Poem for D.H. Lawrence - Robert Creeley
I would begin by explaining
that by reason of being
I am and no other.
Always the self returns to self-consciousness , seeing the figure drawn by the window by its own hand, standing alone and unwanted by others. It sees this, the self sees and returns to the figure there in the evening, the darkness alone and unwanted by others.
In the beginning was this self, perhaps, without the figure, without consciousness of self or figure or evening. In the beginning was this self only, alone and unwanted by others.
In the beginning was that and this is different, is changed and how it is changed is not known but felt. It is felt by the self and the self is feeling, is changed by feeling, but not known, is changed, is felt.
Remembering the figure by the window, in the evening drawn there by the window, is to see the thing like money, is to be sure of materials, but not to know where they came from or how they got there or when they came. Remembering the figure by the window the evening is remembered, the darkness remembered as the figure by the window, but is not to know how they came there.
The self is being, is in being and because of it. The figure is not being nor the self but is in the self and in the being and because of them. Always the self returns to, because of being, the figure drawn by the window, there in the evening, the darkness, alone and unwanted by others.
Big Book Of Poetry
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Music Heard in Illness - Franz Wright
“Everything changes but the avant-garde.”
—Paul Valéry
A few words are left us from the beginning. Thank you, God, for allowing me a little to think again this morning.
Touch my face, touch this scarred heart.
Here, touch this upturned face as wind as light.
So they labored for three or four decades to turn the perfectly harmless word quietude into a pejorative sneer.
Call no man happy until he has passed, beyond pain, the boundary of this life.
We were standing alone at the window when it started to rain and Schumann quietly.
That imbecilic plastic hive of evil—
To
night, and you turned
and said, although you were not there, Night.
What do we know but this world.
And although I could not speak, I answered.
Note: Borrowed from the Ploughshares's Winter 2006-2007 issue, this poem perfectly bookends an year that began with this translation of a song, which was this year's first post.
To the few readers (and blogging friends) who scan this blog from time to time, my best wishes and joy to you at the turn of a year. Keep on answering even if you can't speak.
Big Book Of Poetry
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An Old Cracked Tune - Stanley Kunitz
My name is Solomon Levi,
the desert is my home,
my mother's breast was thorny,
and father I had none.
The sands whispered, <i>Be separate</i>,
the stones taught me, <i>Be hard</i>.
I dance, for the joy of surviving,
on the edge of the road.
Note:While being borne forth in the web of tunnels underneath the clanging, steaming, and booming hulk of a city, he spies this poem in the grafitti etched intestines of that human-filled python, and thinks how appropriate a summation it is of living in this city of hustlers, of many stripes and many feathers.
Big Book Of Poetry
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