woman,
only something alive;
I sit and watch
the small one;
we are woven together
in the air
and the living;
it is late
for both of us.

(taken from Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit: Black Sparrow Press, 1986)


Robinson Jeffers

Return

A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
I will go down to the lovely Sur Rivers
And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.
I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers
In the ocean wind over the river boulders.
I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,
That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,
The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks
So that they cannot strike, hardly can fly.
Things are the hawk’s food and noble is the mountain, Oh noble
Pico Blanco, steep sea-wave of marble.

(taken from Selected Poems: Vintage Books, 1965)


Hitomaro (seventh century AD)
Three Naga Uta ("long poems" by Japanese standards; elegies of moderate length)

In the sea of ivy clothed Iwami
Near the cape of Kara,
The deep sea miru weed
Grows on the sunken reefs;
The jewelled sea tangle
Grows on the rocky foreshore.
Swaying like the jewelled sea tangle
My girl would lie with me,
My girl whom I love with a love
Deep as the miru growing ocean.
We slept together only a few
Wonderful nights and then
I had to leave her.
It was like tearing apart braided vines.
My bowels are knotted inside me
With the pain of my heart.
I long for her and look back.
A confusion of colored leaves
Falls over Mount Watari.
I can no longer see
Her waving sleeves.
The moon rushes through rifted clouds
Over the honeymoon cottage
On Mount Yagami.
The setting sun has left the sky.
The light grows dim.
I thought I was a brave man.
My thin sleeves are wet with tears.
.....

The Bay of Tsyunu
In the sea of Iwami
Has no fine beaches
And is not considered beautiful.
Perhaps it is not,
But we used to walk
By the sea of the whale fishers
Over the rocky shingle of Watazu
Where the wind blows
The green jewelled seaweed
Like wings quivering in the morning,
And the waves rock the kelp beds
Like wings quivering in the evening.
Just as the sea tangle sways and floats
At one with the waves,
So my girl clung to me
As she lay by my side.
Now I have left her,
To fade like the hoarfrost.
I looked back ten thousand times
At every turn of the road.
Our village fell away,
Farther and farther away.
The mountains rose between us,
Steeper and steeper.
I know she thinks of me, far off,
And wilts with longing, like summer grass.
Maybe if the mountains would bow down
I could see her again,
Standing in our doorway.
.....

When she was still alive
We would go out, arm in arm,
And look at the elm trees
Growing on the embankment
In front of our house.
Their branches were interlaced.
Their crowns were dense with spring leaves.
They were like our love.
Love and trust were not enough to turn back
The wheels of life and death.
She faded like a mirage over the desert.
One morning like a bird she was gone
In the white scarves of death.
Now when the child
Whom she left in her memory
Cries and begs for her,
All I can do is pick him up
And hug him clumsily.
I have nothing to give him.
In our bedroom our pillows
Still lie side by side,
As we lay once.
I sit there by myself
And let the days grow dark.
I lie awake at night, sighing till daylight.
No matter how much I mourn
I shall never see her again.
They tell me her spirit
May haunt Mount Hagai
Under the eagles' wings.
I struggle over the ridges
And climb to the summit.
I know all the time
That I shall never see her,
Not even so much as a faint quiver in the air.
All my longing, all my love
Will never make any difference.

(taken from a wonderful collection translated and compiled by Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese: New Directions, 1955)


Assorted Japanese Tanka

Tanka was the precursor to haiku and was the major form of classical Japanese poetry. In the original, it's five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Most commentators consider the quality of the writing to be superior to haiku.


The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
by Akahito


I think of the days
Before I met her
When I seemed to have
No troubles at all.
by Fujiwara No Atsutada


In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not here.
by Hitomaro

I sit at home
In our room
By our bed
Gazing at your pillow.
by Hitomaro

May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love.
by Hitomaro


I may live on until
I long for this time
In which I am so unhappy,
And remember it fondly.
by Fujiwara No Kiyosuke


Imperceptible
It withers in the world,
This flower-like human heart.
by Komachi


Do not smile to yourself
Like a green mountain
With a cloud drifting across it.
People will know we are in love.
by Sakanoe

(taken from Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese: New Directions, 1955)