My anthology this week is Spirits of the Age - Poets of Conscience, edited  by Mona Adilman and published in 1989 by Quarry Press. The book describes itself as a collection, in translation, of the best work of poets from around the world who have been imprisoned, tortured, exiled, or otherwise oppressed because of their writing.

I also have my regular library poets and my own work, new and old. (And a little homage in my title to the great, dirigible-loving movie maker, Russ Meyer.)









From a couple of weeks ago, taking stock.












My first poem from this weeks anthology is by Mauricio Redoles, from the Republic of Chile. The poem is translated by John Lyons.

Redoles was born in Santiago in 1953 and studied law in Valparaiso. After the 1973 coup he spent twenty months in prison, and was expelled from Chile in 1975. A poet, singer/songwriter, and musician, he returned to Chile in 1985.


The Future Will Return

The future will return
with a certainty of fire and stone
with a precision of spiders and rain

Leading sailor Ernesto  Zuniga
will again run half-naked from his cell
towards the showers
in Valparaiso Public Jail

Alicia Rios will again turn a corner
close to Finsbury Park, London, N.r

before dying blown to pieces
on a street in Santiago

The future will return
stubborn as a root, as bone
immaculate as the entire earth

The future will return
with the death of its young
vanquished through its surprise

restored to its plain
vulgarity will travel by out side
when the future returns

sharp as a cricket singing

accurate

in the silence/in the night of light







Don't anymore, but  used to drink more than some, a habit that made knowing  the following sort of stuff important.

I wrote the poem in 2007.







I have two poems by Meg Kearney. The poems are from her book, An Unkindness of Ravens, published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2001.

Kearney is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College. For eleven years prior to joining Pine Manor, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University.

Her most recent collection of poems, Home By Now, was winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year.


Mrs. Plum, Outside the Library, with the Candlestick

My life thus far was found outlined in chalk
on Seventh Avenue. I lay down between the blue

lines, hugged my knees to my chest to test if it was
really me, then stood back smoking a Chesterfield

while the crowd gathered. They weren't interested
in who I was, but in the rumor of a woman gone wrong,

good girl seduced by Johnnie Walker Black - then
wronged  again by a pimp without a profit, or a prophet

without a God. One thing we all knew; there's no
story without a body. I wanted to step into that

crowd, hold out my palms like Christ;  I wanted
to dance flamenco with a stem of chalk in my

mouth. But it was beginning to rain, so I ducked
into the Italian place on Bleeker, ordered a bottle

of Chianti, I toasted the background music: Once
Upon a Time in America I toasted the empty

woman on the sidewalk, and the rain that was,
at that  very moment, sweeping her out to sea.


Fortune Teller

The Gypsy hovers over her  crystal so  closely
her whorled face swims in votive light. "Here

is that little girl again, eating a bologna sandwich,"
she says. "It's summer, she's been swimming -

her braids drip like candles. Her tongue is orange"
Tang, I think. The drink of the astronauts. "With one

hand,the girl holds a towel around herself,  already
distrusting her body." "Who are you?" I ask. Yet

she continues: "The part in her hair is perfect."
"I could tell you a story about that," I offer, but

the Gypsy will not lift her face. "And here is a man,
swimming laps in the pool. The girl watches him

as she eats. His strokes are like a light beginning to
flicker. The girl is waiting for something to happen.

She wonders if she'll be strong enough to save him."
"Who are you," I demand. "The girl wants so much

to look like him," she whispers. "Her eyes are the right
color, but already she is too tall, And now her scalp is

beginning to burn." I leap to my feet and the gypsy,
startled, looks up at last. "Oh," I moan, "It's you."








I wrote this last week. I don't often have nightmares, but when I do they're more about tension than scary monsters. (Checking under the bed before I go to sleep takes care of the monster  nightmares.)











Here are three short poems from the anthology written by Iva Kotrla, of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

Kotrla, is a poet and mother of five children. In 1984, just a few weeks after the birth of her fifth child, she was harassed and taken for interrogation by  the government for the offense of writing poetry. While still in the hospital, her home was searched and all her writings since 1966 was confiscated.

The information about here since 1989 is limited, though it appears she continues to work as a translator and write and publish her own work.


Under the Skin

Memories collect
like books laid on top of another
in a second-hand bookshop

So I think of love
I look
partly through your eyes

What you tell me
when you are alone

The room was motionless
reminding me of desire

That is no sin there are others
which have a name


At Moments of Piety

That lonely cross on Golgotha -
    A periscope
through which the Earth observes us.
Out of its dust
    we're  dust shedding tears
in adult unhappiness
when the Son in the arms of his
    Mother
is the only password
opening the gates of Paradise...


Growing Up

    In the years
when the secret police
took down our faces
    as we left the church
we reached out
    into our dreams

Every evening
adulthood came, with a lamp,
to our bedside,
    quietly drew aside the curtains
and spoke to us
    gently, like a mother.











This is an old poem, written New Year's Day, 2008.










Next, I have two poems, not from my library, but from my poet-friend, Kevin McCann.




