POEM: "Diplomacy by Cartography out of Geography"

Diplomacy by Cartography out of Geography


Space and sovereignty
present a map face
to the ageing world

Drop the ball you never get it back

Monkeys watch the river banks
and slow boats ply a trade
along the new tides

Demarcate, cut, remarcate, reform

Jokes and jibes are
turned into clouts
pigs and punches

Sovereign heads are split

The people believe
there is no plan
there is no map

The sea's path in moonlight

Horses in their stalls 
they're off racing
the field is even

A city changes a memory

The people’s thunder
wonders if there’s 
no going back.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

An Anselm Berrigan Poem

Degrets

drawn frogs appear to serve the exoskeletal goddess
in full mollusk shrug, shelves built for dated wreck
registers, cranial outbursts finely detailed, opening
at the outline of a spotlit ribcage, lists of thefts enter
micro-entry zones, respectability a possessive monster
needleteeth palms, langorous working in a front of
poured-in window light, off-white airshaft blue pushing
forward into the flatness of a room masquerading as
two wear out a corner, somnambulist soap performance
trickles along, black & white docu-film footage of
my fam’s thing-strewn space makes way into numbered
views, anyone may anonymously enter the screen
version of your interior & very few will, column
of skulls stands up a bulb socket, speed hump ahead
15 mph, minnows twig-hopping, playing pick up styx
in the hydroponic vape church fuming newness outs
of touch, & truth kicks back at a fool’s conception of
neutrality, thump thump, these kids need to stop falling
out of bed, ghost marooned on sock induces mock
shriek from the sub-aquatic generation I raise on stay
or no cookie, name of network: true, like & hurt go
hand in hand, the zebraic cosmologic selfie rides with
a drone stick, acktility expenses, tick trick carriers
careening into shape of snakes, sonar belts aura
saying activate instead of turn on, to radicalize a golden
tongue, dig the corpse & call it rotary possiblimity, we
just can’t help wiping the weird out of intelligence

(2016)

POEM: "The Wrecking Crew"

The Wrecking Crew


There's no irony present
couple workers look over
these old poems beating
witness to the bulldozer
a masterpiece on a wall
today hard to remember
in this dust this busy mess
to believe that there will be
at least one Angel of Beauty
who sits across the street
drinking a double expresso
who waits on the last brick
to be picked up thrown upon
the truck that's revving up
who will sigh right back
and then say God bless.


© 2013 Rob Schackne


photo by permission © 2013 Sue Anne Tay

www.shanghaistreetstories.com

A David Ignatow Poem

Against the Evidence

As I reach to close each book
lying open on my desk, it leaps up
to snap at my fingers. My legs
won't hold me, I must sit down.
My fingers pain me
where the thick leaves snapped together
at my touch.
                       All my life
I've held books in my hands
like children, carefully turning
their pages and straightening out
their creases. I use books
almost apologetically. I believe
I often think their thoughts for them.
Reading, I never know where theirs leave off
and mine begin. I am so much alone
in the world, I can observe the stars
or study the breeze, I can count the steps
on a stair on the way up or down,
and I can look at another human being
and get a smile, knowing
it is for the sake of politeness.
Nothing must be said of estrangement
among the human race and yet
nothing is said at all
because of that.
But no book will help either.
I stroke my desk,
its wood so smooth, so patient and still.
I set a typewriter on its surface
and begin to type
to tell myself my troubles.
Against the evidence, I live by choice.

(1993)

A Tess Taylor Poem

Mud Season

We unstave the winter’s tangle.
Sad tomatoes, sullen sky.

We unplay the summer’s blight.
Rotted on the vine, black fruit

swings free of strings that bound it.
In the compost, ghost melon; in the fields

grotesque extruded peppers.
We prod half-thawed mucky things.

In the sky, starlings eddying.
Tomorrow, snow again, old silence.

Today, the creaking icy puller.
Last night I woke

to wild unfrozen prattle.
Rain on the roof—a foreign liquid tongue.


