10 poems // October 10
generation to generation, bone to bone
1//
Untitled // by Jean Valentine
Something bad is happening.
No one says anything.
One by one
they get up and walk away.
They promised not to know.
Generation to generation,
bone to bone.
2 //
Introductory paragraph to her translation of The Iliad // by Emily Wilson
You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.
3 //
from Wound is the Origin of Wonder by Maya C Popa
What would you do with the knowledge
that I’d grieve for a bee? Someone like me
could be played by the threat of endings.
I’ll lose you one day, have lost you always,
a long ongoing Westwardness of thought,
my Blue Period; oh fond, formidable ghost.
It’s not metaphor that bees make honey
of themselves while language only dreams
the hunted thing. Let’s be hungry a little
while longer. Let’s not hurt each other if we can.
4 //
Circe’s Grief // by Louise Glück
In the end, I made myself
Known to your wife as
A god would, in her own house, in
Ithaca, a voice
Without a body: she
Paused in her weaving, her head turning
First to the right, then left
Though it was hopeless of course
To trace that sound to any
Objective source: I doubt
She will return to her loom
With what she knows now. When
You see her again, tell her
This is how a god says goodbye:
If I am in her head forever
I am in your life forever.
5 //
Who Remembers the Armenians? // by Najwan Darwish
I remember them
and I ride the nightmare bus with them
each night
and my coffee, this morning
I’m drinking it with them
You, murderer––
Who remembers you?
6 //
Door in the Mountain // by Jean Valentine
Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars
I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders
deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest
People are not wanting
to let me in
Door in the mountain
let me in
7 //
appendix 33 (a) on the difference between metaphor and metonymy // by Anne Carson
Since this question has arisen, here’s the difference: in a group of children
asked to respond to the world “hut,” some said a small cabin, some
said it burned down.
8 //
April 6 // by Rod McKuen
I have learned no new alphabet this week.
No new yardstick different from the last time out.
The old language has had to do too long a time.
I use the past arithmetic
to make the present work.
Yet even going from room to room
I walk with arms outstretched.
9 //
Lonely women make good lovers, // by Keetje Kuipers
sings the man on the country station,
but that’s not how I
remember loneliness: mostly
too drunk to feel anyone’s pleasure,
and the next morning
that pitiful kinship
of distance. Except for the night he
couldn’t finish it––not in
the meadow, not in his truck––
until finally we stumbled
through the blue light
of his shared living room
because at the least
he needed some place
to put my hunger to bed.
In the morning he thought to make
the misadventure right
while I looked out the window,
examining the scars on the glass––
bird shit, a feather, unbroken blue sky––
the same way I look down at my hands
now, everything so plain, even
my pain, which I’d thought
anyone could see.
10 //
monday sundown 9/17/01 // by Lucille Clifton
Rosh Hashanah
i bear witness to no thing
more human than hate
i bear witness to no thing
more human than love
apples and honey
apples and honey
what is not lost
is paradise