Author: zdunno03

You Cannot Do This by Gwendolyn MacEwen

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You cannot do this to them, these are my people;
I am not speaking of poetry, I am not speaking of art.
you cannot do this to them, these are my people.
you cannot hack away the horizon in front of their eyes.

the tomb, articulate, will record your doing;
I will record it also, this is not art.
this is a kind of science, a kind of hobby,
a kind of personal vice like coin collecting.

it has something to do with horses
and signet rings and school trophies;
it has something to do with the pride of the lions;
it has something to do with good food and music,
and something to do with power and dancing.
you cannot do this to them, these are my people.

remembering Ohio & a lost friend

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this is not something
I do very often
much of what transpired there
lies dormant in my memory
except for grad school
and my friends then
and the boy scouts
but occasionally
faces surface
from my undergrad days
and one in particular
came into focus
because the doctor here
thought my inflamed foot
could be gout
which it isn’t
but the word conjured up
Jimmy Burton
who actually was the first person
I ever heard mention it
since he suffered from that
among other ailments
a young man grown old
long before his time
jimmyjimmyjimmy
what became of you
sleeping on the couch
at north grove c-16
playing rod mckuen albums
in the dark
playing old men on stage
being one in life
an usher at my wedding
that brillo hair of yours
almost tamed
how I could crack you up
every time I danced up
and down the staircase
at u hall
singing call me irresponsible
and pretending to be
fred astaire
with improvised cane & hat
I drove you to an audition
for a rep company
somewhere in Michigan
or at least I think it was Michigan
everything seemed to be
either Ohio or Michigan
in those days
when not in my beloved NY
the earth dark and rich
you said good for growing
corn, I suppose
and you were accepted
off on your professional acting career
in rep companies in the Midwest
or so I was told
years later by Alan Koepke
when I asked about you
I will always remember
how you cried on my shoulder
from early rejections
or how happily surprised you were
when Jody fell in love
with you
you deserve happiness
old fella
old long lost friend
and I hope you received it
there in the Midwest
acting your heart out
on the stage
that would be your life

“We Don’t know How To Say Goodbye. . .” by Anna Akhmatova

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We don’t know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you’re moody, I am your shadow.

Let’s step inside a church and watch
baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead.
Why are we different from the rest?
Outdoors again, each of us turns his head.

Or else let’s sit in the graveyard
on the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.

translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

The Muse by Anna Akhmatova

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All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
as I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most–youth, freedom, glory–
fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.

And look! she comes. . .she tosses back her veil,
staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
the lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”

translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

from Ode to the violin in California by Pablo Neruda

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I sought that violin in the night.
I searched street by pitch-black street,
went house by weathered house,
star by star.
It faded
and fell silent
then suddenly surged,
. . . . . . . . . . .a flare
in the brackish night.
It was a pattern of incendiary sound,
a spiral of musical contours,
and I went on searching
street by street
for the dark violin’s
lifeline,
the source submerged in silence.
Finally, there
he was,
at the entrance to a bar:
a man and his
. . . . . .hungry violin.

The last drunk
weaved homeward
to a bunk on board a ship,
and violated tables
shrugged off empty glasses.
Nobody was left waiting,
and nobody was on the way.
The wine had left for home,
the beer was sound asleep,
and in the doorway
soared
the violin with its ragged
companion,
it soared
over the lonely night,
on a solitary scale
sounding of silver and complaint,
a single theme that wrung
. . . . . . . . . . .from the sky
wandering fire, comets, and troubadors,
and I played my violin,
half asleep,
held fast in the estuary’s
mouth, the strings
giving birth to those desolate
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cries,
the wood worn smooth
by the plunging of many fingers.
I honored the smoothness, the feel
of a perfect instrument, perfectly assembled.
That hungry man’s violin
was like family to me,
like kin,
and not just because of its sound,
not just because it raised
its howling
to the angry stars,
no: because it had grown up
learning
how to befriend lost souls
and sing songs to wandering strangers.

translated by Ken Krabbenhoft

from Ode to the guitar by Pablo Neruda

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O rich solitude
that arrives with the night,
solitude like bread made of earth,
solitude sung by the river of guitars!
The world shrinks
to a single drop
of honey, or one star,
and through the leaves everything in blue:
trembling, all of heaven
. . . . . . . . . . .sings.

And the woman who plays
both earth and guitar
bears in her voice
the mourning
and the joy
of the most poignant moment.
Time and distance
fall away from the guitar.
We are a dream,
an unfinished
song.
The untamed heart
rides back roads on horseback:
over and over again it dreams of the night, of silence,
over and over again it sings of the earth, of its guitar.

translated by Ken Krabbenhoft

from Ode to the dictionary by Pablo Neruda

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Dictionary, you are not
a grave, a tomb, or a coffin,
neither sepulchre nor mausoleum:
you are preservation,
hidden fire,
field of rubies, vital continuity
of essence,
language’s granary.
And it is a beautiful thing,
to pluck from your columns
the precise, the noble
word,
or the harsh,
forgotten
saying,
Spain’s offspring
hardened
like the blade of a plow,
secure in its role
of outmoded tool,
preserved
in its precise beauty
and its medallion-toughness.
Also that other
word,
the one that slipped
between the lines
but popped suddenly,
deliciously into the mouth,
smooth as an almond
or tender as a fig.

Dictionary, guide just one
of your thousand hands, just one
of your thousand emeralds
to my mouth,
to the point of my pen,
to my inkwell
at the right
moment,
give me but a
single
drop
of your virgin springs,
a single grain
from
your
generous granaries.
When most I need it,
grant me
a single trill
from your dense, musical
jungle depths, or a bee’s
extravagance,
a fallen fragment
of your ancient wood perfumed
by the endless seasons of jasmine,
a single
syllable,
shudder or note,
a single seed:
I am made of earth and my song is made of words.

translated by Ken Krabbenhoft

for all those I lost these last few years and especially for those killed violently whether here, there, everywhere: DIRGE WITHOUT MUSIC by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,–but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,–
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curied
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.