(2016)

MUSIC: David Bowie, "Heroes" (Live in Berlin 1987)

I, I will be king

And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day

I, I wish you could swim

Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh we can be heroes, just for one day

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)

And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, forever and ever
Then we could be heroes, just for one day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C7FlnBt1q4&list=RD0C7FlnBt1q4

POEM: "This is serious"

“This is serious”
                           
                           for Robert Brown

This is serious. It knocks
At places I don't usually visit
Let it in. The machinery of the brain
I go deeper into my own nature.

The rain asks me to sleep
Dreams then ask me to come
With her. We'll fly. Let it happen
I’m serious. Nature is a machine.

Daytime so different. See it
Missing the components. But
That isn’t really where we'll go
Let all the good air through.

Let it happen. We let nature go
Let the rain that's so indifferent
Supersede what is missing
Wet with tears again.


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Delilah"

Delilah


She looks at me
I look at her
She turns away
I look at her
She looks away
I look at her
She looks at me
I look away
She looks at me
I turn away
She looks away
I look at her
She looks at me


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The Paper Cut"

The Paper Cut


Handling a precious calendar
with only my normal frenzy
when shit the left index finger
is sliced you know the one
I use to switch stuff on & off
in the spaceship before reentry
then before assessing the damage
I manage to twist my ankle
and further damage the nerves
I'm shouting at Scuttles the Robot
to go fetch the skin spray then go
back to the lab for the micromovie
How it throbs for the days on Earth
the Fool laughs under its breath
under the lens unfolds the reason
the blood had a latch that was undone
and the tiny blade came through
with astonishing ferocity.


© 2013 Rob Schackne­­

A Rainer Maria Rilke Poem

"As long as you catch what you've thrown yourself"

As long as you catch what you've thrown yourself, it's all 

just clever agility and venial gain;
but when you suddenly come to catch a ball
an eternal playmate has thrown
at you, at your center, has exactly set
in mastered motion, in an arc
out of God's great bridge-building -
then that you catch is real power:
not yours, the world's. And when you even
have the strength to throw it back,
no, better yet: have forgotten courage and strength
and thrown it back already...(the way the year
throws birds, the flocks of migrating birds
hurled over the ocean from an old to a new
warmth - ) then, that gamble, is the first moment
you too can be said to play. You
unburden yourself of the throw no longer; you burden
yourself with the throw no longer. Out of your hands steps
the meteor and it races into its skies...

(1922)

POEM: "The Cured As Was"

The Cured As Was


Trolls at the toll-booth 
Charging a lot to convert
Matter into spirit, one way
(Spirit into matter, other way)
And the light is in the windows
What’s your game? They sneer
When I display it upside down
While they look at it jabbering
Stubby grey fingers stabbing
What’s this then? They are irate
They think my desires are unclear
I gather up the papers and turn back.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

A Sam Sax Poem

Description for Police

what did the suspect look like?

the sound a shadow makes breathing tallow & spume back
into its heaving barnacled body, deranged gospel of milk-teeth,
a votive candle extinguished in a flat glass of cola.

what was the suspect’s gender?

something like a brick buried in the walls of a library.
or maybe just the word – brick – buried in books: demolished
tower scattered amidst babel, a building hidden in a building.

what was the suspect’s race?

a beam of light
throws up its hands
& is skinned alive.

did the suspect have a weapon?

thank god we no longer carve the shape of our dead
general’s faces into mountains. thank god we’ve bred
wolves into dogs into dolls

thank god we’ve deformed wheat germ & corn
into new edible organism. don’t forget all the good
that can be done with a scythe.

what was the suspect wearing?

cotton, trapped in a bottle of rubbing alcohol, or caught on a length of chain fence,
or woven into the fabric of a bulk-pack of white t’s from the grocery. gets dirty
easy but for that one night, you’ve never seen anything cleaner in your life

what did the suspect say?

if you look at any animate object
under a microscope, you’ll see
it’s made of smaller screaming parts.

if you smash the microscope, take the blood
it makes of your hands & bathe your eyes. tell me
what you see, how simple & red the light.

