Break, break, break,
    On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
    The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
    That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
    That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
    To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
    And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
    At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
    Will never come back to me.

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
  Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
  Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
  And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
  When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
  The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
  When I have cross’d the bar.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

My heart ’s the field I sow for thee,
For thee to water and reap;
My heart ’s the house I ope for thee,
For thee to air and dust and sweep;
My heart ’s the rug I spread for thee,
For thee to dance or pray or sleep;
My heart ’s the pearls I thread for thee,
For thee to wear or break or keep;
My heart ’s a sack of magic things—
Magic carpets, caps and rings—
To bring thee treasures from afar
And from the Deep.

In cold
          spring air the
white wisp-
          visible
breath of
          a blackbird
singing—
          we don’t know
to un-
          wrap these blind-
folds we
          keep thinking
we are
          seeing through

Nimbawaadaan akiing
I dream a world

atemagag biinaagami
of clean water

gete-mitigoog
ancient trees

gaye gwekaanimad
and changing winds.

Nimbawaadaan akiing
I dream a world

izhi-mikwendamang
of ones who remember

nandagikenindamang gaye
who seek the truth and

maamwidebwe’endamang waabang
believe in tomorrow together.

Nimbawaadaan akiing
I dream a world

izhi-biimiskobideg giizhigong
where our path in the sky

waabandamang naasaab
can be seen as clearly as

gaa-izhi-niibawid wiijibemaadizid
the place where our neighbor once stood.

oh teita, the language the english no it understand tongue of you. and no can i
i feed you these the morsels from mouth of me. language of me the arabic half-
chewed. oh teita, let me i try and i fail to fit languages of us in each other.

seen i face of you split open by riot laughter. the spit it falls without grace from
lips of you thins. complexion of you light; skin of you wrinkled but healthy;
flecks olive they try to jump from folds of the corners of the eyes of you. can i
find in the mirror eyelids of you the heavy. eyelashes of you. the echo of the
nose of you. sometimes, i split open face of me with spoon, tool blunt &
wrong. i want from you for you to bleed from in me into the sink, so that can i i
ask these the questions sprinkled you in lungs of me. i cough out them, always
in the time the wrong. i laugh. soil of the grave falls it without grace from lips
of me.

were crude assemblages of paper sacks and twine,
amalgams of pilfered string and whittled sticks,
twigs pulled straight from his garden, dry patch

of stony land before our house only he
could tend into beauty, thorny roses goaded
into color. How did he make those makeshift

diamonds rise, grab ahold of the wind to sail
into sky like nothing in our neighborhood
of dented cars and stolid brick houses could?

It wasn’t through faith or belief in otherworldly
grace, but rather a metaphor from moving
on a street where cars rusted up on blocks,

monstrously immobile, and planes, bound
for that world we could not see, roared
above our heads, our houses pawns

in a bigger flight path. How tricky the launch
into air, the wait for the right eddy to lift
our homemade contraption into the sullen

blue sky above us, our eyes stinging
with the glut of the sun. And the sad tangle
after flight, collapse of grocery bags

and broken branches, snaggle of string
I still cannot unfurl. Father, you left me
with this unsated need to find the most

delicately useful of breezes, to send
myself into the untenable, balance my weight
as if on paper wings, a flutter then fall,

a stutter back to earth, an elastic sense
of being and becoming forged in our front
yard, your hand over mine over balled string.

I love you
            because the Earth turns round the sun
            because the North wind blows north
                 sometimes
            because the Pope is Catholic
                 and most Rabbis Jewish
            because the winters flow into springs
                 and the air clears after a storm
            because only my love for you
                 despite the charms of gravity
                 keeps me from falling off this Earth
                 into another dimension
I love you
            because it is the natural order of things

I love you
            like the habit I picked up in college
                 of sleeping through lectures
                 or saying I’m sorry
                 when I get stopped for speeding
            because I drink a glass of water
                 in the morning
                 and chain-smoke cigarettes
                 all through the day
            because I take my coffee Black
                 and my milk with chocolate
            because you keep my feet warm
                 though my life a mess
I love you
            because I don’t want it
                 any other way

I am helpless
            in my love for you
It makes me so happy
            to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
            locking me in an echo chamber
            where your voice reverberates
            through the four walls
            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
            because it’s been so good
            for so long
            that if I didn’t love you
            I’d have to be born again
            and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
            is so simple
            the thought though of you
            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
            thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
            because no two snowflakes are alike
            and it is possible
            if you stand tippy-toe
            to walk between the raindrops
I love you
            because I am afraid of the dark
                 and can’t sleep in the light
            because I rub my eyes
                 when I wake up in the morning
                 and find you there
            because you with all your magic powers were
                 determined that
I should love you
            because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
            because you made me
                 want to love you
            more than I love my privacy
                 my freedom          my commitments
                      and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
            to love you
            because you saw me one Friday
                 afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

Being of your blood,
Through thick and thin,
      I have stood up for you.
When the world’s most devilish
Intrigue of humanity was set
And was coiling around you tighter and tighter—
      I have stood up for you.
When public sentiment was against you
And sent you to oblivion,
      I have stood up for you.
When the country was hysterically enraged
For defending your loved ones
And your birthright of priority—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were tagged as “Indians”
And outlawed creatures—
      I have stood up for you.
Haunted and hunted on thy domain,
With no chance of redress
But doomed, as though thy fate—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were described and pictured
And cartooned as cruel and savage—
      I have stood up for you.
When prejudice, hate and scorn
Sounded the keynote against you—
      I have stood up for you.
When starving and naked,
At the verge of your annihilation
By swords in the hands of criminals—
      I have stood up for you.
When the palefaces said
There was no hope for you—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were condemned and relegated
To the reservation system of hell—
      I have stood up for you.
When in prison and in bondage,
When you could neither speak nor see—
      I have stood up for you.
When decreed by the people across the sea
That you could neither learn nor be taught,
      I have stood up for you.
When it was put down black and white
That you could neither work nor support yourselves,
And that you were lazy and worthless—
      I have stood up for you.
When politics and greed were working you
For all that you were worth—
      I have stood up for you.
When everything you possessed was disappearing,
And your personal rights ignored—
      I have stood up for you.
As the Indian Bureau, like an octopus,
Sucked your very life blood,
      I have stood up for you.
For your freedom and citizenship,
By the abolishment of the Indian Bureau,
      I have stood up for you.
When the Indian Bureau says, “Were you freed
You would starve and be cheated”—
Only to feed its 7000 employees—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were judged “incompetent”
For freedom and citizenship by the Indian Bureau—
      I have stood up for you.
God knows that I am with thee day and night;
That is why I have stood up for you.
It might have been self-sacrifice.
It might have been the hand of God leading me.
Whatever it was, you have proven yourselves to be
What I have stood up for you to be.

