Another week went by without any verse on this blog, and April is National Poetry Month, and my favourite living poet AE Stallings has a new book out — so without further ado, enjoy:

Variations on an old standard
Come let us kiss. This cannot last—
Too late is on its way too soon—
And we are going nowhere fast.
Already it is after noon,
That momentary palindrome.
The mid-day hours start to swoon—
Around the corner lurks the gloam.
The sun flies at half-mast, and flags.
The color guard of bees heads home,
Whizzing by in zigs and zags,
Weighed down by the dusty gold
They’ve hoarded in their saddlebags,
All the summer they can hold.
It is too late to be too shy:
The Present tenses, starts to scold—
Tomorrow has no alibi,
And hides its far side like the moon.
The bats inebriate the sky,
And now mosquitoes start to tune
Their tiny violins. I see,
Rising like a grey balloon,
The head that does not look at me,
And in its face, the shadow cast,
The Sea they call Tranquility—
Dry and desolate and vast,
Where all passions flow at last.
Come let us kiss. It’s after noon,
And we are going nowhere fast.

Noir
Late at night,
One of us sometimes has said,
Watching a movie in black and white,
Of the vivid figures quick upon the screen,
“Surely by now all of them are dead”—
The yapping, wire-haired terrier, of course—
And the patient horse
Soaked in an illusion of London rain,
The Scotland Yard inspector at the scene,
The extras—faces in the crowd, the sailors;
The bungling blackmailers,
The kidnapped girl’s parents, reunited again
With their one and only joy, lisping in tones antique
As that style of pouting Cupid’s bow
Or those plucked eyebrows, arched to the height of chic.
Ignorant of so many things we know,
How they seem innocent, and yet they too
Possess a knowledge that they cannot give,
The grainy screen a kind of sieve
That holds some things, but lets some things slip through
With the current’s rush and swirl.
We wonder briefly only about the girl—
How old—seven, twelve—it isn’t clear—
Perhaps she’s still alive
Watching this somewhere at eighty-five,
The only one who knows, though we might guess,
What the kidnapper whispers in her ear,
Or the color of her dress.

Ultrasound
What butterfly—
Brain, soul, or both—
Unfurls here, pallid
As a moth?
(Listen, here’s
Another ticker,
Counting under
Mine, and quicker.)
In this cave
What flickers fall,
Adumbrated
On the wall?
Spine like beads
Strung on a wire,
Abacus
Of our desire,
Moon-face where
Two shadows rhyme,
Two moving hands
That tell the time.
I am the room
The future owns,
The darkness where
It grows its bones.

Those are all available online via the poet’s own site, and all are from her new book, Hapax, as is the author photograph.

I can’t seem to stick to Fridays, but here’s a poem for last week anyway. The author was, in his day, one of the most feared critics, influential poets and respected classical scholars in the world; who was he? I’ll put the answer in a comment for those who don’t know, can’t guess and don’t like waiting.

Purple William; or, The Liar’s Doom
The hideous hue which William is
Was not originally his;
So long as William told the truth,
He was a usual-coloured youth.
He now is purple. One fine day
His tender father chanced to say,
“What colour is a whelp, and why?”
“Purple,” was William’s false reply.
“Pooh,” said his Pa, “You silly elf,
“It’s no more purple than yourself.”
“Dismiss the notion from your head.”
“I, too, am purple,” William said.
—And he was purple. With a yell
His mother off the sofa fell,
Exclaiming, “William’s purple! Oh!”
William replied, “I told you so.”
His parents, who could not support
The pungency of this retort,
Died with a simultaneous groan.
The purple orphan was alone.

I keep forgetting FPB, but today’s Poem of the Week email both reminded me and provided me with material.
Kutti Revathi is a Tamil poet who says of her work, “People always ask me why I do not write poems about societal concerns and issues, as though attempts to bring about inner renewal and inner transformation were not acts of social concern. I use my language only to loosen the fetters that have bound and shrunk a woman’s body.”
The link goes to a brief introduction and links to four poems; my favourite of the four (trans. N. Kalyan Raman) is below, but do read them all.

