pulverized diamonds

Life Story

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

Cascando
-- Samuel Beckett


1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

I remember being made
to stand in the corner for punishment
because it would be dull and empty
and I would be sorry.
But instead it was a museum of small wonders,
a place of three walls
with a weather my breath influenced,
an archaeology of layers, of painted molding,
a meadow as we called them then
of repeatable pale roses,
an eight-eyed spider in a tear of wallpaper
turning my corner.
The texture. The soft echo if I talked,
if I said I am not bad if this is the world.

-Allan Peterson



"The capacity of art to make otherwise dull things fascinate us becomes, for Peterson, one reason it is bearable, even enjoyable, to live."
-Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

We Who Were Executed

(After reading the letters of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg)

I longed for your lips, dreamed of their roses:
I was hanged from the dry branch of the scaffold.
I wanted to touch your hands, their silver light:
I was murdered in the half-light of dim lanes.

And there where you were crucified,
so far away from my words,
you still were beautiful:
color kept clinging to your lips –
rapture was still vivid in your hair –
light remained silvering in your hands.

When the night of cruelty merged with the roads you had taken,
I came as far as my feet could bring me,
on my lips the phrase of a song,
my heart lit up only by sorrow.
This sorrow was my testimony to your beauty –
Look! I remained a witness till the end,
I who was killed in the darkest lanes.

It’s true – that not to reach you was fate –
but who’ll deny that to love you
was entirely in my hands?
So why complain if these matters of desire
brought me inevitably to the execution grounds?

Why complain? Holding up our sorrows as banners,
new lovers will emerge
from the lanes where we were killed
and embark, in caravans, on those highways of desire.
It’s because of them that we shortened the distances of sorrow,
it’s because of them that we went out to make the world our own,
we who were murdered in the darkest lanes.

(translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali)

Derek Walcott, "Love after Love"


The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Rain

I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

Why I Want a Little Dog
Answer for my lover

Because it will be ten years, Momma,
I've brushed away the crumbs,
covered he dishes at night
so you won't come, no
so I won't find you
sitting in the kitchen.

Because I was given to the mystic
who is the mother of many children.
Because I must wait for her small light.
Because in dreams, Momma,
I'm forever searching
backwards for my little-boy bones,

only to find them rattling and older.
Because at times I'm so poemless
in the house where I live
I rearrange the pencils
to give them new purpose.
Because I am my worst critic.

( Because it will be ten years )

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Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

in time of daffodils; e.e. cummings

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

John Burnside
Winter

Imagine I loved you still and nights like these
were visitations,
an endless Pentecost of lips and hands
and bodies resurrected in their beds,
not mine, or yours, but given, like a snowfall.

Out in the dark, the woods are from a map
that someone has left unfinished: hand-coloured signs
for birch, or deer, and nothing to explain
the new red of a kill, or how the silence
wells around a fallen sycamore;

But here, where we lie down in differing weather,
the night fades on our skins while we are dreaming,
and winter is the self, day after day,
ghosting a life from the nothing it knows by heart.

(From: John Burnside, The Hunt in the Forest, London: Cape Poetry, 2009).

Now is my misery complete, and namelessly

it fills me up. I stare here as the stone's

existence stares.

Hard as I am, I know one thing:

You had grown up -

...... and had grown up

so that, as to much pain

and quite beyond the grasping of my heart,

you should stand out.

Now you lie straight across my lap,

now I can no longer any more

bear you.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). from North of Boston, 1915.

The Death of the Hired Man


Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.
“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’
‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.”

( “Ssh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.  )

It's been one of those days...




Edwin Morgan
Rules for Dwarf-Throwing

1.    If a dwarf is thrown through a glass window or glass door, he must wear gloves and a suitable mask.
2.    If a dwarf is thrown through a burning hoop, extinguishers must be provided.
3.    If a dwarf is thrown down a well, the organizers must ensure that the bottom of the well is dry, and is covered by leaves to a depth of three inches.
4.    If a dwarf is to be thrown across the path of an oncoming train, the thrower must previously satisfy the organizers that he bears no personal malice towards the throwee.
5.    If a dwarf is thrown into a pond or river, he must wear a wetsuit and need not be tightly bound.
6.    If dwarfs are thrown at night, they may be painted with phosphorescent paint, so that the point of impact may be clearly established.
7.    If a dwarf refuses to be bound in the usual way before throwing, he may be put in a straightjacket of the requisite size.
8.    If a dwarf utters any sound whatsoever, either in flight or at the moment of impact, the throw will be disqualified.
9.    If a jockey impersonates a dwarf, and wins a competition because his light weight allows him to be thrown farthest, he will be liable to a fine of £1000 or three years imprisonment.
10.    It is strictly forbidden, in dwarf-throwing literature and publicity, to refer to dwarfs as 'persons of restricted growth' or 'small people'.

(From: Edwin Morgan, New Selected Poems, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2000)