The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

~Richard Wilbur
[http://tinyurl.com/m233x2c]

Middle Name

The photograph is black and white
and it's snowing, so I don't know the color
of her hair, her dress, the blanket
I'm wrapped in—2 days old—a close-up,
her eyes cast down, my mother's
best friend, my namesake Louise,
the third woman to hold me, the first
being an anonymous nurse, probably
older than my young mother
in the month of January, in the year
1952, probably dead now, her bones
naked beneath the ground. And Louise,
who was she, the woman who held
the small, warm engine of my body,
the one my mother loved enough
to give me her name, to find a camera
and take this photograph, Louise,
keeper of my mother's secrets and dreams,
her arm arced beneath me, her fingers
pinching the wool brim of my cap
to shield my eyes from the snow, the cold,
holding me so tight and close
she could be mistaken for a mother,
this friend who disappeared into
the past, whose scent I breathed in,
whose breast I turned to, the names
of saints carved into the stone arch
of the church behind her, snow
on the roof, the sky white, her scarf
might be yellow, it might be blue.

~Dorianne Laux
[http://tinyurl.com/ouoxtej]
Posted with the author's permission
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Dorianne Laux

Mandela

When the Great Man died
the hypocrites came out and cried,
“When shall we see his likes again?”

But, secretly they said,
“He was a troublesome spirit in his youth,
but we broke him.

“(Breaking rocks in the sun year after year
will break the hardest men.)

“The seasons changed… and he was ‘suitable.’
(We’d worn him down; time chiseled him.)

“We would play up his ‘non-vengeful’ spirit.
(What vengeance will a man in his 70s wreak?)

“We let him mambo on the World Stage.
For playing our game, we gave him: new teeth;
a home; comfort in his old age.

“‘Don’t call me,’ he said; ‘I’ll call you.’
He didn’t call, of course; nor did we.

“He got the ‘moral victory’; we took the spoils:
gold and diamonds; cheap labor; land to die for,
to kill for. …”

~Gary Corseri
[http://tinyurl.com/m44oye7]
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Gary Corseri

Lending Out Books

You're always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she'll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn't have the time
to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
you'll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

~by Hal Sirowitz
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Hal Sirowitz

Silet

When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen - ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.

It is enough that we once came together;
What is the use of setting it to rime?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather,
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time?

It is enough that we once came together;
What if the wind has turned against the rain?
It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again;

And who are we, who know that last intent,
To plague to-morrow with a testament.

~Ezra Pound
[http://tinyurl.com/o5odnqp]
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Ezra Pound

Variation on the word sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

~Margaret Atwood
(http://tinyurl.com/27b9rve)
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Margaret Atwood

Couscous

Keep stirring, you say
Water the temperature of our bodies

The wide-lipped bowl—its edge,
warm from my own hand through the wood.

A path of oil dances,
looping back, swelling home—

Dip your hand into the folds,
you will know when to stop.

Between my knuckles,
light as warm rain on the skin.

You brush the grain evenly with your palm,
as if blessing it, making sure it's alright.

I pour the water in bouts.
Each time it seems: no more.

The ability to take:
there must be an aging like this.

~Anna Polonyi
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Anna Polonyi

Adolescence II

Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round
As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines.
They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the wash bowl,

One on the bathtub edge; one leans against the door.
"Can you feel it yet?" they whisper.
I don't know what to say, again. They chuckle,

Patting their sleek bodies with their hands.
"Well, maybe next time." And they rise,
Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight,

And vanish. I clutch at the ragged holes
They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness.
Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue.
© Rita Dove

Rita Dove

For Malcolm X

All you violated ones with gentle hearts;
You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak;
Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers,
And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes.
All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums
Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie,
Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns,
Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan.

Snow-white moslem head-dress around a dead black face!
Beautiful were your sand-papering words against our skins!
Our blood and water pour from your flowing wounds.
You have cut open our breasts and dug scalpels in our brain
When and Where will another come to take your holy place?
Old man mumbling in his dotage, or crying child, unborn?
~Margaret Abigail Walker




A young Malcolm

Green Apples

What can you do with a woman under thirty?
It's true she has a certain freshness, like a green apple,
but how raw, unformed, without the mellowness of maturity.

What can you talk about with a young woman?
That is, if she gives you a chance to talk,
as she talks and talks and talks about herself.
Her 'self' is the most important object in the universe.
She lacks the experience of intimate, sensitive silences.

Why don't young women learn how to make love?
They attack with the subtlety of a bull,
and moan and sigh with the ardor of a puppy.
Panting, they pursue their own pleasure,
forgetting to please their partner, as an older woman does.

It's only just that young women get what they deserve.
A young man.

~by Dudley Randall
[http://tinyurl.com/omdm6sy]

Other poems on this blog by Dudley Randall:
1. http://tinyurl.com/qahzlae
2. http://tinyurl.com/894skc5
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Dudley Randall