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Rocky Mountain Gold
Friday, June 12, 2009 IV.6.2. Several things different this week. First, almost entirely by accident none of the poets this week (except me, of course) are Americans and several are from periods before there was an America to be American in. Second, again almost entirely by accident, my poems this week form a kind of poem series, series being something I almost never do when not traveling. And, finally, I sent out a solicitation last week to poets who have appeared here before, asking for new material. I received a good response and have a good poem bank now for future weeks. (Can always use more, though, getting them is the hardest part of doing this every week.) Despite that, I'm not using any of the "friends" poems this week. Two reasons for that, one I simply got lazy and the other, it's too complicated to get into on a very hot summer afternoon. But, this is what I do have for you. Not too shabby at all. The Wild Flower Man Phoenix Hairpins Leaving the Monastery Early in the Morning Rain on the River Me a saturday poem Arthur Rimbaud Morning of Drunken Ecstasy Phases Vigils Me a sunday drive Sappho Hair Yellower Than Torch Flames Time of Youth Song to Groom and Bride To Eros To a Friend Gone, Remember Old Age Me another dread monday Nanao Sakaki After the First Snow Grasshoppers Please Vinegar Winter Flower Trails Midday Me Tuesday Anna Akhmatova from Requiem Epilogue Me worst day Dylan thomas And Earth Shall Have No Dominion Me last day George Grosz Hymn to the World Me sunspot  First, here are several poems by Lu Yu from the book One Hundred Poems From the Chinese, a New Directions book published in 1971. Lu Yu, who lived from 733–804, is respected as the "Sage of Tea" for his contribution to Chinese tea culture. He is best known for his book on the subject The Classic of Tea, the first definitive work on cultivating, making and drinking tea. The remainder of the Wikipedia entry on Lu Yu appears like it might have been poorly translated into English from original Chinese and I could get nothing from it. The poems were translated by Kenneth Rexroth who also assembled and edited the book. The Wild Flower Man Do you know the old man who Sells flowers by the South Gate? He lives on flowers like a bee. In the morning he sells mallows, In the evening he has poppies. His shanty roof lets in the Blue sky. His rice bin is Always empty. When he has Made enough money from his Flowers, he heads for a teahouse. When his money is gone, he Gathers some more flowers. All the spring weather, while the Flowers are in bloom, he is In bloom, too. Every day he is drunk all day long. What does He care if new laws are posted At the Emperor's palace? What doe it matter to him If the government is built On sand? If you try to talk To him, he won't answer but Only give you a drunken Smile from under his tousled hair. Phoenix Hairpins Pink and white hands like roses and rice cake! Cups full of golden pools of wine! Today the willows are blooming By the palace wall. the Spring wind Brings me no pleasure and I Hate it. My bowels are knotted With bitterness. I cannot Loosen the cord of the years Which has bound us together. The Spring is still the Spring Of other days, but I am Empty, withered with pain. My rouge is streaked with tears, my Dress is stained with tear drops. The peach trees are in blossom Over my room, here by the Still lake that mirrors the hills. I no longer have the strength To finish this letter and Wrap it in a cloth of gold. When You receive it, everything Will be over forever. Leaving the Monastery Early In the Morning In bed, asleep, I dream I am a butterfly. A crowing cock wakes me Like a blow. The sun rises Between foggy mountains. Mist hides the distant crags. My long retreat is over. My worries begin again. Laughing monks are gathering Branches of peach blossoms For a farewell present. But no stirrup cup will sustain Me on my journey back Into a world of troubles. Rain on the River In the fog we drift thither and yon over the dark waves. At last our little boat finds Shelter under a willow bank. At midnight I am awake, Heavy with wine. The smoky Lamp is still burning. The rain Is still sighing in the bamboo thatch of the cabin of the boat.  What "Lost & Found" do you go to when you find you've lost your sense of Saturday? a saturday poem i've been trying to remember when i lost saturday, the saturdays i remember from when i was a kid, when there was no school and when, after a couple of hours of work in the morning, the day was mine, for bike riding, for exploration of the canals and resacas within biking distance of our house, for saturday afternoon movies, for a trip to our little small-town library to get books for the week, for an afternoon of swimming, for an afternoon that was mine, all mine, only mine it might have been when i was fourteen or fifteen and i began a series of jobs in grocery stores, working saturdays from opening at 7 a.m. to closing at 9 in the evening, $10 for the day, seven for me, three for the college fund then college, weekends mostly dim days of hangovers and sleep military - working rotating shifts, about days and nights, which days, which nights irrelevant