Li-Young Lee

Little Father

***

I buried my father

in the sky.

Since then, the birds

clean and comb him every morning

and pull the blanket up to his chin

every night.

I buried my father underground.

Since then, my ladders

only climb down,

and all the earth has become a house

whose rooms are the hours, whose doors

stand open at evening, receiving

guest after guest.

Sometimes I see past them

to the tables spread for a wedding feast.

I buried my father in my heart.

Now he grows in me, my strange son,

my little root who won’t drink milk,

little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,

little clock spring newly wet

in the fire, little grape, parent to the future

wine, a son the fruit of his own son,

little father I ransom with my life.

Georg Trakl

At Night

***

The blueness dies out in my eyes tonight,

the red gold of my heart. O how still the light burns!

Your cloak of sadness encircles the long descent.

Your red lips seal your friend’s unhinging.

***

Postdata - Eclipse

Jack Kerouac

***

Close your eyes -

Landlord knocking

On the back door.

***

Postdata - Drift

Jack Kerouac

***

Early morning yellow flowers,

thinking about

the drunkards of Mexico.

***

Booker T. Jones - Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro

***

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

petals on a wet, black bough.

***

The Middle East - Western

Charles Simic

Watermelons

***

Green Buddhas

On the fruit stand.

We eat the smile

And spit out the teeth.

Tamas Wells - Thirty People Away

Kijo Murakami

***


The moment two bubbles

are united, they both vanish.

A lotus blooms.

***

Zachary Lucky - Town To Town

Kijo Murakami

***

First autumn morning:

the mirror I stare into

shows my father's face.

***


Beach House - I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun

Raizan

***

Women planting rice...

Ugly every bit

About them...

But their ancient song

***

Wynn Walent - If You Fall I Fall Too

Etsujin

***

An autumn eve;

She comes and asks,

"Shall I light the lamp?"

***

Jane Weaver - Heart of Gold

Tairo

***

My good father raged

when I snapped

the peony...

Precious memory !

***

Robert Ellis - Bamboo

Abdulah Sidran

Why Venice Is Sinking

***

I look at the sky over Venice.

Nothing’s changed for the last seven billion years.

God’s up there. He created the universe and then

the seven billion worlds in it and in every world innumerable nations,

a babel of tongues, but only one Venice.

He made each nation different, whispering: “Now get acquainted.”

He gave them foreign language to get better acquainted with,

making them all, by this means, richer and better.

He made Venice the way he did birds and fish,

just like that, so people and nations would come to believe in him,

being, of course, thunderstruck by what he could do.

I look at the sky over Venice. Up there and everywhere – is God.

The only one. He created the universe,

seven billion worlds in the universe, and every world

filled with people and languages, to which he added

a single Venice. And in one world, upon a landmass known

as Europe, among the tribe of the southern Slavs, he placed

a small addenda. This is the border. Bosnia.

Bosnia, Bosnia. And here the Eastern cross and the Western cross,

formed of one cross, met and went to war.

But the Bosnians, being meek, took a third faith

and hewed to the unique God, the only One,

neither begotten, nor himself begetter,

Lord of the world, the Master of the Judgement Day.

I look at the sky over Venice. Worldly rulers

have decided that Bosnians should be – nowhere.

Venice is sinking. Europe is sinking. The cradle is sinking.

Roses in Murano glass vases are sinking. Murano

is sinking. Hotel rooms are sinking and

the Dead Poets Society is sinking. Why doesn’t the world need

Bosnians? Amongst colours – one colour less?

Amongst scents – one scent less? Why doesn’t the world need

Venice? Amongst wonders – one wonder less?

I look at the sky over this earthly world.

In a long arc, a single star is breaking up, right down through

the bottomless universe, falling, it seems, right into the Grand Canal.

This ordinary world, among seven billion celestial worlds,

is about to become poorer by a whole people.

Its worldly rulers appear to have so decided.

In the universe, therefore, a single falling star.

And Venice is sinking. The universe will be poorer by a whole world.

That is the will of the Lord of the worlds,

the will of the Master of Judgement Day.

