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)

Things My Grandmother Said by Amit Majmudar

Things My Grandmother Said

 

Turmeric can heal anything

but a broken heart.

I’ve got some Benadryl I bet could shush

that dog of yours. Sounds fun

but what does it pay. You can’t shoot

the spots without shooting the leopard.

If dressmaker’s dummies could cook,

we’d all be old maids.

Poetry? You’re grinding water

with a pestle of ice,

but when you’ve never thirsted a day

in your life, I guess

you can play. I know plenty

of family history, but don’t ask me

where green eyes got into the bloodline.

India invented recycling, we called it karma,

but trash now is trash later.

I wasn’t crying, I was dicing onions

in a memory in Ahmedabad.

Every time I stand up

there’s Rice Krispies in my knees.

This girl is perfect for you, I know

her aunt. Read that to me at

my funeral, boy, right now my show is on.

I got to be this old by nibbling a little

raw ginger every morning.

Ambition’s a sinkhole that deepens

the more you dump in it,

but that doesn’t mean don’t get a job.

In the old days, families were so big,

counting nephews felt like counting stars.

Every kite forgets its string.

Sure, the Ganga is holy

but who told you to drink from it?

In the Afterlife by Mark Strand

In the Afterlife

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.

Loving After Loss by Cass Donish

Loving After Loss

 

for RP

 

when two people kissing             

reinitiate each other’s foundation

—Malva Flores (trans. Jen Hofer)

 

 

 

all night long, the curtain was pulled back

and dawn drew me toward it, through the dark hours

in which, missing you, and feeling the strangeness

of missing you along with her, I swarmed above the pages

of a book searching for a lost syntax that could lead me

to this new form of desire, desire after obliteration,

I shouldn’t overstate this, the death of myself

when she died, I shouldn’t overstate it:

obliteration

 

                              the first time I saw you

I was already held in your arms,

we held each other standing in the grass in a storm,

it was the night my basement flooded and my house

vanished do you remember how the first time

we met we were already making love

in the rain we were already walking between

two houses at dawn we were already right here

in the early summer storm and then

you were in another city and I was already

missing you the day we met and realizing

I was in love with you the day we met you were

out of town and I met you in the dream I had

of walking by your house and looking up

just as you were opening the window

 

                      [when a lover’s mouth

                      reinvents a lost equation]

 

the first time I saw you, you were standing in the street

in front of my house and you waved hello

and said something from under your mask

the pandemic was ending soon on our block

we only had to be careful for a few more years

we didn’t touch for several more years

talking all night on the porch as we grew older

looking at our watches, turning pages on calendars

the first time I saw you, you were seconds

from being inside me for the first time

the first time I saw you I was pulling you

toward me, one foot on the earth,

one in the water, one star above us the first time

I saw you I was in a field without you

with the smell of thyme, animals wading in the river,

the heat of dusk on my skin, the air soaked with dusk-light

layered with dawn-light where we met for the first time

laughing nervously because we hadn’t slept

and we heard the birds beginning to fill with sound

 

           [how a lover’s voice

           reignites a new sensation]

 

                                             you were remarkable

                                            we were going to make love

for the first time and we knew it, I kept seeing

you at each moment for the first time and never

wanted this to end, resisted the urge

to know the end, I want to learn a different way to

            love I always want you         I always want to

see you for the first time and meet you

for the first time every time I wake up beside you

each morning resisting an anxiety I carry

under the surface of my skin because I am falling

in love for the first time and seeing you for the first

time each time I see you and I know the cost of love

            and yet poured forth this wish and yet couldn’t

have imagined you which is why I float in the half-night

sleepwalking with my eyes open

a sight that frightens even the animals

wading in the river and the butterflies

landing on my face who try to close my eyes for me

I tell them I’m on fire, that I carry love now

under my skin, that the love in me obliterated

me when she died and now it’s rebirthing

me into myself, this my own return

to my own transmuted bedrock the way

the way we touch becomes its own occasion