humnal

[humnal]

The Infinite One

by Pablo Neruda

Do you see these hands? They have measured the earth, they have separated minerals and cereals, they have made peace and war, they have demolished the distances of all the seas and rivers, and yet, when they move over you, little one, grain of wheat, swallow, they can not encompass you, they are weary seeking the twin doves that rest or fly in your breast, they travel the distances of your legs, they coil in the light of your waist. For me you are a treasure more laden with immensity than the sea and its branches and you are white and blue and spacious like the earth at vintage time. In that territory, from your feet to your brow, walking, walking, walking, I shall spend my life. [original Spanish text]

Ves estas manos? Han medido la tierra, han separado los minerales y los cereales, han hecho la paz y la guerra, han derribado las distancias de todos los mares y ríos, y sin embargo cuando te recorren a ti, pequeña, grano de trigo, alondra, no alcanzan a abarcarle, se cansan alcanzando las palomas gemelas que reposan o vuelan en tu pecho, recorren las distancias de tus piernas, se enrollan en la luz de tu cintura. Para mí eres tesoro más cargado de inmensidad que el mar y sus racimos y eres blanca y azul y extensa como la tierra en la vendimia. En ese territorio, de tus pies a tu frente, andando, andando, andando, me pasaré la vida.

[humnal]

America

By Kofi Awoonor

A name only once crammed into the child's fitful memory in malnourished villages, vast deliriums like the galloping foothills of the Colorado: of Mohawks and the Chippewa, horsey penny-movies brought cheap at the tail of the war to Africa. Where indeed is the Mississippi panorama and the girl that played the piano and kept her hand on her heart as Flanagan drank a quart of moonshine before the eyes of the town's gentlemen? What happened to your locomotive in Winter, Walt, and my ride across the prairies in the trail of the stage-coach, the gold-rush and the Swanee River? Where did they bury Geronimo, heroic chieftain, lonely horseman of this apocalypse who led his tribesmen across deserts of cholla and emerald hills in pursuit of despoilers, half-starved immigrants from a despoiled Europe? What happened to Archibald's soul's harvest on this raw earth of raw hates? To those that have none a festival is preparing at graves' ends where the mockingbird's hymn closes evening of prayers and supplication as new winds blow from graves flowered in multi-colored cemeteries even where they say the races are intact.

[humnal]

Summer Wind by William Cullen Bryant

It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk

The dew that lay upon the morning grass; There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills, With all their growth of woods, silent and stern, As if the scorching heat and dazzling light Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds, Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven– Their bases on the mountains–their white tops Shining in the far ether–fire the air With a reflected radiance, and make turn The gazer’s eye away. For me, I lie Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf, Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind That still delays his coming. Why so slow, Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth Coolness and life! Is it that in his caves He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge, The pine is bending his proud top, and now Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes; Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves! The deep distressful silence of the scene Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds And universal motion. He is come, Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs, And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs, And sound of swaying branches, and the voice Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers, By the road-side and the borders of the brook, Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew Were on them yet, and silver waters break Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

[humnal]

Emily Dickinson, (Poem 930)

The Poets light but Lamps — Themselves — go out — The Wicks they stimulate If vital Light Inhere as do the Suns — Each Age a Lens Disseminating their Circumference —

[humnal]

Hypostasis & New Year by Peter Gizzi

For why am I afraid to sing the fundamental shape of awe should I now begin to sing the silvered back of       the winter willow spear the sparkling agate blue would this blade and this sky free me to speak      intransitive lack – the vowels themselves free Of what am I afraid of what lies in back of me of day these stars scattered as far as the I what world and wherefore will it shake free why now in the mind of an afternoon is a daisy      for a while flagrant and alive Then what of night of hours’ unpredicated bad luck and the rot       it clings to fathomless on the far side in winter dark Hey shadow world when a thing comes back comes back unseen but felt and no longer itself       what then what silver world mirrors tarnished lenses what fortune what fate and the forms not themselves but only itself the sky by water and wind shaken I am born in silvered dark Of what am I to see these things between myself       and nothing between the curtain and the stain between the hypostatic scenes of breathing and becoming the thing I see are they not the same Things don’t look good on the street today beside a tower in a rusting lot one is a condition the other mystery even this afternoon light so kind and nourishing a towering absence vibrating air Shake and I see pots from old shake       and I see cities anew I see robes shake I see desert I see the farthing in us all the ghost of day the day inside night as tones decay       and border air it is the old songs and the present wind I sing and say I love the unknown sound in a word Mother where from did you leave me on the sleeve       of a dying word of impish laughter in the midst my joy I compel and confess open form my cracked hinged picture doubled I can’t remember now if I made a pact with the devil       when I was young when I was high on a sidewalk I hear “buy a sweatshirt?” and think buy a shirt from the sweat of children       hell I’m just taking a walk in the sun in a poem      and this sound caught in the most recent coup

[humnal]

King Lear in Respite Care by Margaret Atwood | Painting: “Self-Portrait” (Chase Chen)

The daughters have their parties.  Who can cope? He’s left here in a chair he can’t get out of in all this snow, or possibly wallpaper. Wheeled somewhere. He will have to be sly and stubborn and not let on. Another man’s hand coming out of a tweed sleeve that isn’t his, curls on his knee. He can move it with the other hand. Howling would be uncalled for. Who knows what he knows? Many things, but where he is isn’t among them. How did it happen, this cave, this hovel? It may or may not be noon. Time is another element you never think about until it’s gone. Things like ceilings, or air. Someone comes to brush his hair, wheel him to tea-time. Old women gather around in pearls and florals. They want to flirt. An old man is so rare. He’s a hero just by being here. They giggle. They disappear behind the hawthorn bushes in bloom, or possibly sofas. Now he’s been left alone with the television turned on to the weather program, the sound down. The cold blast sweeps across the waste field of the afternoon. Rage occurs, followed by supper: something he can’t taste, a brownish texture. The sun goes down. The trees bend, they straighten up. They bend. At eight the youngest daughter comes. She holds his hand. She says, Did they feed you? He says no. He says, Get me out of here. He wants so much to say please, but won’t. After a pause, she says— he hears her say— I love you like salt

