poems collected

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand —
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...

To Sleep

What is the charge, young god, what have I done
Alone to be denied, in desperate straits,
Epitome of Calm, your treasure, Sleep?
Hush holds enmeshed each herd, fowl, prowling beast;
The trees, capitulating, nod to aching sleep;
The raging floods relinquish their firm roar;
The heavy sea has ceased and the oceans curl
Upon the lap of land to sink and rest.
The moon has now in seven visits seen
My wild eyes staring; seven stars of dawn
And twilight have returned to me
And sunrise, transient witness of distress,
Has in compassion sprayed dew from her whip.
Where is the strength I need? It would defeat
The consecrated Argus, thousand-eyed
Despite the watch that one part of him keeps,
Nerves taut, on guard relentlessly.
Oh Sleep, some couple, bodies interlocked,
Must shut you from their night-long ecstasy;
So come to me. I issue no demand
That you enfold mine eyes with your wings—
Let all the world, more fortunate, beg that.
Your wand-tip's mere caress, your hovering form
Poised lightly on tiptoe: that is enough.

Salutation

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? —
If design govern in a thing so small.

XII. Here’s Our Clean Business Now Let’s Go Down the Hall to the Black Room Where I Make My Real Money

You want to see how things were going from the husband’s point of view—
let’s go round the back,
there stands the wife
gripping herself at the elbows and facing the husband.
Not tears he is saying, not tears again. But still they fall.
She is watching him.
I’m sorry he says. Do you believe me.
Watching.
I never wanted to harm you.
Watching.
This is banal. It’s like Beckett. Say something!
I believe

your taxi is here she said.
He looked down at the street. She was right. It stung him,
the pathos of her keen hearing.
There she stood a person with particular traits,
a certain heart, life beating on its way in her.
He signals to the driver, five minutes.
Now her tears have stopped.
What will she do after I go? he wonders. Her evening. It closed his breath.
Her strange evening.
Well he said.
Do you know she began.
What.

If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.
Why.
To tell it to.
Perfection rested on them for a moment like calm on a lake.
Pain rested.
Beauty does not rest.
The husband touched his wife’s temple
and turned
and ran
down
the
stairs.

—Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos

My Masters

My masters are not infallible.
They're neither Goethe,
who had a sleepless night
only when distant volcanoes moaned, nor Horace,
who wrote in the language of gods
and altar boys. My masters
seek my advice. In fleecy
overcoats hurriedly slipped on
over their dreams, at dawn, when
the cool wind interrogates the birds,
my masters talk in whispers.
I can hear their broken speech.

Kierkegaard on Hegel

Kierkegaard said of Hegel: He reminds me of someone
who builds an enormous castle but live himself
in a storehouse next to the construction.
The mind, by the same token, dwells in
the modest quarters of the skull,
and those glorious states
which were promised us are covered
with spiderwebs, for the time being we should enjoy
a cramped cell in the jailhouse, a prisoner's song,
the good mood of a customs officer, the fist
of a cop. We live in longing. In our dreams,
locks and bolts open up. Who didn't find shelter
in the huge looks to the small. God
is the smallest poppy seed in the world,
bursting with greatness.

translated by Renata Gorczynski

from Paradiso, XVII

Cacciaguida urges Dante to speak out

The light in which it had appeared to me,
That jewel of reserve, suddenly flashed
Like a ray of sun in the gold depths of a mirror,

And carried on: "Those alone who blush
Inwardly, at their own or their neighbours' shame,
Will find your tidings harsh.

But nevertheless, you must stake your claim,
In the teeth of lies, to absolute recall,
And let them scratch whose itch has been inflamed.

And if what you say is hard for them to swallow
At the beginning, let them digest it –
Nourishment will follow.

Let your voice, like a storm-force gust,
Blow louder the higher the peaks it screams off –
You will only be doing yourself proper honour and justice.

That is why, in the giant scheme of things –
The mountain, and the anguished under-valley –
You were allowed to meet only the great and famous,

For the souls of your readers, undecided still,
Will not be convinced, if all they hear
Are unknown stories, good or ill,

Of those whose names have vanished with the years."

Translated by Harry Clifton