a deflated fist
leaking puddles of blood on
the floor at your feet
lost love
an untitled poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for a reply,
And in my heart there sits a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Darkness by Ahmet Hasim
On this dark night of love
Wildly the nightingale sings,
Has Leyla left Mejnun?
I thought the Wild voice sang of parting pain.
On this dark night of love
I felt my grief, remembered you,
Burned like the love-lorn nightingale’s sad refrain.
translated by Bernard Lewis
dancing in the dark: for JK wherever she is
he can’t remember the song
just the image
her naked dancing
candles the only light in the room
he’s sitting on the floor
leaning back against the couch
the dog asleep above him
and her hips sway
the light playing shadows
where lust lives
and he will bury his head soon
immersed in shadows himself
and hips will be joined
on that floor
that rug
lost in what should have lasted forever
but is only a memory now
A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention by Yehuda Amichai
They amputated
your thighs off my hips.
As far as I’m concerned
they are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantled us
each from the other.
As far as I’m concerned
they are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
and loving invention.
An airplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
A Deep-Sworn Vow By W.B. Yeats
Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
Leonard Durso 