You say you will not think of me:
You shut me out and count your beads,
The chaplet of your rules and doubts,
But lovers never think of creeds.

You’ll fill your mind with serious things:
You’ll think of God or Infinity,
Of a lover whose last charm is gone,
Of anything in the world but me.

Yet every thought will lead you back,
Infinity grow far and dim,
And God, with His sense of irony,
Will never let you think of Him.

When Love becomes a stranger
In the temple he has built
Of remembered nights and days,
When he sighs and turns away
From the altar in the temple
With unreturning feet,
When the candles flicker out
And the magical-sweet incense
Vanishes . . .
Do you think there is grief born
In any god's heart?

Under all beauty that I know,
All vital dreams,
Sharp loveliness,
Under the hair, the lips of laughter,
The dusk-dim eyes of pain,
Lurks the single thing I fear,
Hard-mouthed, implacable-eyed,
The monster,
The satyr-thing, futility.

I cannot look on loveliness
Or burn the flame of ecstasy,
Or even dream for very long,
Without the annihilating fear
That it will suddenly tear some veil
And bare its dreadful face.

When I am light with the exaltation
Mysteriously born of worship,
Filled like a cup with the wine of wonder
At some great cloudy bloom of color,
Or learning the infinite secrets of rapture
With bared heart held to love’s lips—
Light’s eyes are suddenly blinded,
Life gropes in empty twilight,
And the mocking mouth of the satyr-thing
Leers at me from a veil of dust.

Shuddering I crouch to earth,
Trembling lest it come more near,
Trembling lest it stretch a hand
And touch me! Choked by an agony
Of horror lest its deadly eyes
Should shrivel my flaming heart of dream.
Sometimes I think the universe,
Mind, passion, beauty, wisdom, light,
All fathomless life-wonders,
Serve only for its cloak.

It lurks like death in everything
That has a singing heart:
In all exultant voices,
In all desire’s burning eyes,
In youth’s true soul,
In love’s slim hands,

Sometimes I think it is life’s core,
This mocking-mouth’d implacable ghost.
Sometimes I think it is life’s core.
Sometimes I think it must be God.

I shall never have any fear of love, 
Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,
Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never hesitate to go down
Into the fastness of its abyss
Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.

Never shall I dread love’s strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never draw back from love
Through fear of its vast pain
But build joy of it and count it again.
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never tremble nor flinch
From love’s moulding touch:
I have loved too terribly and too much
Ever to have any fear of love.

O chillen, run, de Cunjah man,
Him mouf ez beeg ez fryin’ pan,
Him yurs am small, him eyes am raid,
Him hab no toof een him ol’ haid,
Him hab him roots, him wu’k him trick,
Him roll him eye, him mek you sick—
    De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
    O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Him hab ur ball ob raid, raid ha’r,
Him hide it un’ de kitchen sta’r,
Mam Jude huh pars urlong dat way,
An’ now huh hab ur snaik, de say.
Him wrop ur roun’ huh buddy tight,
Huh eyes pop out, ur orful sight—
    De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
    O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Miss Jane, huh dribe him f’um huh do’,
An’ now huh hens woan’ lay no mo’ ;
De Jussey cow huh done fall sick,
Hit all done by de Cunjah trick.
Him put ur root un’ ’Lijah’s baid,
An’ now de man he sho’ am daid—
    De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
    O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Me see him stan’ de yudder night
Right een de road een white moon-light;
Him toss him arms, him whirl him’ roun’,
Him stomp him foot urpon de groun’;
De snaiks come crawlin’, one by one.
Me hyuh um hiss, me break an’ run—
    De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
    O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was      Cold in that water!      It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

     But it was      High up there!      It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love—
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!      Fine as wine!      Life is fine!

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

The moon still sends its mellow light
Through the purple blackness of the night; 
The morning star is palely bright
                    Before the dawn. 

The sun still shines just as before; 
The rose still grows beside my door, 
                    But you have gone. 

The sky is blue and the robin sings; 
The butterflies dance on rainbow wings
                   Though I am sad. 

In all the earth no joy can be; 
Happiness comes no more to me, 
                   For you are dead. 

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun,—
My dream.

And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose slowly, slowly,
Dimming,
Hiding,
The light of my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky,—
The wall.

Shadow.
I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.

My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

The dreams of the dreamer
   Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
   To the soul’s hour-glass.

The songs of the singer
   Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
   ‘Till it ceases to beat.

I’m folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.

For Time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art—
I’m folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart!

The right to make my dreams come true,
    I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!

You are not she I loved. You cannot be
           My wild, white dove, 
My tempest-driven dove that I gave house, 
           You cannot be my Love. 

She died. I used to hold her all night long; 
           Come awake
At dawn beside her. Try to ease with loving 
            A thirst too deep to slake. 

O, it was pain to keep her shut against me. 
           Honey and bitterness
To taste her with sharp kisses and hold her after
            In brief duress. 

You cold woman, you stranger with her ways, 
         Smiling cruelly, 
You tear my heart as never her wild wings’
                   beating 
                            Wounded me. 

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Chloe’s hair, no doubt, was brighter;
     Lydia’s mouth more sweetly sad;
Hebe’s arms were rather whiter;
     Languorous-lidded Helen had
Eyes more blue than e’er the sky was;
Lalage’s was subtler stuff;
Still, you used to think that I was
     Fair enough.

Now you’re casting yearning glances
     At the pale Penelope;
Cutting in on Claudia’s dances;
     Taking Iris out to tea.
Iole you find warm-hearted;
     Zoë’s cheek is far from rough—
Don’t you think it’s time we parted? . . .
     Fair enough!

^{for Gabrielle Civil & Madhu H. Kaza}

Do not trust the eraser. Prefer
crossed out, scribbled over monuments
to something once thought correct
. Instead: colors, transparencies
track changes, versions, iterations
. How else might you return
after discards, attempts
and mis takes, to your 
original genius
?

If for a day joy masters me,
Think not my wounds are healed;
Far deeper than the scars you see,
I keep the roots concealed.

