Aubade

From the last stars to sunrise the world is dark and enduring
and emptiness has its place.


Then, to wake each day to the world's unwavering
limits, you have to think about passion differently, again.


Don't we forgive everything of a lover
if we are the motive,
if love promises to take us to many places, to even larger themes?


Faithlessness is a heart glancing down
a plumed avenue
in which one is serenaded by myriad, scattering birds.


Thunder in the air begins opening appetites;
everyone is being true to themselves, they think—


And then it is having your right arm sheared off,
and the whole world gets to touch you, chime your losses.


I turn to my imagination, but its eyes are still
green, as if from
too much looking on at equatorial gardens.


Still, if I were you I would linger here,
deepen in the rottenness,
learn something about the world, about the desire for safety.


Then, I'd make an instrument from the ruins,
something awfully beautiful.


I would sit down to eat as if I were reading a poem.
I would observe how the night went into the day with a special grandeur.


It could be like swallowing a sword and growing surprised
by how good it is, how it opens.


And then maybe to sing out with a throat like that—
saying look, look how the world has touched me.

- Sandra Lim

The Last Mowing

There’s a place called Far-away Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.
Then now is the chance for the flowers
That can’t stand mowers and plowers.
It must be now, though, in season
Before the not mowing brings trees on,
Before trees, seeing the opening,
March into a shadowy claim.
The trees are all I’m afraid of;
That flowers can’t bloom in the shade of;
It's more men I’m afraid of;
The meadow is done with the tame.
The place for the moment is ours
For you, oh tumultuous flowers,
To go to waste and go wild in,
All shapes and colors of flowers,
I needn’t call you by name.

- Robert Frost

From Henri Cole's poem, "To a Bat"

“…Where are you going now,
Mr. Bat?

Can you see
your brothers and sisters
fluttering over the treetops?
Can you see
the world is crammed,
corrupt, infuriating,
shallow, sanctimonious,
and insincere?
Thank you for afflicting
my life…”

- Henri Cole, from his collection BLIZZARD (2020)

Four from Pietro Marcello's "Lost and Beautiful" (2016)

“That night I dreamt
that all humans
had become winged creatures,
and they had flown far away…”

We Are Gone

Even the night cooling down is slick with heat.
Even the sheet we share like a humming skin.

From three stories up the sounds of the street,
drinkers at the curb, a wet hiss of dry tires,

is a rhythm through our box fan, like panting.
When we sleep it is piecemeal until morning.

        •

Listen, the years are short. They are nothing.
I write each morning, while you are at work.

In the heat of day, I walk to the library, cold
water at the fountain, air-conditioned air; walk

with a new book back in the elm-lined shade.
At night I meet you at the top of the stairs.

        •

Where are you gone, who loved me so long
one summer far from home? Days are long.

Even the heat is lovelier there, as memory is.
We make lemonade from powder. Little wonder

the years are less than a breath, like a song
on the radio heard as the rhythm of languor.

        •

Whistle of the ice-cream truck. Drinkers at the curb.
Days and nights of heat, of sex, such tenderness.

When we sleep sometimes it is to dream of the days.
Where are they gone? Meeting on the stairs,

laughter and light, a small meal, a bottle of wine.
When we wake it is piecemeal, until we are gone.

- David Baker

Otis

A beautiful morning; nothing
died in the night.
The Lights are putting up their bean tepees.
Rebirth! Renewal! And across the yard,
very quietly, someone is playing Otis Redding.

Now the great themes
come together again: I am twenty-three, riding the subways
in pursuit of Chassler, of my lost love, clutching
my own record, because I have to hear
this exact sound no matter where I land, no matter
whose apartment—whose apartments
did I visit that summer? I have no idea
where I’m going, about to leave New York, to live
in paradise, as I have then
no concept of change, no slightest sense of what would
happen to Chassler, to obsessive need, my one thought being
the only grief that touched mine was Otis’ grief.

Look, the tepees
are standing: Steven
has balanced them the first try.
Now the seeds go in, there is Anna
sitting in the dirt with the open packet.

This is the end, isn’t it?
And you are here with me again, listening with me: the sea
no longer torments me; the self
I wished to be is the self I am.

- Louise Gluck

Aboard the Ship

It certainly resembles him, this small
pencil likeness of him.

Quickly done, on the deck of the ship:
an enchanting afternoon.
The Ionian Sea all around us.

It resembles him. Still, I remember him as handsomer.
To the point of illness: that’s how sensitive he was,
and it illumined his expression.
Handsomer, he seems to me,
now that my soul recalls him, out of Time.

Out of Time. All these things, they’re very old—
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.

- C.P. Cavafy, trans. by Daniel Mendelsohn

From Gus Van Sant's "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot" (2018)

Cutting Up an Ox

Prince Wen Hui’s cook
Was cutting up an ox.
Out went a hand,
Down went a shoulder,
He planted a foot,
He pressed with a knee,
The ox fell apart
With a whisper,
The bright cleaver murmured
Like a gentle wind.
Rhythm!  Timing!
Like a sacred dance,
Like “The Mulberry Grove,”
Like ancient harmonies!

“Good work!” the Prince exclaimed,
“Your method is faultless!”
“Method?” said the cook
Laying aside his cleaver,
“What I follow is Tao
Beyond all methods!”


“When I first began
To cut up an oxen
I would see before me
The whole ox
All in one mass.


“After three years
I no longer saw this mass.
I saw the distinctions.


“But now, I see nothing
With the eye.  My whole being
Apprehends.
My senses are idle.  The spirit
Free to work without plan
Follows its own instinct
Guided by natural line,
By the secret opening, the hidden space,
My cleaver finds its own way.
I cut through no joint, chop no bone.


“A good cook needs a new chopper
Once a year–he cuts.
A poor cook needs a new one
Every month–he hacks!


“I have used this same cleaver
Nineteen years.
It has cut up
A thousand oxen.
Its edge is as keen
As if newly sharpened.


“There are spaces in the joints;
The blade is thin and keen:
When this thinness
Finds that space
There is all the room you need!
It goes like a breeze!
Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years
As if newly sharpened!


“True, there are sometimes
Tough joints.  I feel them coming,
I slow down, I watch closely,
Hold back, barely move the blade,
And whump! the part falls away
Landing like a clod of earth.


“Then I withdraw the blade,
I stand still
And let the joy of the work
Sink in.
I clean the blade
And put it away.”


Prince Wan Hui said,
“This is it! My cook has shown me
How I ought to live
My own life!”

- Chuang Tzu, trans. by Thomas Merton

Soul

What am I doing inside this old man’s body?
I feel like I’m the insides of a lobster,
All thought, and all digestion, and pornographic
Inquiry, and getting about, and bewilderment,
And fear, avoidance of trouble, belief in what,
God knows, vague memories of friends, and what
They said last night, and seeing, outside of myself,
From here inside myself, my waving claws
Inconsequential, wavering, and my feelers
Preternatural, trembling, with their amazing
Troubling sensitivity to threat;
And I’m aware of and embarrassed by my ways
Of getting around, and my protective shell.
Where is it that she I loved has gone to, as
This cold sea water’s washing over my back?

- David Ferry