Chinese New Year by Justin Chin

Chinese New Year

 

It is Chinese New Year and I am standing

at the corner of Broadway and Kearny

feeling the warm brush of bodies scurrying

into stores frantic, pleased

and brisk with the glow of celebration.

Soon the gleaming roast ducks,

the carefully spit-turned roasted pork ribs,

the translucent skinned chicken steamed

in sesame oil and the raw fish tossed

in lettuce, mint and peanut sauce

will grace someone’s table:

a feast of richness, a wish

of prosperity,

a life of blessing.

No heads will be washed today, no houses swept

& don’t think about death: it’s bad

luck. I cast my numbers,

and as I age another year,

superstitions don’t hold their weight

anymore than voodoo heebie-jeebie

medicinal claims.

So come take me Year of the Monkey:

witty, articulate, passionate, youthful, vain, immature.

Make me happy with your promises

of luck and life

because it is Chinese New Year

and for a few blocks, the train

of pom pom girls, the Lowell High School band

and sequined Ms. Chinatown will pass

on the same streets where I opened my body

in the rattle of festivities, the creed

of color, the spook of flesh.

You took the uncompromising facts

of my living. Spread it out maplike

as a dangerous game. Spy vs. Spy

like in MAD magazine. You appear to me

as golden frogs. You pour rain water

from pitchers colored with familiarity over me.

I bathe in smells of palm oil, rubber

sap, cannon fodder. Fireworks

grace my feet. I put white

smoke billowing from homemade

crackers on your forehead.

Somehow this might soothe your pain

and mine. Tie ginger in sackcloth,

the tips soaked in kerosene. Suck

illness right out. Strength

nudes itself to my scrawny arms

barely able to throw a good punch

and your life starts unraveling

as mine reveals itself in

this viral flash. A 25¢ peepshow

separated by a sliding opaque

screen flashing ex-lovers,

ex-boyfriends, one night stands, blind dates

and ex-families. Tokens

fill empty jars in our respective rooms.

Candles light the stuff of our

secrets. Sometimes we lie like mad

and civility spurts

like Chinese New Year and I come

festooned with ashes and bones,

hard crumbling and all

too memorable. Miserable. Teal

pours from my mouth. Blood

of every wound, every conceivable

brilliance hides in my hair.

The hard work of walking and waking

ploughs itself in my skull

and I am ready to be brimmed

with the tasks of renewals

and burials.

I have prepared for my feasting.

I’ve paid my debts. I’ve housecleaned:

updated the address book, keeping

the names and numbers unused

anymore, written in disparate script

each, in its safe place.

The last grounding on memory must be respected.

On the day that I am nothing more

than handwriting in some trick’s

book, I will return to your memory

and the hundreds of others.

I will stand in pink fog.

Cats will breathe silent over me.

Talismans will hang from my chest.

Shiny prophecies will pierce my nipples.

My flesh will be smooth as cold coffee.

I will be a haunting

that speaks across waters, borders

and peacetime.

Did I ever think I would make it this far?

Did I make it anywhere at all?

For now, let’s push all that

to the back of our minds like shame,

let’s wave to Ms. Chinatown,

fill our bellies with food and laughter,

entertain our guests, visitors,

families, tell stories — real

and made up, be together, make love, sweat

into each other’s body because

it is Chinese New Year and I’m filling

my trays with candies, peanuts, kana,

sweets, embers, hard, nothing;

and I am looking

for the reddest red, the sweetest meats,

the loudest firecrackers and the hardest

plum blossoms to help me make

another year.

Autobiography by Nazim Hikmet

Autobiography

I was born in 1902

I never once went back to my birthplace

I don't like to turn back

at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo

at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University

at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest

and I've been a poet since I was fourteen

some people know all about plants some about fish

I know separation

some people know the names of the stars by heart

I recite absences

I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels

I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food

I haven't tasted

at thirty they wanted to hang me

at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize

which they did

at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year

at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24

in '61 the tomb I visit is his books

they tried to tear me away from my party

it didn't work

nor was I crushed under the falling idols

in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death

in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart

waiting to die

I was jealous of the women I loved

I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit

I deceived my women

I never talked my friends' backs

I drank but not every day

I earned my bread money honestly what happiness

out of embarrassment for others I lied

I lied so as not to hurt someone else

but I also lied for no reason at all

I've ridden in trains planes and cars

most people don't get the chance

I went to opera

most people haven't even heard of the opera

and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit

mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers

but I've had my coffee grounds read

my writings are published in thirty or forty languages

in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned

cancer hasn't caught up with me yet

and nothing says it will

I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that

and I wouldn't want such a life

nor did I go to war

or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night

and I never had to take to the road under diving planes

but I fell in love at almost sixty

in short comrades

even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief

I can say I've lived like a human being

and who knows

how much longer I'll live

what else will happen to me

This autobiography was written 

in east Berlin on 11 September 1961 

(Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

Love Poem with Tumor and Petrified Dog by Kaveh Akbar

Love Poem with Tumor and Petrified Dog

There is a tumor in my sacroiliac joint 

and snowflakes in my coffee. 