BREASTS
Breasts are bubbles, rising
In wet marshlands
I watched in awe — and guarded —
Their gradual swell and blooming
At the edges of my youth’s season
Saying nothing to anyone else,
They sing along
With me alone, always:
Of Love,
Rapture,
Heartbreak
To the nurseries of my turning seasons,
They never once forgot or failed
To bring arousal
During penance, they swell, as if straining
To break free; and in the fierce tug of lust,
They soar, recalling the ecstasy of music
From the crush of embrace, they distill
The essence of love; and in the shock
Of childbirth, milk from coursing blood
Like two teardrops from an unfulfilled love
That cannot ever be wiped away,
They well up, as if in grief, and spill over

Rob joins jo(e) and friends (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and no doubt many that I missed) in a new¹ meme-y thing, Friday Poetry Blogging, that I like the look of.
Since his Collected is sitting on the desk in front of me, here’s Sir John:
The Cottage Hospital
At the end of a long-walled garden
   in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry—
   scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches
   where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes
   from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers
   basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects,
   and children played in the street.
Out of this bright intentness
   into the mulberry shade
Musca domestica (housefly)
   swung from the August light
Slap into slithery rigging
   by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic
   till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons
   and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed
   that fizzing, hopeless fight.
Say in what Cottage Hospital
   whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet
   of inflexible nurses’ feet
Shall I myself be lying
   when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying,
   as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath uncrying,
   as I feel my senses drown’d
While the air is swimming with insects
   and children play in the street?

In a Bath Teashop

A while back, I signed up for a poem a week by email from Poetry International Web; it’s “Poem of the Week” in my Bloglines account. This week’s poem was by Gieve Patel, and was interesting enough that I went and read a few more. I was really taken with this one:

IT MAKES
It makes sense not
to have the body
seamless,
hermetically sealed, a
non-orificial
box of incorruptibles.
Better shot through and through!
Interpenetrated

From Headpiece Filled With Straw:

I Contain Multitudes
And some of these fuckers
Have got to go.

I detest Whitman’s drivel, but it does make a good target.

It was worth adding delicious/poetry to my rss feeds just to be reminded of Piet Hein‘s Grooks. Picture swiped from here, where you can read a good brief biography.
ARS BREVIS
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.
WHO IS LEARNED?
A definition
One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.
THE ROAD TO WISDOM
The road to wisdom? — Well, it’s plain
and simple to express:
           Err
           and err
           and err again
           but less
           and less
           and less.
HINT AND SUGGESTION
Admonitory grook addressed to youth.
The human spirit sublimates
the impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.
ATOMYRIADES
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.

Pericat has been dreaming, and quite possibly drinking, and writing. Right now, or as soon as you can, whatever you’re doing, take a break; sit yourself down all comfy, with cookies and milk or a hot toddy or whatever you feel like, and go read her daydream. You can thank me later. (It made me feel all warm and fuzzy, especially the bit about getting mud all over the man from the gummint and poking at him with a fishing pole.)

Mona Van Duyn is dead at 83. There is some information at Modern American Poets, and the Academy of American Poets has a brief bio and three of her poems, including one of my favourites, which I’ve pasted below. I nicked the image from the St Louis Walk of Fame. (Via Dumbfoundry, of course.)

