“sight ” by Domingo

Give the fear back
to the sun

give the fear back to the man,
to the earth and to the god,
give the fear back
to the teacher
to the doctor
and the shrink

back to whom put it in you.
to the father, to the mother
and the door you could not open,
and the house of the suicide
and the dog
foaming at the mouth

hold nobody´s hand when walking,
love no one and hate nobody.

be alone.

be alone through life and death
and fear nothing
give the fear back to your blood,
give the fear back to your mind,
to the man who gave it to you
long ago

give the fear back to the book
to the knowledge in the book
which is nothing,
to the temple and the truth
which is a lie, give the fear
back,
and remain empty,
empty of thought or expectation,
empty of guilt and of redemption,
turn away from shades of angels
and be alone,
be alone until the wind
that comes out of the great sea
may for nothingness mistake you

and upon its currents take you
to the End

give your fear away forever
today

 

“Spring” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

 

“Soundings” by Robert Wrigley

The birdhouse made from a gourd is wired

to a flanged loop of steel and screwed to the southeast post

of the shack. Two holes at the top—near where the stem was,

for a thong of leather to hang it by, which long ago broke—

are now the fingerholes of the mournful wind instrument it’s become.

The broad round bowl of it makes a sort of birdly

basso profundo that pearls through the steel, into the post,

the floor joists and walls in two notes: a slightly sharp D

and an equally sharp F, says the guitar tuner,

which explains why all my thinking these days

is in B-flat, a difficult key for all but the clarinet

and this sudden covey of nuthatches, whose collective woe

makes it a minor chord I am in the middle of.

Nothing to do but hoist such silks as the luff

of limbs and needles suggests, and sail on,

the barely-escaped-from-the-cat chipmunk chattering

like a gull, and the mountain’s last drift of snow

resembling the back of a sounding whale. Hear the thrum of the rigging,

Daggoo? Hear its profoundest woo, its sensible gobbledy-goo

and doo-wop, the boo-hoos of the spheres, by vectors and veers,

by tacks and refractal jabberings, taking us deeper into the weirdness

of the ghost sea those prairie hills were the bottom of once,

this nowhere we shall not be returning from.

Draw the lines! Assume the crow’s nest, Pip. This ship

sails on music and wind, and away with birds.

 

“The Surrealist Learns To Fly” by Jennifer O’Grady

Occasionally he wakes, finds
the cool cube of his room
delirious with colors: blaring
daffodils and rigid roses,
petals a soft, translucent red

like the inside of an eyelid.
By the window, a clock’s
expressionless face near glossy skins
of magazines, a telephone
the color of frozen milk

or silence, the color of old.
He is melting, his bones
grown paper-light, they travel
over the bed’s pale hills, the woman
who’s come to wash him.

The ceiling is a landscape
bleeding white as he floats
through the muted winter sky,
a boundless symbol of nothing.
The woman draws the blind.

 

“The Gardener 85″ by Rabindranath Tagore

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad.

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

 

“Maybe Alone On My Bike” by William Stafford

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!–
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

 

“Pleasures” By Denise Levertov

I like to find
what’s not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board—

        tapered as if for         swiftness, to pierce
        the heart, but fragile, substance
        belying design.               Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the seed:
the seed a stone of wood, carved and

polished, walnut-colored, formed
like a brazilnut, but large,
large enough to fill
the hungry palm of a hand.

I like the juicy stem of grass that grows
within the coarser leaf folded round,
and the butteryellow glow
in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory
opens blue and cool on a hot morning.

 

2012 Haikus

Bhokta ran a monthly online haiku contest I would enter as often as I could. Here are some of my 2012 entries.  One of the themes for December was “Departing” in his honor and the last one herein was written with that in mind.

reds in the viburnum
cardinals await their turn
sunflower feeder

a turtle crawls
across the sky

witch hazel
aconite snowdrops crocus
he plants spinach

hard to imagine
this calm dawn with wren warble
is a dream

drought shriveled tomatoes
promise sweet grapes

orange flickers
on the bottom of grey clouds
a gas well is flared

late season crickets
join the chorus so sweetly
tears well

river bottom mist
newly naked trees don
a coat of ice

as days shorten
the laundry basket
fills faster

tap at the window
a reminder to restock
sunflower feeder

as eyes adjust
to snow blindness
sundogs appear

in his death throes
escaping like a butterfly
from its chrysalis