That time you lay with me
and the moon so bright
we doubted our own eyes: springtime,
and silver frost on the ground!
Like a blow, your absence.
I look for you under the bright moon
in the springtime
but the moon sinks. You are absent.
That’s why.
(after Li Po)
A younger me would have stood on his head
To prove the earth and sky are of a size
Then seeing beneath his feet the sunlit clouds
Strode off upon that opalescent path.
These days the sun has turned her face from me.
The autumn wind flings tiny knives of frost.
Far down below, the slow east river flows
Beset with whitecaps, fishing boats, and gulls.
Yes, younger, I’d have turned things upside-down:
The sparrows and the swallows at their nests,
The small birds perched among the date tree’s thorns,
All would have stopped, and quirked their heads to see!
But these days I’m no gymnast, me.
Sundown, I’ll sling my sword upon my back;
I’ll set my feet upon the dusty road
And head off down the mountain, muttering of home.
(After Li Po)
I gazed into my wine cup
Till after darkness fell.
Out of that dark pool
The vines grew up
Twining me around
And the wine was in me
And I was the wine.
Then I dreamed I stood,
Lost in the wine’s dreaming,
And the moon was there
Beneath my feet, there
Where I walked, midstream.
Somewhere an owl hooted
But nobody was there
To wake me.
(after Li Po)
I heard his dog barking down by the creek, but when I tried to follow
A hard rain fell, scattering the peach blossoms, hiding the path.
I’ve long since lost the dog, the creek, the path; I can’t hear the temple bell,
And one stand of bamboo is like any other.
I think it’s spring now, or will be soon: it’s greener, anyhow,
And sometimes I see deer, off in the woods.
No one else can tell you the right way to go, that’s what he always said;
Meaning, I thought: Trust yourself. See where that’s got me?
From so much eyeing of these bars
The panther’s gone cage-blind
So that it sees a thousand bars,
And not the world behind.
Lithely padding, circling
In movement without cease
It coils its body like a spring
That cannot find release.
And sometimes on its eye within,
The silent pictures start–
That rush through sinew, nerve and skin,
But vanish at the heart.
__________________________________
Rilke drew me in again; I’m not quite sure why. His lyricism? His romanticism? This particular poem’s fusion of imagism and philosophizing that, though it stops well short of banality, is certainly situated somewhere along the obviousness spectrum? Likely enough it was over-exposure to the slavish word-bound accuracy of over-respectful translators who run roughshod over sense and sensibility to turn–for example–this:
Sein Blick ist von Vorübergehen der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. (Ranier Maria Rilke)
into this: Continue reading
The Constitution of the United States (A Limerick Cycle)
Preamble and Article I
Preamble
The Union we hereby decree
Shall be Just, Blessed, Tranquil, and Free.
We establish, ordain it,
And herein explain it,
Presuming you all will agree.
Article I.
Section 1.
The power for all Legislating,
Resolving, and also Debating,
Inheres in the Senate
And the Representat-
ives, as we’re herein designating.
Section 2.
Representatives each State supplies
Proportionally to its size.
(There’s provision for Slaves
And for Indian braves,
But that language no longer applies.)
Representatives serve for the space
Of two years, then must run a new race.
If one of them dies
Their Governor supplies
Us another to serve in his place.
Dear reader, I’m curious: of the versions below, which do you prefer (if either), and why?
I.
They built a grand monument to the dead
And the place where the stone was quarried
Soon filled up with rainwater
And the young couples would meet there.
II.
Built to commemorate the dead
This palace stands, untenanted.
By the still pool in the quarry pit
The lovers sometimes come to sit.
Amid the high stratus clouds
In the house made of dawn
In the house that was raised at dawn,
Upon the road lit by the dawn,
Talking God needs a singer, and I am he!
He walks, and it is my feet that walk;
My limbs are become his limbs,
My body, his body,
My mind, his mind,
And he speaks, and it is my voice that speaks;
And the fierce plumes of his plumed helmet,
They nod above my head, above his head.
Beautiful what lies before him, which lies also before me;
Beautiful what comes behind him, and also behind me;
Beautiful, all that lies below, all that rises above,
Beautiful, everything on every side, beautiful!
As his voice is sacred, and of the most sacred, as pollen, and is beautiful,
So does my voice become most sacred, and beautiful,
And thus in beauty it is done;
In beauty it is done.
She called out that one’s name,
Four times she called Nayenezgani, Kill-Ogre,
And the canyon walls answered back,
And the rocks heard it.
She called out that one’s name,
Four times she called Tobadischini, Water-Child,
And the canyon walls answered back,
And the water heard it.
“Now you are part of this place.
“The rocks have heard your name,
“The water has heard it.
“Here you will always have a place.”
I could go north to Gushan temple, or west to Jiating.
I could. But here… here, I am between the calm water and the drifting clouds,
Where the young orioles squabble over perches in the sun,
Where the swallows have returned, and now are harvesting the spring mud.
Unruly flowers sprang up while I was looking elsewhere,
While my horse waded through the new grass.
No, I’ll go east again, where I long to wander
Beneath the green poplars, on White Sand Trail.
Bag of Anything 