Mimesis by Fady Joudah

Mimesis

My daughter

                        wouldn’t hurt a spider

That had nested

Between her bicycle handles

For two weeks

She waited

Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said

It will simply know

This isn’t a place to call home

And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others

Become refugees isn’t it?

Dedication by Franz Wright

Dedication

It’s true I never write, but I would gladly die with you.

Gladly lower myself down alone with you into the enormous mouth

that waits, beyond youth, beyond every instant of ecstasy, remember:

before battle we would do each other’s makeup, comb each other’s

                   hair out

saying we are unconquerable, we are terrible and splendid—

the mouth waiting, patiently waiting. And I will meet you there

                   again

beyond bleeding thorns, the endless dilation, the fire that alters

                   nothing;

I am there already past snowy clouds, balding moss, dim

swarm of stars even we can step over, it is easier this time, I promise—

I am already waiting in your personal heaven, here is my hand,

I will help you across. I would gladly die with you still,

although I never write  

from this gray institution. See

they are so busy trying to cure me,

I’m condemned—sorry, I have been given the job

of vacuuming the desert forever, well, no more than eight hours

                   a day.

And it’s really just about a thousand miles of cafeteria;

a large one in any event. With its miniature plastic knives,

its tuna salad and Saran-Wrapped genitalia will somebody

                   please

get me out of here, sorry. I am happy to say that

every method, massive pharmaceuticals, art therapy

and edifying films as well as others I would prefer

not to mention—I mean, every single technique

known to the mouth—sorry!—to our most kindly

compassionate science is being employed

to restore me to normal well-being

and cheerful stability. I go on vacuuming

toward a small diamond light burning

off in the distance. Remember

me. Do you

remember me?   

In the night’s windowless darkness

when I am lying cold and numb

and no one’s fiddling with the lock, or

shining flashlights in my eyes,

although I never write, secretly

I long to die with you,

does that count?

A Dream of Death by W. B. Yeats

A Dream of Death

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

Near no accustomed hand,

And they had nailed the boards above her face,

The peasants of that land,

Wondering to lay her in that solitude,

And raised above her mound

A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,

And planted cypress round;

And left her to the indifferent stars above

Until I carved these words:

She was more beautiful than thy first love,

But now lies under boards.

Allegro by Tomas Tranströmer

Allegro

I play Haydn after a black day

and feel a simple warmth in my hands.

The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike.

The resonance green, lively and calm.

The music says freedom exists

and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax.

I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets

and imitate a person looking on the world calmly.

I hoist the Haydnflag – it signifies:

“We don’t give in. But want peace.’

The music is a glass-house on the slope

where the stones fly, the stones roll.

And the stones roll right through

but each pane stays whole.

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

A Scholar by Don Paterson

A Scholar

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli 

The light is dying, and the clock has died;

the page succumbs to the atrocious care

that disinters the things not wholly there

by which your solemn field is justified. 

You burnish them until they bear the shine 

of common knowledge, knowing one black skill 

is yours alone: before the greater will

all text is dream, and takes on the design

of what was sought there. Thus your word is God. 

This grammarie electrifies the gate;

none pass but such as you initiate.

The students hurry by you in the quad 

attending to their feet. What can you say? 

You know your Shakespeare would have walked that way. 

Still Life in Landscape by Sharon Olds

Still Life in Landscape

It was night, it had rained, there were pieces of cars and

half-cars strewn, it was still, and bright,

a woman was lying on the highway, on her back,

with her head curled back and tucked under her shoulders

so the back of her head touched her spine

between her shoulder-blades, her clothes

mostly accidented off, and her

leg gone, a long bone

sticking out of the stub of her thigh—

this was her her abandoned matter,

my mother grabbed my head and turned it and

clamped it into her chest, between

her breasts. My father was driving—not sober

but not in this accident, we’d approached it out of

neutral twilight, broken glass

on wet black macadam, like an underlying

midnight abristle with stars. This was

the world—maybe the only one.

The dead woman was not the person

my father had recently almost run over,

who had suddenly leapt away from our family

car, jerking back from death,

she was not I, she was not my mother,

but maybe she was a model of the mortal,

the elements ranged around her on the tar—

glass, bone, metal, flesh, and the family. 

The Lie by Don Paterson

The Lie

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour

before the house had woken to make sure

that everything was in order with The Lie,

his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

I was by then so practiced in this chore

I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more

since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.

Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.

I was at full stretch to test some ligature

when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore

his gag away; though as he made no cry,

I kept on with my checking as before.

Why do you call me The Lie? he said. I swore:

it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor.

The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky

and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.

He was a boy of maybe three or four.

His straps and chains were all the things he wore.

Knowing I could make him no reply

I took the gag before he could say more

and put it back as tight as it would tie

and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door