#36 by Vera Pavlova

#36

 

To converse with the greats 

by trying their blindfolds on; 

to correspond with books 

by rewriting them; 

to edit holy edicts, 

and at the midnight hour 

to talk with the clock by tapping a wall 

in the solitary confinement of the universe.

(Translated by Steven Seymour) 

 

poem where no one is deported by José Olivarez

poem where no one is deported

now i like to imagine la migra running

into the sock factory where my mom

& her friends worked. it was all women

 

who worked there. women who braided

each other’s hair during breaks.

women who wore rosaries, & never 

 

had a hair out of place. women who were ready

for cameras or for God, who ended all their sentences

with si dios quiere. as in: the day before 

 

the immigration raid when the rumor

of a raid was passed around like bread

& the women made plans, si dios quiere.

 

so when the immigration officers arrived

they found boxes of socks & all the women absent.

safe at home. those officers thought

 

no one was working. they were wrong.

the women would say it was god working.

& it was god, but the god 

 

my mom taught us to fear

was vengeful. he might have wet his thumb

& wiped la migra out of this world like a smudge

 

on a mirror. this god was the god that woke me up

at 7am every day for school to let me know

there was food in the fridge for me & my brothers.

 

i never asked my mom where the food came from,

but she told me anyway: gracias a dios.

gracias a dios del chisme, who heard all la migra’s plans

 

& whispered them into the right ears

to keep our families safe.

Time Problem by Brenda Hillman

Time Problem 

The problem

of time.          Of there not being   

enough of it.

 

My girl came to the study

and said Help me;

I told her I had a time problem   

which meant:

I would die for you but I don’t have ten minutes.   

Numbers hung in the math book   

like motel coathangers. The Lean   

Cuisine was burning

like an ancient city: black at the edges,   

bubbly earth tones in the center.   

The latest thing they’re saying is lack   

of time might be

a “woman’s problem.” She sat there   

with her math book sobbing—

(turned out to be prime factoring: whole numbers   

dangle in little nooses)

Hawking says if you back up far enough   

it’s not even

an issue, time falls away into

'the curve' which is finite,

boundaryless. Appointment book,   

soprano telephone—

(beep End beep went the microwave)

 

The hands fell off my watch in the night.

I spoke to the spirit

who took them, told her: Time is the funniest thing   

they invented. Had wakened from a big

dream of love in a boat

No time to get the watch fixed so the blank face   

lived for months in my dresser,

no arrows

for hands, just quartz intentions, just the pinocchio   

nose         (before the lie)

left in the center;            the watch

didn’t have twenty minutes; neither did I.

My girl was doing

her gym clothes by herself;         (red leaked

toward black, then into the white

insignia)                  I was grading papers,

heard her call from the laundry room:   

Mama?

Hawking says there are two

types of it,

real and imaginary (imaginary time must be   

like decaf), says it’s meaningless

to decide which is which

but I say: there was tomorrow-

and-a-half

when I started thinking about it; now   

there’s less than a day. More

done. That’s

the thing that keeps being said. I thought   

I could get more done as in:

fish stew from a book. As in: Versateller   

archon, then push-push-push

the tired-tired around the track like a planet.   

Legs, remember him?

Our love—when we stagger—lies down inside us. . .   

Hawking says

there are little folds in time

(actually he calls them wormholes)

but I say:

there’s a universe beyond

where they’re hammering the brass cut-outs .. .

Push us out in the boat and leave time here—         

 

(because: where in the plan was it written,   

You’ll be too busy to close parentheses,

the snapdragon’s bunchy mouth needs water,   

even the caterpillar will hurry past you?

Pulled the travel alarm

to my face: the black

behind the phosphorous argument kept the dark   

from being ruined. Opened   

the art book

—saw the languorous wrists of the lady

in Tissot’s “Summer Evening.” Relaxed. Turning   

gently. The glove

(just slightly—but still:)   

“aghast”;

opened Hawking, he says, time gets smoothed   

into a fourth dimension   

but I say

space thought it up, as in: Let’s make

a baby space, and then

it missed. Were seconds born early, and why   

didn’t things unhappen also, such as

the tree became Daphne. . .

 

At the beginning of harvest, we felt

the seven directions.

Time did not visit us. We slept

till noon.