[humnal]

Early Morning, Left-Handed by Hilda Raz

Lear's five nevers over the fool hanged, and Cordelia and Lear dead at last, Edmund reported and yes he was loved by both evil sisters, so what. I'm awake in the dawn. Cold stone floors. The cat. His father loved him too, I tell my son on the phone, my son just married. Let him cleave to his wife. Let my old flesh resume its boundaries, let go. No divisions of the kingdom. Will they write of my courage killing the snake? We know the dreamy answer to that one. Honey tea swirls us sweet; never fear the village fair, lights stay on all night. Tea bags bottomless coffee cup. Ashes in the grate sweeten the garden provender. Clay. Ripeness is all. The fool lives on, my left elbow's cartilage feather.

[humnal]

Storming Toward a Precipice by Simon J. Ortiz

A diesel freight truck roars toward us. A precipice is no mirage for its metal plunge. It is headlong nevertheless. "It carries its own storm," I say dryly, feeling my tongue wet my lips. Trapped steel storming, the faint line just so, just inches just split time, just nothing more than luck keeps us alive. The mirage of metal storming is a precipice, no mirage.

[humnal]

On the Beach at Night Alone by Walt Whitman

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

[humnal]

Travel by Ron Padgett

The little clock dings the night on the roof. It hurries toward the mystery of luck. I don’t know where these things are hidden. 

What is not behind is silence on the face of a plaque dividing the barrel from the wall. They intend to propose a lower voice to sing a voice higher. 

That at night one’s life full of bits of wood is silent is passing between the veins. 

Much paint falls on the world indoors. You are finished hearing through a filter where noise lends a sort of joy to your own clock.

[humnal]

The Dark Day by William Carlos Williams

A three-day-long rain from the east-- an terminable talking, talking of no consequence--patter, patter, patter. Hand in hand little winds blow the thin streams aslant. Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion. A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves, hurry from one place to another. Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!-- An interminable talking, talking, talking . . .it has happened before. Backward, backward, backward.

--

[humnal]

The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. by Larry Levis

At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street Was brightly lit, the opossum would take A few steps forward, then back away from the breath Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars Would approach, as if to help it somehow. It would lift its black lips & show them The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors, Teeth that went all the way back beyond The flames of Troy & Carthage, beyond sheep Grazing rock-strewn hills, fragments of ruins In the grass at San Vitale. It would back away Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could Sever it completely from the wrist in forty. There was nothing to be done for it. Someone Or other probably called the LAPD, who then Called Animal Control, who woke a driver, who Then dressed in mailed gloves, the kind of thing Small knights once wore into battle, who gathered Together his pole with a noose on the end, A light steel net to snare it with, someone who hoped The thing would have vanished by the time he got there.

[humnal]

Viewing the Plain by Du Fu

White snow lies on the western hills by the three walled cities, To the south, from the clear river's bank, stretches the thousand li bridge. In this world of war and confusion, I'm cut off from my brothers, Standing alone at the end of the sky, I weep for distant places. Past my prime, all I have to offer is this sick body, I have no trickle or mote of strength with which to repay the emperor. On my horse, outwith the city, at times I gaze afar, I cannot bear our condition, which daily grows more desolate.

野望 西山白雪三城戍 南浦清江万里桥 海内风尘诸弟隔 天涯涕泪一身遥 惟将迟暮供多病 未有涓挨答圣朝 跨马出郊时极目 不堪人事日萧条

translation by Mark Alexander

[humnal]

Haiku by Henri Cole

After the sewage flowed into the sea and took the oxygen away, the fishes fled, but the jellies didn’t mind. They stayed and ate up the food the fishes left behind. I sat on the beach in my red pajamas and listened to the sparkling foam, like feelings being fustigated. Nearby, a crayfish tugged on a string. In the distance, a man waved. Unnatural cycles seemed to be establishing themselves, without regard to our lives. Deep inside, I could feel a needle skip:                 Autumn dark.              Murmur of the saw.                 Poor humans.

[humnal]

Our Nature by Rae Armantrout 

The very flatness of portraits makes for nostalgia in the connoisseur. Here’s the latest little lip of wave to flatten and spread thin. Let’s say it shows our recklessness, our fast gun, our self-consciousness which was really our infatuation with our own fame, our escapes, the easy way we’d blend in with the peasantry, our loyalty to our old gang from among whom it was our nature to be singled out

[humnal]

[This World is not Conclusion] Poem 373 by Emily Dickinson

This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond - Invisible, as Music - But positive, as Sound - It beckons, and it baffles - Philosophy, dont know - And through a Riddle, at the last - Sagacity, must go - To guess it, puzzles scholars - To gain it, Men have borne Contempt of Generations And Crucifixion, shown - Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies - Blushes, if any see - Plucks at a twig of Evidence - And asks a Vane, the way - Much Gesture, from the Pulpit - Strong Hallelujahs roll - Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul -

[humnal]

haiku by Uejima Onitsura

roving dreams

over charred fields

the wind’s sound