(2016)

POEM: "How badly does"

“How badly does”


How badly does
it want her to leave
with her little red laugh
the slammed door
a broken irreplaceable
and you (me) stinking
with a 4-day beard
eyes like a panda bear’s
whiskey again for breakfast
pages scattered about the floor
your (my) music on a loop
notes between the notes
and no job, no money
no holidays to share
outside of your (my)
own mind, imagine that.


© 2016 Rob Schackne

A Jane Hirschfield Poem

My Doubt

I wake, doubt, beside you,
like a curtain half-open.

I dress doubting,
like a cup
undecided if it has been dropped.

I eat doubting,
work doubting,
go out to a dubious cafe with skeptical friends.

I go to sleep doubting myself,
as a herd of goats
sleep in a suddenly gone-quiet truck.

I dream you, doubt,
nightly—
for what is the meaning of dreaming
if not that all we are while inside it
is transient, amorphous, in question?

Left hand and right hand,
doubt, you are in me,
throwing a basketball, guiding my knife and my fork.
Left knee and right knee,
we run for a bus,
for a meeting that surely will end before we arrive.

I would like
to grow content in you, doubt,
as a double-hung window
settles obedient into its hidden pulleys and ropes.

I doubt I can do so:
your own counterweight governs my nights and my days.

As the knob of hung lead holds steady
the open mouth of a window,
you hold me,
my kneeling before you resistant, stubborn,
offering these furious praises
I can’t help but doubt you will ever be able to hear.


(2016)

POEM: "Is Who A Photographer?"

Is Who A Photographer?

I am a writer
I spend my life in the visual arts

I have a great memory
I’ve spent my life in film

I hear music everywhere
I’ve spent a lifetime making music

Joy has mingled with sorrow
Love was mixed with hate

Clinging to life or death
Keats will live longer than me

Already 60 with no prospects of fame.


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Indra's Net"

Indra’s Net


Wispy the reticulum
That stretches invisibly
From the dark end to the light

Observe the landscape
The old hills covered by road
The ghosts of trees still sighing

Consider that nature loves you
It communicates its assets
The seconds stop moving

Look up at the burning stars
You will be safe in the dark
Sleep will be bestowed

The heart floats in crystal ships
Love, this hope, that dreams
From palace to new palace

Wispy the reticulum
That stretches invisibly
From the dark end to the light


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "New Year Poets"

New Year Poets 


It’s not spring, it’s not 
     winter
we agree it doesn’t
     matter
poetry dead
     around the world
but alive around 
     our table
twenty tigers eating 
     dinner
drinking wine instead
     of water
a smile here, a smile
     there
eating our vegetable
     lives
beauty in a circle
     we take deep breaths
later 

     the traffic jams
back to the zoo. 

© 2015 Rob Schackne

A William Carlos Williams Poem (3)

January

Again I reply to the triple winds
running chromatic fifths of derision
outside my window:
                                          Play louder.
You will not succeed. I am
bound more to my sentences
the more you batter at me
to follow you.
                                          And the wind,
as before, fingers perfectly
its derisive music.

(1921)

POEM: "Drive"

Drive

If life is just a gamble 
why are the bets so small
should have taken the tunnel
instead of the bridge, subway
all the way minimum traffic
thunder every three minutes
going in opposite directions
maybe this is all they have to say
maximum speed is what matters
my arm around her shoulders
lying in bed her leg crosses
her own special line, drawing
the meal a story the afternoon
now it's started raining heavily
I am not where I wanted to be


© 2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Anna Setton (2012), Sarah Vaughan (1977), Elis Regina (1967), Andy Bey (2007) Sing "O Cantador" / "Like A Lover"

O Cantador (Dori Caymmi & Nelson Motta) 

Amanhece, preciso ir 

meu caminho é sem volta e sem ninguém 

Eu vou prá onde a estrada levar 

Cantador só sei cantar 

Ah! eu canto a dor 

canto a vida e a morte, canto o amor 

Cantador não escolhe o seu cantar 

Canta o mundo que vê 

e pro mundo que vi meu canto é dor 

mas é forte prá espantar a morte 

prá todos ouvirem minha voz 

mesmo longe 

De que servem meu canto e eu 

se em meu peito há um amor que não morreu 

Ah! se eu soubesse ao menos chorar 

cantador só sei cantar 

Ah! Eu canto a dor 

de uma vida perdida sem amor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK7IvDqA1-w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w8Tv1DWqr8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nx6HrpkUAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ZW7Y4HFuM

