"And I Can't Sing the Blues Any More..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

To-day we were iced in. Everything was covered, the roads were useless, the trees were silver. We made cheese and I read aloud and packed my things and cut up Christmas cards for art.

I also have decided it is time for another issue of Don't You Wish You'd Written That? (Love Poem Edition). So, without further ado, poems you wish you'd written, volume three:

The Shipfitter's Wife
Dorianne Laux

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat,
smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I'd go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
annointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me--the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torth, the whistle,
and the long drive home.

---

A Love Poem
Etheridge Knight

I do not expect the spirit of Penelope
To enter your breast, for I am not mighty
Or fearless. (Only our love is brave,
A rock against the wind.) I cry and cringe
When the cyclops peers into my cave.

I do not expect your letters to be lengthy
And of love, flowery and philosophic, for
Words are not our bond.
I need only the hard fact
Of your existence against my subsistence.
Our love is a rock against the wind,
Not soft like silk and lace.

---

An Early Afterlife
Linda Pastan

Why don't we say goodbye right now
in the fallacy of perfect health
before whatever is going to happen
happens. We could perfect our parting
like those characters in On the Beach
who said farewell in the shadow
of the bomb as we sat watching,
young and holding hands at the movies.
We could use the loving words
we otherwise might not have time to say.
We could hold each other for hours
in a quintessential dress rehearsal.
Then we would just continue
for however many years were left.
The ragged things that are coming next--
arteries closing like river silting over,
or rampant cells stampeding us to the exit--
would be like postscripts to our lives
and wouldn't matter. And we would bask
in an early afterlife of ordinary days,
impervious to the inclement weather
already in our long-range forecast.
Nothing could touch us. We'd never
have to say goodbye again.

---

Last Night You Left Me and Slept
Rumi (translation Coleman Barks)

Last night you left me and slept
you own deep sleep. Tonight you turn
and turn. I say,
"You and I will be together
till the universe dissolves."
You mumble back things you thought of
when you were drunk.

---

I Wrung My Hands Under My Dark Veil
Anna Akhmatova (translation Max Howard and Stanley Kunitz)

I wrung my hands under my dark veil...
"Why are you pale; what makes you reckless?"
--Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate...
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all
in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain."
He smiled at me--oh so calmly, terribly--
and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?"

---

Telemachus' Detachment
Louise Gluck

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.

---

Three Times My Life Has Opened
Jane Hirshfield

Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times withing it and starts
to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognise what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves
like a woman in love with winter, dropping colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light
stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

Comments

[softerthansound.livejournal.com]

I did a brief report on Ahkmatova this semester. Within five minutes, I was madly in love.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

She is amazing.