Words That Burn

Breakfast, by Mary Lamb (1764-1847)

So Simple.  So Unexpected, by Eileen Hennessy

Practical, impeccably polite,

glowing with righteousness

and the importance

of my town of clotheslines

and light poles and propane tanks,

our well-tempered river lounging

in its luscious bed of weeds,

the railroad running past

my one-way life,

I lived

to the complicated rhythms of my days,

the colors of the melodies I wrung

from wet sidewalks and alleyways,

not thinking about death

until the night when,

hard driven

by pleasure in a restaurant garden

with wide white-faced flowers

browsing like nightmares in the dusk,

I felt a sudden knowing

of my roots in that ground.

Sunbeams, by Avner Treinin (also transliterated Tranin, 1928-2011)

Do not allow the sun to dim.

Out of paper, friendship, smiles,

Cut many suns

As one cuts cookies with the glass’s rim.

Let it be round,

Rays extending from it

(They’ll say: make believe!)

Two lines like two hands,

Outspread with a fistful of seds,

Two lines like two feet,

Tracing love on the ground,

Give it many rays —

Don’t be grudging —

As many as will stretch

From you to the people around.

(Trans. Ruth Finer Mintz)

Living Here Now, by Eloise Klein Healy (1943-)

Two Women Drinking Coffee, by Laila Halaby

They sit in jeans and drink their coffee, black
As kohl on their eyes.  They pour their tales
Of broken romance through a sieve: the words,
While cardamom in flavor, are in English.
Today they’ve met outside of a cafe;
Their work is done and each is going home.
It’s here they punctuate each other’s day
With stories, lively jokes, and cigarettes.
The mood is soft, the laughter not so strong.
The talk is dominated by their thoughts
Of home, to which there’s no return: like love
That’s lost and leaves a stinging sadness there
To bite the heart without a kind of warning.
The one who’s lost most recently then sighs.
Her hands are silent, her head turned away
As she speaks in words with orange blossom scent:
The angel I believed was always here
Has flown to heaven and I now must cope
Alone with love that’s in a different tongue
I understand too well to misinterpret.

Three Birds, by Matthew Brenneman (1960-)

1. ALBATROSS

    A thousand miles of gale-lashed sea
Is nothing to this winged mariner.
    Of all the birds, he would prefer
This emptiness to earth's solidity,

    The gray abstraction of the waves
Rolling beneath great tapered wings, whose span
    Would dwarf the stature of a man
And lightly glide where sailors meet their graves.

    He has no use for tulip trees,
For lawns at twilight, purple hyacinths,
    For shelter from the labyrinths
Of hurricanes, for any certainties

    Or faiths. He'd rather do with less
Than nothing; for him, nothing will suffice.
    If solitude exacts a price,
He's rich in the cold coin of loneliness.

    The very winds that bear him tear
His song and scatter it like so much spray.
    And yet he sings it anyway,
And builds his soaring castles in the air.

2. BARN SWALLOW

A hanging porch-light's broken bulbless cup
    Will do as well as anything.
She fits it to her purpose, flying up
    With spoils of tugs and rummaging

To the amusement of the chickadees
    And cracks of old black crows
Who lack her sense of possibilities,
    Until her nest takes shape, and grows.

Is she content? She sometimes scans the sky
    For hawks on cloudless nights in June.
Those peregrines and red-tails terrify
    And thrill her! They seem to brush the moon.

But even so, there's something to be said
    For feathering a kind of heaven
On a few twigs and some frayed bits of thread,
    From what she finds that she is given

In the detritus other birds would leave.
    Why should she be particular?
The mettle of a nest is in the weave.
    It's all material to her.

3. SNOWY EGRET

    Light rain lifting. Pond like glass.
The shadblow's given way to dogwood and
    Forsythia, which summons bees
Through stands of arrowwood and sassafras.
He loves this marsh, its rich interstices,
This confluence of sea and sky and land.

    All through the spring-tide's ebb he stands
Balanced on legs like frail black sticks, stock-still
    And focused as a samurai,
Until some flicker in the tangled strands
Of underwater grass attracts his eye
And triggers like a spring his darting bill.

    Often as not, it's true, his hope
Eludes him, disappearing in the grass,
    So close yet just beyond his aim,
Into the watery kaleidoscope.
But he is captivated just the same.
Light rain lifting: pond as still as glass...

The Old Man On The Shore, by Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)

deep mountains lined up in rows

the pine forest reached to the sea

on the shore an old man lay

stretched out on the pebble beach

and this sun-ripe September day

the distant news of sunken ships

the cool blue of the northeast breeze

caressed the old man’s face

his hands were folded on his chest

stubborn and tired like two crabs

the tough hard-shelled triumph

of a journey outlasting time

his salt-wrinkled eyelids

were softly closed

and in the gold-speckled darkness

the old man listened to the roar

the sea the sharp-toothed fish

the flaming dawn

the rocks blooming at the bottom

the nets and the fisherman’s home

or maybe the roar came from high

in the pines near the clouds

he knew it would make him dizzy

to look up at them from below

deep mountains lined up in rows

the pine forest reached to the sea

on the shore an old man lay

stretched out on the pebble beach

(Trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

The New Experience, by Suzanne Buffam (1972-)

The Parakeets, by Alberto Blanco (1951-)

They talk all day
and when it starts to get dark
they lower their voices
to converse with their own shadows
and with the silence.

They are like everybody
—the parakeets—
all day chatter,
and at night bad dreams.

With their gold rings
on their clever faces,
brilliant feathers
and the heart restless
with speech...

They are like everybody,
—the parakeets—
the ones that talk best
have separate cages.

(Trans.  W. S. Merwin)

Poetry II, by Andre Chedid (1920-2011)

What is more than the word

but delivered by the word

What dies

but rises again

What always surrenders

but is reborn

What grows beyond us

but is rooted in us

What we call life

but the days destroy

What is obvious

but remains obscure.

(Trans. Carl Hermey)