And for a little more of the wonderful Anna Setton...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdsw7ykzgXY

POEM: "The Day After Tomorrow"

The Day After Tomorrow

The building blocks shall

largely cover every place

except for that space between

Where the occasional sky opens up

below of course lie city streets

that people follow everywhere

Mirrored windows so sealed against

neither hearts nor storms
can shine on lively forms        

How did everything get so bad

does any ever change into

a thing approaching freedom

Only now I don’t know where to go

or what I need to write down

to whom and why and when

You say everything leads me to you

except the sky above

and all the sky below.

© 2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Randy Newman, "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" (1979)

Randy Newman and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The song, well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4c54PAzXrM

POEM: "Ordinary Storms"

Ordinary Storms 

I know by now why the Earth hums
The Earth hums because the oceans
Love to strum the bits of land they fill

I know tonight why little kids point
With an arm and a finger to call us out
It's time to see the future and the past

And I know why it rains for everyone
It's because the streets fill with love, else
The night won't fall and I fail to understand  

Why hum is sometimes an affliction—
It's when ordinary storms wake up demons
It's when plants and trees burn with ruin

And I know tonight we misread the future
(I know it's raining, and I'm still not ready)
I know that somehow we've mislaid a planet

The lightning is striking outside my window 
The hum in my ears inside a stolen umbrella
Leaving the bar in a manner timely and respectful.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Another Day Early"

Another Day Early


In the veils of flesh 

we carry forward like
a pompadour on a cat
like a big butt that shouts
I leave nothing behind!
        In this limitation
we cover everything
till it’s all forgotten
these veils of flesh
so beautiful and rotten—
        I wish all women smart
that men were better ugly
and childhood never end
while our flesh proclaims
we start and start again.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

A W.B. Yeats Poem (3) / Francis Bacon, "Three Studies for Self-Portrait" (1976) / Peter O'Shaughnessy Reads

Cuchulain Comforted

A MAN that had six mortal wounds, a man

Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head
Came and were gone. He leant upon a tree
As though to meditate on wounds and blood.

A Shroud that seemed to have authority
Among those bird-like things came, and let fall
A bundle of linen. Shrouds by two and three

Came creeping up because the man was still.
And thereupon that linen-carrier said:
'Your life can grow much sweeter if you will

'Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud;
Mainly because of what we only know
The rattle of those arms makes us afraid.

'We thread the needles' eyes, and all we do
All must together do.' That done, the man
Took up the nearest and began to sew.

'Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told our character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain

'Or driven from home and left to die in fear.'
They sang, but had nor human tunes nor words,
Though all was done in common as before;

They had changed their throats and had the throats of birds.

(1939)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhZQ37FRf9c

POEM: "Vozes"

Vozes


A stuttering love in
Just a horseshoe kitchen
Remarkable understanding
Who am I fooling?

At night it gets so bad
I contemplate the voices
The dark wind brings
But that isn’t the truth

The appellate division
In the next smelly stall
Snickers in the dark
This isn’t the force of destiny

Why did it take so long
To turn me into a horse
With this huge cock
This affectionate nature?

The mystery is there
The truth is beyond
The black is fear
The division is hope

My hungry ghosts
Just stretch it and yawn
Occasionally they even
Wonder why I’m so stupid

The days gallop into years
The years ride into galaxies
I tell them to relax
I tell them to relax.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

A Tina Chang Poem

Invention

On an island, an open road
where an animal has been crushed
by something larger than itself.

It is mangled by four o'clock light, soul
sour-sweet, intestines flattened and raked
by the sun, eyes still watchful, savage.

This landscape of Taiwan looks like a body
black and blue. On its coastline mussels have cracked
their faces on rocks, clouds are collapsing

onto tiny houses. And just now a monsoon has begun.
It reminds me of a story my father told me:
He once made the earth not in seven days

but in one. His steely joints wielded lava and water
and mercy in great ionic perfection.
He began the world, hammering the length

of trees, trees like a war of families,
trees which fumbled for grand gesture.
The world began in an explosion of fever and rain.

