Try to Praise the Mutilated World - Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
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Daily Bread - Barbara Kingsolver
For Steven
The clink of tin cups in the kitchen rouses my ears. I close my book, hold my place with a fingertip while I listen: to the measuring cups, little quarrels of half against quarter, then the sifted hush of the flour. There will be kneading, there will be punching down, and rising and rising again, the press of increase constrained by the small square box in the oven, the immutable passage of time, and finally a home and a hunger filled with fragrant gold. I return to my reading, but first I thank the kitchen gods for what marriage is: throughout this immutable passage, these square impossible constraints, these petty clinkings of half against quarter, and oh this needing, oh this falling and this rising, I am blessed with a husband who makes bread
Big Book Of Poetry
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Face through the Glass (An Old Man Gazes) - Vicente Aleixandre
Either late or soon or never. But here through the glass the face insists. Beside some natural flowers the flower itself appears in the form of colour, cheek, rose. Through the glass the rose is always a rose. But it has no scent. Distant youth is itself. But here it is not heard.
Only light passess through the virgin glass.
O tarde o pronto o nunca.
Pero ahí tras el cristal el rostro insiste. Junto a unas flores naturales la misma flor se muestra en forma de color, mejilla, rosa. Tras el cristal la rosa es siempre rosa. Pero no huele. La juventud distante es ella misma. Pero aquí no se oye.
Sólo la luz traspasa el cristal virgen.
Rostro tras el cristal (Mirada del viejo)
Big Book Of Poetry
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