Poemunity — your poem community

Lord, it’s not true That my faith is cooling. It’s just that people Are saying that candle smoke Has caused cancer in church mice. And I also worry that candle light Is too weak to reach your cloud. Do I need a hydrogen candle? Are the Angels into lasers? Lord, as I think about it, Lately I haven’t had much to thank you for. Are you on vacation?

Tell me not in mormonful numbers “Life is but an empty dream!” To a student of the slumbers Things are never what they seem. Life is yearning and suppression; Life is that to be enjoyed; Puritanical discretion Was not spoke by Dr. Freud. Deep enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to dream, that each to-morrow Finds us Freudier than to-day. Sleep is long, and dreams are straying, And our hearts, though they may falter, Still, like sexiphones, are playing Wedding marches to the altar. In the universal battle, In the seraglio of life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle— Beat your husband—or your wife. Trust no dame, however pleasant! Leave the dead ones on the shelf! Act—act in the living present! Nothing matters but Yourself. Wives of great men all remind us We can make our lives a serial, And, departing, leave behind us Biographical material. Stories that perhaps another Sailing o’er life’s Freudian sea— A forlorn and dream-racked brother— Reading, might say, “How like me!” Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any mate; Now eluding, nor pursuing, Learn to individuate.

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,— act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o’erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

One does not want, O Lord, to heap Up by still waters Of words a cairn But hopes to attend A small covert Of tamarisk Whose leaves salty Yet feathery Will shed light over A thickened plot. One wants at last To cede the field To tamarisk And mastic tree, To olive and stone, Stones in the fruit, Seed in the stones.

Ignorance will carry me through the last days, the blistering cities, over briny rivers swarming with jellyfish, as once my father carried me from the car up the tacked carpet to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.

Beauty exists,la ermozura egziste and paradises are not artificial, yet how can one have fans of ginkgo, green right next to yellow, and human faces in the sunshine, pearls of architecture and thoughts about the dust that we become? Two days later I remember only theory, what we said concerning the mathematics of the Alhambra and the fragments of poems, so I undress quickly, to catch life red-handed, to relish the goodness of your home amid the hills encircled by a wedding party where I seek and find, seek and do not find, seek and disappear and — Translated from the Polish

lord pray pray loudly against the noise of the human hand which seeks to drown you out and appear on quiet soles so that we might understand your footsteps exert yourself in order to recognize our prayers even when they appear in a different garment because no prayer ever looses itself from the source of the one praying • lord take up the speech by which i pray to you grant me the gestures which have grown within me in your absence so that i might remain true to my uneducable nature and take your weakness upon me • lord you should always wander and never let yourself settle down because there are no longer any dwelling places only footsteps be loud and penetrating sympathize with me and my stirrings lead me all the way to your bread so that my word might wake • lord stay by me even if i nourish myself from ashes and salt be still and listen to that name which i lend to you because i want to distinguish you from the idols grant me patience to endure those who are vain with their empty words and the converts who are zealous to confirm their opposite and grant that my waiting be full of revolt • lord when you arrive we will be light bread and water the table is set and the door opened come and take your place among us free me of the belief that you are only faithful from a distance and speak with me in the unharried language of animals who from far off lie in wait for us with their unadulterated hunger

I am angry with X, with Y, with Z, for not being you. Enthusiasms jump at me, wagging and barking. Go away. Go home. I am angry with my eyes for not seeing you, they smart and ache and see the snow, an insistent brilliance. If I were Psyche how could I not bring the lamp to our bedside? I would have known in advance all the travails my gazing would bring, more than Psyche ever imagined, and even so, how could I not have raised the amber flame to see the human person I knew was to be revealed. She did not even know! She dreaded a beast and discovered a god. But I know, and hunger to witness again the form of mortal love itself. I am angry with everything that is filling the space of your absence, breathing your air. Psyche, how blessed you were in the dark, knowing him in your flesh: I was wrong! If I were Psyche I would live on in darkness, and endure the foolish voices, barking of aeolian dogs, the desert glitter of days full of boring treasures, walking on precious stones till my feet hurt, to hold you each night and be held close in your warmth in a pitchblack cave of a room and not have to wait for Mercury, dressed in the sad gray coat of a mailman and no wings on his feet, to bring me your words.

All those Liquid love affairs, Blind swimmers Trusting rumps. We wiggled, Imagining water. Wet, where was The One? Nevermind Atlantis And the promise Of moving pictures, A lit candle In the window Of our conscious minds. Those who danced, Pretending to swim Underwater, Did so out Of pure allegiance. Some wore snorkels Made with The waistbands Of funky underwear, Others wet suits With clothespins Clamped to their noses, Airtight as Black Power handshakes. Rump-by-rump, The strings attached To our thangs were Reeled into The Deep And rhythmic as fins, Schools of P signs Flapped and waved Like flags. One nation Under a groove. No one held their breath In the flashlit depth. No one sank.

The clock here is quiet. Into the rain’s applause, a woman rises fatigued. Tablets dissolve in a glass by the bed. The wind lifts, branches animating inconsonant darkness. She undoes her gown, lays it over the bedpost. Seductive leg hair. Almost dawn, she makes coffee like that. Low thunder, glints of lightning, the dog’s concern.Rain on the roof, friends walking across my grave