I’m in Iowa with the cats

and you’re in Pompeii.

You send a video: lizards rushing into limestone

which remind you of being a kid in Florida. 

In Florida we memorized sonnets

while leaping around green anoles. 

I’ve forgotten the poems. 

Your black tights, even in that heat. 

Mostly that’s what I remember.

It’s okay to say it straight. 

Like: I’m scared, still,

that I might be dying. 

Pomegranates growing from Pompeiian ash, 

scandalizing propriety—

you send a picture and I do not say,

It just looks like a tree

or Another of God’s secrets 

wasted on me. 

Which part of the mind 

gets you to the soul?

I am reading St. John of the Cross,

a character you might’ve put in a poem:

In the evening of life,

we will be judged on love alone. 

Some petrified dog. Table bread,

a painted doorway. 

You’ve been with me forever.

You know all my angels.

How could I say no to you, 

taking off your earrings to kiss me?

The Dictator in Prison by Adèlia Prado

The Dictator in Prison

 

The dictator is writing poetry,

poor fellow,

poor us for saying

poor fellow,

since he, too, has a memory

to conjure orange trees,

little bowls of pudding,

laughter and pleasant conversation—

a paradise of lowly delights.

The impatiens have barely opened

and the bees are already busy among them,

turning the day perfect.

Let’s not ridicule the bloodthirsty man

who, under the eyes of the guards,

pours his desire—equal to anyone’s—

into a notebook:

I want to be happy, I want an elastic body,

I want a horse, a sword and a good war!

The dictator is devout,

he observes his canonic hours

like the monks in the choir,

and dozes over the Koran.

I who live outside the walls

tremble for the fate

of a man who pounded the ground

with his iron boot.

Let no one interrupt the outcast’s prayer

or ridicule his verses.

God’s mercy is strange,

its mystery crushing.

For some unfathomable reason

I am not the prisoner.

My compassion is too large

to be my own.

He who invented hearts

loves this poor wretch with mine.

(translated by Ellen Doré Watson)

Hidden Things by Constantine P. Cavafy (Two Translations)

Hidden Things

 

From all I did and from all I said

they shouldn’t try to find out who I was.

An obstacle was there and it distorted

my actions and the way I lived my life.

An obstacle was there and it stopped me

on many occasions when I was going to speak.

The most unnoticed of my actions

and the most covert of all my writings:

from these alone will they come to know me.

But perhaps it’s not worth squandering

so much care and trouble on puzzling me out.

Afterwards –in some perfect society –

someone else who’s fashioned like me

will surely appear and be free to do as he pleases.

 

(Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)

Hidden Things

 

From all I did and all I said

let no one try to find out who I was.

An obstacle was there that changed the pattern

of my actions and the manner of my life.

An obstacle was often there

to stop me when I’d begin to speak.

From my most unnoticed actions,

my most veiled writing—

from these alone will I be understood.

But maybe it isn’t worth so much concern,

so much effort to discover who I really am.

Later, in a more perfect society,

someone else made just like me

is certain to appear and act freely.

 

(translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

The Gods Abandon Antony by Constantine P. Cavafy (Two Translations)

The Gods Abandon Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, there comes the sound

of an invisible procession passing by

with exquisite music playing, with voices raised—

your good fortune, which now gives way; all your efforts’

ill-starred outcome; the plans you made for life,

which turned out wrong: don’t mourn them uselessly.

Like one who’s long prepared, like someone brave,

bid farewell to her, to Alexandria, who is leaving.

Above all do not fool yourself, don’t say

that it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;

don’t stoop to futile hopes like these.

Like one who’s long prepared, like someone brave

as befits a man who’s been blessed with a city like this,

go without faltering toward the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the entreaties and the whining of a coward,

to the sounds—a final entertainment—

to the exquisite instruments of that initiate crew,

and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria, whom you are losing.

(Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)

The Gods Abandon Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear

an invisible procession going by

with exquisite music, voices,

don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,

work gone wrong, your plans

all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say

it was a dream, your ears deceived you:

don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.  

(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Weather Forecast by Adélia Prado

Weather Forecast

 

The spirit of rebellion

also called hopelessness                                                              

has begun another sinister round.   

His dark and cold come straight from hell.

I was expecting happy days from May,

but so far the only sunny thing was Albertina’s news

that she was chosen to sing “Jesus is the bread of heaven.”

That’s bread without butter, Albertina,                                             

just so you know.

We eat it with bitter herbs

(Translated by Ellen Doré Watson)  

Cul-De-Sac by Andrea Cohen

Cul-De-Sac

Like all tyrants,

my mother made

decrees. The last

straw was the law

that said: no frogs

inside the house.

The lousy universe!

I was seven and ready

to flee with nothing. At

least take a sandwich,

my mother said,

tucking a foil brick

into the kerchief

I’d tied to a stick. I

was a real hobo.

I barely watched her

watch me walk off.

I got all the way

to the cul-de-sac

and sat down to eat.

It was a sandwich

full of grief––

grief and salt,

grief and tomatoes,

grief and cheese.

