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Entry tags:
National Poetry Month
I missed yesterday :( so two poems today!
2 April 2011:
My Hood of Stars
God was still walking around in the wilderness
fascinated and puzzled. He kept trying to show
me how to take the words from dreams and old
magazine covers, to make something out of them.
He was preoccupied for hours and hours, but
he never spoke his mind plainly. He did not
like people to feel too comfortable around him.
He was far more troubled than anyone now wants
to remember. This is when the world was
mostly without form, but it wasn't void: it is
just that everything made only one kind of sense.
You didn't have good words like automobile or deduction,
though you had rebuke and anoint. Then God
bent down and picked up a handful of desert.
Not really. It's just how we talk about such things.
He picked up a handful of desert and there came
a great tempest. Then there were worlds standing in line,
waiting on street corners and in train stations. Then
God went a great way into that wilderness, whistling
and singing in bright garments. I watched him go.
Everybody did. Then his stars fell around us like swallows,
stricken and stunned: That’s when the people began scooping
them into their pockets and purses, trying on names, in-
venting excuses. That’s when I tried on my own garment,
drunk on fear and craving. That’s how I began whistling and singing.
-- Frank Gaspar
And for today:
Ode to the Seagull
To the seagull
high above
the pinewoods
of the coast,
on the wind
the sibilant
syllable of my ode.
Sail,
bright boat,
winged banner,
in my verse,
stitch,
body of silver,
your emblem
across the shirt
of the icy firmament,
oh, aviator,
gentle
serenade of flight,
snow arrow, serene
ship in the transparent storm,
steady, you soar
while
the hoarse wind sweeps
the meadows of the sky.
After your long voyage,
feathered magnolia,
triangle borne
aloft on the air,
slowly you regain
your form,
arranging
your silvery robes, shaping
your bright treasure in an oval,
again a
white bud of flight,
a round
seed,
egg of beauty.
Another
poet
would end here
his triumphant ode.
I cannot
limit myself
to
the luxurious whiteness
of useless froth.
Forgive me,
seagull,
I am
a realist
poet,
photographer of the sky.
You eat,
and eat,
and eat,
there is nothing
you don't devour,
on the waters of the bay
you bark
like a beggar's dog,
you pursue
the last
scrap of
fish gut,
you peck
at your white sisters,
you steal
your despicable prize,
a rotting clump
of floating garbage,
decayed
tomatoes,
the discarded
rubbish of the cove.
But
in you
it is transformed
into clean wing,
white geometry,
the ecstatic line of flight.
That is why
snowy anchor,
aviator,
I celebrate you as you are:
your insatiable voraciousness,
your screech in the rain,
or at rest
a snowflake blown
from the storm,
at peace or in flight,
seagull,
I consecrate to you
my earthbound words,
my clumsy attempt at flight;
let's see whether you scatter
your birdseed in my ode.
-- Pablo Neruda (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden)
2 April 2011:
My Hood of Stars
God was still walking around in the wilderness
fascinated and puzzled. He kept trying to show
me how to take the words from dreams and old
magazine covers, to make something out of them.
He was preoccupied for hours and hours, but
he never spoke his mind plainly. He did not
like people to feel too comfortable around him.
He was far more troubled than anyone now wants
to remember. This is when the world was
mostly without form, but it wasn't void: it is
just that everything made only one kind of sense.
You didn't have good words like automobile or deduction,
though you had rebuke and anoint. Then God
bent down and picked up a handful of desert.
Not really. It's just how we talk about such things.
He picked up a handful of desert and there came
a great tempest. Then there were worlds standing in line,
waiting on street corners and in train stations. Then
God went a great way into that wilderness, whistling
and singing in bright garments. I watched him go.
Everybody did. Then his stars fell around us like swallows,
stricken and stunned: That’s when the people began scooping
them into their pockets and purses, trying on names, in-
venting excuses. That’s when I tried on my own garment,
drunk on fear and craving. That’s how I began whistling and singing.
-- Frank Gaspar
And for today:
Ode to the Seagull
To the seagull
high above
the pinewoods
of the coast,
on the wind
the sibilant
syllable of my ode.
Sail,
bright boat,
winged banner,
in my verse,
stitch,
body of silver,
your emblem
across the shirt
of the icy firmament,
oh, aviator,
gentle
serenade of flight,
snow arrow, serene
ship in the transparent storm,
steady, you soar
while
the hoarse wind sweeps
the meadows of the sky.
After your long voyage,
feathered magnolia,
triangle borne
aloft on the air,
slowly you regain
your form,
arranging
your silvery robes, shaping
your bright treasure in an oval,
again a
white bud of flight,
a round
seed,
egg of beauty.
Another
poet
would end here
his triumphant ode.
I cannot
limit myself
to
the luxurious whiteness
of useless froth.
Forgive me,
seagull,
I am
a realist
poet,
photographer of the sky.
You eat,
and eat,
and eat,
there is nothing
you don't devour,
on the waters of the bay
you bark
like a beggar's dog,
you pursue
the last
scrap of
fish gut,
you peck
at your white sisters,
you steal
your despicable prize,
a rotting clump
of floating garbage,
decayed
tomatoes,
the discarded
rubbish of the cove.
But
in you
it is transformed
into clean wing,
white geometry,
the ecstatic line of flight.
That is why
snowy anchor,
aviator,
I celebrate you as you are:
your insatiable voraciousness,
your screech in the rain,
or at rest
a snowflake blown
from the storm,
at peace or in flight,
seagull,
I consecrate to you
my earthbound words,
my clumsy attempt at flight;
let's see whether you scatter
your birdseed in my ode.
-- Pablo Neruda (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden)