A World Made of Words

Posted on 27 December 2015 by Thomas Kearney

panoply

the girl loved the whole world

she loved everything about it

even the parts that were not nice

she loved it and she wrote it all down so she would be sure not to forget what it was about the whole thing that she found so beautiful and compelling

but after a while everything was covered up with words and she remembered the words and that she had written them but she was less sure about the things themselves and what she had loved about them

when the rains came and washed away her words it was a relief

but she loved the world a little less afterward

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The Poet Speaks the Same

Posted on 3 December 2015 by Thomas Kearney

robert-graves

Robert Ranke Graves
Had a voice like the waves.
Its falling and rising
Was rarely surprising.

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The Tesseract

Posted on 3 December 2015 by Thomas Kearney

4dcube

The Tesseract
Despite her name
Does not intend a fancy show.

To her, in fact,
It’s all the same
Which way her edges seem to go.

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Final Fig

Posted on 27 November 2015 by Thomas Kearney

millay

I burned my candle at both ends
Thinking to get more light —

But drowned its wick in red wine
Then tumbled down a flight.

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Toy Boat

Posted on 4 July 2015 by Thomas Kearney

Inadequate paddles, a child’s boat.
It got us to the far bank
Where summer grass choked the shore
And the heat scent of summer grass grew heavy on the cooling air.

Somewhere a car-camper played a radio.
Everything seemed to stand still:
The boat still; the water still;
But we startled the shorebirds and they rose all about us, all at once.

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Post-Script (Anno 1945)

Posted on 5 June 2015 by Thomas Kearney

(by Mascha Kaléko; translated from the German)

Bloch_portrait-of-a-boy
I’ve traveled far in thirteen years –
Although what I looked for was hardly romantic;
But without any taste for new frontiers
Still I seem to have crossed the Atlantic.

All that I had, I’ve left behind
But the moment I look around, I find
I’ve a child like the one my parents knew:
His parents are immigrants, through and through.

My son writes “ALIEN” – learning to spell.
He tells me, “Don’t speak German, dear.”
He’s eight. He wants to know, as well,
Is it “all right” not to be from here?

Just what I once asked Rector May!
And like me, too, in another way:
For he’s sure that peace will come to stay
Once the stupid War has gone away.

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Interview with Myself (Anno 1932)

Posted on 2 June 2015 by Thomas Kearney

(by Mascha Kaléko; translated from the German)

In the talkative town where I made my debut
My parents were immigrants, through and through.
We had a church, a doctor or two,
And a loony bin with a lovely view.

My favorite word as a child was “NO.”
If I made Mother happy, it didn’t show.
And thinking back to that long-ago
I wouldn’t wish my own child so.

The Great War found me under the sway
Of the parish school and Rector May,
And thinking that peace would come to stay
If only the War would go away.

Well, I entered the academic race
And the teachers were pleased at my rapid pace –
Despite my having not a trace
Of Nordic hair or an Aryan face –

At graduation, Teacher said
We were all so smart, and so well-bred,
We could go forth, work hard, get ahead.
But I took an office job instead.

I work eight hours of every day
And my duties are light, but so’s my pay;
And at night I while the time away
With poetry – to Dad’s dismay.

I love to brave the wilderness
Of maps, and wander, bodiless;
Still there are days, I must confess
I sometimes wish for happiness.

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That Old Feeling

Posted on 26 May 2015 by Thomas Kearney

(by Mascha Kaléko; translated from the German)

The first time that I thought to die
–I still recall the scene–
I died with so much skill and grace
In Hamburg, just the perfect place,
And I was just eighteen.

And when I died the second time,
It filled my heart with woe
That I could leave you nothing more
Than just my heart, laid at your door,
And footprints, red in snow.

And when I died the third time,
I hardly felt the pain;
Familiar as my toast and tea,
Like an old shoe, is death to me.
I needn’t die again.

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