Every province and kingdom under heaven fronting on
the Great Wall, no city has avoided shield and sword.
Why can’t the weapons be cast into ploughshares,
and every inch of abandoned field tilled by oxen?
Tilled by oxen,
spun by silkworms:
don’t condemn heroes to weep like heavy rains, leave
men to grain, women to silk—let us go in song again.
translated by David Hinton
Month: February 2024
from Four For John Daley by Robert Creeley
Leaving
My eye teared,
lump in throat—
I was going
away from here
and everything that
had come with me
first was waiting
again to be taken.
All the times
I’d looked, held,
handled that or this
reminded me
no fairness, justice,
in life, not
that can stand
with those abandoned.
Overnight at White-Sand Post-Station by Tu Fu
Another night on the water: last light,
Woodsmoke again, and then this station. Here
Beyond the lake, against the enduring white of
Shoreline sand, fresh green reeds. Occurrence,
Ch’i’s ten thousand forms of spring—among
All this, my lone craft is another Wandering Star.
Carried by waves, the moon’s light limitless,
I shade deep into the pellucid southern darkness.
translated by David Hinton
from Thoughts, Sick With Fever On A Boat (Thirty-Six Rhymes Offered To Those I love South Of The Lake) by Tu Fu
Ma Jung’s flute sings. Helpless, I hold
My tunic open, like Wang Ts’an, looking out
Toward a cold homeland full of sadness.
The sorrowful year blackened over by cloud,
White houses vanish along the water in fog.
Over the maple shoreline, green peaks rise.
It aches. Winter’s malarial fire aches,
And the drizzling rain won’t stop falling.
Ghosts they welcome here with drums bring
No blessings. Crossbows kill nothing but owls.
When my spirits ebb away, I feel relieved.
And when grief comes, I let it come. I drift
Outskirts of life, both sinking and floating,
Occurrence become its perfect ruin of desertion.
translated by David Hinton
I’ll Win by Robert Creeley
I’ll win the way
I always do
by being gone
when they come.
When they look, they’ll see
nothing of me
and where I am
they’ll not know.
This, I thought, is my way
and right or wrong
it’s me. Being dead, then,
I’ll have won completely.
December Evening 1972 by Tomas Tranströmer
Here I come, the invisible man, perhaps employed
by a Great Memory to live right now. And I am driving past
the locked-up white church—a wooden saint is standing in there
smiling, helpless, as if they had taken away his glasses.
He is alone. Everything else is now, now, now. The law of gravity pressing us
against our work by day and against our beds by night. The war.
translated by Robin Fulton
Days by Robert Creeley
In that strange light,
garish like wet blood,
I had no expectations
or hopes, nothing any more
one shouts at life to wake it up,
be nice to us—simply scared
you’d be hurt, were already
changed. I was, your head
out, looked— I want each
day for you, each single day
for you, give them
as I can to you.
from About History by Tomas Tranströmer
Out on the open ground not far from the building
an abandoned newspaper has lain for months, full of events.
It grows old through nights and days in rain and sun,
on the way to becoming a plant, a cabbage-head, on the way to being
united with the earth.
Just as memory is slowly transmuted into your own self.
translated by Robin Fulton
Mother’s Things by Robert Creeley
I wanted approval,
carrying with me
things of my mother’s
beyond their use to me—
worn-out clock
her small green lock box,
father’s engraved brass plate
for printing calling cards—
such size of her still
calls out to me
with that silently
expressive will.
some tears for mother
it happens
when least expected
doing laundry
brewing tea
ironing shirts
stirring spaghetti
in the morning
late at night
in the afternoon
these tears
they fall
they fall
as I sit stand lay
helpless
to stop them
helpless
as they fall
these tears
Leonard Durso 