Poems

Today is that day, the day that carried
a desperate light that since has died.
Don't let the squatters know:
let’s keep it all between us,
day, between your bell
and my secret.

Today is dead winter in the forgotten land
that comes to visit me, with a cross on the map
and a volcano in the snow, to return to me,
to return again the water
fallen on the roof of my childhood.
Today when the sun began with its shafts
to tell the story, so clear, so old,
the slanting rain fell like a sword,
the rain my hard heart welcomes.

You, my love, still asleep in August,
my queen, my woman, my vastness, my geography
kiss of mud, the carbon-coated zither,
you, vestment of my persistent song,
today you are reborn again and with the sky’s
black water confuse me and compel me:
I must renew my bones in your kingdom,
I must still uncloud my earthly duties.

Pablo Neruda.

 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Anne Sexton.

 

I've never studied poetry in depth or practiced writing it since I was in high school, but I did write this one day...obviously my emotions had control of my thoughts and this is what came out of the end of my pen.

Here I am again
So enraged
So lonely
So ugly

Here I am again
So angry
So sad
So pathetic

Here I again
So resentful
So unfulfilled
So unwanted

Here I am again
So frustrated
So disappointed
So ridiculous

Here I am again
So resigned
So defeated
So invisible

That's how I felt with my husband...

 

I wait and abide, with anticipation,

while I consider the inevitable.

My wish is to be in repose, quiet,

However the possibilities are startling

And disturb any thought of calm.


--- merged: Aug 26, 2012 3:29 AM ---

Quite a litany of despair. Talk to someone about this. (OH Right, You are!) Good! You are not defeated yet! And you are Making yourself visible today! The very fact that you have spoken out is good. I disbelieve most of your complaints, but that is just me! I think there is a bit of good in everyone! With the possible exception of my first Ex wife! LMAO!

 

Thanks for that input and you're right, it was despair, but I handled it an took my happiness into my own hands.

 

This is what I basically think of as my poem.


"Love Sonnet XI"

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

~Pablo Neruda

 

I wrote this one in Hebrew, and I continue to think it sounds best in that language. But I present the translation here, nonetheless:

In My Father’s Study

My father’s study smells of scriptural knowledge:
The scent of the past in the present, and the future in the past;
But also of mighthavebeens
that never were: chances lost, or buried alive.
It’s not such a bad smell: bittersweet, and often more sweet than bitter,
Like cut flowers after some days have passed.

Between the pages of the Talmud, of the Mishneh Torah, of the Shulchan Aruch,
are pressed memories,
of love, of abandonment, of regret, of resignation:
dry, whole, brittle.

As he got older, my father shrank a little bit;
But even in his youth, he never quite reached his heights.

My father is a man of almosts.
And when it comes to him, so am I.
In my childhood, I loved him almost totally.
In my youth, I almost hated him.
Now, I have compassion for him, almost entirely.

I visit him, lovingly, once a year:
a pilgrimage to come before his face,
in his scented study.
And when I return home, to my study,
I sniff the air for my own maybes and chances.

I will learn.

 

Nothing not to love about both of these.

 

Got the munchies I see! My favorite line is: "I hunger for your sleek laugh" Admittedly, I do not understand the sub-culture you are describing, and that is alright. I also like: "I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight."

 

I was never a huge poetry fan, but I have seen some in this thread that I like. I particularly like "A Man In His Life" by Yehuda Amichai.

I've written a few myself over the past year and a half or so, which have either been sorta sociopolitical about things I think could be better, or have been more personal and emotional about how I felt about myself and the things I was going through. I thought about posting one of them, but I'm still contemplating.

 

The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

This shit was intense when I read it. So I decided to copy/pasta it herr.

 

This poem has been in my mind lately. It is nearing our anniversary (Mrs. Levite and I), and this poem is one of those that's special to me because it reminds me of Mrs. L and I. We courted one another largely by e-mail and IM, because I was living abroad when we first knew one another, and we are both writers, and both rabbis, so Donne's imagery here just seems deeply suited to us.

A Valediction: To His Book

I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do
To anger destiny, as she doth us ;
How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus,
And how posterity shall know it too ;
How thine may out-endure
Sibyl's glory, and obscure
Her who from Pindar could allure,
And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.

Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me ;
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love's subliming fire invades,
Rule and example found ;
There the faith of any ground
No schismatic will dare to wound,
That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.