They shall bear blossoms with the fall;
I have their word for this,
Who tend my roots with rains of gall,
And suns of prejudice.

After she died, I’d catch her
stuffing my nose with pine needles and oak,
staring off into the shadows of early morning.
Me, too jetlagged for the smells a ghost leaves behind.
The tailor of histories,
my mother sewed our Black Barbies and Kens
Nigerian clothes, her mind so tight against
the stitching, that in precision, she looked mean
as hell, too. My mother’s laugh was a record skipping,
so deep she left nicks in the vinyl.
See? Even in death, she wants to be fable.
I don’t know what fathers teach sons,
but I am moving my mother
to a land where grief is no longer
gruesome. She loved top 40, yacht rock,
driving in daylight with the wind
wa-wa-ing through her cracked window
like Allah blowing breath
over the open bottle neck of our living.
She knew ninety-nine names for God,
and yet how do I remember her—
as what no god could make?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

I have turned our childhood into a few dozen verses;
there are places for dramatic pause,
and where memory failed,
I embellished a bit.

You’ve grown impatient with me
and my so-called poetic license;
I don’t remember that
has become your weary mantra.

D,
I am learning to excavate the good times too.
Can’t you see where I’ve colored some words?
Inserted those tender moments?

A famous writer once said that eventually
I will tire of myself and will be compelled
to tell the I-less stories….I anxiously await that moment.
But for now, I want to tell them about our war with mama’s illness
and how at school we were maimed for being foreign.

Remember D?
When they chased us up Tioga Street
and accused us of having voodoo and
scanned our dark bodies for tribal scars
and discovered the cayenne pepper we had hidden;
to throw in their faces,
to sting them,
to make them fear us,
to be left alone,
to be African.

D,
I have managed to poem all my pain;
tell me,
what do you do with yours?

I have turned our childhood into a few dozen verses;
there are places for dramatic pause,
and where memory failed,
I embellished a bit.

You’ve grown impatient with me
and my so-called poetic license;
I don’t remember that
has become your weary mantra.

D,
I am learning to excavate the good times too.
Can’t you see where I’ve colored some words?
Inserted those tender moments?

A famous writer once said that eventually
I will tire of myself and will be compelled
to tell the I-less stories….I anxiously await that moment.
But for now, I want to tell them about our war with mama’s illness
and how at school we were maimed for being foreign.

Remember D?
When they chased us up Tioga Street
and accused us of having voodoo and
scanned our dark bodies for tribal scars
and discovered the cayenne pepper we had hidden;
to throw in their faces,
to sting them,
to make them fear us,
to be left alone,
to be African.

D,
I have managed to poem all my pain;
tell me,
what do you do with yours?

I DO not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men. . . .
I’m due to fall in love again.

My far cry, though no one should echo,—
    Though no one to listen should stand,
I shall dare with my burden the darkness
    And I shall not retreat from this land;
Though I’m hurled ’neath the feet of the millions,
    Who struggle their places to keep,
The sea-nymphs still bathe with my fancy
    And the Dryads still sweeten my sleep.

Though I’m crushed, cast away and forgotten,—
    Though I’m buried in the dust of their cars,
I can see through their madness above me,—
    I can feel the quick pulse of the stars;
Though my head be the foot-stool of tyrants,
    Though my back be a step to their throne,
I still dwell with the kings of Orion
    And I walk with the sun-queen alone.

Though the fire of my youth should consume me,—
    Though my body a brimstone should be,
I can draw on the clouds for their water,
    And behold! I’ve of water a sea;
And though roofless, and friendless, and hopeless
    And loveless, and godless I stand,
The waves of my Life shall continue
    To murmur and laugh on the Strand .

Regardless of the cries of priests and sages
I strove to give my bleeding soul her wages; 
   And each embrace or memory of one 
Is worth to me the treasures of the ages, 
Is worth to me the treasures of the ages. 

Each shadow of a kiss or fond embrace
Down in the depth of solitude I trace; 
   And in the corners of my darkest den
The fallen gods of pleasure find a place. 
The fallen gods of pleasure find a place. 

And though knee-deep I find myself in hell, 
And though the flames around my cheeks should swell, 
   I shall not loose my grip on Allah's throne, 
I shall not fall alone, I know full well. 
I shall not fall alone, I know full well. 

The old gods and their slaves I’ve deserted ;
    The new gods I’ve shunned at first sight ;
And my god is the god of the goddess
    That presides at my feast of delight.
But once, when the dark moment lingered,
    I questioned the god she adores ;
To his throne I implored her to lead me,
    And, behold! I’m the god she implores.

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

A betrayal
to stand
with your hand
over your heart
and sing
the song

of the country
occupying
your country

to read every star
on the flag
above
your country’s flag

and see the last one
there: small, white
and pointed

stitched into the blue
with a thin thread

as if
it has always
been that way

as if
it can never
be undone.

At first we don’t answer. 
Knocks that loud usually mean 5-0 is on the other end.

                                 Señora ábrenos la puerta porfavor.
                                 Estamos aquí para platicar con usted.
                                 No queremos llamar la policía.

The person on the other side of the door
is speaking professional Spanish.

Professional Spanish is fake friendly.
Is a warning.

Is a downpour when you
Just spent your last twenty dollars on a wash and set.

Is the kind of Spanish that comes
to take things away from you.

The kind of Spanish that looks at your Spanish like it needs help.
Professional Spanish of course doesn’t offer help.

It just wants you to know that it knows you need some.
Professional Spanish is stuck up

like most people from the hood who get good jobs.
Professional Spanish is all like I did it you can do it too.

Professional Spanish thinks it gets treated better than us
because it knows how to follow the rules.

Because it says Abrigo instead of Có.
Because it knows which fork belongs to the salad

and which spoon goes in the coffee.

Because it gets to be the anchor on Telemundo and Univision
and we get to be the news that plays behind its head in the background.

A boy, prettier than me, who loved me because
my vocabulary and because my orange pills, once asked me
to translate my father’s English.

This poem wants me to translate it too.
Idiot poem, idiot hands for writing it

an accent isn’t sound.
Only those to whom it seems alien
would flatten an accent to sound.

My poem grew up here, sitting in this American chair
staring out at this lifeless American snow. 

Black grass dying up out of this snow,
through a rabbit’s

long tracks, like a ghost
sitting upright
saying oh.

But even that’s a lie.

Just black grass, blue snow.
I can’t write this

without trying to make it
beautiful. Submission, resistance, surrender.