Letters from a Father
    I
Ulcerated tooth keeps me awake, there is
such pain, would have to go to the hospital to have
it pulled or would bleed to death from the blood thinners,
but can’t leave Mother, she falls and forgets her salve
and her tranquilizers, her ankles swell so and her bowels
are so bad, she almost had a stoppage and sometimes
what she passes is green as grass. There are big holes
in my thigh where my leg brace buckles the size of dimes.
My head pounds from the high pressure. It is awful
not to be able to get out, and I fell in the bathroom
and the girl could hardly get me up at all.
Sure thought my back was broken, it will be next time.
Prostate is bad and heart has given out,
feel bloated after supper. Have made my peace
because am just plain done for and have no doubt
that the Lord will come any day with my release.
You say you enjoy your feeder, I don’t see why
you want to spend good money on grain for birds
and you say you have a hundred sparrows, I’d buy
poison and get rid of their diseases and turds.
    II
We enjoyed your visit, it was nice of you to bring
the feeder but a terrible waste of your money
for that big bag of feed since we won’t be living
more than a few weeks long. We can see
them good from where we sit, big ones and little ones
but you know when I farmed I used to like to hunt
and we had many a good meal from pigeons
and quail and pheasant but these birds won’t
be good for nothing and are dirty to have so near
the house. Mother likes the redbirds though.
My bad knee is so sore and I can’t hardly hear
and Mother says she is hoarse from yelling but I know
it’s too late for a hearing aid. I belch up all the time
and have a sour mouth and of course with my heart
it’s no use to go to a doctor. Mother is the same.
Has a scab she thinks is going to turn to a wart.
    III
The birds are eating and fighting, Ha! Ha! All shapes
and colors and sizes coming out of our woods
but we don’t know what they are. Your Mother hopes
you can send us a kind of book that tells about birds.
There is one the folks called snowbirds, they eat on the ground,
we had the girl sprinkle extra there, but say,
they eat something awful. I sent the girl to town
to buy some more feed, she had to go anyway.
    IV
Almost called you on the telephone
but it costs so much to call thought better write.
Say, the funniest thing is happening, one
day we had so many birds and they fight
and get excited at their feed you know
and it’s really something to watch and two or three
flew right at us and crashed into our window
and bang, poor little things knocked themselves silly.
They come to after while on the ground and flew away.
And they been doing that. We felt awful
and didn’t know what to do but the other day
a lady from our Church drove out to call
and a little bird knocked itself out while she sat
and she brought it in her hands right into the house,
it looked like dead. It had a kind of hat
of feathers sticking up on its head, kind of rose
or pinky color, don’t know what it was,
and I petted it and it come to life right there
in her hands and she took it out and it flew. She says
they think the window is the sky on a fair
day, she feeds birds too but hasn’t got
so many. She says to hang strips of aluminum foil
in the window so we’ll do that. She raved about
our birds. P.S. The book just come in the mail.
    V
Say, that book is sure good, I study
in it every day and enjoy our birds.
Some of them I can’t identify
for sure, I guess they’re females, the Latin words
I just skip over. Bet you’d never guess
the sparrow I’ve got here, House Sparrow you wrote,
but I have Fox Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Vesper Sparrows,
Pine Woods and Tree and Chipping and White Throat
and White Crowned Sparrows. I have six Cardinals,
three pairs, they come at early morning and night,
the males at the feeder and on the ground the females.
Juncos, maybe 25, they fight
for the ground, that’s what they used to call snowbirds. I miss
the Bluebirds since the weather warmed. Their breast
is the color of a good ripe muskmelon. Tufted Titmouse
is sort of blue with a little tiny crest.
And I have Flicker and Red-Bellied and Red-
Headed Woodpeckers, you would die laughing
to see Red-Bellied, he hangs on with his head
flat on the board, his tail braced up under,
wing out. And Dickcissel and Ruby Crowned Kinglet
and Nuthatch stands on his head and Veery on top
the color of a bird dog and Hermit Thrush with spot
on breast, Blue Jay so funny, he will hop
right on the backs of the other birds to get the grain.
We bought some sunflower seeds just for him.
And Purple Finch I bet you never seen,
color of a watermelon, sits on the rim
of the feeder with his streaky wife, and the squirrels,
you know, they are cute too, they sit tall
and eat with their little hands, they eat bucketfuls.
I pulled my own tooth, it didn’t bleed at all.
    VI
It’s sure a surprise how well Mother is doing,
she forgets her laxative but bowels move fine.
Now that windows are open she says our birds sing
all day. The girl took a Book of Knowledge on loan
from the library and I am reading up
on the habits of birds, did you know some males have three
wives, some migrate some don’t. I am going to keep
feeding all spring, maybe summer, you can see
they expect it. Will need thistle seed for Goldfinch and Pine
Siskin next winter. Some folks are going to come see us
from Church, some bird watchers, pretty soon.
They have birds in town but nothing to equal this.
So the world woos its children back for an evening kiss.