A C.P. Cavafy Poem

Caesarion

In part to verify a date,

and in part just to pass the time,

last night I picked up a volume

of Ptolemaic inscriptions and began reading.

Those endless poems of praise and flattery

all sound the same. All the men are brilliant,

great and good, mighty benefactors;

most wise in all their undertakings.

The same for the women of the dynasty, all the Berenices

and Cleopatras, wonderful, each and every one.

When I managed to find the date in question,

I'd have put the book aside had a brief mention

of King Caesarion, an insignificant note really,

not suddenly caught my eye...

Ah, there you stood, with that vague

charm of yours. And since history has devoted

just a few lines to you, I had more freedom

to fashion you in my mind's eye...

I made you handsome, capable of deep feeling.

My art gave your face an appealing,

dreamlike beauty. In fact, I imagined you

so vividly last night, that when my lamp

went out—I let it go out on purpose—

I actually thought you had come into my room;

you were there, standing before me,

just as you would have looked in defeated Alexandria,

pale and tired, ideal in your sorrow,

still hoping for mercy from those vicious men

who kept on whispering 'too many Caesars.'

(1918) Tr. Avi Sharon

POEM: "A Dream In September"

A Dream In September


This morning I woke up, blood on
The pillow, don't know whose it was
Then we both started to explain
She was our only knowledge
We were young, we tossed our curls
Flirting with the dangerous big waves
Thirty years later now we remember
All that has happened. Yes. It does.

That time I came home afterwards
You were shuddering like the wind
But I know what you saw, the Moon
Hooked bad on the horns of the bull
That had been racing through the sky
The better part of a week. I ask you
Tossing curls, did it come your way?
You grimace again. Yes. It did.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "In Strong Winds"

In Strong Winds


The earthworms know the future
the birds fly away for the bombing
only much later do you pick up the pieces
holding your breath for the thousand leaves
your water in bottles in an unlighted room
you bite your own hand like a hamburger
a hurricane has come taking angry stock
flaying rivers and trees, sending roof slates
miles off in search of a field without a house
but you're going to miss the Apocalypse
now you have to eat the left-overs fast
before the moon sets and dark animals come
it's only August, the lucky month of leaders
you've just lost your job, you have $20.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Today The Lesson Is Fresh Air"

Today The Lesson Is Fresh Air


A 60-year-old man, and she is 23
And naturally she is very beautiful

Walking on the bridge he breathes
The air suspended between 2 peaks

She waits for each word, she presses
His hand to her ear. He doesn't say it.

Sunset seagulls play shivaree below,
One has what looks like a banana peel

Zen lessons years ago he remembers
Detachment from all that causes pain

Though desire can make a lousy poem
He will not carry her from his mind.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Why Maps Matter"

Why Maps Matter

The bugs are plaguing you

The ruts are getting deeper

You are unfolding the map

There’s a dead beast up ahead

Her giggling continues, you reach in

A brown bag for a sip of Jack D

The machine almost out of control

Not exactly because of you, but well

Damn, levity is beyond your powers

She slaps foul goo all over you

The tube says Use By 2006

And the map is nearly useless

A million insects suddenly go nuts

Their number’s been dialled at last

You swat at them hard with the map

When you get back on the sacred road

You miss your turn-off, damn it all

How far do brutal tracks go?

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The Art Of China"

The Art Of China


WW in prison
as a punishment
the guards make him
wash his own clothes

(Never pleasure for them both)

Pavement night
there was no moon
summer impenetrable
a beggar lay beating
long summer odds
feigning sleep

To walk on, to hum
to admire the skulls

(What's that in Chinese?)

Around the clock
& inches away
they're shouting
they want you to wake up

Get back on board!

Released.

Then write again.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

A William Matthews Poem

 Office Life

Drab bickering, the empire dead and tax

reports alive, paperwork, erasure,

the grime on the philodendron leaves

since who tends everybody’s plant?

It’s the triumph of habit over appetite,

like comparing the stars to diamonds.