On first
inspecting Adam, the devil entered his lips,

Watch: the devil enters Adam’s lips
crawls through his throat through his guts
to finally emerge out his anus.

He’s all hollow! the devil giggles.
He knows his job will be easy, a human just one long desperation
to be filled.

My father’s white undershirt peeking out
through his collar. My father’s hand slicing skin, gristle,
from a chicken carcass I hold still against the cutting board.

Sometimes he bites his bottom lip to suppress
what must be
rage. It must be rage

because it makes no sound. My vast
terror at what I can’t hear,

at my ignorance, is untranslatable.
My father speaks in perfect English.

Yallah habibti, move your tongue like the sea
easy. My big sister teaches me to ululate, rolls
her tongue in waves. Dips thin fingers inside
my mouth to pull out mine, stretches it long
and pinches the tip. Watch, we move tongues
like this. I see the walls of our father’s house
collapse and we swim free leleleleleleleleleee

On the ferry to Tangier I shriek across the sea.
Practice how to sound like a real woman. Old
aunties grab my buttocks, smush their breasts
against my back and sing leleleleleleleleleleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Don’t cover your mouth habibti! Only women
on the upper deck, only sea. We move tongues
like this to tell the waves stay back, tell men

stay back, tell the dead stay gone, tell runaway
wives stay gone. They turn me into wisteria
woman, limbs wrapped around poles and thighs
as they guide me. Throw back your head, epiglottis
to the breeze. Salt air burns my hot membranes,
scratches at the tight knots of my chords.
All my life I was told

women must swallow sand 
unless we are sounding
a warning.

^{Meaning: stranger, one without a home and thus, deserving of pity. Also: westerner.}

on visits back your english sticks to everything.
your own auntie calls you ghareeb. stranger

in your family’s house, you: runaway dog turned wild.
like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger.

black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose.
they say it so often, it must be your name now, stranger.

when’d the west set in your bones? you survive
each winter like you were made for snow, a stranger

to each ancestor who lights your past. your parents,
dead, never taught you their language—stranger

to everything that tries to bring you home. a silver sun
& blood-soaked leaves, everything a little strange

& a little the same—like the hump of a deer on the busy
road, headless, chest propped up as the cars fly by. strange

no one bats an eye. you should pray but you’re a bad muslim
everyone says. the Qur’an you memorized turns stranger

in your mouth, sand that quakes your throat. gag & ache
even your body wants nothing to do with you, stranger.

how many poems must you write to convince yourself
you have a family? everyone leaves & you end up the stranger.

“Oh no, not with your syntax,” said H.V. to her daughter-in-law, a Chinese writing poetry in English

She walk to table
She walks to a table

She walk to table now
She is walking to a table now

What difference it make
What difference does it make

In Nature, no completeness
No sentence really complete thought

Language, our birthright & curse
Pay no mind to immigrant syntax

Poetry, born as beast
Move best when free, undressed

Allah, you gave us a language
where yesterday & tomorrow
are the same word. Kal.

A spell cast with the entire
mouth. Back of the throat
to teeth. Tomorrow means I might

have her forever. Yesterday means
I say goodbye, again.
Kal means they are the same.

I know you can bend time.
I am merely asking for what
is mine. Give me my mother for no

other reason than I deserve her.
If yesterday & tomorrow are the same
pluck the flower of my mother’s body

from the soil. Kal means I’m in the crib,
eyelashes wet as she looks over me.
Kal means I’m on the bed,

crawling away from her, my father
back from work. Kal means she’s
dancing at my wedding not-yet come.

Kal means she’s oiling my hair
before the first day of school. Kal
means I wake to her strange voice

in the kitchen. Kal means
she’s holding my unborn baby
in her arms, helping me pick a name.

Ma Jesus
Was a troubled man,
Wid lots o’ sorrow
In His breast.
Oh, he was weary
When they laid Him
In the tomb to rest.
Po’, good Jesus.

Stars, turn from your courses,
Stars, stars, I want you,
Spill into my hands.
I have found a new loneliness,
A new strong loneliness,
That no one understands.
I know a new joy, stars,
A joy of the still peak,
The wonder of airs knife-sharp;
Stars, I have learned to know them,
I have learned the tongue they speak.
Stars, I can understand them,
All the words they say,
All the subtle things.
They teach me exaltation,
A new intoxication
Fine drawn as the music of harp-strings.
Alone … alone … alone …
Stars, I can hear my skin breathe,
Hear my blood beat.
How can flesh be so light,
Feet walk and touch nothing,
Thought become so fleet?
Time is a rhymeless poem
Without any end Written in space,
Here at the world’s summit
Where life-giving winds
Sharply whip one’s face.
Life is the one reality,
Life intensely realized,
Life wildly felt;
Death is an ungrasped dream,
A vague monstrous fable,
A puzzle still unspelt.
Alone … alone … alone …
No other thing that breathes
In this keen place.
O my new joy,
Joy of singing summits,
Of endless, vibrant space!
Stars, stars, stoop down,
Stars, turn from your courses,
Spill into my hands!
Stars, you are my kindred:
I am strong with a new loneliness
That no one understands.

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert 
                    the unpainted stairs 
at the back where we squat 
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire 

Last night when my work was done,
And my estranged hands
Were becoming mutually interested
In such forgotten things as pulses,
I looked out of a window
Into a glittering night sky.

And instantly
I began to feather-stitch a ring around the moon.

Loneliness is not an accident or a choice.
It’s an uninvited and uncreated companion.
It slips in beside you when you are not aware that a
choice you are making will have consequences.
It does you no good even though it’s like one of the
elements in the world that you cannot exist without.
It takes your hand and walks with you. It lies down
with you. It sits beside you. It’s as dark as a shadow
but it has substance that is familiar.
It swims with you and swings around on stools.
It boards the ferry and leans on the motel desk.

Nothing great happens as a result of loneliness.
Your character flaws remain in place. You still stop in
with friends and have wonderful hours among them,
but you must run as soon as you hear it calling.
It does call. And you climb the stairs obediently,
pushing aside books and notes to let it know that you
have returned to it, all is well.
If you don’t answer its call, you sense that it will sink
towards a deep gravity and adopt a limp.

From loneliness you learn very little. It pulls you
back, it pulls you down.

It’s the manifestation of a vow never made but kept:
I will go home now and forever in solitude.

