Door of Being, Octavio Paz

door of being, dawn and wake me,

allow me to see the face of this day,

allow me to see the face of this night,

all communicates, all is transformed,

arch of blood, bridge of the pulse,

take me to the other side of this night,

where I am you, we are us,

the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined,

 

door of being: open your being

and wake, learn to be ....

 

~ Octavio Paz ~

 

 

( Sunstone/Piedra de Sol, translated by Eliot Winberger)

Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer

Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer

by Stephen Dunn

 

 

Mrs. Cavendish desired the man in the fedora
who danced the tarantella without regard
for who might care.  All her life she had
a weakness for abandon, and, if the music
stopped, for anyone who could turn
a phrase. The problem was
Mrs. Cavendish wanted it all
to mean something in a world crazed
and splattered with the gook
of apparent significance, and meaning 
had an affinity for being elsewhere.
The dancer studied philosophy, she told me,
knew the difference between a sophist
and a sophomore, despite my insistence
that hardly any existed. It seemed everyone
but she knew that sadness awaits the needy.
Mr. Cavendish, too, when he was alive,
was equally naïve, might invite a wolf
in man's clothing to spend a night
at their house. This was how the missus
mythologized her husband--a man of what
she called honor, no sense of marital danger,
scrupled  beyond all scrupulosity.
The tarantella man was gorgeous and oily, 
and, let's forgive her, Mrs. Cavendish
was lonely. His hair slicked back, he didn't
resemble her deceased in the slightest,
which in the half-light of memory's belittered
passageways made her ga-ga. And I, as ever,
would cajole and warn, hoping history
and friendship might be on my side.
Mrs. Cavendish, I'd implore, lie down
with this liar if it feels good, but, please,
when he smells most of sweetness, get a grip,
develop a gripe, try to breathe your own air.

 

Still, David Romtvedt

Still by David Romtvedt The children are sleeping and the cows and chickens are sleeping, and the grass itself is sleeping. The machines are off and the neighbor’s lights, a half mile away, are out, and the moon is hanging like a powdered face in a darkened room, and the snow is shining under stars the way we are shining here in our cold skins under warm quilts. We pull our shirts over our heads and toss them to the floor and the only thing grotesque is the space through which we stumble each night. I roll to you and put my hand on your skin. You shiver and smile, “Cold. But not too cold. Some cold I like.” And draw my hand closer. I pull it away and jam it in my armpit, and while I wait for the blood I look at you, admire your face, your neck and breasts, your belly and thighs, the shadowy double of you thrown by candlelight to the wall- There is no season, no grass gone brown, no cold, and no one to say we are anything but beautiful, swimming together across the wide channel of night.

Anthem, Melissa Stein

Anthem   Melissa Stein

We were all in love but didn’t know it. We were all in love continually. Bless our little hearts, smoking and drinking and wrecking things. Bless our shameless shame. We were loud, invincible. We were tough as rails. We stole street signs and knocked over bins. Ripped the boards off boarded-up stuff. Slept in towers filled with pigeon shit and fluff. We kicked beer bottles down cobbled lanes. Tires and chains. Chains and wheels and skin. The world was always ending and we the inventors of everything.

Poetics, A.R. Ammons

Poetics
By A. R. Ammons
(1926 - 2001)

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours

What Work Is, Philip Levine

What Work Is
by Philip Levine


We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, ‘No,
we’re not hiring today,’ for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

"What Work Is" by Philip Levine from What Work Is. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1992

poem I wrote sitting across the table from you, Kevin Varrone

poem I wrote sitting across the table from you

by Kevin Varrone

 

 

if I had two nickels to rub together
I would rub them together

like a kid rubs sticks together
until friction made combustion

and they burned
a hole in my pocket

into which I would put my hand
and then my arm

and eventually my whole self--
I would fold myself

into the hole in my pocket and disappear
into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants

but before I did
like some ancient star

I'd grab your hand 

 

Variation On A Theme By Rilke, Denise Leverton

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

 

(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

 

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.

 

~ Denise Levertov ~

 

(Breathing the Water)