Kim Addonizio: You Don't Know What Love Is

You don’t know what love is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she’ll try to eat solid food. She’ll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she’s headed, you know she’ll wake up
with an ache she can’t locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

Jon Sands: A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You

When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.

In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.

Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway

for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still

believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.

Reményik Sándor: Vihar utáni gondolatok

Csak egyszer adnád énnekem
Teremtő Úr hatalmadat:
Az elszabadult orkán erejét,
A felhőszakadás
Patakokat dagasztó hatalmát!
Csak azt a percet adnád énnekem
Én Istenem, csak azt a percet,
Amelyben a leomló görgeteg
Közepén vágja ketté az utat
És a lázadó elemek
Kitűzik zászlajuk
A halombadőlt szálfák barrikádján.
Csak ezt a percet,
Csak ezt a földrengető percet add nekem,
Isten!

Tudnám, hogy mitevő legyek vele!...

Juan Carlos Abril: Diseminación

Los poemas que nunca escribiré
se han convertido en humo

afirmativo y en volutas
que no desaparecen, se disuelven.

Blanco humo de las chimeneas
que contiene poemas de todos los colores.

Julia Vinograd: Ginsberg

No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout
‘the war is over’ as loud as I can,” he said
“and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going.”
I thought it was a great idea at the time
a truly poetic idea.
So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled “the war is over.”
And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
“My son. My son is coming home.”
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.
That was the first time I believed there was a war.

James Schuyler: His Dark Apartment

Coming from the deli
a block away today I
saw the UN building
shine and in all the
months and years I've
lived in this apartment
I took so you and I
would have a place to
meet I never noticed
that it was in my view. . . .
Now, without saying
why, you've let me go.
You don't return my
calls, who used to call
me almost every evening
when I lived in the coun-
try. "Hasn't he told you
why?" "No, and I doubt he
ever will." Goodbye. It's
mysterious and frustrating.
How I wish you would come
back! I could tell
you how, when I lived
on East 49th, first
with Frank and then with John,
we had a lovely view of
the UN building and the
Beekman Towers. They
were not my lovers, though.
You were. You said so.

Reményik Sándor: Isten

Uram, olyan egyforma minden szolgád
És oly egyforma minden templomod,
S olyan mindegy, hogy a toronycsúcsokra
Keresztet tűznek-e vagy csillagot.

Uram, én békén hagylak az imámmal,
De Te se kívánj a szívemtől semmit,
Vagyok kopott kőtábla, jaj sok zápor
Mosta le rólam a Te törvényeid.

Uram, teremtők vagyunk mind a ketten,
Amily igaz, hogy a lelkem Te adtad,
Olyan igaz, hogy én formállak Téged
És nincs Uram, én rajtam más hatalmad.

Mégis Uram, míg ringsz egy fűszál selymén,
Amíg sötétlesz mélyén egy örvénynek,
Amíg csillagbetűkbe írva látlak:
Uram, lesz még találkozásom Véled.

Kim Addonizio: For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;

and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal

surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,

or cherries, the rich spurt in the back

of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.

Give me the lover who yanks open the door

of his house and presses me to the wall

in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched

and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload

and begin their delicious diaspora

through the cities and small towns of my body.

To hell with the saints, with martyrs

of my childhood meant to instruct me

in the power of endurance and faith,

to hell with the next world and its pallid angels

swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.

I want this world. I want to walk into

the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along

like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,

and I want to resist it. I want to go

staggering and flailing my way

through the bars and back rooms,

through the gleaming hotels and weedy

lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks

where dogs are let off their leashes

in spite of the signs, where they sniff each

other and roll together in the grass, I want to

lie down somewhere and suffer for love until

it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again

and put on that little black dress and wait

for you, yes you, to come over here

and get down on your knees and tell me

just how fucking good I look.

Dorianne Laux: Mugged By Poetry

—for Tony Hoagland who sent me a handmade chapbook made from old postcards called OMIGOD POETRY with a whale breaching off the coast of New Jersey and seven of his favorite poems by various authors typed up, taped on, and tied together with a broken shoelace. 