career - thirty years of saturdays alone in my office where i could work without distraction, catching up, getting ahead now - i have made writing my work, what i do, what i do most of every day what i do most every day in a way based on work habits developed over the thirty years that came before like now, writing this... worth the time i've spent on it - some might know, i don't but i'm too old to go swimming in the resaca, to fat to ride a bicycle, too impatient to spend an afternoon in a movie theater filled with a bunch of kids having the kind of saturday i'd like to have again but can't  Next I have some pieces by Arthur Rimbaud from the book A Season in Hell and Illuminations, published by J.M. Dent in 1998. As the book's title suggests, it consists of translations by Mark Treharne of two of Rimbaud's best know works, A Season in Hell and Illuminations. Rimbaud was born 1854 . As part of the decadent movement, his influence on modern literature, music and art has been enduring and pervasive. He produced his best known works while still in his late teens - Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare" - and gave up creative writing altogether before he reached 21. He was known to have been a restless soul, traveling extensively on three continents before his premature death from cancer in 1898, less than a month after his 37th birthday. All of the work I'm using this week comes from Illuminations. Morning of Drunken Ecstasy Oh my good! My Beauty! Hideous fanfare in which I do not falter! magical easel of torture! Hurrah for the unheard-of work and the wondrous body, for the first time! It began amid children's laughter, it will end there. This poison will remain in all our veins even when the fanfare sours and returns us to former disharmony. But let us now, we so deserving of this torture, fervently muster the superhuman promise made to our created bodies and souls: that promise, that insanity. Refinement, knowledge, violence! We have been promised that the proprieties shall be exiled so that we can usher in the uncontaminated perfection of our love. It began with a certain disgust and it ended, - since we are unable to seize hold of this eternity here and now, - it ended in a riot of perfumes. Children's laughter, discreet attention of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror of the faces and objects in this place, may you be hallowed by the memory of this vigil. It began in utter crudity, and now it ends in angels of fire and ice. Little drunken vigil, holy! if only the mask with which you have honored us. Method, we assert you! We do not forget that yesterday your glorified every state of our lives. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole life each day. This is the time of the Assassins.. Phrases When the world has been scaled down to one single dark wood for our four astonished eyes, - to a beach for two inseparable children, - to a musical house for our untroubled sympathy, - I shall find you. Let there be a single old man left on earth, calm and handsome, surrounded by "untold wealth", - and I shall be at your feet. Let me have realized all your memories, - let me be the woman who can bind you hand and foot, - I shall suffocate you. .......... When we are very strong, - who draws back? very gay, who collapses in ridicule? When we are very evil, what would they do to us? Adorn yourself, dance, laugh, - I shall never be able to send Love out of the window. .......... My companion, beggar-girl, monster child! how little you care about these unhappy women and these maneuvers, and my difficulties. Attach yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! the sole redeeming feature of this vile despair. .......... An overcast morning, in July. A taste of ashes floats through the air; - a smell of wood sweltering in the fireplace, - the retted flowers - the devastated walks - the drizzle of canals across the fields - why not toys and incense this early? .......... I have hung ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I am dancing. .......... The upland pond is always steaming. What witch is going to loom up against the white sunset? what violet foliage is going to fall? .......... While public money is being poured out in celebrations of brotherhood, a bell of rose-colored fire rings in the clouds. .......... Heightening a pleasant flor of Indian ink, a black powder falls like gentle rain on my vigil, - I turn down the gas lamp, throw myself on the bed, and as I turn towards the shadow, I can see you, my young girls! my queens! Vigils I This is mindful repose, not fever, not languor, on the bed or on the grass. This is the friend, neither pressing nor undemanding. The friend. This is the beloved, neither a tormentor nor tormented. The beloved. Air and the world unsought. Life - So this is what it was? - And the dream grows cold. II The light returns to the roof-beam. From the two ends of the room, nondescript scenes, harmonic elevations meet up together. The wall facing the watcher is a psychological sequence of cross-sections of friezes, atmospheric layers and geological strata. - A vivid, rapid dream of sentimental groups with beings of all kinds in every conceivable setting III The lamps and the rugs of the vigil sound like waves, at night, along the hull and around the entrepont. The sea of the vigil, like Amelie's breasts. The wall-hangings, up to half the way, thickets of lace, dyed emerald, where the doves of the vigil dart about ............................................................................................... The fireback of the blackened hearth, real suns on seashores: ah! wells of magics; the only glimpse of dawn, this time.  I always like to catch the quick flash of not-what-you-expect in an every day regular day. a sunday drive a sunday drive to Austin on an errand that couldn't wait for Monday thinking about going on for a drive in the hill country, maybe spend the night in Blanco or Mason or Johnson City before heading home tomorrow take a step outside and decide it's too damn hot so i'll just do the do i'm supposed to do and head for home in San Antonio - save the hotel night for a trip later in the month to Presidio or maybe to the coast let Reba run on the beach a pretty normal Sunday i'm thinking, then i see the guy with the scars all over his head, like three quarters of his skull had been lifted in pieces then put back together a big story there, i think, Iraq, maybe - motorcycle - something like that involved, probably, something, probably, he doesn't like to talk about my life - no big scars but i'm happy to talk about it anyway, do it all the time, even though not that interesting not like the guy with the jigsaw skull who probably doesn't want to talk about it  Here are several poems and fragments of poems from the book Sweetbitter Love, poems of Sappho, with new translations by Willis Barnstone. The book was published by Shambhala in 2006. Sappho was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments. The only contemporaneous source which refers to Sappho's life is her own body of poetry, and scholars are skeptical of biographical readings of it. Hair Yellower Than Torch Flames My mother used to say in her youth it was a great ornament to wear a purple ribbon looped in her hair. But a girl with hair yellower than torch flame need wear just a wreath of blooming flowers, or lately maybe a colorful headband from Sardis or some Ionian city Time of Youth You will remember we did these things in our youth many and beautiful things. In the city for us the harsh We live opposite a daring person stone foundation thin-voiced Song to Groom and Bride Happy groom, your marriage you prayed for has happened. You have the virgin bride of your prayers. You the bride are a form of grace, your eyes honey. Desire rains on your exquisite face. Aphrodite has honored you exceedingly To Eros You burn us To a Friend Gone, Remember Honestly I wish I were dead. When she left me she wept profusely and told me, "Oh how we've suffered in all this. Sappho, I swear I go unwillingly." And I answered her, "Be happy, go and remember me, you know how we worshiped you. But if not, I want to remind you of beautiful days we shared, how you took wreaths of violets, roses and crocuses, and at my side tied them in garlands made of flowers round your tender throat, and with sweet myrrh oil worthy of a queen you anointed your limbs and on a soft bed gently you would satisfy your longing and how there was no holy shrine where we were absent, no grove no dance no sound" Old Age In pity and trembling old age now covers my flesh. Yet there is chasing and floating after a young woman. Pick up your lyre and sing to us of one with violets on her robe, especially wandering  How long the attitudes of a lifetime hang over us. Like this. another dread monday it's another dread monday and everyone drags moans, groans, pisses at the wind including me even though i don't do anything on monday that i don't do every other day of the week, except on Sunday we sometimes go to a movie and i haven't been to a movie on monday in decades (a thought for this afternoon) and even when i worked i usually looked forward to monday because i loved the work and saw each new week as an opportunity to do even more it probably goes all the way back to childhood (doesn't everything) when i did not love school and did not look forward to going back to it, even though half of sunday was eaten up churchifying, which was actually worse than going to school so you'd think i'd be happy to get sunday over with and get to school where, at least, there wasn't anyone yelling at me, telling me i was going to hell because of those pesky nocturnal dreams about Gina Lollabrigida and the things we could do if she would teach me Italian, maybe some French, too but there it was, monday, with first period English and Mrs. Buck (arrivederci Gina) who was sure i couldn't be writing as well as i did and spent four years trying to catch me copying my themes and book reports from someone else, who else was always the big question, because of the dearth of likely candidates, and i was selling book reports rather than buying them, anyway, a prospect she never even casually entertained so that must have been the beginning of dread monday for me Mrs. Buck and first period English which is ironic since here i am beginning monday and all the rest of the days with my poem of the day, just like first period English Mrs. Buck would never believe it  Next, I have a poet new to me, Nanao Sakaki, from his book Break the Mirror, the Poems of Nanao Sakaki, published by North Point Press in 1987. Sakaki was a Japanese poet, born in 1923 to a large family in the Kagoshima Prefecture and raised by parents who ran an indigo dye-house. After completing compulsory education to age twelve, he worked as an office boy in Kagoshima. He was a draftee radar specialist stationed in Kyushu in the Japanese Air Force or Navy, and surreptitiously read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kropotkin, Marx, and Engels as time allowed. After the war, he went to Tokyo, living in an underpass near Ueno Station, working in various low skill jobs. Around 1952 he moved to the San'ya district and lived off the generosity of his neighbors, spending all his time studying English and reading. After two years there, he moved to Shinjuku, became interested in primitive art, and collaborated with a wood sculptor. They visited forests all over Japan for some three years. During this time, Sakaki began to write poems expressing a deep relationship with the forests. This led to exhibitions combining poetry and sculpture in Kagoshima in 1955 and in Ikebukuro in 1959. Sakaki and the sculptor then went separate ways, Sakaki returning to Shinkuju and becoming friends with Neale Hunter. They co-translated some of his poems into English and published them in Tokyo 1961 as the book Bellyfulls. It was also around this time that Sakaki helped create and lead "the Tribe", and led these friends to Suwanosejima to build the Banyan Ashram.[9] Bellyfulls was reprinted in the US in 1966, and starting in 1969, Sakaki made several trips to the United States, exploring the wilderness, writing, and reading poetry. He spent about ten years in the US, primarily in San Francisco and Taos, New Mexico, but also walking widely. Sakaki was married twice and had two sons and a daughter, At the time of his death in 2008, he was living with friends in the mountains of Nagano prefecture. Here are several of his shorter poems. After the First Snow From the ground snow comes. To heaven sap goes back. At the end of the universe life starts. In the wind time walks. Grasshoppers Hi Fred! You don't want to have Vegetable garden this summer, do you? ........No, Too many grasshoppers. Why don't you eat them. ........Prairie Shrimp........ Catch them with butterfly net Take off legs Saute in butter Eat with garlic and soy sauce Next morning Give your shit back to the garden; Now with numberless grasshoppers Sing songs Hop Jump Dance Forever Sing a song or Laugh or or Cry or Go away. Vinegar With vinegar I clean up windows. I clean up mind's windows. I clean up green forest blue sky white clouds I clean up great universe. ......not true...... Now transparent windows.... Against the glass Chickadees, robins, jays hit their heads and lose their lives In charity I pick them up eat them up with friends. Winter Flower Trails After two days snowing A rosy evening glow. You remember suddenly The star shining in daytime And flowers blooming here in summer. Star light Snow light an icy thistle field. Staggering with heavy boots You break dry flowers Into small pieces of the sun. Start here Your footprints Animal tracks Flower trails Midday A gray shadow Crosses over snow field. A white cloud Floats in blue sky. Between heaven and earth Between you and me Light dancing  History is very important; it is a tool that helps us plan for the future. That's why I like to do what I can to keep the historical record straight. Like the whole, hidden truth about Tuesday. Tuesday now we begin the second day of the work week, Tuesday, named, during the first Gregorian period, after the goddess Tuesday Weld, followed in ancient times by Weldsday, leading during that remote, romantic period to the Gregorian bacchanal spanning Tuesday night and Weldsday morn, called Tuesday Weldsday, followed by Thirstday, or, the day of the great thirst that follows the night of the great drink, from which arose that peculiar Gregorian sight of close-shaven dogs, necessary for the production of the hair of the dog that bit them, followed by Friarsday which all the Gregorian friars spent coughing up hair balls, not to be confused with Fryersday the solstice holiday when large buckets of fryers were consumed during the Gregorian friars' Kentucky fairs - original or extra-crispy - normally held on Thirstday when great great quantities of tequila sunrises were consumed, followed by hung-over Friarsday, spent mostly consuming large casks of bloody marys, made by the witch and purveyor of potent potions, Mary Steenbergen It was a wonderful time, a simple time, spoiled by invasions of the Goths and Semi-Goths which led to the Gregorian II era when days' names were changed to honor Germanic peoples like the infamous Red Baron and his dog Markey Mark Bark  The next poem is by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova from the collection of her work, You Will Hear Thunder, published by Ohio University Press in 1985. Akhmatova was the pen name of Anna Andreevna Gorenko, the pen name taken because her father did not want the family name associated with the disreputable world