^{translated by Pierre Joris}

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk:
time returns to the shell.

In the mirror is Sunday,
in the dream we sleep,
the mouth speaks true.

My eye goes down to my lover’s sex:
we gaze at each other,
we speak of dark things,

we love each other like poppy and memory,
we sleep like wine in the seashells,
like the sea in the moon’s blood-beam.

We stand and embrace at the window, they watch us from the street:
it is time, for this to be known!
It is time that the stone took the trouble to bloom,
that unrest’s heart started to beat.
It’s time for it to be time.

It is time.

Corona

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,

wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

^{translated by Pierre Joris}

The bright
stones pass through the air, the bright-
white, the light-
bringers

They don’t
want to come down, nor fall,
nor hit. They open
up
like humble
dog roses, that’s how they open,
they float
toward you, my quiet one,
you, my true one—:

I see you, you gather them with my
new, my
everyman’s hands, you put them
into the Bright-Again no one
has to weep for or name.

Die Hellen Steine

Die hellen
Steine gehn durch die Luft, die hell-
weißen, die Licht-
bringer.

Sie wollen
nicht niedergehen, nicht stürzen,
nicht treffen. Sie gehen
auf,
wie die geringen
Heckenrosen, so tun sie sich auf,
sie schweben
dir zu, du meine Leise,
du meine Wahre—:

ich seh dich, du pflückst sie mit meinen
neuen, meinen
Jedermannshänden, du tust sie
ins Abermals-Helle, das niemand
zu weinen braucht noch zu nennen.

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,
     And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,
     Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.

We knew that things were deteriorating.

Gothic houses collapsing, sharks patrolling the lagoons, 

the born-again ministers warning of an immediate conflagration.

All the flights to paradise had been cancelled and even 

pinhole cameras weren’t letting light in.

It got to be so bad we didn’t want to listen to the news anymore,

where all we were doing was gawking at someone else’s trouble.

It wasn’t worth the effort. Where was the satisfaction we longed for?  

We couldn’t sleep so would spend all night watching the full moon’s

beams cement themselves to the silky water and travel for miles 

on the waves.  Someone was rowing along the shore, 

and in the silver light the evergreens were shaking slightly. 

At the edge of the forest the thistles

were attaching themselves to the fur of animals.  

What serendipity to hitch a ride to your future.

When the heavens with stars are gleaming
   Like a diadem of light, 
And the moon’s pale rays are streaming, 
   Decking earth with radiance bright; 
When the autumn’s winds are sighing, 
   O’er the hill and o’er the lea, 
When the summer time is dying, 
   Wanderer, wilt thou think of me? 

When thy life is crowned with gladness, 
     And thy home with love is blest, 
Not one brow o’ercast with sadness, 
     Not one bosom of unrest—
When at eventide reclining, 
    At thy hearthstone gay and free, 
Think of one whose life is pining, 
    Breathe thou, love, a prayer for me. 

Should dark sorrows make thee languish, 
     Cause thy cheek to lose its hue, 
In the hour of deepest anguish, 
     Darling, then I’ll grieve with you. 
Though the night be dark and dreary, 
     And it seemeth long to thee, 
I would whisper, “be not weary;” 
   I would pray love, then, for thee. 

Well I know that in the future, 
    I may cherish naught of earth; 
Well I know that love needs nurture, 
    And it is of heavenly birth.
But though ocean waves may sever 
     I from thee, and thee from me, 
Still this constant heart will never, 
    Never cease to think of thee. 

You have sweet flowers for your pleasure;
    You laugh with the bountiful earth
In its richness of summer treasure:
    Where now are your flowers and your mirth?
Petals and cadenced laughter,
    Each in a dying fall,
Droop out of life; and after
    Is nothing; they were all.

But we from the death of roses
    That three suns perfume and gild
With a kiss, till the fourth discloses
    A withered wreath, have distilled
The fulness of one rare phial,
    Whose nimble life shall outrun
The circling shadow on the dial,
    Outlast the tyrannous sun.

Yesterday I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.

But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?

Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.

Ah, to-day is like a dirge,—
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.

Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.

Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.

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. 

^{(written in her fifteenth year)}

Life is but a troubled ocean, 
     Hope a meteor, love a flower
Which blossoms in the morning beam, 
     And whithers with the evening hour. 

Ambition is a dizzy height, 
     And glory, but a lightning gleam; 
Fame is a bubble, dazzling bright, 
    Which fairest shines in fortune’s beam. 

When clouds and darkness veil the skies, 
    And sorrow’s blast blows loud and chill, 
Friendship shall like a rainbow rise, 
    And softly whisper—peace, be still.

^{translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa}

Alone, now you are free.

You pick a sky and name it
                 a sky to live in
                 a sky to refuse

But if you want know
                 if you are really free
and to remain free
you must steady yourself
                 on a foothold of earth

so that the earth may rise
so that you may give
                 wings
to the children of earth
                 below 

Beyond the cities I have seen,
Beyond the wrack and din,
There is a wide and fair demesne
Where I have never been.

Away from desert wastes of greed,
Over the peaks of pride,
Across the seas of mortal need
Its citizens abide.

And through the distance though I see
How stern must be the fare,
My feet are ever fain to be
Upon the journey there.

In that far land the only school
The dwellers all attend
Is built upon the Golden Rule,
And man to man is friend.

No war is there nor war’s distress,
But truth and love increase—
It is a realm of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.

You know the photo: the one of
the young woman with a scarf &
dark hair, crouching over what
used to be a student

screaming why

hands plunging into the low atmosphere
as if she can grab her god’s shoulders &
shake him for letting this happen.
But you don’t know the man in plaid

over her left shoulder. You don’t know
his class had been dismissed early to
participate in democracy. He is too far
away & indistinct for you to see the

thick glasses, the mustache he still
wears fifty years later. You don’t know
that a decade after the National Guard
almost shot him, too, he would become

my father. Daffodils remain silent, but
not complicit: they’re still suffering shock.
Flowers planted in gun barrels, tear gas
tossed back at uniforms. Shoots

of yellow flowers from my baptism
poke through early May soil.

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

In-between the sun and moon,
I sit and watch
and make some room
for letting light and twilight mingle,
shaping hope
and making single glances last eternity,
a little more,
extending love beyond the doors of welcoming,
while wedding all the parted people,
even sons to violent mothers,
and searching all the others finding light
where twilight lingers,
in-between the sun and moon.

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

for Ernestine Hemingway

She was an old woman who fished alone
from a skiff in the Sea of Tranquility
and she had gone eighty-five years now
without a fish. Not even a dusty rock
bass had struck her night crawler though
the worm was fat and finely bristled
and covered in slime and interminable
in the airless waste. Her neck was thin
and creased with lines the sun had written
on skin gone fine as paper but this
was not the first thing one noticed
upon seeing the old woman in the skiff.
No, it was her eyes that were the color
of the moon and cheerful in the reflected
light like two bone-white plates waiting
for sliced cake on a table. They were
quietly empty and waiting for something
good, and they were not at all defeated.
In the skiff there was a bottle of wine.
It was the wine of the country and tasted
of mineral and sunlight and the green
glass of the bottle was beaded with drops
of condensation, which was an odd thing,
thought the woman, because the moon
is an arid place and the air is thin as hope,
the hopes of a widow casting her line
with its moist worm into the scattered
gravel so that bits of gray dust clung
to its meatiness. The old woman pulled
the cork out with her teeth and began
to drink and set the bottle on the bench
and rested one hand on a wooden thwart
and said, The wine is good. It tastes of
the country and of loneliness and also
the moon, which is where I fish because
this is the thing that I was born to do.