He said, Tina, your body came out floating.
I was born in the middle of monsoon season,
palm trees tearing the tin roofs.

Now as I wander to the center of the island
no one will speak to me. My dialect left somewhere
in his pocket, in a nursery book,

a language of childsplay. Everything unfurls
in pictures: soil is washed from the soles of feet, a woman
runs toward her weeping son, chicken bones float

in a pot full of dirty water.
I return to the animal on the road.
When I stoop to look at it

it smells of trash, rotting vegetation,
the pitiful tongue. Its claws are curled tight
to its heart; eyes open eyes open.

When the world began
in the small factory of my father's imagination
he never spoke of this gnarled concoction

of bone and blood that is nothing like wonder
but just the opposite, something
simply ravaged. He too would die soon after

the making of the world. I would go on
waking, sexing, mimicking enemies.
I would go on coaxed by gravity and hard science.


(2004)

POEM: "I rewrite a poem"

“I rewrite a poem”


I rewrite a poem about love
convinced I can bring new light
to an old problem
is it better to be an eagle or a cock?
many pages later
when the candle's almost down
to a dull glow, the sun is rising
and the cat wants to go out
I'll write it again before I sleep


© 2015 Rob Schackne

A John Keats Poem

What the Thrush Said

O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phœbus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At the thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.


(1818)

POEM: "Make the Bowls Sing"

Make the Bowls Sing


Periphery you know future you do not
Walking home see China’s tallest building
Its shrouds (good word) in smog (bad word)

Circle every planet dar una vuelta
Form the scandal part of every molecule
Waves of song beating invisible oceans

Patiently watch the islands drowning
Bless its generations of scavengers 
(Lucky no birdsong on the moon)

How the streets will run high with words
The bronze bowls forever hum with joy
They ever figure out this disguise of noise

Have faith in hope the music holds
Everywhere the edges of sound & if health
For happiness then happiness for 10,000 years.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The World Is Bad, Let Me Sleep"

The World Is Bad, Let Me Sleep


The Great Barrier Reef
is the size of Italy or Japan
our nearest star closer than
the nearest human heart
stretched from you to me
from the cosmos to the sea

I once tied a life around my neck
with the tensile strength of spider silk
after meditation upon the aggregates
and form was returning to nothingness
I rested my case, I drew the curtains
the world was bad I said, let me sleep.

Dreams rattle the door before the fall
when the nothing spins a web of matter
for the bangles of the ten-thousand arms
when your cell dreams become your alarm
back to the greed and jealousy and envy
so tough shit, the world is bad, let me sleep.

Reading an old poem about the kids of
factory fodder in a hell of a town somewhere
people we could've loved and we imagine hope
but good poetry it is, that draws the curtains
against knowing more than a bit about the future
the world was bad, it's starting to rain, let me sleep.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Frank Sinatra, "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)" (1958)

Born 1915.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs07p77t9ZQ

An Allen Ginsberg Poem

Song

The weight of the world
             is love.
Under the burden
            of solitude,
under the burden
            of dissatisfaction
            the weight,

the weight we carry
            is love.
Who can deny?
            In dreams
it touches
            the body,
in thought
            constructs
a miracle,
            in imagination
anguishes
            till born
in human—
looks out of the heart
             burning with purity—
for the burden of life
             is love,
but we carry the weight
             wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
             at last,
must rest in the arms
             of love.
No rest
             without love,
no sleep
             without dreams
of love—
             be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
             or machines,
the final wish
             is love
—cannot be bitter,
             cannot deny,
cannot withhold
             if denied:
the weight is too heavy
             —must give
for no return
             as thought
is given
             in solitude
in all the excellence
             of its excess.
The warm bodies
             shine together
in the darkness,
             the hand moves
to the center
             of the flesh,
the skin trembles
             in happiness
and the soul comes
             joyful to the eye—
yes, yes,
             that’s what
I wanted,
             I always wanted,
I always wanted,
             to return
to the body
             where I was born.