We make copies. We send out for food. Food

arrives. We have spats and tizzies and huffs.

Isn’t it great being grown up, having

a job? We get our work done more or less

and go home. How was it today? we’re asked

and don’t know what to say. It’s like wet soot,

like us, like what we feel: stuck on itself,

as, from here, starlight seems stuck to its star.

(from New Hope For The Dead: Uncollected Matthews, 2010)

A Jorge Luis Borges Poem

  Limits


Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.


(Tr. Alastair Reid)

POEM: "Y Por La Mañana Miraba"

Y Por La Mañana Miraba

                                   Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia
                                   José Ortega y Gasset

You think you know
the histories of a person's hand
what touched it, what it did

these hearts are leather gloves
whether pounding a kitchen table
or shooting something inattentive

of course there's a gentle side
the hands of the farmer husband
who makes paper birds for children

now the hot summer months

need trucks to carry water

and the beasts are sullen

I am I and my circumstances, he says
pick up the bullet and show me
you say it to any human heart.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Rosemary Nissen-Wade Poem

Quietly Surprising

(Found poem: Cryptic crossword clues)


One enters
very quietly
the final conduit
quiet knock
Len returning
with bits of broken shell
nice to come back
into quiet, first-rate court area
the French shelter
outside the open atrium
with a kind of concealed energy
the boy it brings back
makes hand signals in water surges
surprising boy dancer
a pro, he is faultless.

(2011)

A Michael Blumenthal Poem

 The Nurse
                                                        after Tennyson

Now come the purple garments, now the white;

Now move the vagrant beds among the disinfected halls;
Now stretch the opaque hose between the antiseptic rooms:
I waken: and she looks at me.

Now droops the freshly propped-up pillow like a ghost,
And like a ghost she sets it right for me.

Now lie the intravenous tubules by the door,
And all the body's ills stare openly at me.

Now drifts the slim physician on, and leaves
His clipboard hanging like a thought in front of me.

Now folds the young nurse all her aprons up,
And slips her lovely bosom in a waiting car:
And so desire folds itself as well, and slips
Into my arms, and then is lost in me.

(2011)

A Jennifer Chang Poem

 Again A Solstice 

It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked 
for bacon in my sandwich, and then 

I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar: 

I did not use a knife. I lied 
about what he did to my faith 
in loneliness. Both mistakes.

That there is always a you. Mistake. 
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,

is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom 
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!

We swim in glittering murk. 
I tread, you tread. There are children

testing the deep end, shriek and stroke, 
the lifeguard perilously close to diving. 
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick. 

It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.

I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake. 
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion 

I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake, 
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.

What does it even mean to write a poem? 
It means today 
I'm correcting my mistakes.

It means I don't want to be lonely.

(2011)

POEM: "Bill Evans, Village Vanguard 1961"

Bill Evans, Village Vanguard 1961

                                                        for Stu Rawlinson

1.

Bill plays My Foolish Heart

What a bass line and what a piano

A smart melody beyond economics

(The cocktail glasses we can hear them)

What value could we ever add to it?                               

2.

You wrote that she’s spread by atoms

In a club where strong drink is dealt

(Way too expensive) everybody hears

The manager when he falls over, what

If the atoms still demolish the carpet?

3.

If what we do is love sweetheart come

Tell me there will be poems 10 years from now

Put your black hand back on my piano

Your word you will learn these words

And we will love until we both forget.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Angels Redux"

Angels Redux


I believe that angels always
watch for the falling spirits

bodies that are canted oddly
the eyes that give it all away

the obdurate memories
of late and tender kisses

an agreement of tongues
& just one strong word

but the day it was done
we went out shopping

after that we shot some pool
& later made love for hours

so patiently do they try
not to be fastidious.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

An Ian Hamilton Finlay Poem

Orkney Interior


Doing what the moon says, he shifts his chair
Closer to the stove and stokes it up
With the very best fuel, a mixture of dried fish
And tobacco he keeps in a bucket with crabs

