ancient dinosaur
too sensitive for this world
with regret in heart
goes lumbering off to lie
with his own vanishing breed
Month: September 2013
Valentine by Robert Creeley
Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you—
that one, my son.
Dogs by Robert Creeley
I’ve trained them
to come,
to go away again,
to sit, to stand,
to wait
on command,
or I’d like to
be the master who
tells them all
they can’t do.
Passing By Waterwheel Bay by Yang Wan-li
Reading in my palanquin, I fall asleep and dream–
dream of a fishing boat, lapped by waves.
When I awake, the wind is riffling the pages of my book,
and I can’t even find the right chapter.
trans. Jonathan Chaves
from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
“And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can only make one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.
History is similar to individual lives in this respect…..
….History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.”
translated by Michael Henry Heim
a haiku: expectations
you should never live
for others’ expectations
yours are hard enough
A Song of “Hand-in-Hand” by Ou-yang Hsiu
The sun sets on the dike where I walk,
As I sing alone the song of “Hand-in-hand.”
Then I remember the one whose hand I once held,
And everywhere I look, spring is radiant and green.
The Quarrel by Paul Blackburn
Dried green leaf on the door
Blackened leaf below it
Under that a metal leaf, blackened also
Below that the leafy ace of clubs
Outside the window the tree I thought a friend
has undressed all its branches & is ugly to me
Returning home defenseless
even a stray dog barked at me
I could not even declare my love to him
much less my innocence. Branches
of frozen breath writhed from both our mouths
into the air.
Even the room is cold
& here I sit and stare
& barely move
from Sand of Silk-washing Stream, Five Lyrics by Wei Chuang
Every night I think of you until the water clock fades;
Sadly, under the bright moon, I lean against the balcony;
I think you too feel the cold in your lonely quilt.
A short foot away, the painted hall is as deep as the sea;
In remembrance I have only your old letters to read;
When can we be together, hand in hand, in Ch’ang-an?
translated by Lois M. Fusek
old wounds: for RK
old wounds resurface
there is no peaceful life
they come in the light
numbers roll off oily tongues
grease marks along the corridors
the same old logic in the air
reduce this
cut back that
be mediocre rather than right
little ordinary men in touring caps
the enemy is not so easily perceived
but the casualities are always visible
when education takes second place
to the bottom line
and those with principles
lose heart
Leonard Durso 