Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

 

Stevie Smith

Tree At My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

 Robert Frost

Larme

Far from birds, from herds, from village girls,
I used to drink, squatting in some heather
Surrounded by tender woods of hazel trees,
By a warm green afternoon vapor.

What could I drink from this young Oise,
Voiceless elms, flowerless lawn, overcast sky.
What was I pulling from the colocase gourd?
Some golden liquor, insipid and sweaty.

As such, I would have made a bad inn sign.
Then the storm altered the sky until sundown.
It was black country, lakes, poles,
Columns beneath blue night, railway stations.

The water of the woods vanished over virgin sands,
The wind pitched icicles from the sky into the ponds...
Well! like a fisherman for gold or shells,
To say that I had no trouble drinking!

Arthur Rimbaud

 

Teardrop

Far from the village girls, cattle, birds,

I drank, kneeling down in the heather

Surrounded by tender copses of hazel,

In the green warm mist of afternoon.

 

What could I have drunk from that young Oise,

Elms without voices, turf without flowers,

Shut sky? Or sip from the gourd of the vine?

Some liquor of gold that causes pale sweats.

 

Like that I’d have made a poor inn-sign.

Then storms altered the sky till evening.

Black landscapes, poles, lakes, colonnades

under the blueness of night, rail-stations.

 

Wood’s water was lost in virgin sand.

The wind, out of heaven, iced the ponds...

But, like fishers for gold or shells, to think

That I didn’t take the trouble to drink!

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/larme-teardrop.html

[The cry of the cicada]

 

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die. 

Matsuo Basho

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

By William Butler Yeats

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

My Blue Shirt

hangs in the closet

of this small room, collar open,

sleeves empty, tail wrinkled.

Nothing fills the shirt but air

and my faint scent. It waits,

all seven buttons undone,

button holes slack,

the soft fabric with its square white pattern,

all of it waiting for a body.

It would take any body, though it knows,

in its shirt way of knowing, only mine

has my shape in its wrinkles,

my bend in the elbows.

Outside this room birds hunt for food,

young leaves drink in morning sunlight,

people pass on their way to breakfast.

Yet here, in this closet,

the blue shirt needs nothing,

expects nothing, knows only its shirt knowledge,

that I am now learning—how to be private and patient,

how to be unbuttoned,

how to carry the scent of what has worn me,

and to know myself by the wrinkles.

 

Gary Whited

Pandemania

There are fewer introductions

In plague years,

Hands held back, jocularity

No longer bellicose,

Even among men.

Breathing’s generally wary,

Labored, as they say, when

The end is at hand.

But this is the everyday intake

Of  the imperceptible life force,

Willed now, slow —

Well, just cautious

In inhabited air.

As for ongoing dialogue,

No longer an exuberant plosive

To make a point,

But a new squirreling of air space,

A new sense of  boundary.

Genghis Khan said the hand

Is the first thing one man gives

To another. Not in this war.

A gesture of  limited distance

Now suffices, a nod,

A minor smile or a hand

Slightly raised,

Not in search of   its counterpart,

Just a warning within

The acknowledgment to stand back.

Each beautiful stranger a barbarian

Breathing on the other side of the gate.

By Daniel Halpern

RIOT (pt 3)

In a package of minutes there is this We.

How beautiful.

Merry foreigners in our morning,

we laugh, we touch each other, 

are responsible props and posts.

A physical light is in the room.

Because the world is at the window

we cannot wonder very long.

You rise. Although

genial, you are in yourself again.

I observe

your direct and respectable stride.

You are direct and self-accepting as a lion

in Afrikan velvet. You are level, lean,

remote.

There is a moment in Camaraderie

when interruption is not to be understood.

I cannot bear an interruption.

This is the shining joy;

the time of not-to-end.

On the street we smile.

We go

in different directions

down the imperturbable street.

Gwendolyn Brooks

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

E. E. Cummings