That Old Cliché by Anne Carson

That Old Cliché 

                              of polar adventure fatigue

                              flooding his body in

                              waves. This wonderful

                              longing to lie down surely

                              he's been walking for

                              years surely he should

                              stop and rest a moment

                              against one of those satiny

                              planes of ice that allure on

                              every side. Cucumbers

                              Shackleton Spam why is

                              everything draining away

                              why this silver ebbing and

                              flowing not quite reaching

                              his brain. He is so tired.

                              Pour the honey into the

                              jar. He dozes. A sudden

                              violent sneeze shatters

                              him in all directions. Oh

                              he says aloud let's not die

                              in the jar and with an

                              effort that seems to rip his

                              spine apart arches his

                              upper back. Stiffened

                              wing muscles pull hard

                              against their roots and

                              move into a lift. Pieces of

                              ice break from the

                              primaries and fall in a

                              shower. Again he strains

                              backward and up against

                              what seem like seams of

                              steel thinking maybe I

                              can't do this but all, all at

                              once the coverts jolt

                              terribly free and the

                              motion begins. He is

                              rising. Air grabs his

                              knees. Out of black

                              nothing into perfect

                              expectancy – flying has

                              always given him this

                              sensation of hope – like

                              glimpsing a lake through

                              trees or that first steep

                              velvet moment the opera

                              curtains part – he is

                              keening down the ice

                              fault. Soul fresh. Wings

                              wildawake. Front body

                              alive in a rush of freezing

                              air. He opens his mouth

                              in a cry as red sadness

                              pours away behind him

                              and the ancient smell of

                              ice floods every corner of

                              his skull. 

excerpt from Translation by Julian Randall

excerpt from Translation

 

My mother hangs up the phone

scrapes loose the tears

prepares to tell me

who is dying    this time

I speak no Spanish

my mother is the translator

of the dying

my family is always the dying

I say family despite the fact

I have attended none of their funerals

 

My abuelita was a ricocheting ghost

she died once    and I forgot

an entire language

Ok    I didn’t forget

it just became inconvenient to remember

who wants a language for the living anyway?

 

An inventory of my tongue

yields nothing

that looks like my mother

the resemblance stops at the mouth

 

She is fluent in a language

I am only ever ugly in

she falls asleep in front of the tv

her show muted    

I wonder if in her dreams 

I can speak

Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple by Robin Coste Lewis

Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple

(An erasure of Grant Allen’s Recalled to Life)

 

I don’t believe

I thought

 

or gave names

in any known language.

 

I spoke

of myself always

 

in the third person.

What led up to it,

 

I hadn’t the faintest idea. 

I only knew the Event

 

itself took place. Constant

discrepancies. To throw them

 

off, I laughed,

talked—all games

 

and amusements—to escape

from the burden of my own

 

internal history. 

But I was there

 

trying for once

to see you,

 

longed so

to see you.

 

I might meet you

in the street:

 

a bicycle leaning

up against the wall

 

by the window. Rendered

laws of my country

 

played before my face. 

Historical, two-souled,

 

forgotten, unknown

freaks of memory.

 

The matter of debts,

the violent death

 

of a near relation,

and all landing

 

at the faintest conception.

Dark. Blue. And then.

 

All I can remember

is when I saw you. 

 

It was you

or anyone else. 

 

The shot

seemed to end

 

all. It belongs

to the New World:

 

the Present

all entangled, unable

 

to move. Everything

turned round

 

and looked

at you.

The Circle by Don Paterson

The Circle

My boy is painting outer space,

and steadies his brush-tip to trace

the comets, planets, moon and sun

and all the circuitry they run

in one great heavenly design.

But when he tries to close the line

he draws around his upturned cup,

his hand shakes, and he screws it up.

The shake's as old as he his, all

(thank god) his body can recall

of that hour when, one inch from home,

we couldn't get the air to him;

and though today he's all the earth

and sky for breathing-space and breath

the whole damn troposphere can't cure

the flutter in his signature.

But Jamie, nothing's what we meant.

The dream is taxed. We all resent

the quarter bled off by the dark

between the bowstring and the mark

and trust to Krishna or to fate

to keep our arrows halfway straight.

But the target also draws our aim —

our will and nature's are the same;

we are its living word, and not

a book it wrote and then forgot,

its fourteen-billion-year-old song

inscribed in both our right and wrong —

so even when you rage and moan

and bring your fist down like a stone

on your spoiled work and useless kit,

you just can't help but broadcast it:

look at the little avatar

of your muddy water-jar

filling with the perfect ring

singing under everything.

Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams

Winter Trees

 

All the complicated details 

of the attiring and 

the disattiring are completed! 

A liquid moon 

moves gently among 

the long branches. 

Thus having prepared their buds 

against a sure winter 

the wise trees 

stand sleeping in the cold.