When longing has become the moon
Brightest in the darkest night
When the sea is without shore
Remembrance has become like sun
When heart is speaking all without whisper
On the palanquin were placed
A hundred little moons
Studded with stars
The sweet one had the fingertips
With henna to enhance to color
Recoiled in reproach a little
The self that grows from threads
Heart has many reasons for reality
Don not take away the delusion
On insistence I ask from my love
In abject reality like the face
Of the book with dust of knowledge
Burden not thy heart O lover
Seek still in the depth of your heart
The signs that speaketh to you
To whom are your songs I wonder
To the beauty once that adored
In poverty the abode of the self
Just around but who shall now
The cup of wine that I hold in my hands
Truth and nothing else shall I speak
I who make other women smile did not make you–
But no man can move mountains in a day.
So this hard thing is yet to do.
But first I want your life:–before I die I want to see
The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes,
There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be,
Yet on brown fields there lies
A haunting purple bloom: is there not something in grey skies
And in grey sea?
I want what world there is behind your eyes,
I want your life and you will not give it me.
Now, if I look, I see you walking down the years,
Young, and through August fields–a face, a thought, a swinging dream
perched on a stile–;
I would have liked (so vile we are!) to have taught you tears
But most to have made you smile.
To-day is not enough or yesterday: God sees it all–
Your length on sunny lawns, the wakeful rainy nights–; tell me–;
(how vain to ask), but it is not a question–just a call–;
Show me then, only your notched inches climbing up the garden wall,
I like you best when you are small.
Is this a stupid thing to say
Not having spent with you one day?
No matter; I shall never touch your hair
Or hear the little tick behind your breast,
And as a flying bird
Brushes the branches where it may not rest
I have brushed your hand and heard
The child in you: I like that best
So small, so dark, so sweet; and were you also then too grave and wise?
Always I think. Then put your far off little hand in mine;–
Oh! let it rest;
I will not stare into the early world beyond the opening eyes,
Or vex or scare what I love best.
But I want your life before mine bleeds away–
Here–not in heavenly hereafters–soon,–
I want your smile this very afternoon,
(The last of all my vices, pleasant people used to say,
I wanted and I sometimes got–the Moon!)
You know, at dusk, the last bird’s cry,
And round the house the flap of the bat’s low flight,
Trees that go black against the sky
And then–how soon the night!
No shadow of you on any bright road again,
And at the darkening end of this–what voice? whose kiss? As if you’d say!
It is not I who have walked with you, it will not be I who take away
Peace, peace, my little handful of the gleaner’s grain
From your reaped fields at the shut of day.
Peace! Would you not rather die
Reeling,–with all the cannons at your ear?
So, at least, would I,
And I may not be here
To-night, to-morrow morning or next year.
Still I will let you keep your life a little while,
See dear?
I have made you smile.
If you are the wind on the sea
I am the water tingling under your breeze.
If you are a wave in flood
I am an empty shell dreaming of your coming.
If you are the roar of a storm
I am the tide lapping in the noon heat.
If you are the stag of seven combats
I will pick my graceful way to you through furze.
If you are a hawk on the cliff
I will bless you with lyrics of larksong.
If you are a dewdrop in the sun
I will bruise the morning grass with you.
If you are the fairest of flowers
I will blossom year upon year with you.
If you are a maddened boar
I will charm your tusks into laughter.
If you are a salmon in the pool
I will lure infinities of insects to you.
If you are a lake in the plain
I will plumb your very depths.
If you are the essence of poetry
I am all of your muses.
If you are edging towards a fight
I will bewitch you to bluntness.
If you are kindling inspiration in the mind
I will blow on the seed of the fire for you.
I know in my heart who made the way smooth for me,
Was a star of knowledge for me, gave the sun and moon to me,
And though the stones close in, and light moves towards its end,
We will shadow one another, word for word with the wind.
~
Freagra Scéine ar Aimhirghin
Más tusa gaoth na mara
Is mé an fharraige om shearradh féin faoid leoithne
Más tonn díleann thú
Is sliogán folamh mé ag tnúth led theacht
Más tú gáir na stoirme
Is mé lapadaíl na taoide i mbrothall nóna
Más damh seacht gcomhrac thú
Tiocfad go mánla chugat ar aiteann
Más seabhac thú ar an bhfaill
Beannód thú le liricí fuiseogacha
Más deoir drúchta faoin ngréin thú
Brúfad féar na maidne leat
Más tú is áille a fhásann
Bláthód leat bliain ar bhliain
Más torc ar mire thú
Cuirfead geasa gháire ar na fiacla fada agat
Más bradán thú sa linn
Meallfad cuileoga ina gcéadta chugat
Más loch ar mhá thú
Raghad go tóin poill ionat
Más tú rún na héigse
Mise na naoi mBéithe agat
Má bhíonn faobhar ort chun troda
Cuirfead ceangal na ceanúlachta ort
Má bhíonn tinfeadh á adhaint sa cheann agat
Séidfead síol na tine duit
Tá fhios ag mo chroí istigh cé réitigh an bealach dom,
Cé ba réalt eolais, cé bhronn grian agus gealach orm,
Is in ainneoin na gcloch seo, agus an solas ag dul in éag,
Mairfead scáth ar scáth leat, focal ar fhocal leis an ngaoth.
ag uaigh Scéine, 21 Nollaig 1999.
Was there in us one fondness, one thought,
one gladness, one promise
that we had not sown before our footsteps?
Was there a prayer heard
in secret whose hands stretched out
gently over our bosom we had not clasped?
Was there one appeal, one purpose,
one tranquil or violent desire
whose pace we had not quickened?
And each loving the other thus,
our hearts went out as apostles to the gentle,
timid and chilled hearts of others;
And by the power of thought invited them
to feel akin to ours, and,
with frank ardours, to proclaim love,
as a host of flowers loves the same branch
that suspends and bathes it in the sun.
And our soul, as though made greater in this awakening,
began to celebrate all that loves,
magnifying love for love’s sake,
and to cherish divinely, with a wild desire,
the whole world that is summed up in us.
All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast
In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there
Translated by Jane Hirschfield
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
Somewhere beside the sea a woman sings
A song about the sea, a song that knows
Words contain waves as music contains
Melody. Somewhere the sea sings a song.
As a footprint in sand fills with water
So the sea sings about a woman singing
At the edge of the sea: the music fills her in.
Mostly the songs sound the same, like
A mother hushing a child who hushes her
In fear or insolence. It’s hard to tell
From foam formed by wave’s collapse
Love herself once stepped naked,
Her yet uncombed hair covering one breast.
But I’ve never seen her. I’ve never
Heard those songs sing one inside the other.
Just heard that both exist, just heard the rumors
That whisper in the labyrinthine ear
Those myths the monster most wants to hear.
And by monster I mean mind.
Any head will do for example, even mine.
Remnants from other lives I never lived
Wander through the unlit
Room the ancients called the undergloom
But it’s all within. Even the mossy ground.
Even the moon-lit cloud. Even the shroud.
There a monster with two heads stares
Into its own eyes. Its gaze is its chain.
One mouth says, I think.
The other says, I am.
It’s a conversation that doesn’t end.
When I mean to sing sometimes I drone,
Sometimes I replace words with stones
Waves worried flat as fate. Note
The flatness of my voice when I find
The startle of history disables feeling.
I haven’t yet been liberated into feeling.
One remedy is love. One remedy is fate.
I thought that if I went back to Homer
And wrote down every line
That used those words I’d understand
How love drifts into fate, or fate
Drifts into love, as on a day suddenly
Without wind, the clouds still move
Far above. Like that I’d understand:
& that same night a fatal dream
brought home a lovely woman
but you lay down to make love to dust
& did make love, while Menelaus roamed the ranks.
In the undergloom I worked against my fate.
Aphrodite, lover of smiling eyes,
cut her lovely hand. So I learned
no mortal can escape his fate—
if they are now to meet hard fate—
if they are now to meet hard fate and die.
But in my heart I loved.
Death’s shadow fell from my child: her fate was not
lovelier than return, not lovelier than sailing.
Even she could not give hard fate the slip.
O Aphrodite, lover of smiling eyes
and all these charms of love.
But I gave up. I took too many liberties.
Rescuing lines into narrative sense
Just to prove true what I wanted to be true:
Loves succumbs to fate and then fate
Liberates love. But there’s no proof.
Just this wanting it to be true
That lets me add words, switch order,
Delete what I want not to exist,
Ignore the facts that break apart wonder—
But none of it makes it true.
And now I realize I’ve forgotten to sing.
I meant to be singing this whole time
About time: that must be why the ocean cries—
Why the gulls on the ocean cry from so far
Away. Must be why my mouth is so dry.
So dry I’d put in it anything for just a drop.
Again there are those children. I read
In a book I’ve been trying to forget—
I’ve been trying to forget—about children
So hunger-struck, so desperate,
They ate the cardboard tag
On which a soldier wrote their names.
No one knew what to call them
When they wandered through the camps.
Maybe just “child.”
Child, listen. Here is no charm of love.
Here some kind of fate recites in the air
Words long lamented: black milk of daybreak
We drink it at sundown at morning at night
We drink it digging graves in breezes.
Tell me, if you know, why
When the singing ended and we turned
Toward town, my own child spoke:
Does ‘sea’ rhyme with ‘free’?
Yes.
Does ‘lip’ rhyme with ‘ship’?
Yes, it does.
Does ‘lake’ rhyme with ‘snake’?
Yes.
Does ‘fence’ rhyme with ‘bence’?
“Bence” isn’t a word.
Yes it is.
No it’s not.
Then what rhymes with fence?
Silence. Silence does.
Silence rhymes with silence.
Love rhymes with love.
Fate with fate.
The ocean eats up the dirt
That makes the field deliberate.
Not a rhyme lovelier then sailing.
Not a rhyme lovelier then return.
Just a fact.
Just a fact missing a mouth to sing it.
Just a fact patient and alone in the air.
I went out to the farthest meadow,
I lay down in the deepest shadow;
And I said unto the earth, “Hold me,”
And unto the night, “O enfold me,”
And unto the wind petulantly
I cried, “You know not for you are free!”
And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;
Then to the stars I told my tale:
“That is my home-light, there in the vale,
“And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern.
“For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear . . .”
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan,
“The heart in my bosom is not my own!
“O would I were free as the wind on wing;
Love is a terrible thing!”
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
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.
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