Reading a good one makes me love the one who wrote it,
as well as the animal or element or planet or person
the poet wrote the poem for. I end up like I always do,
flat on my back like a drunk in the grass, loving the world.
Like right now, I'm reading a poem called "Summer"
by John Ashbery whose poems I never much cared for,
and suddenly, in the dead of winter, "There is that sound
like the wind/Forgetting in the branches that means
something/Nobody can translate..." I fall in love
with that line, can actually hear it (not the line
but the wind) and it's summer again and I forget
I don't like John Ashbery poems. So I light a cigarette
and read another by Zbigniew Herbert, a poet
I've always admired but haven't read enough of, called
"To Marcus Aurelius" that begins "Good night Marcus
put out the light/and shut the book For overhead/is raised
a gold alarm of stars..." First of all I suddenly love
anyone with the name Zbigniew. Second of all I love
anyone who speaks in all sincerity to the dead
and by doing so brings that personage back to life,
plunging a hand through the past to flip off the light.
The astral physics of it just floors me. Third of all
is that "gold alarm of stars..." By now I'm a goner,
and even though I have to get up tomorrow at 6 am
I forge ahead and read "God's Justice" by Anne Carson,
another whose poems I'm not overly fond of
but don't actively disdain. I keep reading one line
over and over, hovering above it like a bird on a wire
spying on the dragonfly with "turquoise dots all down its back
like Lauren Bacall". Like Lauren Bacall!! Well hell,
I could do this all night. I could be in love like this
for the rest of my life, with everything in the expanding
universe and whatever else might be beyond it
that we can't grind a lens big enough to see. I light up
another smoke, maybe the one that will kill me,
and go outside to listen to the moon scalding the iced trees.
What, I ask you, will become of me?

Rózsa Dániel: Ébredés

Szempillád ereszén
végigcsordul a fény.
Nézlek. Szép vagy. Aludj...
de szólj, ha a párna kemény!

Antonio Machado: Proverbios y cantares IV, XIII, XXIV

IV
Nuestras horas son minutos
cuando esperamos saber,
y siglos cuando sabemos
lo que se puede aprender.


XIII
Es el mejor de los buenos
quien sabe que en esta vida
todo es cuestión de medida:
un poco más, algo menos...

XXIV
De diez cabezas, nueve
embisten y una piensa.
Nunca extrañéis que un bruto
se descuerne luchando por la idea.

e. e. cummings: it is so long since my heart has been with yours

it is so long since my heart has been with yours
shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town–
that i have perhaps forgotten
how, always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,
and whittles life to eternity
–after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories

Nazim Hikmet: Arról van szó...

Az eljövendő fényességben állok,
kezemben vággyal, s oly szép a világ.
Szemem nem győzi bámulni a fákat,
és reményzölden intenek a fák...
Eperfák szegte fényes út szalad,
a betegszoba ablakában állok.
Nem is érzem az orvosság szagát,
valahol biztos szegfűk nyílnak.
Nem az a kérdés, hogy fogoly vagy-e,
arról van szó, hogy meg ne add magad.

(Somlyó György fordítása)

Nazim Hikmet: It’s This Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can’t get enough of the trees—
they’re so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I’m at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can’t smell the medicines—
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It’s this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

Fodor Ákos: Jókívánság

Legyen erőd lent
hagyni, amit nincs erőd
följebb emelni.

pleasefindthis: The Ghost Train

And if you can't say yes, answer anyway.
Because I'd rather live with the answer than die with the question.

pleasefindthis: The people we could be

Being gifted doesn't mean you've been given something.
It means, you have something to give.

pleasefindthis: The Bibliography of Strings

And you taught me what this feels like.
And then how it feels to lose it.
And you showed me who I wanted.
And then who I wasn't.
And you ticked every box.
And then drew a line.
And you weren't mine to begin with.
And then not to end with.
And you looked like everything I wanted.
And then became sonething I hated.
And you get thought of every day.
And then not in a good way.
And you let me leave.
And then wish I'd stayed.
And you almost killed me. 
But I didn't die.

Marianne Moore: I may, I might, I must

If you will tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try. 

John Hall Wheelock: Earth

 "A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily
 The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air --
 "That they were able to do it is proof that highly
 Intelligent beings must have been living there."

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Rima X

The unseen atoms of the air,
Inflamed, are dancing round about;
The sky dissolves in flashes rare
Of trembling gold, a dazzling rout;
The earth appears with rapture buoyed
And vibrates as if overjoyed;
The sounds come stealing o'er to me
Of strange, delightful harmony;
I hear the sound of kisses, - feel
The fluttering of wings, - I reel
And close my eyelids! - Who is nigh?
- 'T is Eros, who is passing by.