And after that loneliness will accompany you to
every airport, train station, bus depot, café, cinema,
and onto airplanes and into cars, strange rooms and
offices, classrooms and libraries, and it will hang near
your hand like a habit.
But it isn’t a habit and no one can see it.

It’s your obligation, and your companion warms itself
against you.
You are faithful to it because it was the only vow you
made finally, when it was unnecessary.

If you figured out why you chose it, years later, would
you ask it to go?
How would you replace it?

No, saying good-bye would be too embarrassing.
Why?
First you might cry.
Because shame and loneliness are almost one.
Shame at existing in the first place. Shame at being
visible, taking up space, breathing some of the sky,
sleeping in a whole bed, asking for a share.

Loneliness feels so much like shame, it always seems
to need a little more time on its own.

I wouldn’t even know what to do with a third chance,
another halo to shake loose galloping into the crossfire.
     Should I be apologizing? Supposedly, what’s inside my

     body is more or less the same as what’s inside yours—
here, the river girl clutching her toy whistle. There,
the black snake covered in scabs. Follow my neckline,

the beginning will start beginning again. I swear on my
head and eyes, there are moments in every day when
     if you asked me to leave, I would. Heaven is mostly

     preposition—up, above, around—and you can live
any place that’s a place. A failure of courage is still
a victory of safety. Bravery pitches its refugee tent

at the base of my brain and slowly starves, chipping into
darkness like a clay bird bouncing down a well. All night
     I eat yogurt and eggplant and garlic, water my dead

     orchids. In what world would any of me seem credible?
God’s word is a melody, and melody requires repetition.
God’s word is a melody I sang once then forgot.

When I have passed away and am forgotten,
         And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten
         With not a tree or stone to mark the place;

Perchance a pensive youth, with passion burning,
         For olden verse that smacks of love and wine,
The musty pages of old volumes turning,
         May light upon a little song of mine,

And he may softly hum the tune and wonder
         Who wrote the verses in the long ago;
Or he may sit him down awhile to ponder
         Upon the simple words that touch him so.

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.

Last night I asked my mother to cornrow my hair
A skill I had been practicing since last summer
But always ended with a tumbleweed excuse of a braid

My black has always resided in braids
In tango fingers that work through tangles
Translating geometry from hands to head

For years my hair was cultivated into valleys and hills
That refused to be ironed out with a brush held in my hand
I have depended on my mother to make them plains

I am 18 and still sit between my mother’s knees
I still welcome the cracks of her knuckles in my ears
They whisper to me and tell me the secret of youth

I want to be 30 sitting between my mother’s knees
Her fingers keeping us both young while organizing my hair
I never want to flatten the hills by myself
I want the brush in her hand forever

The moon
Was an old, old woman, tonight,
Hurrying home;
Calling pitifully to her children,
The stars,
Begging them to go home with her
For she was afraid,
But they would not.
They only laughed
While she crept along
Huddling against the dark blue wall of the Night
Stooping low,
Her old black hood wrapped close about her ears,
And only the pale curve of her yellow cheek
With a tear in the hollow of it
Showing through.
And the wind laughed too,
For he was teasing the old woman,
Pelting her with snowballs,
Filling her old eyes with the flakes of them,
Making her cold.
She stumbled along, shivering,
And once she fell,
And the snow buried her;
And all her jewels
Slid from the old bag
Under her arm
And fell to earth,
And the tall trees seized them,
And hung them about their necks,
And filled their bony arms with them.
All their nakedness was covered by her jewels,
And they would not give them back to her.
The old moon-woman moaned piteously,
Hurrying home;
And the wild wind laughed at her
And her children laughed too,
And the tall trees taunted her
With their glittering plunder.

And now the sun in tinted splendor sank,
  The west was all aglow with crimson light;
The bay seemed like a sheet of burnished gold,
  Its waters glistened with such radiance bright.

At anchor lay the yachts with snow-white sails,
  Outlined against the glowing, rose-hued sky.
No ripple stirred the waters’ calm repose
  Save when a tiny craft sped lightly by.

Our boat was drifting slowly, gently round,
  To rest secure till evening shadows fell;
No sound disturbed the stillness of the air,
  Save the soft chiming of the vesper bell.

Yes, drifting, drifting; and I thought that life,
  When nearing death, is like the sunset sky:
And death is but the slow, sure drifting in
  To rest far more securely, by and by.

Then let me drift along the Bay of Time,
  Till my last sun shall set in glowing light;
Let me cast anchor where no shadows fall,
  Forever moored within Heaven’s harbor bright.

Remember not the promises we made
In this same garden many moons ago.
You must forget them. I would have it so.
Old vows are like old flowers as they fade
And vaguely vanish in a feeble death.
There is no reason why your hands should clutch
At pretty yesterdays. There is not much
Of beauty in me now. And though my breath
Is quick, my body sentient, my heart
Attuned to romance as before, you must
Not, through mistaken chivalry, pretend
To love me still. There is no mortal art
Can overcome Time’s deep, corroding rust.
Let Love’s beginning expiate Love’s end.

What do I care for morning,
For a shivering aspen tree,
For sun flowers and sumac
Opening greedily?
What do I care for morning,
For the glare of the rising sun,
For a sparrow’s noisy prating,
For another day begun?
Give me the beauty of evening,
The cool consummation of night,
And the moon like a love-sick lady,
Listless and wan and white.
Give me a little valley
Huddled beside a hill,
Like a monk in a monastery,
Safe and contented and still,
Give me the white road glistening,
A strand of the pale moon’s hair,
And the tall hemlocks towering
Dark as the moon is fair.
Oh what do I care for morning,
Naked and newly born—
Night is here, yielding and tender—
What do I care for dawn!

Now,
In June,
When the night is a vast softness
Filled with blue stars,
And broken shafts of moon-glimmer
Fall upon the earth,
Am I too old to see the fairies dance?
I cannot find them any more.