Too small to eat. One raises its pincer
As if to seize hold of the crescent moon
On the calendar which is almost like a zodiac
With inexplicable and pallid blanks. Meanwhile

A lobster is crawling towards the clever
Bait that is set inside the clock
On the shelf by the wireless—an inherited dried fish
Soaked in whisky and carefully trimmed

With potato flowers from the Golden Wonders
The old man grows inside his ears.
Click! goes the clock-lid, and the unfortunate lobster
Finds itself a prisoner inside the clock,

An adapted cuckoo-clock. It shows no hours, only
Tides and moons and is fitted out
With two little saucers, one of salt and one of water
For the lobster to live on while, each quarter-tide,

It must stick its head through the tiny trapdoor
Meant for the cuckoo. It will be trained to read
The broken barometer and wave its whiskers
To Scottish Dance Music, till it grows too old.

Then the old man will have to catch himself another lobster.
Meanwhile he is happy and takes the clock
Down to the sea. He stands and oils it
In a little rock pool that reflects the moon.


from Selections (2011)

From Franz Kafka

A Message from the Emperor


The emperor—it is said—sent to you, the one apart, the wretched subject, the tiny shadow that fled far, far from the imperial sun, precisely to you he sent a message from his deathbed. He bade the messenger kneel by his bed, and whispered the message in his ear. So greatly did he cherish it that he had him repeat it into his ear. With a nod of his head he confirmed the accuracy of the messenger’s words. And before the entire spectatorship of his death—all obstructing walls have been torn down and the great figures of the empire stand in a ring upon the broad, soaring exterior stairways—before all these he dispatched the messenger. The messenger set out at once; a strong, an indefatigable man; thrusting forward now this arm, now the other, he cleared a path though the crowd; every time he meets resistance he points to his breast, which bears the sign of the sun; and he moves forward easily, like no other. But the crowds are so vast; their dwellings know no bounds. If open country stretched before him, how he would fly, and indeed you might soon hear the magnificent knocking of his fists on your door. But instead, how uselessly he toils; he is still forcing his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he overcome them; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to fight his way down the steps; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to cross the courtyard and, after the courtyard, the second enclosing outer palace, and again stairways and courtyards, and again a palace, and so on through thousands of years; and if he were to burst out at last through the outermost gate—but it can never, never happen—before him still lies the royal capital, the middle of the world, piled high in its sediment. Nobody reaches through here, least of all with a message from one who is dead. –You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes.


(1919) trans. Mark Harman

An Emily Dickinson Poem

A lane of Yellow led the eye (1650)


A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know—


(c. 1860)

A Tomaž Šalamun Poem

 Young Cops


All young cops have soft
mild eyes. Their upbringing is lavish.
They walk between blueberries and ferns,
rescuing grannies from rising waters.
With the motion of a hand they ask for
a snack from those plastic bags. They
sit down on tree stumps, looking at valleys
and thinking of their moms. But woe is me
if a young one gets mad. A Scourge
of God rings, with a club that later you can
borrow to blot your bare feet.
Every cops wears a cap, his head murmuring under it
A sled rushes down a slope in his dreams.
Whomever he kills, he brings spring to,
whomever he touches has a wound inscribed.
I would give my granny and my
grandpa, my mom and my pa, my wife
and my son to a cop to play with.
He would tie up my grannie's white hair,
but he'd probably chop up my son
on the stump of a tree. The cop himself
would be sad that his toy was broken. That's the way they are
when smoking pot: melancholy. They take off
their caps and breathe their tears into them.
Actually, they're like camels riding
in the desert, as if it were the wet palm of a hand.


(2006)

A David Hernandez Poem

 Mosul


The donkey. The donkey pulling the cart.
The caravan of dust. The cart made of plywood,
of crossbeam and junkyard tires. The donkey
made of donkey. The long face. The long ears.
The curled lashes. The obsidian eyes blinking
in the dust. The cart rolling, cracking the knuckles
of pebbles. The dust. The blanket over the cart.
The hidden mortar shells. The veins of wires.
The remote device. The red light. The donkey
trotting. The blue sky. The rolling cart. The dust
smudging the blue sky. The silent bell of the sun.
The Humvee. The soldiers. The dust-colored
uniforms. The boy from Montgomery, the boy
from Little Falls. The donkey cart approaching.
The dust. The laughter on their lips. The dust
on their lips. The moment before the moment.
The shockwave. The dust. The dust. The dust.