(Translated by Jules Renard)

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Rima X

Los invisibles átomos del aire
en derredor palpitan y se inflaman,
el cielo se deshace en rayos de oro,
la tierra se estremece alborozada.

Oigo flotando en olas de armonías,
rumor de besos y batir de alas;
mis párpados se cierran... ?¿Qué sucede?
¿Dime?
?¡Silencio! ¡Es el amor que pasa!

Mark Strand: Keeping Things Whole

In a field

 I am the absence

 of field.

 This is

 always the case.

 Wherever I am

 I am what is missing.

 When I walk

 I part the air

 and always

 the air moves in

 to fill the spaces

 where my body's been.

 We all have reasons

 for moving.

 I move

 to keep things whole.

Penny Arcade: No Mona Lisa

I am magnum mouthed
honey snatched
my flavor changes constantly
No Mona Lisa
I stroll like a sailor
bullets pass thru me and I keep moving.
No Mona Lisa
I don't hang around
but if I have it for you
you are lucky
you can take it to the track
you can take it to the bank
you can deposit it
No Mona Lisa
No sidelong glance
no rolling eye
supposition, preposition
have no place in my communication.
When I talk
you know exactly what I mean.
Mona Lisa has no mouth,
no cunt,
she stops at the waist.
I hate that bitch!
My head turns from side to side
My brain, mouth and cunt all work.
No Mona Lisa
I can't be displayed, restored
or evaluated.
No Mona Lisa
I read the writing on the wall behind me.
No Mona Lisa
I don't preview.
No Mona Lisa.
No auction.
No rebate.
No Mona Lisa
I don't discount, price down or go on sale.
No Mona Lisa
When I'm in love I stay wet all the time!
Mona Lisa has no mouth, no cunt, she stops at the waist.
I hate that bitch!
No Mona Lisa
No side long manipulation.
I never had a father.
I never learned how to be that kind of whore.
You need a daddy to practice that kind of stalking.
You need a daddy.
I never apprenticed to my mother.
I wasn't well for that center of attention and protection.
I was nobody’s angel.
nobody’s princess.
nobody's baby.
I grew wild, uncultivated, ungroomed, unprotected,
To a position of power
I'm a loner. You are lucky.
I know what you want, when you want it, how you want it.
I deliver without a sermon.
My religion has no pope, no choir, no hope
I'm a loner. You are lucky.
No Mona Lisa
I never learned how to simmer contentedly.
I boil over continuously.
Hot sweet syrup between my legs
When I am in love I stay wet all the time!
No Mona Lisa
I cannot be catalogued or dissertated
I cannot be viewed from a different angle,
a different perspective.
I cannot be seen in a different light.
Mona Lisa has no mouth! No cunt! She stops at the waist!
I hate that bitch!
Mona Lisa sits.
I stand
two lightening bolts in my fists
a crescent moon over my cunt.
No Mona Lisa
I cannot be swayed, rehung or framed.
I don't need special lights, special glass
or a smoke free environment.
No Mona Lisa
No refracted light, no insurance.
I am no collector's item.
no curators pet.
I am no one's voyeur, no one's witness.
I cannot be replicated, calendared
or placed on coffee mugs.
No Mona Lisa
I am 3D
You can touch me.
I touch back.
I bite back, spit back, talk back.
No Mona Lisa
No Gioconda smile
No Mona Lisa
I tell you the truth.
I am ruthless.
You are lucky.

Akasa: Depresszió

Leülök.
Előttem papír és toll.
Levelet próbálok írni
Önmagamhoz.
Lehetetlen a helyzet,
és érthetetlen,

hogy nem jut eszembe
a megszólítás.

Leo Marks: {We all need a centre}

We all need a centre
A core we can rely on
Our private Mount Zion
Which all can see
But none can spy on.

Leo Marks: {I searched the pages}

I searched the pages
Now blank
The drawers
Now empty
The pictures
Now faded
The rooms
Now rooms
And nothing more
But could not find my life

I found only wood
In the forest
Only water
In the sea
Only sand
On the beach
I could not find me.