(1954)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRTdAIlMdT8

POEM: "Tethered"

Tethered

                           for Jack Gilbert

Nothing be nothing or strong

the humming started yesterday

the plastic bag fell in the street

see nothing be nothing be long

the wind blows the same black bag

every single day stays the same

tethered in an alley blind of sight

drawn by a light if you noticed it. 

© 2012 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Ah Dreams"

Ah Dreams


We grapple with violence
we look down we don’t look up
beyond the dust beyond the harvest
the clothes are just a trickery one smell
of invidious wanting or not wanting
little night scuffles with big darkness
the rats fight under the promenade
in the cinema she watches a movie
skittish proud curious boys up for murder
mid-autumn moon-cakes made of ice cream
none of it as real as the dog she keeps as pet
ah rattus dreams rattus love me from it
cover up my heart and my stomach
take away the nearest mouth.

© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Lines By The Pint (CXXX)"

Lines By The Pint (CXXX)


It's no small thing like the fold
Of a dress which suddenly speaks
Or a light switch from another world

But even by those kindly lights I see
Reaching deep inside the common face
Where language is mixed with nonsense

There's no limit to a foolish greed
And cosmetics can't hide a smart woman
And I wonder what my next beauty looks like ­­­­­­­

If we'll slap hands together and conjure glee
Till the sun rises roughly over our secrets
And the bed we’re in hears the music wrong.

© 2014 Rob Schackne

PHOTO: A Gonbad Silk Tabriz Persian Rug

An Anne Waldman Poem

Endtime


Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction?
—William Blake


Won’t come alive ever yet or again? In the mind of Endtime it looks like this: shell, volute, Tabriz, eddies, and tides. Flowers wilt. When you wake, observe the unmitigated trials and tribulations of these tossed things, random it seems. But in the endtime, less personhood more ransom. Radical sleep in the Endtime, there is no end of sleep. Multiplying the stars was never easy in Endtime, doing it by themselves, obstinate stars. Self-repairing and learning on the job. Write reports, sniff out plagiarism, fly your planes with a computer. Drones inhabit the Endtime lore, how many kills. In Endtime things go static. Then still. Switch off “solace.” Would you kill another literary form? a ransom note perhaps, saying again: The dead always will be saying too many of us! Then carry the corpses around. In the mind of the Endtime no substitutes but if you care to try your hand you may gamble all you have to offer and what would that be. A mole might do for you, a burrowing animal “thing” might do, biding time might do for a time, a night perhaps you have for rhetoric, before you are released at dawn. Recant, reflect, review, reach out. We have met the enemy and it is the psychotic karmic flow of our blowback. Privileged community survives a raging flood. Maybe. You keep churning and there’s an echo in the world. In the Endtime no need of explanation. Need stronger better experienced cop? He’s a baby. In the Endtime there are theories of dysfunction, delicate wheelworks that need retread. In the mind of the Endtime scot-free isn’t possible. No interpretation necessary for your cargo. But tax and a search and a fee and a calibration what it all adds up to. Then drop it. Drop it down, send it off, may it disintegrate in peace.


(2015)

A Mark Strand Poem

Coming to This

We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.

Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.

(1980)

A W.H. Auden Poem (2)

We, Too, Had Known Golden Hours


We, too, had known golden hours
When body and soul were in tune,
Had danced with our true loves
By the light of a full moon,
And sat with the wise and good
As tongues grew witty and gay
Over some noble dish
Out of Escoffier;
Had felt the intrusive glory
Which tears reserve apart,
And would in the old grand manner
Have sung from a resonant heart.
But, pawed-at and gossiped-over
By the promiscuous crowd,
Concocted by editors
Into spells to befuddle the crowd,
All words like Peace and Love,
All sane affirmative speech,
Had been soiled, profaned, debased
To a horrid mechanical screech.
No civil style survived
That pandaemonium
But the wry, the sotto-voce,
Ironic and monochrome:
And where should we find shelter
For joy or mere content
When little was left standing
But the suburb of dissent?


(1950)