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes – 
I wonder if It weighs like Mine – 
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long – 
Or did it just begin – 
I could not tell the Date of Mine – 
It feels so old a pain – 

I wonder if it hurts to live – 
And if They have to try – 
And whether – could They choose between – 
It would not be – to die – 

I note that Some – gone patient long – 
At length, renew their smile –  
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil – 

I wonder if when Years have piled –  
Some Thousands – on the Harm –  
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –  

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve – 
Enlightened to a larger Pain –  
In Contrast with the Love –  

The Grieved – are many – I am told –  
There is the various Cause –  
Death – is but one – and comes but once –  
And only nails the eyes –  

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –  
A sort they call "Despair" –  
There's Banishment from native Eyes – 
In sight of Native Air –  

And though I may not guess the kind –  
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –  

To note the fashions – of the Cross –  
And how they're mostly worn –  
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own – 

^{Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto,
President of The People’s Republic of Angola: 1976}

1
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
                                     Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
and this is dedicated in particular
to those who hear my footsteps
or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery
cart
then turn around
see me
and hurry on
away from this impressive terror I must be:
I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon
surrounded by my comrades singing
terrible revenge in merciless
accelerating
rhythms
But
I have watched a blind man studying his face.
I have set the table in the evening and sat down
to eat the news.
Regularly
I have gone to sleep.
There is no one to forgive me.
The dead do not give a damn.
I live like a lover
who drops her dime into the phone
just as the subway shakes into the station
wasting her message
canceling the question of her call:
fulminating or forgetful but late
and always after the fact that could save or 
condemn me

I must become the action of my fate.

2
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number? 
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I must become a menace to my enemies.

3
And if I 
if I ever let you slide
who should be extirpated from my universe
who should be cauterized from earth
completely
(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the
                   terrorist degree)
then let my body fail my soul
in its bedeviled lecheries

And if I 
if I ever let love go
because the hatred and the whisperings
become a phantom dictate I o-
bey in lieu of impulse and realities
(the blossoming flamingos of my
                   wild mimosa trees)
then let love freeze me
out.
I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies.

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters.
      Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity. 

The grim dawn lightens thin bleak clouds;
In the hill clefts beyond the flooded meadows
Lies death-pale, death-still mist.

We trudge along wearily,
Heavy with lack of sleep,
Spiritless, yet with pretence of gaiety.

The sun brings crimson to the colourless sky;
Light gleams from brass and steel—
We trudge on wearily—

O God, end this bleak anguish
Soon, soon, with vivid crimson death,
End it in mist-pale sleep!

Here shall my heart find its haven of calm,
By rush-fringed rivers and rain-fed streams
That glimmer thro’ meadows of lily and palm.
Here shall my soul find its true repose
Under a sunset sky of dreams
Diaphanous, amber and rose.
The air is aglow with the glint and whirl
Of swift wild wings in their homeward flight,
Sapphire, emerald, topaz, and pearl.
Afloat in the evening light.

A brown quail cries from the tamarisk bushes,
A bulbul calls from the cassia-plume,
And thro’ the wet earth the gentian pushes
Her spikes of silvery bloom.
Where’er the foot of the bright shower passes
Fragrant and fresh delights unfold;
The wild fawns feed on the scented grasses,
Wild bees on the cactus-gold.

An ox-cart stumbles upon the rocks,
And a wistful music pursues the breeze
From a shepherd’s pipe as he gathers his flocks
Under the pipal-trees.
And a young Banjara driving her cattle
Lifts up her voice as she glitters by
In an ancient ballad of love and battle
Set to the beat of a mystic tune,
And the faint stars gleam in the eastern sky
To herald a rising moon.

My soul, there is a country
     Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a wingéd sentry
     All skilful in the wars;

There above the noise and danger,
     Sweet Peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And One born in a manger
     Commands the beauteous files.

He is thy gracious Friend,
     And—O my Soul awake!—
Did in pure love descend
     To die here for thy sake.

If thou canst get but thither,
     There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
     Thy fortress and thy ease.

Leave then thy foolish ranges,
     For none can thee secure
But One, who never changes,
     Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end—
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release—
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best—
God! but the interest!

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.

That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.

The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.

The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.

I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

I boasted among men that I had known
you. They see your pictures in all 
works of mine. They come and ask
me, “Who is he?” I know not how 
to answer them. I say, “Indeed, I 
cannot tell.” They blame me and they 
go away in scorn. And you sit there
smiling.
    I put my tales of you into lasting 
songs. The secret gushes out from my
heart. They come and ask me, “Tell
me all your meanings.” I know not
how to answer them. I say, “Ah, who
knows what they mean!” They smile
and go away in utter scorn. And you
sit there smiling.

Death, thy servant, is at my door.
He has crossed the unknown sea and
brought thy call to my home.
   The night is dark and my heart is 
fearful-yet I will take up the lamp,
open my gates and bow to him my 
welcome. It is thy messenger who 
stands at my door.
   I will worship him with folded hands,
and with tears. I will worship him 
placing at his feet the treasure of my 
heart.
   He will go back with his errand done,
leaving a dark shadow on my morning; 
and in my desolate home only my
forlorn self will remain as my last
offering to thee.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
     Where knowledge is free;
     Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
     Where words come out from the depth of truth;
     Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
     Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
     Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action— 
     Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

THEY say of me, and so they should,
It’s doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come––
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

The pressure of the moment can cause someone to kill someone or something

The leniency of consideration might treat with more kindness

Which is to be desired. Or at least often to be desired.

But if my house is on fire and you notice, I wish you would kill

That fire. But if my hair is on fire, while I'm sure you'll be enjoying

The spectacle of it, act quickly or don't act at all. But if a sudden

Jarring of us all out of existence is eminent, do something.

If I were in a book it would be the book
in which some lesser angel bemoans
the state of my soul

and is comforted for it
and is corrected for it

by some greater angel who knows
as the reader knows that it is not my soul
that suffers the indignities of ignobility: 
the inability to curb the petty smallness
of spirit, ungladness in the company
of fools, anger's decay,

in the sense that my soul itself cannot be
harmed nor tarnished though it can witness
my sorrow on finding that illness alters me
from the self I thought I'd more or less known. 

What can one do about one's nature?
I look at the spider that's finally 
restrung its great wheel away from the door.

I’d like to close the door awhile
leaving the spider be.
I’d like to preclude the possibility
of angel, as of prey.

^{translated from the French of Judith Gautier by James Whitall}

Before daybreak the breezes whisper 
through the trellis at my window;
they interrupt and carry off my dream, 
and he of whom I dreamed 
vanishes from me. 

I climb upstairs 
to look from the topmost window, 
but with whom? . . .

I remember how I used to stir the fire 
with my hairpin of jade 
as I am doing now . . .
but the brasier holds nothing but ashes. 

I turn to look at the mountain; 
there is a thick mist, 
a dismal rain, 
and I gaze down at the wind-dappled river, 
the river that flows past me forever 
without bearing away my sorrow. 

I have kept the rain of my tears 
on the crape of my tunic; 
with a gesture I fling these bitter drops 
to the wild swans on the river, 
that they may be my messengers.