***

Glen Campbell - Sadly Beautiful

Abdulah Sidran

A Blind Man Sings To His City

***

The rain stops. Now from the drains,
From the attics, from under the floorboards
Of the shattered homes in the suburbs
Oozes the stench of the corpses
Of mice. I walk seeking
No special meaning in this. A blind man,
To whom it has been given to see
Only what others don't. This
Makes up for my deprivation: in the south wind
That touches me I recognise the voices
Of those who left this city. As if they were crying.
There, scent of the linden trees, close.
I know
The bridge is near, where my step and my stick
Will ring differently - more light
In the sound.There, now, right by my ear
Two flies mate in the air.
It will be scorching hot again
Bodies
Brush past me,hot
Smelling of bed, smelling of lust. I walk muttering
To God, as if He were beside me:
'Surely nobody in this city
Better than me - better than me, God,
To whom you have given never to see
The face he loves.'

***

Laura Veirs - Shadow Blues / Paintings by Dina Meštrović

Edith Sitwell

Poetry

***

Ennobles the heart and the eyes,
and unveils the meaning of all things
upon which the heart and the eyes dwell.
It discovers the secret rays of the universe,
and restores to us forgotten paradises.

***

Ruarri Joseph - Faces, Movements and Cheats

Michael Ondaatje

The Cinnanon Peeler

***

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
you climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
Peeler's wife. Smell me.

***

Doug Paisley - Out on the Weekend

Michael Ondaatje

To A Sad Daughter

***

All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
or assaults the coach.

When I thought of daughters
I wasn't expecting this
but I like this more.
I like all your faults
even your purple moods
when you retreat from everyone
to sit in bed under a quilt.
And when I say 'like'
I mean of course 'love'
but that embarrasses you.
You who feel superior to black and white movies
(coaxed for hours to see Casablanca)
though you were moved
by Creature from the Black Lagoon.

One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change.

I don't care if you risk
your life to angry goalies
creatures with webbed feet.
You can enter their caves and castles
their glass laboratories. Just
don't be fooled by anyone but yourself.

This is the first lecture I've given you.
You're 'sweet sixteen' you said.
I'd rather be your closest friend
than your father. I'm not good at advice
you know that, but ride
the ceremonies
until they grow dark.

Sometimes you are so busy
discovering your friends
I ache with loss
--but that is greed.
And sometimes I've gone
into my purple world
and lost you.

One afternoon I stepped
into your room. You were sitting
at the desk where I now write this.
Forsythia outside the window
and sun spilled over you
like a thick yellow miracle
as if another planet
was coaxing you out of the house
--all those possible worlds!--
and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics.

I cannot look at forsythia now
without loss, or joy for you.
You step delicately
into the wild world
and your real prize will be
the frantic search.
Want everything. If you break
break going out not in.
How you live your life I don't care
but I'll sell my arms for you,
hold your secrets forever.

If I speak of death
which you fear now, greatly,
it is without answers.
except that each
one we know is
in our blood.
Don't recall graves.
Memory is permanent.
Remember the afternoon's
yellow suburban annunciation.
Your goalie
in his frightening mask
dreams perhaps
of gentleness.

***

Wilco - Jesus, etc.

Vladimir Nabokov

Softest of Tongues

***

To many things I've said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means "good-bye") -- to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly.... And so that's that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I've said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that -- like some ancient sonneteer -- I heard
its echoes by posterity acclaimed.
But now thou too must go; just here we part,
softest of tongues, my true one, all my own....
And I am left to grope for heart and art
and start anew with clumsy tools of stone.

***

Chip Taylor - Words (Between The Lines Of Age)

Frank O'Hara

Poem

***

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

***

Vesper Stamper & Sufjan Stevens - Up On The Housetop

Joseph Brodsky

In Memory of My Father: Australia

***

You arose―I dreamt so last night―and left for
Australia. The voice, with a triple echo,
ebbed and flowed, complaining about climate,
grime, that the deal with the flat is stymied,
pity it’s not downtown, though near the ocean,
no elevator but the bathtub’s indeed an option,
ankles keep swelling. “Looks like I’ve lost my slippers”
came through rapt yet clear via satellite.
And at once the receiver burst into howling “Adelaide! Adelaide!”―
into rattling and crackling, as if a shutter,
ripped off its hinges, were pounding the wall with inhuman power.

Still, better this than the silky powder
canned by the crematorium, than the voucher―
better these snatches of voice, this patchwork
monologue of a recluse trying to play a genie

for the first time since you formed a cloud above a chimney.

***

This Is Magnolia - Murmur

Adam Zagajewski

Self-Portrait

***

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.

