Scotophili

In the Annals of Everlasting,
I saw your eyes shining
like forest jewels
that I had forgotten how to ponder.

In the Book of No More,
were your words
which would not leave
me when I woke.

For a time I put the books away.
The annals stood unconsulted.
The wind ripped each day away as it passed
leaving me to see each morning anew.

The sun grew and grew.
What joy!
And every morning, I approached
the grasses and we shared in prayer.

Yet still I knew.
How starkly it stood –
that absence by my side
with which you used to play pretend.

And now the trees looked sickly and hidden.
The hissing fury of untouched shadows,
and how they grew and grew
as I pretended I could not see them.

Some Nanao Sakaki poems

If you have time to chat,
Read books.
If you have time to read books,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk,
Sing a song and dance.
If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly,
You lucky, happy idiot.

Soil for the legs
Axe for the hands
Flower for the eyes
Bird for the ears
Mushroom for the nose
Smile for the mouth
Song for the lungs
Sweat for the skin
Wind for the mind.

In the morning
After taking cold shower
– what a mistake –
I look at the mirror.

There, a funny guy,
Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin,
– what a pity –
Poor, dirty, old man,
He is not me, absolutely not.

Land and life
Fishing in the ocean
Sleeping in the desert with stars
Building a shelter in the mountains
Farming the ancient way
Singing with coyotes
Singing against nuclear war –
I’ll never be tired of life.

Now I’m seventeen years old,
Very charming young man.
I sit quietly in lotus position,
Meditating, meditating for nothing.

Suddenly a voice comes to me:
“To stay young,
To save the world,
Break the mirror.”

Upon the blooming plum twig
         a warbler
               wipes his muddy feet

How lovely
         through the torn paper window
                — the Milky Way

Grasshopper, good singer!
         Take care of my tomb
                when I die

LET’S EAT STARS

Believe me, children!
God made
Sky for airplanes
Coral reefs for tourists
Farms for agrichemicals
Rivers for dams
Forests for golf courses
Mountains for ski resorts
Wild animals for zoos
Trucks and cars for traffic tragedies
Nuclear power plants for ghost dance.
Don’t worry, children!
The well never dries up.
Look at the evening glow!
Sunflowers in the garden.
Red dragonflies in the air.
A small child starts singing:
“Let’s eat stars?”
“Let’s eat stars!”

Two Poems by Denise Levertov

The Prayer

At Delphi I prayed
to Apollo
that he maintain in me
the flame of the poem

and I drank of the brackish
spring there, dazed by the
gong beat of the sun,
mistaking it,

as I shrank from the eagle’s
black shadow crossing
that sky of cruel blue,
for the Pierian Spring—

and soon after
vomited my moussaka
and then my guts writhed
for some hours with diarrhoea

until at dusk
among the stones of the goatpaths
breathing dust
I questioned my faith, or

within it wondered
if the god mocked me.
But since then, though it flickers or
shrinks to a

blue bead on the wick,
there’s that in me that
burns and chills, blackening
my heart with its soot,

flaring in laughter, stinging
my feet into a dance, so that
I think sometimes not Apollo heard me
but a different god.




The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

These Poems, She Said
by Robert Bringhurst


These poems, these poems,
these poems, she said, are poems
with no love in them. These are the poems of a man   
who would leave his wife and child because   
they made noise in his study. These are the poems   
of a man who would murder his mother to claim   
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man   
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not   
comprehend but which nevertheless
offended me. These are the poems of a man
who would rather sleep with himself than with women,   
she said. These are the poems of a man
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s   
hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These   
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant   
as elm leaves, which if they love love only   
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,   
and not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.   
These poems, she said….
                                             You are, he said,
beautiful.
                  That is not love, she said rightly.

From Look by Solmaz Sharif:


SAFE HOUSE

SANCTUARY where we don’t have to

SANITIZE hands or words or knives, don’t have to use a

SCALE each morning, worried we take up too much space. I

SCAN my memory of baba talking on

SCREEN answering a question (how are you?) I would ask and ask from
behind the camera, his face changing with each repetition as he tried to
watch the football game. He doesn’t know this is the beginning of my

SCRIBING life: repetition and change. A human face at the seaport and a
home growing smaller. Let’s

SEARCH my father’s profile: moustache black and holding back a

SECRET he still hasn’t told me,

SECTION of the couch that’s fallen a bit from his repeated weight,

SECTOR of the government designed to keep him from flying. He kept our
house

SECURE except from the little bugs that come with dried herbs from Iran.
He gives

SECURITY officers a reason to get off their chairs. My father is not afraid of

SEDITION. He can

SEIZE a wild pigeon off a Santa Monica street or watch

SEIZURES unfold in his sister’s bedroom—the FBI storming through. He
said use wood sticks to hold up your protest signs then use them in

SELF-DEFENSE when the horses come,

SENSITIVE When he passes advice to me, like I’m his

SEQUEL, like we’re all a

SERIAL caught on Iranian satellite TV. When you tell someone off, he calls it

SERVICING. When I stand on his feet, I call it

SHADOWING. He naps in the afternoon and wakes with

SHEETLINES on his face, his hair upright, the sound of

SHELLS (SPECIFY)—the sound of mussel shells on the lip of the Bosphorus
crunching beneath his feet. He’s given me

SHELTER and

SHIELDING, shown it’s better to travel away from the

SHOAL. Let them follow you he says from somewhere in Los Angeles waiting
for me. If he feels a

SHORT FALL he doesn’t tell me about it.

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