A Horace Poem

To Licinius


You'll do better, Licinius, not to spend your life
Venturing too far out on the dangerous waters,
Or else, for fear of storms, staying too close in
To the dangerous rocky shoreline. That man does best
Who chooses the middle way, so he doesn't end up
Living under a roof that's going to ruin
Or in some gorgeous mansion everyone envies.
The tallest pine shakes most in a wind storm;
The loftiest tower falls down with the loudest crash;
The lightning bolt heads straight for the mountain top.
Always expect reversals; be hopeful in trouble,
Be worried when things go well. That's how it is
For the man whose heart is ready for anything.
It's true that Jupiter brings on the hard winters;
It's also true that Jupiter takes them away.
If things are bad right now, they won't always be.
Apollo isn't always drawing his bow;
There are times when he takes up his lyre and plays,
And awakens the music sleeping upon the strings.
Be resolute when things are going against you,
But shorten sail when the fair wind blows too strong.


(Horace, Odes II, 10) 
Tr. David Ferry, 1998

POEM: "How We Might Look Like Fools"

How We Might Look Like Fools


When a little kid puts his pants on backwards
the shoes on the wrong foot proudly to display
ah we might look like fools mismatched ideas
a bit of this a bit of that maybe you don’t get it
a little kid listening to the grown-ups laughing
the glasses raised high the noise getting louder
Uncle Alice is passed out and put into my room
I go in to look at him snoring and touch his nose
how we might look like fools strange match moods
it’s one part Paul Desmond one part of Jim Hall
then time for bed like the kid what does it mean
I see this but I want something else go to sleep
aye we might look like fools look at everything
proudly the ideas images and music come along
don’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before
you're told it’s different maybe the dreams will fit.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Nick Cave, "Push The Sky Away", Paris 11/2/13

For fans of the great music of Nick Cave, why not have a listen to this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7iBWk0pPbM

A Jack Gilbert Poem (2)

Ovid in Tears

Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. “In the cities,”
he said, “there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman,” he said. How like
a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds
later he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn’t read but still made a world. About Hagia
Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
“White stone in the white sunlight,” he said
as they picked him up. “Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world.” His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”

(2009)

A Michael Palmer Poem

Your Diamond Shoe


Don't write poems about what's going on.
Murderers and liars, dreams and desires,

they're always going on.
Leave them outside the poem.

Don't describe your sad-eyed summer home
or wide-eyed winter home.

Don't write about your being homeless
or your home-away-from-home.

Don't write about war,
whether you're against or for,

it's the same fucking war.
Don't talk about language,

don't talk about loss.
Don't mention truth or beauty

or your grandpa's bones.
No one wants to know

how your father/brother/lover
deducted himself. Razor, rope, or gun,

what's the difference?
Whisper nothing of the snow

on the Contrescarpe,
nothing of moths, their fluttering arcs,

or the towers--how we watched them fall.
Don't write at all.


(2005)

A K.J. Bishop Poem

The Crone Meets Her Son (On The Battlefield)


The revolution, this time, was 'to actualise the marvellous'. 

   The gunslinger

enlisted, far from sure of his part, for his weapons fired only
   common lead,

not multicoloured lights or waves of kundalini. But he had,
   in his dreams,

dived to the bottom of the ocean and seen the carcass of a
   whale, with hagfish

at it all around like mad sperm around a dead egg, devouring
   the infertile germ,

and felt his private share of responsibility, like a new organ
   in his body, a harmonica,

maybe. He had always been around the edges, among the
   listeners, tapping a foot,

but if he really was a boar leaping out of the sea, he wanted
   to know that furious joy.

There was no commander as such to give orders, so he found
   a place on the left flank

with the giraffes, and an old woman who had a tray of
   buttons and a thermos

of black coffee, infinitely replenishing, which she shared
   around like a suave host.