How far into

far did I go?

How is it

my glass of milk

was still cold

when I got home?

Still Life with Rose by Richard Scott

Still Life with Rose

 

Like a foreskin being pulled back, the damask 

reveals – pelvic bowl of pink-fringed shadow, 

dense sweet-meat bloom, coral’d cave, puce 

empyrean with no vanishing point, planetary blush! 

So let me in – where everything is new-born 

and crystalline, paused and protected – into that other 

world, that high-shine place of safety, arranged 

and sparking up like a bower. Almost every day, 

for some moments, I think about him – the black 

stems, thorns that can prick so deeply, whorl 

of serrated leaves, all just beneath, around – still 

gorgeousness – your petal’d cumulus, your constancy – 

helps me live. O rose keep on stunning for me – 

for all us boys who have been ruined by men.

I Dare You by Dorianne Laux

I Dare You

 

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid

of books, getting ready to retire,

to move some place smaller, more

manageable. We’re living in reverse,

age-proofing the new house, nothing

on the floors to trip over, no hindrances

to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,

a small table for two. Our world is

shrinking, our closets mostly empty,

gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,

the bells and whistles. Now, when

someone comes to visit and admires

our complete works of Shakespeare,

the hawk feather in the open dictionary,

the iron angel on a shelf, we say

take them. This is the most important

time of all, the age of divestment,

knowing what we leave behind is

like the fragrance of blossoming trees

that grows stronger after

you’ve passed them, breathing

them in for a moment before

breathing them out. An ordinary

Tuesday when one of you says

I dare you, and the other one

just laughs.

 

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid

of books, getting ready to retire,

to move some place smaller, more

manageable. We’re living in reverse,

age-proofing the new house, nothing

on the floors to trip over, no hindrances

to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,

a small table for two. Our world is

shrinking, our closets mostly empty,

gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,

the bells and whistles. Now, when

someone comes to visit and admires

our complete works of Shakespeare,

the hawk feather in the open dictionary,

the iron angel on a shelf, we say

take them. This is the most important

time of all, the age of divestment,

knowing what we leave behind is

like the fragrance of blossoming trees

that grows stronger after

you’ve passed them, breathing

them in for a moment before

breathing them out. An ordinary

Tuesday when one of you says

I dare you, and the other one

just laughs.

You Want Me Pale by Alfonsina Storni

You Want Me Pale

 

You want me pale,

Made of sea foam,

A mother of pearl.

Made of white lily,

Untouched among the others.

Made of thinning perfume.

Petals sealed.

 

Not touched by moonbeams,

Not called 'sister' by the daisies.

You want me like snow,

You want me white,

You want me pale.

 

You have had all

The cups in your hands,

Flowing fruit and honey,

Staining your lips dark.

You have been in the banquet

Laced with grapevines,

Relinquishing your meat,

Reveling in Bacchus.

You have been in the gardens,

Black with deception,

Wearing red and

Running into ruin.

 

You have kept your

Skeleton intact, and by

Miracles I do not know,

Still expect me to be white

(God forgive you for it),

Still expect me to be spotless

(God forgive you for it),

Still expect me to be pale.

 

So flee into the woods,

Run into the mountains;

Clean your mouth;

Live in a cottage;

Touch the damp earth

With your hands;

Nourish your body with

The bitter root;

Drink, like Moses,

From the rocks;

Sleep upon the frost;

Rejuvenate your flesh

With saltpetre and water;

Speak with the birds,

Rise with the sun.

And when your body

Has returned to you,

When it's become entangled

In the bedroom of your soul,

Only then, good man,

Can you expect me to be pale,

Expect me to be snow,

Expect me to be untouched.

 

(Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Fletcher)

We Wait by Adam Zagajewski

We Wait

One afternoon

Alfred Cortot plays Chopin

but only on a record

So what

There is eternity

There is delicacy

and dark powers

that drowse

We all wait

what comes next

There is eternity

but it ends soon

Sounds are lightning strokes

they can’t be stopped

We can be stopped

just like that

stop

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

My Aunts by Adam Zagajewski

My Aunts

 

Always caught up in what they called 

the practical side of life 

(theory was for Plato), 

up to their elbows in furniture, in bedding, 

in cupboards and kitchen gardens,

they never neglected the lavender sachets 

that turned a linen closet to a meadow. 

 

The practical side of life, 

like the Moon’s unlighted face, 

didn’t lack for mysteries; 

when Christmastime drew near, 

life became pure praxis 

and resided temporarily in hallways, 

took refuge in suitcases and satchels. 

 

And when somebody died--it happened 

even in our family, alas—

my aunts, preoccupied

with death’s practical side, 

forgot at last about the lavender,

whose frantic scent bloomed selflessly 

beneath a heavy snow of sheets.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

And so I have, so I have,

                    the seasons curling around me like smoke,

Gone to the end of the earth and back without sound.

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

Without by Joy Harjo

Without

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

 

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

 

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

 

“I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead.”

 

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

 

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

 

(Translated by Robert Bly)