Translated by Clare Cavanagh

***

This Is Magnolia - New Gold Mountain

Philip Levine

Father

***

The long lines of diesels
groan toward evening
carrying off the breath
of the living.
The face of your house
is black,
it is your face, black
and fire bombed
in the first street wars,
a black tooth planted in the earth
of Michigan
and bearing nothing,
and the earth is black,
sick on used oils.

Did you look for me in that house
behind the sofa
where I had to be?
in the basement where the shirts
yellowed on hangers?
in the bedroom
where a woman lay her face
on a locked chest?
I waited
at windows the rain streaked
and no one told me.

I found you later
face torn
from The History of Siege,
eyes turned to a public wall
and gone
before I turned back, mouth
in mine and gone.
I found you whole
toward the autumn of my 43rd year
in this chair beside
a masonjar of dried zinnias
and I turned away.

I find you
in these tears, few,
useless and here at last.

Don't come back.

***

This Is Magnolia - Double Happiness

Saigyō Hōshi

***

What it is

I know not,

But with gratitude

My tears fall.

***

Magnolia Electric Co. - Protection Spell

Albert Huffstickler

Don't Ask the Angels How They Fly

***

Knowing there's only so much time,
I don't rejoice less but more.
Knowing how many things will now
not happen, I wish them Godspeed
and pass them on to someone
down the line. I honor my
regrets, the part of me that
never happened or happened wrong
and proceed on course though
the course is not known. Only
the end is known and some days
it's a comfort. We live on
love, whether it's there or
not and rejoice in it even in
its absence. If I had known,
I'd have come here better equipped -
but that's another one of those
things you can't change - as we
can't alter that part of us
that lives on memory, knowing
all the while that time is not
real and that what we are we
never were in the light of that
timeless place where we really
belong, have belonged always.
And what's left then is only
to bless it all in the light of
what we don't and will never
know or at least not here where
the light is only a shadow of
that light we almost see sometimes -
that light that's really home.


Albert Huffstickler
On my 69th birthday - Dec 17, 1996


***

William Pint & Felicia Dale - Go From My Window

Charles Simic

Old Man

***

Backed myself into a dark corner one day,
Found a boy there,
Forgotten by teachers and classmates,
His shoulders slumped,
The hair on his head already grey.
Friend, I said.

While you stood here staring at the wall,
They shot a president,
Some guy walked on the moon,
Dolly, the girl we all loved,
Took too many sleeping pills and died
In a hotel room in Santa Monica.

Now and then I thought of you,
Listening to the squeak of the chalk
On the blackboard,
The sighs and whispers
Of unknown children
Bent over their lessons,
The mice running in the night.

Visions of unspeakable loveliness
Must’ve come to you in your misery:
Cloudless skies on long June evenings,
Trees full of cherries in our orchard,
To make you ache and want to be with me,
Driving a cab in New York City.

***

Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea - Rain

Kidusha-Ni

***

Only the moon

and I, on our meeting-bridge,

alone, growing cold

***

Neville Skelly - He Looks A Lot Like Me

Shiki

***

Oh! I ate them all

and oh! What a

stomach-ache . . .

Green stolen apples

***

Jen Cloher - Save Me

Sekitei Hara

***

Autumn wind.

Two plates,

Their designs differ.

***

Sharron Kraus -- The River's Daughter

Issa

***

on a misty day

they chat...

horses in the field

***

Sodastream - The Women's Review

Buson

***

A summer river being crossed,

how pleasing!

Sandals in my hands.

***

John Grant - Tc And Honeybear

Issa

***

one man, one fly

one large

sitting room

***

The Owl Service - North Country Maid

Matsuo Basho

***


Teeth sensitive to the sand

in salad greens--

I'm getting old.

***

Jeffrey Luck Lucas - Leave Me Now

Santoka Taneda

***

Unpleasant days:

days I don't walk, days without booze,

haikuless days.

***

Charlotte Greig And Johan Asherton - Lay The Bent To The Bonny Broom

Santoka Taneda

***

Sakè for flesh, haiku for soul:

sakè is the haiku of the flesh

haiku is the sakè of the soul.

***

Audie Darling - Clouds Roll Around

Kato Gyodai

***

In the dawn

whales roaring;

a frosty sea.

***

Steve Abel - Gone

Ikkyu Sojun

***

No beginning,

No end.