Les Cygnes Sauvages

^{translated from the Chinese of Li Qingzhao by Judith Gautier}

Le vent souffle, avant l’aube, au dehors, sur les treillis de ma fenêtre.

Il interrompt et emporte mon rêve, il efface tout vestige de lui.

Pour voir aux alentours, je monte à l’étage supérieur . . . avec qui? . . .

Autrefois, je me souviens, du bout de l’épingle en jade de ma coiffure, je remuais le feu,

Comme je le fais à présent . . . mais le brasero est éteint.

Je tourne la tête vers la montagne: la pluie, un épais brouillard.

Je regarde vers le fleuve, tout bossué de vagues; le fleuve qui coule toujours, devant moi, sans emporter ma peine.

Sur le crêpe de ma tunique, j’ai gardé la pluie de mes larmes;

D’une chiquenaude, je chasse ces gouttes amères vers les cygnes du fleuve, pour qu’ils soient mes messagers.

浪淘沙·帘外五更风

帘外五更风，
吹梦无踪。
画楼重上与谁同？
记得玉钗斜拨火，
宝篆成空。

回首紫金峰，
雨润烟浓。
一江春浪醉醒中。
留得罗襟前日泪，
弹与征鸿。

Four great walls have hemmed me in.
Four strong, high walls:
Right and wrong,
Shall and shan’t.
The mighty pillars tremble when
My conscience palls
And sings its song—
I can, I can’t.

If for a moment Samson’s strength
Were given me I’d shove
Them away from where I stand;
Free, I know I’d love
To ramble soul and all,
And never dread to strike a wall.

Again, I wonder would that be
Such a happy state for me . . .
The going, being, doing, sham—
And never knowing where I am.
I might not love freedom at all;
My tired wings might crave a wall—
Four walls to rise and pen me in
This conscious world with guarded men.

Chilled into a serenity
As rigid as your pose
You linger trustingly,
But a gutter waits for you.
Your elegance does not secure
You favors with the sun.
He is not one to pity fragileness.
He thinks all cheeks should burn
And feel how tears can run.

Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
To the same well-worn rock;
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun
The same tints—rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;
Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,
Two eyes, unfathomable, soul-searing,
Watching, watching—watching me;
The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk;
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,
       —The eyes of my Regret.

            O these bonds packed with zeroes—harmony, grief, regrets. I’m done with memory. And every time I listen to your poetry, nausea becomes a river in me in which I swim naked, dispossessed.

            I’m making a fetish of everyone dead, my electrons black with heat and sound.

            O my thousand delicate microaggressions, bound up with a hunger I can never grasp. Keep me safe, erotic. Be a mirror to these movements of bourgeois frustration.

            In these wee early hours, know that it has become very hard for me to tell apart the odds on fornication from a staggering, and at times quite foolish, feeling of abjection; as such, my sex might as well have been written down in algebra columns.

            The following notes were written in prison, under forced labour, that is, in the dismal intervals and caesuras in which, to proclaim my virtue, I had to consent to being bludgeoned to death by pigs.

            I’ve yet to overcome. Indeed, I’ve been destroyed so many times my probationer, in anger and disgust, had to void each letter so as to weigh down what is meant by free on appeal.

            O my decadent counter-revolution. My beautiful mechanism. What matters most is not invention, force or calculation, but what it means to suffer the fate of failure, and to learn from it.

            (A mistake made by the struggle. As Césaire knew—only too well—modern revolt needs a black clarity of vision.)

            As for the wonder communicated by metaphor—I have spent many mornings watching a monkey open a cowrie shell.

            The scene reminds me of Landscape of a Man Killed by a Snake, but, on further reflection, the verses seem more intimately bound up with the Koran as read by Malcolm.

            We need to scribble an x on the walls of our collective resurrection. We need to let the right one in.

            (What worries me most about the absolute is that it has no depth, but is all surface.)

            To become zealous, indecent, as we bleed out at sunrise. For that is the contract. You can fuck all the rest.

You were a sophist,
Pale and quite remote, 
As you bade me
Write poems—
Brown poems 
Of dark words
And prehistoric rhythms . . . 
Your pallor stifled my poesy 
But I remembered a tapestry
That I would some day weave 
Of dim purples and fine reds
And blues 
Like night and death—
The keen precision of your words 
Wove a silver thread 
Through the dusk softness 
Of my dream-stuff. . . .

Cemeteries are places for departed souls
And bones interred, 
Or hearts with shattered loves. 
A woman with lips made warm for laughter 
Would find grey stones and roving spirits
Too chill for living, moving pulses . . .
And thou, great spirit, wouldst shiver in thy granite shroud 
Should idle mirth or empty talk 
Disturb thy tranquil sleeping. 

A cemetery is a place for shattered loves
And broken hearts. . . . 
Bowed before the crystal chalice of thy soul,
I find the multi-colored fragrances of thy mind
Has lost itself in Death’s transparency. 

Oh, stir the lucid waters of thy sleep 
And coin for me a tale 
Of happy loves and gems and joyous limbs
And hearts where love is sweet! 

A cemetery is a place for broken hearts 
And silent thought. . . 
And silence never moves, 
Nor speaks nor sings. 

When first you sang a song to me
With laughter shining from your eyes, 
You trolled your music liltingly
With cadences of glad surprise. 

In after years I heard you croon
In measures delicately slow 
Of trees turned silver by the moon
And nocturnes sprites and lovers know. 

And now I cannot hear you sing, 
But love still holds your melody
For silence is a sounding thing
To one who listens hungrily. 

Whenever I make a new poem,
the old ones sound like gibberish.
How can they ever make sense in a book?

Let them say:
“He seems to have lived in the mountains.
He traveled now and then.
When he appeared in cities,
he was almost always drunk.

“Most of his poems are lost.
Many of those we have were found in
letters to his friends.

“He had a very large number of friends.”

^{translated from the modern Greek by John Cavafy}

Without reflection, without mercy, without shame,
they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about.

And here I sit now and consider and despair.

It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate:
I had outside so many things to terminate.

Oh! why when they were building could I not beware!

But never a sound of building, never an echo came.
Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out. 

Τείχη

Χωρίς περίσκεψιν, χωρίς λύπην, χωρίς αιδώ
μεγάλα κ’ υψηλά τριγύρω μου έκτισαν τείχη.

