Words That Burn

Common Blue, by Melissa Kwasny (1954-)

The Hanging Hours, by Nathalie Handal (1969-)

When I leave the windows will be shut
the air in the room will be moist
the city loud and everything will continue as usual –
the telephone will not stop ringing, the electricity will
go on and off, the coffee will be brewing

When I leave the sky will dress in light blue
before wearing black, the people I know will have tears
descending from their eyes to their hands
before they wipe them off and continue their tasks

The bed I leave will be warm
the other body will not know I am missing
until the very next day when the hours hang
in his heart as he finds himself in a mild season
a wild place where breaths crowd the bedroom

Photograph of a Baby, by Charles Brasch (1909-1973)

Round-head round-eyed Sebastian,

Wrinkling his eyes against the sun,

Looks into the distance and will not see anyone.

 

What does he find there

At the end of his absorbing stare,

Where Mt. Herbert floats weightless in the glass-clear air?

 

Is it something he does not meet

Among us, that he will not be asked to greet,

To laugh at or yield to, because it knows how to treat

 

Him as an equal, as fact,

The present and plain, which neither bluffness nor tact

Can make more real or charm away or even distract.

 

Sure he can udnerstand,

It is primal like himself, like the sun on his hand,

Disdaining to raise a smoke-screen of reasons for what must be, and

 

Ignores all conditions.  For though objects are mulitplied

Hourly in his world, he  cannot put them aside,

But always must try to see them as clearly as though they had died,

 

As still and as final; and he

has the air of one looking back, by death set free,

Who sees the strangeness of life, and what things are trying to be.

The Detective’s Last Case, by Luis Rogelio Nogueras (1944-1985)

The crime scene

isn’t the crime scene yet:

it’s just a half-lit room

where two naked shadows kiss.

 

The killer

isn’t the killer yet:

he’s just a tired man

who’s about to return from a long trip

a day early.

 

The victim

isn’t the victim yet:

she’s just a wife burning

in another’s arms.

 

The special witness

isn’t the special witness yet:

he’s just a daring detective

enjoying his neighbor’s wife

on his neighbor’s bed.

 

The murder weapon

isn’t the murder weapon yet:

it’s just an unlit bronze lamp,

peaceful, innocent

on a mahogany table.

 

(Trans.  Mark Weiss)

Tiger Butter, by Diane Glancy (1941-)

Talking to Her, by Vincent O’Sullivan (1937-)

Talking to her is stepping from a street,
from traffic and sun and the racket of news
to a hospital lobby, where feet
click on lino, where the jaunty lose

the springiness of their walk, are told
Wait here until the Authorities are free.
Or Come in, you can visit now, old
and young and sick are all there to see.

I imagine a ward with row upon row
of patients, some sleeping, a few
sighing to themselves, a dream of snow
over beds sedation is flooding through.

And there are other doors for the dying
and a room with bars across the pane.
The smell of the air scours deceit and lying.
I have never been anywhere so sane.

(Note: “lino” is short for “linoleum”)

Afternoon Light, by Yakov Fichman (1881-1958)

Drink deep, my heart, of brightest noon,
But trust not its tranquility!
Quietly, in the blue light, lurk
Mourning winds one cannot see.

Treacherous is the afternoon rest.
Do not trust it when it comes.
A bright canopy is woven slowly
By a hidden hand over horror’s depths.

Dreams of purest white
Dig, for something, a grave:
You awake — their song stills:
Their gold tarnishes, their light pales.

Do not believe in the light of afternoon
Nor in its deceiving rest.
Sure is one hour, one hour alone,
Faithful in its distress.

This is the muted evening hour —
Lingering always in the day’s edge.
It will not fail, believe in it.
Walk erect to meet it.

In the light of day, in the golden white
That it come, my heart, await!

(Trans. Ruth Finer Mintz)

Art Class, by James Galvin (1951-)

Let us begin with a simple line,
Drawn as a child would draw it,
To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,
Which is less than line,
Which is visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications
Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,
Making us feel central.
But the horizon is an empty shell—

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.
As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,
The line draws us in, 

Requiring further lines,
Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,
Urging shades, shapes, figures…

What should we place, in all good faith,
On the horizon? A stone?
An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time. Take it easy.
The horizon will not stop abstracting us.

Sleep’s Threshold, by Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904)

What footstep but has wandered free and far

Amid that Castle of Sleep whose walls were planned

By no terrestrial craft, no human hand,

With towers that point to no recorded star?

Here sorrows, memories, and remorses are,

Roaming the long, dim rooms or galleries grand;

Here the lost friends our spirits yet demand

Gleam through mysterious door-ways left ajar.

But of the uncounted throngs that ever win

The halls where Slumber’s dusky witcheries rule,

Who after wakening, may reveal aright

By what phantasmal means he entered in?–

What porch of cloud, what vapory vestibule,

What stairway quarried from the mines of night?

The Burning Kite, by Ouyang Jianghe (1956-)