Our mind

is born and dies:

The emptiness of emptiness!


Steve Abel - Cinders of the Sun

Ikkyu Sojun

***

If at the end of our journey

There is no final

Resting place,

Then we need not fear

Losing our Way.

***

Cibelle - Green Grass (Tom Waits cover)

Kuroyanagi Shoha

***

To wake, alive, in this world,

what happiness!

Winter rain.

***

Corinne West & Kelly Joe Phelps - Horseback In My Dreams

Choko

***

This final scene

I'll not see to the end...

my dream is fraying

***
Farriers - Coastlines

Kyoshi Takahama

***
He says a word,

and I say a word - autumn

is deepening.

***

Gwyneth Keen -- Motherland (orig. Natalie Merchant)

Sekitei Hara

***

Autumn wind.

Two plates,

Their designs differ.

***

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion - Never Far From My Heart

Kyoshi Takahama

***

I caught a petal fallen from cherry tree in my hand.

Opening the fist

I find nothing there.

***

Audie Darling - Little Bird

Matsuo Basho

***

What luck!

The southern valley

Make snow fragrant.

***

Doug Peters - Samhain Song

Yosa Buson

***

Not quite dark yet

above the withered fields.

and the stars shining

***

Breathe Owl Breathe - Own Stunts

Matsuo Basho

***

Another year is gone;

and I still wear

straw hat and straw sandal.

***

Part Timer - Unfound (feat. Heidi Elva and Aaron Martin)

Sami Mansei

***

Living in this world -

to what shall I compare it?

Its like a boat

rowing out at break of day,

leaving no trace behind.

***

Sparklehorse and Radiohead - Wish You Were Here

Monk Sogi

***

That man's life is but a dream -

is what we now come to know.


Its house abandoned,

the garden has become home

to butterflies.

***

Green Man Music - Pact

Ono no Komachi

***

Though I go to you

ceaselessly along dream paths,

the sum of those trysts

is less than a single glimpse

granted in the waking world.

***

Jo Mango - The Black Sun

Shiki

***

cockscomb flowers

fourteen, no maybe fifteen

blooming over there 

***

Libbie Linton - I Am A Stone

Ki no Tsurayuki

Crimson

***

Crimson

Waves weeping

Tears on

My sleeves alone

Is the colour stronger.

***

Jennifer Kimball - Motherless Child

Saigyo

***

In a mountain village

at autumn’s end—

that’s where you learn

what sadness means

in the blast of the wintry wind

***.
Tristram -- Rhyme or Reason

Shiki

***

So enviable . . .

maple-leaves

most glorious

Contemplating death

***

Tristram - Someone Told Me A Poem

Shiki

***

After killing

a spider, how lonely I feel

in the cold of night!

***

The Mariner's Children - Coal

Shiki

***

While I turned my head

that traveler

I'd just passed . . .

Melted into mist

***

Dana and Susan Robinson - The Cuckoo

Matsuo Bashō

***

This dark autumn

old age settles down on me

like heavy clouds or birds

***

Dana and Susan Robinson - Zephyr Wind

Taneda Santoka

***

sake slopping over

on our knees

wish we were together

***

Anthony Reynolds with Vashti Bunyan & Charlotte Greig - Like The Sun Feeds From The Flowers

Taneda Santoka

***

somehow

the sound of swallowing sake

seems very lonely

****

The Mariner's Children - Golden Pine

Yosa Buson


Elegy to the Old Man Hokuju

***

You left in the morning, at evening my heart is in a

thousand pieces.

Why is it so far away?

Thinking of you, I go up on the hill and wander.

Around the hill, why is it such a sadness?

Dandelions yellow and shepherds-purse blooming white --

not anyone to look at them.

I hear a pheasant, calling and calling fervently.

Once a friend was there across the river, living.

Ghostly smoke rises and fades away with a west wind

strong in fields of small bamboo grasses and reedy fields.

Nowhere to leave for.

Once a friend was there across the river, living, but today

not even a bird sings a song.

You left in the morning, at evening my heart is in a

thousand pieces.

Why is it so far away?

In my grass hut by the Amida image I light no candle,

offer no flowers, and only sit here alone.

This evening, how invaluable it is.

Priest Buson

with a thousand bowings 

***

Cowboy Junkies - We Hovered With Short Wings (orig. Vic Chesnutt)