This book, as long-lived as the elements,
Or as the world's form, this all-gravèd tome
In cypher writ, or new made idiom ;
We for Love's clergy only are instruments ;
When this book is made thus,
Should again the ravenous
Vandals and Goths invade us,
Learning were safe ; in this our universe,
Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.

Here Love's divines-- since all divinity
Is love or wonder-- may find all they seek,
Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see ;
Or, loth so to amuse
Faith's infirmity, they choose
Something which they may see and use ;
For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it.

Here more than in their books may lawyers find,
Both by what titles mistresses are ours,
And how prerogative these states devours,
Transferr'd from Love himself, to womankind ;
Who, though from heart and eyes,
They exact great subsidies,
Forsake him who on them relies ;
And for the cause, honour, or conscience give ;
Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative.

Here statesmen-- or of them, they which can read--
May of their occupation find the grounds ;
Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds,
If to consider what 'tis, one proceed.
In both they do excel
Who the present govern well,
Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell ;
In this thy book, such will there something see,
As in the Bible some can find out alchemy.

Thus vent thy thoughts ; abroad I'll study thee,
As he removes far off, that great heights takes ;
How great love is, presence best trial makes,
But absence tries how long this love will be ;
To take a latitude
Sun, or stars, are fitliest view'd
At their brightest, but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have we,
But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?

-John Donne

 

Two by Yehudah Amichai, both translated by Levite....

If With A Bitter Mouth

If with a bitter mouth you say
sweet words, it won’t sweeten the world
or embitter it.

It is written in The Book that we must not fear.
And it’s written: even you and I have to change;
like words
in future or past tense, pluralized or made single.

Pretty soon, in coming nights,
like actors on tour, we’re going to star
in each other’s dreams
and in the dreams of strangers we never knew together.

--

My God, The Soul...

My God, the soul you put into me
is the smoke
from the ever-burning-sacrifice of the memories of love.
We’re barely born, and we begin burning;
and so we go, until the smoke
like smoke
is consumed.

 

The Apple

The apple, truly, God did not create
for aught save delighting the one who smells and nibbles it!
I have thought upon it: the aspect of green and red
joined in it-- like the faces of the desired and the desirer.

- Moshe Ibn Ezra (Granada, Spain, 1060-1138), tr. Levite

 

Imperatives

Bring me out
mine the wild abandon
that was mine
once
when I was seventeen
a young wraith in black
bells ringing in flight
wrapped around a young man's back
on a BMW that wound up mountains
to a naked lunch
on ice-planted crags
pounded by the Pacific

once
when I was thirty
entrancing from clandestine
curtained brilliance
a subversive siren in a sea
of easily parted waves of dark-eyed lovers

awaken passion one more time
I am in danger!
the zodiac abandons me
to land-locked shadows
they smother me flat
I cannot breathe without
the vivid rainbow edge

find me
free me from pale dry days
of drab restraint

(Marilyn Buck, from Inside/Out, 2012, City Lights Books)

 

Rejoice, She Said

She said: “Rejoice, because God has brought you
unto fifty years in your world!” And she didn’t know
That there is no separation, in my view, between my days which have passed,
and the days of Noah, of which I have only heard;
There is nothing for me in this world save the moment in which I am present,
and that arises for but an instant,
And afterward, drifts on like a cloud.

-Shmuel ha-Nagid, (Under-Vizier to Habbus al-Muzaffar, Berber king of Granada), 993-1056
(tr. Levite)

 

Two Bodies

Two bodies face to face
Are at times two waves
And the night is an ocean.

Two bodies face to face
Are sometimes two stones
And the night a desert.

Two bodies face to face
Are at times two roots
laced into the night.

Two bodies face to face
Are sometimes two knives
And night strikes sparks.

Two bodies face to face
Are two stars falling
In an empty sky.

Octavio Paz

 

A couple of shorties that caught my eye recently....

Hito Wo Yume To Ya

That our lives are but a dream
We have most likely come to understand well.
An abandoned home,
Its garden become the dwelling-place
Of butterflies.

-Sogi Roshi

Yo No Naka Wa

Our life in this world:
To what shall I compare it?
It is like an echo
Resounding off the mountains
And off into the empty sky.

-Ryokan Roshi

Yumeji Ni Wa

Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.

-Ono no Komachi