Ashley Wylde: Meet Yourself in the Mirror

Tell me what you love.
If I look you in your eyes and ask you to tell me what you love, the answers will likely roll off of your tongue. You love pizza and crafting and roller coasters and poetry. You love to read, you love to write, you love music, birds, tattoos, obscure documentaries, and the color of the sun filtered through the smoke of a wildfire. You love your boyfriend. Your mom. Your brother. Your sister. Your daughter. Your best friend. Your dog. Your grandmother. Your cousin. Your son. Your aunt. Your wife. You love pastries and foreign languages and folk music the way it feels to itch a bug bite. You love early mornings and late nights and study breaks and hugs and sentimental cards on your birthday. How long do you think you could go on and on before you said, “I love myself.”
Most people go a lifetime.
I used to think I was invincible, like most young people do. I knew everything, knew exactly who I was, could have conquered the world. My grandmother, with a smile sewn of wisdom, told me if I really wanted the truth, I should stand in front of a mirror. She told me:
“Meet yourself in the mirror, make a date of it. Look closely, and even if it’s strange, keep on looking until your eyes became skies with constellations of light, and the rest of the world fades away. Examine every inch of your face, and feel however you feel about it. Be thorough. See even the things you don’t like to see. When you know your face like you’d know a friend’s, meet your eyes again. If it’s awkward or forced, do the best that you can, and with all the sincerity you can muster, say, ‘I love you.’”

I thought it was stupid, and I told her that right there, but for some reason I still crept into the bathroom that night to rendezvous with my eyes. I was surprisingly awkward, awkwardly shy, and stood with my gaze turned down, like I was seeing myself for the first time. With a flutter in my stomach I met my own stare, and though everything in me protested, I let out a half breath that carried an almost inaudible whisper of the words… I love you… and then I cried uncontrollably because I knew it wasn’t true.
I stood in that bathroom every night for a year, and I lied to my eyes until I could rewrite the truth. When I looked in the mirror and knew for the first time that I loved myself, I also knew I would never need anything else to survive.
My grandmother knows me, and instead of telling, she showed me that love is a tree, and if we don’t grow the roots, we’ll spend our lives collecting dry leaves; they are charming when pressed in books and kept in picture frames but they don’t grow up to feed our families the way seeds do.
She told me:

“You cannot say, ‘I love you,’
without the implied foundation
of, ‘but I love myself, first.’

If you don’t love yourself,
every time you have ever said,
‘I love you,’
it was a lie.”

And she was right.

May 12th, 2013

Dr. D. D. Perrin: A mosquito was heard to complain

A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain
The cause of his sorrow
Was paradichloro
Diphenyltrichloroethane.

Shel Silverstein: Masks

She had blue skin.
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through.
Then passed right by –
And never knew.

Simor András: Üzenet

Entre sus corazones y el mío no habrá diálogo -
írtad a Március egyik soraként
szabadversben, és én
örülök, hogy nem változtattad meg
hűségesebb sorrá formálva e verssort.
Mert így József Attila mondja ma,
két évvel az új évezred előtt
évezredig tartó igazságként:
Szívük és szívem közt nem lesz párbeszéd.
Nem lesz párbeszéd
az emberiség elpusztítóival,
ámítóival,
vagyis az elnyomókkal,
még ha a kétségbeesett elnyomottak
hajlanának is rá;
hitlerek, hruscsovok, gorbacsovok után
nem lesz párbeszéd.
Ez a nem éltet a legkétségbeesettebb pillanatban is
kétségkívül,
és minden kétségek közepette.
Ezt a nemet
formálom szonetté, glosszává, trioletté,
mert nincs más fegyverem.
Köszönöm, Fayad Jamís,
József Attila új verssorát.
Ő üzen vele
a nem tudni melyik galaktikába költözött proletárutókornak.
Másképpen szólni nekünk sincs okunk,
mert szívünk csak addig a mi szívünk, amíg
szívünk és szívük közt nem lesz párbeszéd.

Mario Benedetti: Pasatiempo

Cuando éramos niños
los viejos tenían como treinta
un charco era un océano
la muerte lisa y llana
no existía

luego cuando muchachos
los viejos eran gente de cuarenta
un estanque era océano
la muerte solamente
una palabra

ya cuando nos casamos
los ancianos estaban en cincuenta
un lago era un océano
la muerte era la muerte
de los otros

ahora veteranos
ya le dimos alcance a la verdad
el océano es por fin el océano
pero la muerte empieza a ser
la nuestra.

