A Speech at the Lost-and-Found by Wisława Szymborska

A Speech at the Lost-and-Found

I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north,

and also some gods while moving east to west.

I let several stars go out for good, they can’t be traced.

An island or two sank on me, they’re lost at sea.

I’m not even sure exactly where I left my claws,

who’s got my fur coat, who’s living in my shell.

My siblings died the day I left for dry land

and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.

I’ve shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,

taken leave of my senses time and again.

I’ve long since closed my third eye to all that,

washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.

Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me

how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily

declined in human form, just now making such a fuss

about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.

(Translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)

When All the Others Were Away at Mass by Seamus Heaney

When All the Others Were Away at Mass

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Wanting To Be White by Charif Shanahan

Wanting To Be White

How easy for the waterfall to turn back

into the river, the long, silent face

holding all that has passed through it

as though untouched,

undisturbed…. Then, within it,

a shadow moves—a turtle, or

kelp wavering, drifting, reaching,

trying to exist beyond its own watery nest—

and the face darkens,

quickens, stills. The waterfall

insists on its own incessant breaking, an anxiety,

a completion at once its own negation,

merging at its most opaque

with the waiting body, froth gathering, evaporating.

Sometimes I’ll come this far from home

merely to taste the air,

the always witness to this relentless constructed flow

unable to hold itself

beyond the falling of its own nature,

asserting itself only to destroy

itself. The sky is

sunless, ill-fitting, unhinging, barely awake. The river,

taking its motion from the surging above, urges,

persists, knowing

no way out, no way to extract

itself from its own circular endurance,

tenacious, whole, singularly minded

until it carries itself back to its own source.

 

Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka

Telephone Conversation

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned,

“I hate a wasted journey - I am African.”

Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

“HOW DARK?”...I had not misheard....”ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?” Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar.

It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT” Revelation came

“You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?”

Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted

I chose. “West African sepia”_ and as afterthought.

“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness chaged her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece “WHAT'S THAT?” conceding “DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”

“THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?”

“Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused-

Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears- “Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn't you rather

See for yourself?”

Elegy with Oil in the Bilge by Patrick Phillips

Elegy with Oil in the Bilge

By the time we got out on the water

the sun was so low, it wasn’t like water

but a field of gray snow that we plowed

in one endless white furrow of water

as I skirted the rocks and wrecked trawlers

and abandoned old jetties just under the water,

while you moaned in the bow, slick with fever,

whispering back to whatever the water

chattered and hissed through the hull—

until at last there were lights on the water

and I let the old Mercury rattle and sputter

its steaming gray rainbows out onto the water

as we drifted, at idle, for the last time in your life,

through that beloved, indifferent harbor.

 

Constructive by Heather McHugh

Constructive

You take a rock, your hand is hard.   

You raise your eyes, and there's a pair   

of small beloveds, caught in pails.

The monocle and eyepatch correspond.

You take a glove, your hand is soft.   

The ocean floor was done

in lizardskin. Around a log or snag   

the surface currents run

like lumber about a knot. A boat

is bent to sea—we favor the medium   

we're in, our shape's

around us. It takes time.

At night, the bed alive, what   

teller of truth could tell

the two apart? Lover, beloved,   

hope is command. Your hand

is given, when you take a hand.

 

I Don't Miss It by Tracy K. Smith

I Don't Miss It

But sometimes I forget where I am,

Imagine myself inside that life again.

Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,

Or more likely colorless light

Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.

And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,

The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke

Climbing the walls while the hours fall.

Straining against the noise of traffic, music,

Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.

And that scamper of feeling in my chest,

As if the day, the night, wherever it is

I am by then, has been only a whir

Of something other than waiting.

We hear so much about what love feels like.

Right now, today, with the rain outside,

And leaves that want as much as I do to believe

In May, in seasons that come when called,

It’s impossible not to want

To walk into the next room and let you

Run your hands down the sides of my legs,

Knowing perfectly well what they know.