of poetry. Born in 1889, she is credited with a large influence on Russian poetry. After decades of falling in and out of favor by the communist government of the Soviet Union, Akmatova died in 1966. A minor planet, 3067 Akhmatova, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina in 1982 is named after her. What follows is the introduction and epilogue to her poem Requiem, written in the late 1930s, circulated in samizdat form and by work of mouth until it was finally officially published in Russia well after her death. All the poems in the book, including the sections below, were translated by D.M. Thomas. from Requiem In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror I spend seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone "identified" me. Beside me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly came out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): "Can you describe this?" And I said, "Yes, I can." And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face. Epilogue I There I learned how faces fall apart, How fear looks out from under the eyelids, How deep are the hieroglyphics Cut by suffering on people's cheeks. There I learned how silver can inherit The black, the ash-blond, overnight, The smiles that faded from the poor in spirit, Terror's dry coughing sound. And I pray not only for myself, But also for all those who stood there In bitter cold, or in the July heat, Under that red blind prison-wall. II Again the hands of the clock are nearing The unforgettable hour. I see, hear, touch All of you: the cripple they had to support Painfully to the end of the line; the moribund; And the girl who would shake her beautiful head and Say: "I come here as if it were home." I should like to call you all by name, But they have lost the lists... I have woven for them a great shroud Out of the poor words I overheard them speak. I remember them always and everywhere, And if they shut my tormented mouth, Through which a hundred million of my people cry, Let them remember me also... And if ever in this country they should want To build me a monument I consent to that honor, But only on the condition that they Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born: My last links to them were broken long ago, Nor by the stump by the Royal Gardens, Where an inconsolable young shade is seeking me, But here, where I stood for three hundred hours And where they never, never opened the doors for me. Lest in blessed death I should forget The grinding scream of the Black Marias, The hideous clanging gate, the old Woman wailing like a bounded beast. And may the melting snow drop like tears From my motionless bronze eyelids, And the prison pigeons coo above me And the ship sails down the Neva  For most of us, even our worst day is not really so bad, not compared to others'. This poem arose from my reading of a poem i used in "Here and Now" last week. worst day i just read a poem by a guy telling about the night during the Viet Nam war when he was eighteen years old and skipping the country to avoid the draft i suspect it's supposed to be a sad story as he tells about getting on the bus in his hometown, podunk, wherever, leaving behind his family, his mother, his father, his little brother, etc. etc. but he doesn't get much sympathy from me i honor both those who served their country by going to war and those who served by going to jail those who dodged the question by running away to foreign shores where they could smoke dope and more safely agitate against their country strike me as types we seem to see a lot of these days, losers, whiners, victims of their own overblown self-image, irrelevancies who find no question so large or so serious that they cannot mock as they scurry to find a safe place to hid from it i chose a third way, not a way of any particular honor or courage, but, when my draft notice came, at least i hung around, joining the air force, an option offering equal loss of personal freedom to those shipping off to army or marine boot camp but a lesser likelihood of having my guts and brain matter strewn across a bug-infested jungle floor the bus i got on in little Victoria, Texas, took me to the processing center in Houston and another bus that took me to San Antonio, where, very early in the morning at Lackland Air Force Base, I began to learn the basics of responding to incomprehensible language screamed in my ear - usually in a southern, hillbilly accent, learning that even when not understanding what you were being told to do, doing something was better doing nothing, which left you a sitting duck for more abuse and the simulated rage from the drill instructor appointed by the President of the United States to scare the civilian crap out of slick-sleeved rookies so that more survival-directed military crap could be embedded in every bone and essence of their pussy civilian bodies it was the worst day of my entire service of nearly four years, others, less fortunate than me, would have much worse days than that, and many would find one of those worse days to also be their last  Now, I think for the first time, I have a poem by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. I found the poem, one of his best known, in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, 1934-1952, published by New Directions in 1971. Thomas was born in 1914. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. He died in New York in 1953. The first rumors were of a brain hemorrhage, followed by reports that he had been mugged. Soon came the stories about alcohol, that he had drunk himself to death. Later, there were speculations about drugs and diabetes. And Earth Shall Have No Dominion And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, though they sink through he sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer though daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.  All kinds of days in our lives, weekdays, holidays, birthdays; and then there is the last day. last day when you reach a certain age you begin to think about an end to things you think about last days, or, for me, a last day and what i would like to be doing on that final day before the end of things arrives and i've thought about it and decided i'd like it to be a lot like today maybe in Autumn instead of Summer, sitting on the Riverwalk under an October blue sky, a color blue i've never seen anywhere but here this time of the year, drinking coffee, the last coffee, writing a poem, the last poem, the last chance to get it right alone on the river, watching the water flow past me, passing like time passes, there, then gone, never again to be right there, me, an observer as it passes never again to see its passage, never to know where it goes when it leaves me alone would be best, i think, though, in whatever state of atomic dispersion follows my own brief time of elemental gathering, i will miss many but, still, alone, i think, for only an alone mind can find itself to clarity alone, i think, being so much easier that way to forget no other day follows  For my next poem I went to the anthology, The Fader book of 20th Century German Poems, published by Faber and Faber Limited in 2005. The poem I selected is by George Grosz. Born in 1893, he was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1932. In 1914 Grosz volunteered for military service during the first World War. Like many other artists, he embraced the first world war as "the war to end all wars", but was quickly disillusioned and was given a discharge after hospitalization in 1915. In January 1917 he was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit. He was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents. He joined the Communist Party of Germany in the same year. In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in a 300 German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection Gott mit uns ("God with us"), a satire on German society. Grosz left the Communists in 1922 after having spent five months in Russia and meeting Lenin and Trotsky, because of his antagonism to any form of dictatorial authority. Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany in 1932, a year before Hitler came to power, and was invited to teach at the Art Students League of New York in 1933, where he would teach intermittently until 1955. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1938. Grosz died in Berlin in 1959 from the effects of falling down a flight of stairs after a night of drinking. The poem was translated by Michael Hofmann. Hymn to the World I O whizzbang world, you luna park, You delicious cabinet of horrors. Watch out! Here comes Grosz. The saddest man in Europe, "A phenomenon of sadness." Hard hat pushed back, By no means a softie!! A skull full of black blues, Bright as fields of hyacinths Or rushing express trains Clattering over bridges - Ragtime dancer. waiting with crowds by the picket fence For Robert E. Lee. Horido! By the beard of headmaster Wotan - Afternoons of perttified sewers, Painted over putrition, Perfumed stench - Grosz can sniff it. Parbleu! I smell roast babies. II Get yourself together, lads! Crank up the Benz - 150 km Down the ribboning roads! You too are disgusted by the cold sweat On your flaccid features! Turbulence of the world! My dear friends! Ahoy! Greetings, y'all, boys over the water! I.W. Hurban, Lewis, Abraham, Theo F. Morse, Lillian Elmore. You converted the jungle into notes With your New World banjo music. Stiff standing skyscrapers. The grey eye at liberty. Cleanshaven and broad. The houseboat glides down the Hudson - With dark nights And Negroes in black hats!  Here's a short poem I wrote about a very good day. sunspot thunder and lightning all night but little rain this morning the sun - in a clear-sky patch surrounded by black clouds - is shining on me like a spotlight at the grand ballet the star of the show, that's me, it's my day to shine  That's it for this week. Next week, we'll have our friends back. I'm still working on poets from my library. So far, it looks like I'll have Frank O'Hara, Susan Griffin, Nikki Giovanni, and Norman Stock with a couple of poems from his fun collection Buying Breakfast For My Kamikaze Pilot, plus some more I haven't come up with yet. Until next week, remember, all of the material presented in this blog remains th property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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