Reading the Japanese Poet Issa (1762–1826)

      by Czesław Miłosz

        A good world—

        dew drops fall

        by ones, by twos

A few strokes of ink and there it is.

Great stillness of white fog,

waking up in the mountains,

geese calling,

a well hoist creaking,

and the droplets forming on the eaves.

Or perhaps that other house.

The invisible ocean,

fog until noon

dripping in a heavy rain from the boughs of the redwoods,

sirens droning below on the bay.

Poetry can do that much and no more.

For we cannot really know the man who speaks,

what his bones and sinews are like,

the porosity of his skin,

how he feels inside.

And whether this is the village of Szlembark

above which we used to find salamanders,

garishly colored like the dresses of Teresa Roszkowska,

or another continent and different names.

Kotarbinski, Zawada, Erin, Melanie.

No people in this poem. As if it subsisted

by the very disappearence of places and people.

     A cuckoo calls

for me, for the mountain,

      for me, for the mountain

Sitting under his lean-to on a rocky ledge

listening to a waterfall hum in the gorge,

he had before him the folds of a wooded mountain

and the setting sun which touched it

and he thought: how is it that the voice of the cuckoo

always turns either here or there?

This could as well not be in the order of things.

     In this world

we walk on the roof of Hell

        gazing at flowers                                                                                 +

To know and not to speak.

In that way one forgets.

What is pronounced strengthens itself.

What is not pronounced tends to nonexistence.

The tongue is sold out to the sense of touch.

Our human kind persists by warmth and softness:

my little rabbit, my little bear, my kitten.

Anything but a shiver in the freezing dawn

and fear of oncoming day

and the overseer’s whip.

Anything but winter streets

and nobody on the whole earth

and the penalty of consciousness.

Anything but.

Hot Springs County Cemetery

Those happy days tending the dead.

Mountains embraced me. The gate

closed. No one wanting in or out.

Perfecting the width and depth

of death, I circled granite testaments,
recreated their lives from clues:

middle names, dates, places of birth,
last words etched with acids for all

eternity. I called them by first names.

At home in bed, into the morning, 

I told my wife their stories. The lie 

as good as the truth in this world.

Waving Goodbye 

By Gerald Stern

I wanted to know what it was like before we 
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we 
had minds to move us through our actions 
and tears to help us over our feelings, 
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend 
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her 
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her, 
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek, 
and turned my head after them as an animal would, 
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts, 
her smiling face and her small hand just visible 
over the giant pillows and coat hangers 
as they made their turn into the empty highway.

January

He walks in the door like the biggest guy in the bar.
We sit by the fire gripping our hot toddies. He drinks 

from a frosted mug, sends chills through the room 
with a stare as immovable as the block of ice 

in his chest, his meat locker breath on our necks 
though he's in a corner booth. He'll drink the bar dry, 

ask for more with a grin frozen on his deathly countenance. 
Icicles hang from eaves until Spring, a last minute reprieve.

cup of tea
gone cold--
writer's block

Ceremony in the Park

The poet in a sweat suit, scraggly beard,
jogging in the park. Spring. The bride
hacking and coughing, running late.
The day undecided
between rain and sunshine.
Mauricio, the groom's friend, serenades
on the clarinet.
His niece jilted the groom a year ago.
He feigned insanity, wrote poems to her
from the psych ward.
He loved the bruise on her neck
made by her viola.
It's raining again.
Everyone running for the trees.
The groom looks at his watch,
talks with the poet,
tells him how fortuitous it is
that he happened by.
The vagabond poet
whose first chapbook
the groom had read in high school,
A Thousand Smiling Cretins.
He bought it at his hometown's first head shop.
The sun appears, so does the bride,
with an entourage
of soggy daughters drying out.
The poet straddles a park bench, scribbles
something in a notebook during the ceremony.
The groom considers this a blessing.

The Dead Canary

The gut holds a secret

a stranger knows. 

Through a peephole

the pilot light still burning.

I go about my life again,

little nudges 

that turn to bruises
in places no one can see.

The yellow heaven

that can never be filled. 

By the Bend in the River

Cove thick with tall reeds,
leaping frogs. Many Horses
and I scythe juicy blades

for beds, sun blinking
through the willows.
Dusk rolls in by boxcar

on a slow moving train.
The long, low whistle

like a hobo's lullaby

sounds the close of our day.

Our talk sparse, thoughtful,
trailing into the dark.

So Many Things Forgotten That Don't Seem To Matter Now

The moon slipped past him.
The day came and went
before the question returned.

He held himself in his hands
in a photo they had said was
him, but he couldn't believe.

At night there were no stars.
An owl flew by him twice.
The wind blew to open a gate.