With one voice I called him, with one voice   

I let him sleep, remembering

summer years ago,

I had come to visit him in the house of last straws   

and when he returned

above the garden of pears, he said

our weeping caused the dew. . .

 

I have borrowed the little boat

and I say to him Come into the little boat,   

you were happy there;

 

the evening reverses itself, we’ll push out   

onto the pond,

or onto the reflection of the pond,   

whichever one is eternal

  

Interpretations by Mourid Barghouti

Interpretations

A poet sits in a coffee shop, writing.

The old lady

thinks he is writing a letter to his mother,

the young woman

thinks he is writing a letter to his girlfriend,

the child

thinks he is drawing,

the businessman

thinks he is considering a deal,

the tourist

thinks he is writing a postcard,

the employee

thinks he is calculating his debts.

The secret policeman

walks, slowly, towards him.

 

(Translated by Radwa Ashur)

'And What Now of Dreaming?' by Deborah Landau

'And What Now of Dreaming?'

And what now of dreaming?

We’ve failed the planet has published our failures.

 

Our crimes are perpetual methane

and sweltering, arrogant and endless—

 

poor fucks we are, breathing mindlessly

as the marsh grass floods,

 

and here comes the supermoon again,

like it’s so special.

 

Weak and disordered become the governments,

disquiet rules us now.

 

Onward, I thought,

and so we were obscured.

 

The snow goes to the gallows

of a warm grass and what survives?

 

Seasons grow immodest,

the bullet sun does parch

 

and drive us migratory

in search of new and fertile fields.

 

The long drought makes blaze the plankton

makes smoke the oceans

 

and insincere the governments—

a demise indelicate.

 

We’re in a deep jelly now

no cause for applause

 

but try a little clemency

my body is warm today, and yours,

 

we have this small span of time

and in this way we’re millionaires.

 

Bright colors we make when pressed, see?

Basta! dawdling on the edge again that’s me.

Alone by Tomaž Šalamun

Alone 

One finger is the tundra,

one finger is the Bodhisattva,

one finger is mother Slovenia.

Two fingers still remain, beckoning

and with awful force feeding me

seventeen hands with this arrangement.

Alone,

I’m alone on the roof of the world and drawing

so stars are created.

I’m spurting through the nose so the Milky Way is created

and I’m eating

so shit is created, and falling on you

and it is music.

I am God.

I am God and I’m dancing.

This table is a gift, this house is a gift,

this garden is a gift, these squirrels are a gift.

These human legs are murmuring mantras.

Alone,

alone.

Glug glug glug I drink gulps of light

and I brush.

So I shower and put myself back, alone.

I alone am the center of the world’s light, the Lord’s lamb.

I alone am all animals: a tiger, an ant, a deer,

a rabbit, a porcupine (a hedgehog), a butterfly, an insect,

a piranha, a baby rabbit, a daddy rabbit,

the god of ferrets, the straw hat of a sketched

puppy and his paws.

I alone am all plants: strawberries, birch, hazel,

pumpkin, fern, dandelion, juves (juves is a plant

with thin roots, resembling the roots

of parsley, but it has a nose and head like

a porcini cap and one birch’s hand,

sitting all day in a race car like a liana),

maple, oak, corn, alone.

I alone am all the people named in this book

and all the others: Joe, Janet, Agatha, Veronika,

Boris, Ivan, Italo, Pierre, alone.

I alone am the air, smoothly, the lining, two parallel tracks,

pot (to sweat), pot (the road),

the cause, the forceps, Lope de Vega, the streak,

the dot on the forehead, the dot in the air, alone.

Alone,

I alone am the air and the golden butter,

linden bark, the king, the sickle and hammer,

the Dalmatian, the saw, Armenia, the key,

alone.

(Translated by Brian Henry)

Late September by Charles Simić

Late September

The mail truck goes down the coast

Carrying a single letter.

At the end of a long pier

The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then

And forgets to put it down.

There is a menace in the air

Of tragedies in the making. 

 

Last night you thought you heard television

In the house next door.

You were sure it was some new

Horror they were reporting,

So you went out to find out.

Barefoot, wearing just shorts.

It was only the sea sounding weary

After so many lifetimes

Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere

And never getting anywhere. 

 

This morning, it felt like Sunday.

The heavens did their part

By casting no shadow along the boardwalk

Or the row of vacant cottages,

Among them a small church

With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close

As if they, too, had the shivers.