The Road by Muriel Rukeyser

The Road

 

These are roads to take when you think of your country

and interested bring down the maps again,

phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend,

 

reading the papers with morning inquiry.

Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light

chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights

 

indicate future of road, your wish pursuing

past the junction, the fork, the suburban station,

well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety.

 

Past your tall central city’s influence,

outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds,

are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason.

 

These roads will take you into your own country.

Select the mountains, follow rivers back,

travel the passes. Touch West Virginia where

 

the Midland Trail leaves the Virginia furnace,

iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down

into the wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel.

 

Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs.

Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add

history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee.

 

The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine

in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring,

crosscut by snow, wind at the hill’s shoulder.

 

The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow,

rivers and spring. king coal hotel, Lookout,

and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge.

 

Now the photographer unpacks camera and case,

surveying the deep country, follows discovery

viewing on groundglass an inverted image.

 

John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop

he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall’s Pillar,

but later, Hawk’s Nest. Here is your road, tying

 

you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice.

Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river

cutting fast and direct into the town.

 

White Dog by Carl Phillips

White Dog

 

First snow—I release her into it—

I know, released, she won't come back.

This is different from letting what,

 

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing

like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what

losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

 

I love her.

Released, she seems for a moment as if

some part of me that, almost,

 

I wouldn't mind

understanding better, is that

not love? She seems a part of me,

 

and then she seems entirely like what she is:

a white dog,

less white suddenly, against the snow,

 

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it,

I release her. It's as if I release her

because I know.

Under Limestone by Richie Hofmann

Under Limestone

 

It rained in fluted torrents,

the earth smelled of manure.

It was like desire

entering and possessing you quietly.

We undressed.

The sun through the windows made shapes

on the couch I lay face down on.

Our jeans were soaked

and wrinkled on the radiator, our socks heavy.

Then your eyes were opening a little.

Then you could hear the mopeds starting up again.

When it was dry enough, we found a small bistro

where we had prosecco and fries,

and took pictures of one another in our damp clothes

under trees and buildings

of the hated regime.

The Kurdish Musician by Mimi Khalvati

The Kurdish Musician

 

She is swaddled in pink, sky-blue and veiled

in a gold hejab that with every chime

of her santoor dangles its fringe where trailed

 

on her cheeks hang coins that bob in time

to her nods, throb in a pause, sway to tremor

and echo. Poised on thumbs, twin hammers mime

 

a flurry of wings, two thin furred tongues that stammer

at strings, streaming a swarm of rising notes

not through field and hedgerow, blossom and clover,

 

but through space and stars to the huge black throats

of gully and scarp where all music is stilled,

hived in a dome, as she is, rapt, remote,

 

impervious to the here and now, hands filled

with flightpaths winging home. Through her who knows

what trails might meet or where pollen has spilled

 

strange hybrids take, scrub thrive or desert rose;

groundcover prove alive, on five dark grounds

now train its greening shoots? Or who’d suppose

 

in a London sky, pink, sky-blue, that has wound

itself in the sun’s hejab, in fold on fold

veiled its own dark grounds, she too could be found,

head in the clouds, while ours are fringed with gold?

Passer-By, These Are Words by Yves Bonnefoy

Passer-By, These Are Words

 

Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading

I want you to listen: to this frail

Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee

Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.

It flits between two sprays of leaves,

Carrying the sound of branches that are real

To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be

The endless murmuring of all our shades.

Their whisper rises from beneath the stones

To fuse into a single heat with that blind

Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

May your listening be good! Silence

Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,

Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage

A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.

And for you who move away, pensively,

Here becomes there without ceasing to be. 

 

(Translated by Hoyt Rogers)

 

She Ties My Bow Tie by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

She Ties My Bow Tie

 

What you thought was the sound of the deer drinking

at the base of the ravine was not their soft tongues

entering the water but my Love tying my bow tie.

We were in our little house just up from the ravine.

Forgive yourself. It’s easy to mistake her wrists

for the necks of deer. Her fingers move so deftly.

One could call them skittish, though not really because

they aren’t afraid of you. I know. You thought it was the deer

but they’re so far down you couldn’t possibly hear them.

No, this is the breeze my Love makes when she ties me up

and sends me out into the world. Her breath

pulled taut and held until she’s through. I watch her

in the mirror, not even looking at me. She’s so focused

on the knot and how to loop the silk into a bow.

won't you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me 

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.