Και κάθομαι και απελπίζομαι τώρα εδώ.
Άλλο δεν σκέπτομαι: τον νουν μου τρώγει αυτή η τύχη·

διότι πράγματα πολλά έξω να κάμω είχον.
A όταν έκτιζαν τα τείχη πώς να μην προσέξω.

Aλλά δεν άκουσα ποτέ κρότον κτιστών ή ήχον.
Aνεπαισθήτως μ’ έκλεισαν από τον κόσμον έξω.

Though I was dwelling in a prison house, 
My soul was wandering by the carefree stream
Through fields of green with gold eyed daisies strewn, 
And daffodils and sunflower cavaliers. 
And near me played a little browneyed child, 
A winsome creature God alone conceived, 
“Oh, little friend,” I begged. “Give me a flower
That I might bear it to my lonely cell.” 
He plucked a dandelion, an ugly bloom, 
But tenderly he placed it in my hand, 
And in his eyes I saw the sign of love. 
‘Twas then the dandelion became a rose. 

Once I was good like the Virgin Mary and the Minister’s
    wife.
My father worked for Mr. Pullman and white people’s
    tips; but he died two days after his insurance expired.
I had nothing, so I had to go to work.
All the stock I had was a white girl’s education and a
    face that enchanted the men of both races.
Starvation danced with me.
So when Big Lizzie, who kept a house for white men,
    came to me with tales of fortune that I could reap
    from the sale of my virtue I bowed my head to Vice.
Now I can drink more gin than any man for miles around.
Gin is better than all the water in Lethe.

She stands
In the quiet darkness,
This troubled woman,
Bowed by
Weariness and pain, 
Like an
Autumn flower
In the frozen rain. 
Like a 
Wind-blown autumn flower
That never lifts its head 
Again. 

"Good-bye," I said to my conscience—
    "Good-bye for aye and aye,"
And I put her hands off harshly,
    And turned my face away;
And conscience smitten sorely
    Returned not from that day.

But a time came when my spirit
    Grew weary of its pace;
And I cried: "Come back, my conscience;
    I long to see thy face."
But conscience cried: "I cannot;
    Remorse sits in my place."

I can laugh now.
Have you not heard my laughter?
It leads the winds:
They come tumbling and bubbling after.

I have learned to laugh.
I have learned to laugh with my spirit
And with my soul.
Listen. Do you not hear it?

I shall quench the world.
I shall sear the stars with my laughter;
Shrivel the moon and the sun
And make new ones after.

For life’s skeleton
I shall make flesh from desires;
Then of my mounting laughter
Build it a temple with mocking spires.

I shall laugh to heaven.
I shall laugh below hell and above.
I shall laugh forever.
It was laughter God died of.

Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness.
Touch me with your hands a little,
Kiss me, as you lean above me,
With your cold sadistic kisses;
Wind your hair close, close around me,
Pain might dissipate this blankness.
Hurt me even, even wound me,
I have need of love that stings.
Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness.
So that I may laugh at things.

My laughter rings in the highest mountains,
My mockery echoes vividly over the peaks,
My laughter and my mockery dance lightly together
Like derisive imps… But my soul never speaks.

My wisdom sits on a promontory
And remotely overwatches the world;
My pain stays forever in that cave
Where the ragged ends of life come unfurled.

My love cuts downward between mountains
Like a torrential, cataract, to the deeps,
For love, like life, is a down-going.
But my soul is like a thing that sleeps.

It knows the remorseless depths,
The thinnest ether of the farthest height;
There are no lights or darkness for its discovering
It has crawled on the earth and it knows the joy of flight

It is speechless because it knows all speeches,
Future and present and what has gone before.
It waits sphinxlike, and I myself
Cannot guess what it is waiting for.

Why are you laughing, Poet?
I much prefer your sighs.
I myself have just read one of your songs
And tears are biting my eyes.

And why should I not laugh?
I cleaned my heart of its dust,
Swept my spirit clear of its cobwebs,
Gathered them up and thrust
Them from me. And then
Men passing, found the whole,
Called them songs and sang them and exulted.
They thought they had found my soul.

There are more songs in the far corners
           of my soul
Than I shall ever be able to sing.
I shall go away long before they are
           all expressed
And they will wait for another life, for
           more suffering,
To give them birth; another life and many
           more tears
And love, to make them open their eyes to
           the light.
It will take many lives to express all
           the songs
I hear singing to themselves day and night.

There is an autumn sadness upon me,
A sadness of bared trees,
And mist and delicate death of flowers.
There is an autumn sadness upon me,
A falling of leaves in my soul.

There is an autumn sadness upon me,
A dreamfulness in my heart,
And a wistful sense of longing.
There is faint moaning music
Like cries of departing birds.

There are trembling hands on my eyelids,
A dim foreknowledge of tears
And dreams, patterning ultimate slumber.
There is an autumn sadness upon me,
A falling of leaves in my soul.

I shall not harm you at all nor ask you
        for anything,
You need have no fear;
I am only very tired and would like to
        rest awhile
With my head here
And play with the long strands of your
        loosed hair,
Or touch your skin,
Feel your cool breath on my eyes,
        watch it stir
Those rising hills where your breasts begin;
And listen to your voice whispering
        tender words
Until, perhaps, I fall asleep;
Or feel you kiss my forehead to comfort me
        a little
If I should weep.
That is all, just to lie so beside you
Till dawn's lamp is lit.
You need not fear me. I have given
        too much of love
Ever to ask for it.

Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.

But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.

I will think of water-lilies
Growing in a darkened pool,
And my breath shall move like water,
And my hands be limp and cool.

It shall be as though I waited
In a wooden place alone;
I will learn the peace of lilies
And will take it for my own.

If a twinge of thought, if yearning
Come like wind into this place,
I will bear it like the shadow
Of a leaf across my face.

I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. They cannot even die
Who have not lived.

                                The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.

If I am not life’s, if I am not death’s,
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
Who has not waked may not yet sleep.

                   1

I should like to creep
Through the long brown grasses
        That are your lashes;
I should like to poise
        On the very brink
Of the leaf-brown pools
        That are your shadowed eyes;
I should like to cleave
        Without sound,
Their glimmering waters,
        Their unrippled waters,
I should like to sink down
        And down
            And down . . . .
                And deeply drown.

                   2

Would I be more than a bubble breaking?
        Or an ever-widening circle
        Ceasing at the marge?
Would my white bones
        Be the only white bones
Wavering back and forth, back and forth
        In their depths?