Richard Brautigan : Boo Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

Robert Frost: Tűz és jég

Mondják: a világ vége tűz.
Más mondja: jég.
Mert a vágy forrósága űz,
azt vallom én is: vége tűz.
S ha vesznem kétszer illenék:
mert ismerős a gyűlölet,
hiszem: végpusztulásra jég
is jó lehet,
és épp elég.

(Weöres Sándor fordítása)

Robert Frost: Fire and Ice

 Some say the world will end in fire,
 Some say in ice.
 From what I've tasted of desire
 I hold with those who favor fire.
 But if it had to perish twice,
 I think I know enough of hate
 To say that for destruction ice
 Is also great
 And would suffice.

Robert Burns: Ha mennél hideg szélben

Ha mennél hideg szélben
        a réten át, a réten át,
rád adnám kockás takaróm,
        öleljen át, öleljen át!
S ha körülzúgna sors-vihar
        rémségesen, rémségesen:
szivemben volna házad,
        oszd meg velem, oszd meg velem!
Volna köröttem zord vadon,
        sötét, veszett, sötét, veszett:
mennyország volna nékem az
        együtt veled, együtt veled!
S ha volnék minden föld ura
        az ég alatt, az ég alatt:
koronám legszebb ékköve
        volnál magad, volnál magad!

(Weöres Sándor fordítása)

Kaláka előadásában

Kathleen Lynch: How to Build an Owl

1.   Decide you must.

2.   Develop deep respect
      for feather, bone, claw.

3.   Place your trembling thumb
      where the heart will be:
      for one hundred hours watch
      so you will know
      where to put the first feather.

4.   Stay awake forever.
      When the bird takes shape
      gently pry open its beak
      and whisper into it: mouse.

5.   Let it go.

Mark Halliday: Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts

The connection between divorced fathers and pizza crusts
is understandable. The divorced father does not cook
confidently. He wants his kid to enjoy dinner.
The entire weekend is supposed to be fun. Kids love
pizza. For some reason involving soft warmth and malleability

kids approve of melted cheese on pizza
years before they will tolerate cheese in other situations.
So the divorced father takes the kid and the kid's friend
out for pizza. The kids eat much faster than the dad.
Before the dad has finished his second slice,

the kids are playing a video game or being Ace Ventura
or blowing spitballs through straws, making this hail
that can't quite be cleaned up. There are four slices left
and the divorced father doesn't want them wasted,
there has been enough waste already; he sits there

in his windbreaker finishing the pizza. It's good
except the crust is actually not so great—
after the second slice the crust is basically a chore—
so you leave it. You move on to the next loaded slice.
Finally there you are amid rims of crust.

All this is understandable. There's no dark conspiracy.
Meanwhile the kids are having a pretty good time
which is the whole point. So the entire evening makes
clear sense. Now the divorced father gathers
the sauce-stained napkins for the trash and dumps them

and dumps the rims of crust which are not
corpses on a battlefield. Understandability
fills the pizza shop so thoroughly there's no room
for anything else. Now he's at the door summoning the kids
and they follow, of course they do, he's a dad.

Garai Gábor: Jókedvet adj

Jókedvet adj, és semmi mást, Uram!
A többivel megbirkózom magam.
Akkor a többi nem is érdekel
szerencse, balsors, kudarc vagy siker.
Hadd mosolyogjak gondon és bajon
nem kell más, csak ez az egy oltalom
még magányom kiváltsága se kell
sorsot cserélek, bárhol, bárkivel
ha jókedvemből, önként tehetem;
s fölszabadít újra a fegyelem
ha értelmét tudom és vállalom
s nem páncélzat, de szárny a vállamon.
S hogy a holnap se legyen csupa gond
de kezdődő és folytatódó bolond
kaland, mi egyszer véget ér ugyan -
ahhoz is csak jókedvet adj , Uram.

Flora Delmis: ¡Así te amo!

Cuando se quiere así como te quiero
con tanta ilusión, con ansias tantas,
no importa nada, tú eres lo primero
el sol, la luna, la espina de mis plantas…


Cuando se ama así como te amo
qué poquita es la vida para amarte.
Que rota voz sin con mi voz te llamo
porque el alma también sabe llamarte.


Cuando se ama así, hondo profundo,
Qué importa la razón si la razón resiste.
Está sordo mi oído para el mundo.
Tú eres la norma de todo cuanto existe!