With gratitude he drank the unsweet brew in the tin cup and
   remembered how, as a boy,

he'd loved the tubes of buttons in the haberdasher's shop,
   like lasting candy,

kaleidoscopes, or magic money for buying magic things
   from magicians.

Perhaps, he mused, that was where his longtime love of
   finery budded in tulip-stripes.

Looking back, said the woman, it's all ravines and tempests.
   You're cold, have my coat,

he said, stripping down to waistcoat and watch-chain. It's
   bulletproof, and keeps the rain out.

Well, I like rain, but thank you, and here, choose some
   buttons, son. The pearl is smart,

but please yourself. Thank you, ma'am, and in the yellow
   dawn he chose plastic sections of Jupiter

and brass wafers for the charity of the poor, and pearl for the
   whale and the egg,

and fake tortoiseshell for the giraffes, and fuchsia velvet
   domes for sex and love

and loaded them in his old shotgun, and grinned like a fox
   sucking shit through a sieve

because that's how it's done, and he followed the old woman,
   who followed no one,

cocking her leg at every pillar, eating out of garbage cans,
   sniffing bums in trousers,

her jubilant howl assuring him this wasn't desertion at all.

(2007)

POEM: " Folding Paper"

Folding Paper

I ask him if he likes to read
sure he says I read all the time
terrific what are you reading now?
The Practical Illustrated Encyclopedia of Origami
sounds like a pretty complete guide I say
oh yes he says it’s very useful, tell me
what do you do in your free time?


© 2013 Rob Schackne

A Seamus Heaney Poem

From The Frontier Of Writing

The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration—

a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

(1987)

MUSIC: Elis Regina & Tom Jobim, "Aguas de Março", 1974

Brazilians voted "Aguas de Março" the all-time best song the country ever wrote. It's a large claim, but I won't disagree. Enjoy the performance. It's hard to watch just once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qle1OrunKnE

An Antonio Carlos Jobim Poem

Águas de Março (1972)

A Geraldo Vandré Poem

Sorry If I Don't Mention The Flowers


Walking and singing and following the song
We're all equal, whether arm in arm or not

In schools, on the streets, fields, construction sites

Walking and singing and following the song

Vem, vamos embora que esperar não é saber

Quem sabe faz a hora não espera acontecer

Through the fields the hunger of the great plantations

Through the streets we march in nervous bunches

Still making the flower the strongest verse

We believe that flowers will win against the guns

Vem, vamos embora que esperar não é saber

Quem sabe faz a hora não espera acontecer

There are soldiers (whether they're armed or not)

Who have almost all lost an arm, or a hand

In the forts where they were taught old lessons

To live for their country, & to live without reason

Vem, vamos embora que esperar não é saber
Quem sabe faz a hora não espera acontecer

In schools, on the streets, fields, construction sites

We're all soldiers, whether we are armed or not

Walking and singing and following the song

We're all equal, whether arm in arm or not

Lovers of the mind, of the flowers in the ground

The certainty of your thought, the history of your hand

Walking and singing and following the song

Of learning, & then teaching this new lesson

Vem, vamos embora que esperar não é saber

Quem sabe faz a hora não espera acontecer

(1968) 

— from the Portuguese

MUSIC: Buika, 2 Songs, 26/8/13

Buika's duende. Hear it & see it here.

http://www.npr.org/event/music/214909117/buika-tiny-desk-concert

POEM: "Concha Buika"

Concha Buika

She sings la Nave del Olvido
she sings a thousand songs I loved
she sings un poquito más y más
the burning swell of her breast
the blue guitar and the blues inside it
everyone sings una noche más, it passes
what’s invisible sometimes happens
you close your eyes you hold yourself
you watch the boat leave the harbor again
the world whispers espérame. Hold me tight.

© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "A Dog Show"

A Dog Show


I know it’s just a show trial 
It’s a good dog that understands
you will kill him if he misbehaves
A world of justice won’t ever console you
I say and right then a bitch in heat marches
past his Yorkie with a bow in his hair who
sets after her crack (a little kid is monstered)
our man jumps up knocks over his chair etc.
returns 15 minutes later carrying the thing
And what do we have today on Saturday
that we didn’t have on Friday, huh?
I tried to ask him. No response.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Third Coffee After The Atomic Opera"

Third Coffee After The Atomic Opera


I.

Perfect half-moon we sit outdoors
evensong with double expressos

desperates & not-so-desperates
plying dreams we help to futurize

ancient wishes excavate the East
no idea where the digging leads.

II.

The usual clause that’s in every contract
tear it back down to the Sanity Clause

redraft it as the Liberty Clause
the last precedent of mercy

but there ain’t no sanity
you don’t fool me.


III.

They say there is a pretty spirit
far above the general despair
yesterday was the time for that
sure we will feel what we must

now picture us beautiful beneath
the high dumb parapets of hope
waiting for whose god knows what
for it to humpty-dumpty I guess

is it real bad now please don’t cry
it’s bad enough we have to part
in the middle of this no please don’t
bother OK fetch me anything.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "On Thursday"

On Thursday

If reporting this the media must
use standard sources do not speculate
or exaggerate and do not independently
investigate report or comment if reporting
the sunrise human rights or screaming
because the media must use standard
sources and not speculate or exaggerate
human rights screaming or the sunrise
and do not independently investigate report
or comment if reporting this the
media uses the standard sources not
screaming the sunrise or human rights
not speculate or exaggerate and do
not independently investigate report or comment.

© 2013 Rob Schackne

An Amanda Z. Poem

As The Sky Begins To Clear

雨霁云开

淅淅小雨渐声无，

翳翳薄衣恰适时。
杯盏欢声逍遥客，
谁言斯人独寂寞？

The very moment the rain slows down,
A good time to forget about wet clothes.
All the patrons are laughing & singing,
Who knows if this man is lonely?

(2013) Tr. Li Jian Rong & Boris Knack

A John Tranter Poem

Detour


A, hot pink, babies angry when kissed,
Gummy smile clenching to a scowl,
E, snow blessing the street, a lisped vowel
Hiding midnight’s infidelities, the wife pissed,
Smile (angelic) changing to grimace (foul),
Faint flutter of pulse at the wrist
As the Grim Reaper calls with his damned list.
I, sallow salmon, time to throw in the towel

And get outta here. O, tropical jungle green,
U, blue, lavender, dizzy aquamarine –
Padding from the pool, dripping wet, past
Croaking frogs, pythons, hamburger joints
Covered in vines, then a sign in Chinese that points
To the busy city – lights, people – home at last.

(2013)

POEM: "Guess What The Fucking Title Is"

Guess What The Fucking Title Is


Seismologists listen to a volcano
Screaming in Alaska, you jump in
And scream anthropomorphism
You scream the most pathetic fallacy
Meanwhile the cars and jack-hammers
Are all screaming, Listen! Listen!
I scream my secrets in your tender ear
You scream that you listen carefully
The passing clouds float overhead
A jet-fighter screams to its destination
I am listening as well as I can listen
Something in my kitchen is screaming
Some of this poem is screaming.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "While The Clouds Blow In From The South"

While The Clouds Blow In From The South


Inner Mongolia or Nei Menggu
shares an international border
with Mongolia (of course) and Siberian Russia
it stretches almost two and a half thousand kilometres
and Shaanxi province lies just beneath it where
three million farmers will face urban relocation
where it happens that a shining woman
I'm starting to love a little comes from
(yes, Virginia, it's on the fabled Silk Road —
and yes I have "guessed at the layers of her face")
although I know today’s easy trading
comes from another furious direction
only now I'm forced (again) to consider
to whose greater detriment it will be
if ever we crossed those long borders
how we would ever walk such a distance.


© 2013 Rob Schackne