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Oggi il mare ringhia. S’incupisce.
Vanga, impasta il sangue
dei vivi all’ultima saliva dei morti.
Chiede la notte:
l’ora lunga della memoria
spuma nel mare aperto. Lì,
dove non sei mai stato e
non conosci. La notte
sull’altra riva crolla, s’ingoia.
Onda e onda. Muri e Macerie
– dov’è il confine?-
Sotto il passo
la sabbia ricorda e dimentica
ricorda e dimentica
in piccoli fiori di ciliegio
Mio caro Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Lorca,
These letters are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent. They will establish the bulk, the wastage that my sour-stomached contemporaries demand to help them swallow and digest the pure word. We will use up our rhetoric here so that it will not appear in our poems. Let it be consumed paragraph by paragraph, day by day, until nothing of it is left in our poetry and nothing of our poetry is left in it. It is precisely because these letters are unnecessary that they must be written. Read the rest of this entry »
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
Praise Song for the Day- (Graywolf Press, 2009). Read the rest of this entry »
We pull off
to a road shack
in Massachusetts
to watch men walk
on the moon. We did
the same thing
for three two one
blast off, and now
we watch the same men
bounce in and out
of craters. I want
a Coke and a hamburger.
Because the men
are walking on the moon
which is now irrefutably
not green, not cheese,
not a shiny dime floating
in a cold blue,
the way I’d thought,
the road shack people don’t
notice we are a black
family not from there,
the way it mostly goes.
This talking through
static, bounces in space-
boots, tethered
to cords is much
stranger, stranger
even than we are.
Elizabeth Alexander
(First published in Poetry, April 1992) Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Wyeth si è spento all’età di 91 anni.
Poi venne il tempo dei giardini di rame,
strappati
al mare con le mani,
d’oro disse chi era lì
a guardare.
E crebbero piante
che pur sempre lasciarono sale,
perché sale fu il senso
della guerra e del sorriso,
crebbero fiori dalla saliva delle bocche e lasciarono sale,
perché fu sale il senso
del sangue e della vita.
Si quietarono
le coscienze nel senso giusto delle cose,
ondeggiarono
fra papaveri e grano.
Qualcuno soffiò
credendosi vento,
ma appena si sporcò di odori cambiò direzione,
-follia- gridò qualcuno
credendosi nel giusto.
Poi si addormentò,
fuori il pianto dei bambini
era appena un soffio,
era quasi
un albero
foglie di silenzio.
http://www.casadellapoesia.org/poesie.php/1473/mahmoud-darwish/stato-dassedio
Sporting Life
The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios don’t develop scar-tissue. The tubes burn out, or with a transistor, which most souls are, the battery or diagram burns out replaceable or not replaceable, but not like that punchdrunk fighter in the bar. The poet
Takes too many messages. The right to the ear that floored him in New Jersey. The right to say that he stood six rounds with a champion.
Then they sell beer or go on sporting commissions, or, if the scar tissue is too heavy, demonstrate in a bar where the invisible champions might not have hit him. Too many of them.
The poet is a radio. The poet is a liar. The poet is a counterpunching radio.
And those messages (God would not damn them) do not even know they are champions.
(Jack Spicer ) da: My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2008).
Vita da sportivo
Il problema del paragonare un poeta ad una radio è che le radio non sviluppano tessuto cicatrizzato. Le valvole/
si bruciano, o nel caso di un transistor, di cui gran parte delle anime sono fatte, la batteria o il diagramma si brucia sostituibile o
non sostituibile, ma non come quel pugile un po’ suonato in un bar. Il poeta
Riceve troppi messaggi. Il diritto all’orecchio che lo ha messo al tappeto nel New Jersey. Il diritto di dire che/
lui è rimasto in piedi per sei rounds con un campione.
Poi vendono birra o vanno avanti a commissioni sportive,o,se il tessuto cicatrizzato è troppo esteso, fanno dimostrazioni in /
un bar dove i campioni invisibili non avrebbero potuto colpirlo. Troppi di loro.
Il poeta è una radio. Il poeta è un bugiardo. Il poeta è una radio contacolpi.
E quei messaggi ( Dio non li condannerebbe) non lo sanno neanche di essere campioni. Read the rest of this entry »
“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
J.D. Salinger
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