snakesnakewhale

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from The Paris Review

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from The Paris Review

C.P. Cavafy, 1915

Ordinary people know what’s happening now,
the gods know future things
because they alone are totally enlightened.
Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.

Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.

John Berryman, 1948

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball.
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over—there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street,
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight.
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

Philip Larkin, 1974

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

David Wojnarowicz, 1976

I stood in the doorway noticing you did the same
as I’ve done while packing to vacate a room
that strange unexplained action where we’ll even pack
personal bits of refuse like scraps of paper
even the covering for some long ago candy bar
munched slowly in the quietness of an afternoon room

Langston Hughes, 1943

I was setting on the hen-house steps
When the hen begin to crow.
Setting on the hen-house steps
When the hen begin to crow.
I ain't gonna set on
Them hen-house steps no mo'!

I had a cat, I called him
Battling Tom McCann.
Had a big black cat, I called him
Battling Tom McCann.
Last night that cat riz up and
Started talking like a man.

I said to Baby,
Baby, what do you hear?
I said, Baby,
What on earth do you hear?
Baby said, I don't hear nothin'
But your drunken snorin', dear.

Ummmm-mmm-m-huh! I wish that
Domineck hen wouldn't crow!
Oh-ooo-oo-o, Lawd! Nor that
Black cat talk no mo'!
But, woman, if you don't like it,
Find someplace else to sleep and snore---
Cause I'm gonna drink my licker
Till they burn the licker store.

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original New Yorker article here

Yi Lei, 1987
Translated by Tracy K. Smith

14. Hope Beyond Hope

This city of riches has fallen empty.
Small rooms like mine are easy to
breach. Watchmen pace, peer in,
gazes hungry.
I come and go, always alone, heavy with
worry. My flesh forsakes itself. Strangers’
eyes
Drill into me till I bleed. I beg God:
Make me a ghost.

    Fellow citizens:

Something invisible blocks every
road.
I wait night after night with a hope beyond
hope. If you come, will nation rise against
nation?
If you come, will the Yellow River drown its
banks? If you come, will the sky blacken and
rage?
Will your coming decimate the harvest?
There is nothing I can do in the face of all I
hate. What I hate most is the person I’ve
become.

    You didn’t come to live with me.

Federico García Lorca, 1921--24

Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?
The day walks in circles around me,
and the night copies me
in all its stars.

I want to live without seeing myself,
and I will dream that ants
and thistleburrs are my
leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.

Emily Dickinson

“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!