(2011)

POEM: "At Last"

At Last

                                     
One general dead in the afternoon
The bells are not ringing, the rain
Continues to beat to no lament

In your heart you moved
Mountains of holes, the soil
Of course the river took its toll

The dream a million times
Writing down the sounds to make
Some small thing of your own

Left out in the stars
Faint, not really in heaven
You and she belong together

You smile, it was all unspoken
She came back pulling an old suitcase
Tied round with rope, a broken wheel.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A David Rivard Poem

 The Moon In Time Lapse


The moon in time lapse sliding over skyline
the way a remote frisbee might wheel through air
as slowly as a banjo once floated across the wide
Missouri River in my mind when as a boy
the devil to pay permitted me to dream-up
my get-away from home, far from my parents'
witchy vigilance & the wine-barrel cellars
of their household—this after my experimental
stuffing of a dinner fork into a light socket
in the green gazebo under backyard grapevines.
That fuse box blown & blackened was the bliss
of departure—it was thrilling, but sometimes
I have to stop to touch my life & see if it's real.
How surprising to find that I wanted so much,
and mostly got it. My fantasies are fewer now
(one involves living through a day without
resentments, the other getting seated next to
gorgeous Fanny Ardant on a puddle jumper).
No need to see my life as a story the world
has to read, no need for sentimental
mooning & nostalgia—blessed with a bit
of amnesia anyway, I don't recall much
of what went down. I know that it's engraved
there on some cellular level, & that I can't
command the consequences. Like a spider
who has climbed atop a survey stake in a bull-
dozed field, I feel slightly truer in any case.


(2011)

POEM: "Fears We Have For Children"

Fears We Have For Children

                                                  The old man said, Johnny
                                                  It's time for us to leave
                                                                    Lou Reed


You'll keep plastic bags away
From the cracks and absent soft
They miss the sounds in the womb

The wild electricity they sense
Drawers of pills, sharp knives
Child's play, what's in store

Years later the stumbling blocks
Most voices singing gloriously
Of that one track made perfect

Keeping errant cars from them
Roads they don't know the way to
Bad directions that change the mind

Danger in a sky above, the earth
Behind, the eyes left and eyes right
Below, keep all bloody things away.

                                                
© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Unseen"

Unseen

                          for Ron Slate


The hand is a bird stretches
Past a dozen blocks of memory
Every old one of them a prison
Cardboarding a curled collection

A friend had written a poem
About the skin of days, there's
Nothing that we can't recycle
And no tough bread we won't eat

A chipped cup sits upon a rock
No need to know whether the sea
Crashes or sunshine is in the hills
On this other side of knowing

The husbandry of our souls
Can't be easy listening to silence
To the cant of the tip of the slip
The wavering moment of it

An old book lies upon the shelf
Its eyes closed against the sun
A snake bathes against the rock
Filling up, emptying cold blood.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Cynthia Zarin Poem

 Birch


Bone-spur, stirrup of veins—white colt
a tree, sapling bone again, worn to a splinter,
a steeple, the birch aground

in its ravine of leaves. Abide with me, arrive
at its skinned branches, its arms pulled
from the sapling, your wrist taut,

each ganglion a gash in the tree's rent
trunk, a child's hackwork, love plus love,
my palms in your fist, that

trio a trident splitting the birch, its bark
papyrus, its scars calligraphy,
a ghost story written on

winding sheets, the trunk bowing, dead is
my father, the birch reading the news
of the day aloud as if we hadn't

heard it, the root moss lit gas,
like the veins on your ink-stained hand—
the birch all elbows, taking us in.


(2010)

POEM: "Whomsoever Listens"

Whomsoever Listens

                                               for John Coltrane et al.


