Without by Donald Hall

Without

we live in a small island stone nation

without color under gray clouds and wind

distant the unlimited ocean acute

lymphoblastic leukemia without seagulls

or palm trees without vegetation

or animal life only barnacles and lead

colored moss that darkens when months do

hours days weeks months weeks days hours

the year endures without punctuation

february without ice winter sleet

snow melts and recovers but nothing

without thaw although cold streams hurtle

no snowdrop or crocus rises no yellow

no bright leaves of maple without autumn

no spring no summer no autumn no winter

no rain no peony thunder no woodthrush

the book is a thousand pages without commas

without mice maple leaves windstorms

no castles no plazas no flags no parrots

without carnival or the procession of relics

intolerable without brackets or colons

silence without color sound without smell

without apples without pork to rupture gnash

unpunctuated without churches uninterrupted

no orioles ginger noses no opera no

without fingers daffodils cheekbones

the body is a nation a tribe dug into stone

assaulted white blood broken to fragments

provinces invade bomb shoot shell

strafe execute rape retreat and attack

artillery sniper fire helicopter gunship

grenade burning murder landmine starvation

the ceasefire lasts forty-eight hours

then a shell explodes in a market

pain vomit neuropathy morphine nightmare

confusion terror the rack the screw

vincristine ara-c cytoxan vp-16

loss of memory loss of language losses

foamless unmitigated sea without sea

delirium whipmarks of petechiae pcp

multiple blisters of herpes zoster

and how are you doing today I am doing

one afternoon say the sun comes out

moss takes on greenishness leaves fall

the market opens a loaf of bread a sparrow

a bony dog wanders back sniffing a lath

it might be possible to pick up a pencil

unwritten stanzas taken up and touched

beautiful terrible sentences unuttered

the sea unrelenting wave gray the sea

flotsam without islands broken crates

block after block the same house the mall

no cathedral no hobo jungle the same women

and men they long to drink hayfields

without dog or semicolon or village square

without monkey or lily without garlic

Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

these hips have never been enslaved, 

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.

these hips are magic hips.

i have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top!

 

Patience by Kay Ryan

Patience

Patience is

wider than one

once envisioned,

with ribbons

of rivers

and distant 

ranges and 

tasks undertaken

and finished

with modest 

relish by

natives in their 

native dress.

Who would 

have guessed

it possible 

that waiting

is sustainable—

a place with 

its own harvests.

Or that in 

time’s fullness

the diamonds 

of patience

couldn’t be 

distinguished

from the genuine 

in brilliance

or hardness.

A Song and the Sultan by Mahmoud Darwish

A Song and the Sultan

It was no more than the description of a burst of rain 

and handkerchiefs of lightning which burned the secret of trees— 

then why did they resist her? 

When she said that something different from this water 

runs in the river 

and the people of the shore are statues and other things, 

why did they torture her? 

When she told them the forest was abounding with secrets 

and the moon was stabbed with a carving knife 

and the blood of the nightingale was on that stone, abandoned, 

why did they resist her? 

Why did they torture her? 

When she said, my country is a mountain of sweat 

and on the small bridge a man is dying 

and darkness burning 

the Sultan was angry 

and the Sultan is an imaginative creature. 

He said, “The fault is in the mirror 

so let your singer be silent 

and let my kingdom from the Nile to the Euphrates be.” 

and he shouted, “Put that poem in prison!” 

The torture room, for security, 

is a thousand times better than an anthem or a newspaper. 

Go and tell the Sultan 

that the wind cannot be wounded by the shake of a sword 

that millions of trees can become green 

in the cupped hand of a single letter. 

But the Sultan was angry, and the Sultan is everywhere 

on stamps, in psalms, 

and on his forehead is the tattoo of hunting. 

He shouted, “It is ordered! 

Execute this poem!” 

Execution Square is the best anthology for obstinate sons. 

Go and tell the Sultan 

that lightning cannot be imprisoned in a corncob 

that songs are the logic of the sun 

and the history of sheaves 

and the nature of earthquakes. 

That songs like tree trunks may die in one land 

but sprout in every country 

The blue sun was an idea 

the Sultan tried to submerge 

but it became the birthday of an ember 

and the red sun has become an ember 

which the Sultan in vain imprisoned 

and suddenly the fire 

is a revolution! 

The voices of blood 

have taken the tone of a tempest 

and the pebbles of the Square are becoming 

like open wounds 

and I laugh, awed by the birth of the wind. 

When the Sultan resisted me 

I grasped the key of the morning 

and groped my way with the lamps of wounds. 

Oh how wise I was when I gave my heart 

to the call of the tempest! 

Let the tempest roar, 

O let the tempest roar . . . !

(Translated by Rose Styron)

 

The Mower by Philip Larkin

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

 

The Hug by Thom Gunn

The Hug

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined

Half of the night with our old friend

Who'd showed us in the end

To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.

Already I lay snug,

And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,

Suddenly, from behind,

In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:

Your instep to my heel,

My shoulder-blades against your chest.

It was not sex, but I could feel

The whole strength of your body set,

Or braced, to mine,

And locking me to you

As if we were still twenty-two

When our grand passion had not yet

Become familial.

My quick sleep had deleted all

Of intervening time and place.

I only knew

The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.  

 

Excerpt from "Gutted" by Justin Chin

Excerpt from "Gutted"

I would not mind getting the cancer

that Ali MacGraw gets in Love Story,

the cancer where as you lay dying,

you become more beautiful and more moisturized.

The classic death would be Garbo’s Camille,

but all that coughing and flopping around on the bed

is just so undignified. I realize she had consumption,

but at least Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge 

still managed to karaoke with her consumption.

I certainly wouldn’t want the cancer

Debra Winger gets in Terms of Endearment.

“Come to Laugh, Come to Cry, Come to Care, Come to Terms.”

Oh, just go away already.

The death I would most like

is Bette Midler’s in The Rose.

Where, up on stage in front of a packed house,

I’ll tell the story of the first time I heard

the blues, and as the story winds down,

my speech all slurry and raised to an odd minor chord,

I’ll wonder, Why is it so dark? Who turned off all the lights? Where has

everybody gone?

                                                                       Then I will collapse and die.

My one request for my funeral

is that at no point should “I Believe I Can Fly”

be sung, played, hummed, mumbled, muttered,

mentioned or thought of.

                                  This is how poltergeist activity gets started.

But I know, I know my death

                                  will not kill me.

Rather it is the death of others

                                  that will kill me.