Full Moon by Robert Hayden

Full Moon

No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood's
tumbling Mother Goose man,

The emphatic moon ascends –
the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
the white hope of communications men.

Some I love who are dead
were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
planted seeds, trimmed their hair,

Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
as it waxed or waned.
It shines tonight upon their graves.

And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
its light made holy by the dazzling tears
with which it mingled.

And spread its radiance on the exile's path
of Him who was The Glorious One,
its light made holy by His holiness.

Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
an arms base, a livid sector,
the full moon dominates the dark. 

Cat in an Empty Apartment by Wisława Szymborska

Cat in an Empty Apartment

Die—you can’t do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

in an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here

but nothing is the same.

Nothing’s been moved

but there’s more space.

And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,

but they’re new ones.

The hand that puts fish on the saucer

has changed, too.

Something doesn’t start 

at its usual time.

Something doesn’t happen

as it should.

Someone was always, always here,

then suddenly disappeared

and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet’s been examined.

Every shelf has been explored.

Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.

A commandment was even broken:

papers scattered everywhere.

What remains to be done.

Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,

just let him show his face.

Will he ever get a lesson

on what not to do to a cat.

Sidle toward him

as if unwilling

and ever so slow

on visibly offended paws,

and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

(Translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Luna Moth by Carl Phillips

Luna Moth

No eye that sees could fail to remark you:   

like any leaf the rain leaves fixed to and   

flat against the barn’s gray shingle. But

what leaf, this time of year, is so pale,   

the pale of leaves when they’ve lost just   

enough green to become the green that means

loss and more loss, approaching? Give up   

the flesh enough times, and whatever is lost   

gets forgotten: that was the thought that I

woke to, those words in my head. I rose,   

I did not dress, I left no particular body   

sleeping and, stepping into the hour, I saw

you, strange sign, at once transparent and   

impossible to entirely see through. and how   

still: the still of being unmoved, and then

the still of no longer being able to be   

moved. If I think of a heart, his, as I’ve   

found it.... If I think of, increasingly, my

own.... If I look at you now, as from above,   

and see the diva when she is caught in mid-

triumph, arms half-raised, the body as if

set at last free of the green sheath that has—

how many nights?—held her, it is not   

without remembering another I once saw:

like you, except that something, a bird, some   

wild and necessary hunger, had gotten to it;  

and like the diva, but now broken, splayed

and torn, the green torn piecemeal from her.   

I remember the hands, and—how small they   

seemed, bringing the small ripped thing to me.

Box of Cigars by Gerald Stern

Box of Cigars

I tried one or two but they were stale

and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them

and lighting a match was useless nor could I

put them back in the refrigerator—

it was too late for that—even licking them

filled my mouth with ground-up outer leaf,

product of Lancaster or eastern Virginia,

so schooled I am with cigars, it comes in the blood,

and I threw handfuls of them into the street

from three floors up and, to my horror, sitting

on my stoop were four or five street people

who ran to catch them as if they were suddenly rich,

and I apologize for that, no one should

be degraded that way, my hands were crazy,

and I ran down to explain but they were smoking

already nor did I have anything to give them

since we were living on beans ourselves, I sat

and smoked too, and once in a while we looked

up at the open window, and one of us spit

into his empty can. We were visionaries.

Farewell by Agha Shahid Ali

Farewell

       Solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant

       - Tacitus (speaking through a British chieftain regarding Pax Romana)

At a certain point I lost track of you.

They make a desolation and call it peace.

When you left even the stones were buried:

The defenceless would have no weapons.

When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks, who collects 

       its fallen fleece from the slopes?

O Weaver whose seams perfectly vanished, who weighs the 

       hairs on the jeweler's balance?

They make a desolation and call it peace.

Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?

My memory is again in the way of your history.

Army convoys all night like desert caravans:

In the smoking oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved — all 

       winter — its crushed fennel.

We can't ask them: Are you done with the world?

In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked 

       in each other's reflections.

Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are 

       found like this centuries later in this country 

              I have stitched to your shadow?

In this country we step out with doors in our arms.

Children run out with windows in their arms.

You drag it behind you in lit corridors.

If the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.

At a certain point I lost track of you.

You needed me. You needed to perfect me:

In your absence you polished me into the Enemy.

Your history gets in the way of my memory.

I am everything you lost. You can't forgive me.

I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy.

Your memory gets in the way of my memory:

I am being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell: 

       Exquisite ghost, it is night.

The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves:

It is still night. The paddle is a lotus:

I am rowed — as it withers — toward the breeze which is soft as 

       if it had pity on me.

If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn't 

       have happened in this world?

I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me.

My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.

There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me.

I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to 

       myself.

There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me.

If only somehow you could have been mine,

what would not have been possible in the world?

How High the Moon by Adam Zagajewski

How High the Moon

Of course, there were

the family trips in summer,

picnics by the black canal

(named earlier for Adolph Hitler)

where crabs still lived;

on its banks the pines were gaunt and stunted.

Sometimes—rarely—barges holding coal,

like charcoal for a Sunday painter,

sailed due west.

The heat wave changed clothes like an opera star:

sky-blue, rosy, scarlet,

finally white, transparent.

My uncle supervised

our outings: he loved life

(but it wasn’t mutual)

If anyone told me then

that this was childhood,

I would have said no;

it was just hours and days,

endless hours,

the sweet days of June

on the banks of a canal

that never rushed,

drenched in damp dreams,

and the meek young moon

setting out alone

to vanquish night.

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

How Clowns Go by Adam Zagajewski

How Clowns Go

An old clown hands out flyers at the station
for a traveling circus. No doubt
this is how clowns go—replacing vending machines (or children).
I watch him carefully: I want to know how clowns go.

The captivating balance between sadness
and mad, infectious laughter slowly slips;
each year the furrow in the cheeks grows deeper.
What’s left is the desperately oversized nose

and an old man’s clumsiness—not a parody
of healthy, silly humans, but a broadside
on the body’s flaws, the builder’s
errors. What’s left is the large gleaming forehead, a lamp

made of white cheese (not painted now), thin lips
and eyes from which a stranger coldly
gazes, perhaps the face’s next tenant—
if the lease on this grief can be renewed.

This is how clowns go—when the world’s great indifference
invades us, enters us bitterly, like lead between our teeth.

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)