The fascination of what’s difficult
Worked out all right for you, it seems, old man,
As when Blavatsky’s esoteric cult
Helped you parse George’s automatic hand–
And who would doubt that Truth herself was caught
Dumbfounded in your raveled Celtic knot?
“No ideas but in things.”
William Carlos Williams
All righty then
so say I want an idea
you’re saying I need to
bust open a thing
and find an idea inside
maybe a bunch of them
twisting like worms
and then what?
What the hell
am I supposed to say
about all these busted things
and all these twisty ideas?
Because right now
the place is littered with things I’ve busted
that don’t work anymore
and won’t even stand up
and the ideas
have got into the floorboards
and the bag of sugar
and the mattress.
I tell you
if this is poetry
it’s nothing like what I was led to believe
back when they gave us
that wheelbarrow poem to read.
So tell me
sage of Paterson
tell me
old witch
old doctor
tell me what’s the big idea
mister thing?
I don’t know why
it never occurred to me before
but today I thought
that I could kiss you
something serious
for letting me know poetry
after all is
a respectable thing to love
so even though it’s years on
and you, last time we met,
hated me, anyway
there’s a kiss outstanding
you don’t really want
and I won’t really give
and that’s poetry too
as much as anything is
Robert Ranke Graves
Had a voice like the waves.
Its falling and rising
Was rarely surprising.
I burned my candle at both ends
Thinking to get more light —
But drowned its wick in red wine
Then tumbled down a flight.
The world laments with many tongues;
You had your one.
But you said enough, with your rhymes and your songs
And your crying, crying, crying all night long.
You were just killing time till it was time to go
But found time dies too slow.
It’s all right now, I think you’d say.
Maybe there was a better change you could have made
But finally they’re all the same.
After the games you’d played with pain
The gas was easy, anyway.
Were you afraid? Who wouldn’t be?
You knew the soul is what it feels.
A private pain is no less real:
Yours grew until it had to be set free.
I guess you did it perfectly.
(by Mascha Kaléko; translated from the German)
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.
(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.
(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.
God’s sake, don’t write a sonnet! What’s the point?
That boy you like will still be fully dressed,
And other poets still be unimpressed
(In fact, their noses may go out of joint).
Feeling is first! Form’s just an afterthought,
And rhyming’s unforgiving work at best,
When every single line feels like a test.
So, should you write a sonnet? You should not.
Oh, Petrarch, Shakespeare, had their vogue, it’s true,
But really, fourteen lines is awfully long.
Best get in — cut the middle — finish strong.
Who wants a sonnet? You should write haiku.
Trust me, I’ve thought this through and through: put down the pen.
The sonnet’s day is gone, and will not come again.
Bag of Anything 