I. Acknowledgment

Who supplies your bread
The base is the bass 
To do with you
Or the blues

Ask what you did today
How did your soul fare
How did your shit fail
Explain that to your kids

Sky and abyss missing
The love supreme it is
Does it cleanse your soul
Do you acknowledge?


II. Resolution

We'll watch the sunsets
Under sunken properties
Intricate movements
Look to the metronome

A mine in Pannowonica W.A.
Limping back to my shack
After my 45-R machine drill
Had probed the earth all night

Drumming a resolution
To do no more harm, sure
To do no daylight harm, that is
A tentative arrangement chère


III. Pursuance

Pursuant to the facts
Up to the minutes
Not a moment to lose
Out in the darkness

Everything a moth
They be moving away
They be studying the moon
No path is straighter

The instruments
All those sounds
The railroad tracks
The susurrus of flights


IV. Psalm

It's a matrimony
Of feelings between
This impossible
And the next

The hills are distant
I don't hear any echo
Except distant falling leaves
One for everyone chère

No lasting memories
Worth the winds
The drum is bringing
You home again.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "At Sunset"

At Sunset

                                                     "Let me take you to a friend of mine..."
                                                      Kirk Franklin


Earlier that morning you'd tampered with
The history of your apartment, tired walls
Releasing red China blues and that fine silk

Now of a sudden, in the middle of the city
There is no more noise, traffic disappears
For a miracle moment the crowds are gone

You have taken your pleasures, it's true
And the honesty of your situation is
Daily asking for more melody and light

You look to the West, above the skyscrapers
Pink clouds are moving faster towards you
To the East a three-quarter moon is rising

How much can this be? Where is the rest?

The silence is exceptional. There is a tap
On the arm, "Teacher, what are you doing?"
You point in both directions, maybe smiling.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Steve Orlen Poem

 In The House Of The Voice Of Maria Callas


In the house of the voice of Maria Callas
We hear the baby's cries, and the after-supper
Rattle of silverware, and three clocks ticking
To different tunes, and ripe plums
Sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds
Dissecting the avenues outside. We hear, like water
Pouring over time itself, the pure distillate arias
Of the numerous pampered queens who have reigned,
And the working girls who have suffered
The envious knives, and the breathless brides
With their horned helmets who have fallen in love
And gone crazy or fallen in love and died
On the grand stage at their appointed moments--
Who will sing of them now? Maria Callas is dead,
Although the full lips and the slanting eyes
And flared nostrils of her voice resurrect
Dramas we are able to imagine in this parlor
On the evenings like this one, adding some color,
Adding some order. Of whom it was said:
She could imagine almost anything and give voice to it.


(2001)

POEM: "Inedible Food"

Inedible Food

                                     "But if it's not asking too much..."
                                       Percy Mayfield


Just because of the screw in your mouth
shards of globe in the mutton potatoes
the waiter-hair-in-my-soup, who cares
if this food is increasingly inedible
or if love skirts the eatery like a rat
Lord, but if it's not asking too much
how about gathering from memory
all the inedible foods of this fool's life
please send me someone to love again
the tendons and the gristle, fragments
of pieces to be carefully reassembled
and of that which you can never keep
place her on my right side, impressed
when I lay all the frog bones in a row.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "A Little Conversation At The Bar"

A Little Conversation At The Bar


In the spirit, I ask him, where is your spirit
In askance, you ask me, what do you mean?

What elevates you, I say, fearing no reply
Get away, you baulk, I work for my living

Always good, the leaves that keep on growing
Do you think the world doesn't notice you?

I play cricket, I'm captain of my Shanghai club
Do you follow the footie or the cricket yourself?

No, I was a rock climber for so many years
I was selfish, all other sports overtook me

So then, are you a specialist, I think to ask
I'm an all-rounder, you answer, I play it all

Willow bat that carves through watery planes
The balls that I tried seaming to perfect flight

In our imaginations, we both recoil.


© 2011 Rob Schackne