Answered an Ad
                  
Pulls the apartment door                       
Towards her, slowly clicks
It shut, picks up her bag
Packed for who knows,                        
Pads down backstairs, slips                       
On her shoes, clack-taps                       
Echoing the basement car                       
Park, finds her old Ford,                       
Still starts first time, drives                       
Up the ramp, checks right                       
And left, No traffic yet,                       
Re-reads the directions                       
That came with his note,                       
Rolls down her window,
Grips the wheel gulping,                       
At long last sets off,                       
Chalked my name
On the sidewalk,                       
Watched that night                       
As rain washed it away                       
Reaches the Freeway,                       
Still early, still quiet                       
But takes a Highway                        
Instead as her sister                       
Wakes up crying, makes                       
Coffee until it’s late enough
To phone A shower of stones                       
Cracked our roof tiles. Mother                       
Said it was neighbours who’ve                       
Never liked us at all Mid-morning                       
She stops at a diner, drinks coffee,
Has doughnuts for breakfast,                       
Smokes openly as she leaves
Brushing some man Beery breath                       
Who whistles And the wheels on                       
The car go round and round and                       
Past a cop, parked by some billboard,                       
Asleep Round and round and round
Overtakes a school bus, jaundiced,
Empty Round and reaches her turn off,
Checks herself in the mirror,                       
Smiles, practicing.


I am the one

Who set out that morning,
Instructions laid out
On the passenger seat.

 I am the one
Who, after driving all day,
Slowed through that town

But when I wound down my window
To ask last minute directions
Had my pardon me sir
Or ‘scuse me there mam
Get no more response
Than some panhandling bum.

I am the one
Who was last to arrive
(So the gatekeeper told me
Then smiled at his wife)
I am the one Who followed the slowly
Last curving stretch
And when the house pounced
As I rounded the curve
Just past the tree stump

Hung in a vacuum Head in a vice

Cold freshly scalped

I am the one whose mind changed right there.

 I am the one who turned back








This, from last week.











The next  poem from the anthology is by Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou. He is a well-known poet in Iran, dismissed from the Ministry of Culture in 1980. When the anthology was published he was living in hiding. Born in 1925, he died in 2000.

The poem was published shortly before the fall of the Shah. Shamlou was no greater friend of the new order than he was of the old, and the new Islamic regime returned the enmity, considering him an anti-Islamist nationalist element, a traitor and a Westernised writer. Despite that, with a view to his popularity, the ruling clerics could not arrest him, but at the same time didn't allow publication of his works for many years.

His poem was translated by F. Safiri.


The Game Is Over

Lovers passed by, heads down
Awkward with their untimely songs

Murmurs and footsteps
Vanished from the streets

Soldiers passed by, battered and exhausted
Riding their mutilated horses
Their lowered bayonets
Smeared with bleached pride

What use flaunting your victory
to the universe
When every speck of dust
Whirls up, cursing you!

What are trees and gardens to you
When you always speak to the jasmine
With a scythe

wherever you step
the plants cease to grow
For you never had faith
In the holiness of earth and water

Alas!
Our life-story
Was the hollow song
of your troops
Returning from their conquest of a whore-house

Black shrouded mothers
Demented by the loss
Of earth's precious children
Have not yet raised their heads
From their prayer-mats
See what fate awaits you
When demonic curses will descend on you.








Another old poem, this one from 2009.






Park was  born in New  York in 1977. She is a recipient of a fiction grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and has published widely. She has performed her work in the United States, Cuba, and Korea and was a featured poet in HBO's Def Poetry Jam.


A Simple Bridge

these days I feel out of touch with lightning,
fire, even the loneliness of wind.

My soul sings to itself
because it is alone.

And then, I think lightning,
fire, wind are all solitary forces;

they can't help but touch
things in their path. It is the reaching -

the space between the paper's edge,
the blue fingers of flame,

between the wind
and sharp, breathless laves,

between the whiteblue jolt,
the one bare tree,

branches open to the light
and burning -

it is a simultaneous distance
and longing my body recognizes.

A simple bridge inside me
waits to be crossed by lovers

in both directions - who meet
in the middle of the arc at four hours:

the pink hour, the pitch hour,
the starless hour, the soft, waking hour.


Pool and Poetry
     - for the CAAAV Sisters

We roll deep down Fordham  with a baby carriage
to Mr. Lee's pool hall. Kim,  Rothny, and Rothana
grace tables with the cool of black ravens.
Kim aims and shoots,

fingers arched over poolcloth
with mathematical precision,
slow  click of the cue ball against the nine
that rolls to its pocket
smooth and easy as fate.

It's a bet.  Teach me pool and I'll teach you
poetry In St. Mary's convent
we write quotes on our graffiti blackboard
like an eye for an eye leaves the world blind
and God grant me the serenity...

Through a stained-glass  Jesus,
D cops an ounce of Jekyll &
Hyde off young dealers on Briggs.
Rothana daily navigates sidewalks of left dog shit
and crumpled Wise bars.

Kim throws Rothny a handball across the pool room
right above the baby's curled forehead, and Rothny
catches it with swift, thoughtless precision.

From this, I know they hurl themselves in the air
like hawks - dip, swoop, fling, and soar.
They know how magic sings in their limbs
and how to play Bainsbridge at twilight -
girls sanding in position, ready to  leap
into the women they want to become.









Pride  goeth before the fall, I'm told. Seems likely.











Next from the anthology, I have this poem by Samih al-Quasim.

The poet is a Druse Arab born in Jordan in 1939. Committed to the idea of a  secular democratic state, he e has been jailed several times for his political activities that have involved advocacy for Palestinian rights and dissent against government policies, starting in 1960 for refusal to enlist in the Israeli army which is required of Israeli Druze. He has also been under house arrest. He joined the Israeli Communist party Hadash in 1967 and was detained along with other members of the party at the outbreak of the Six-Day War.

Al-Quasim, a very prolific writer, is well-known throughout the Arab world. He lives in Haifa, where he writes and works as a journalist.


A Homeland

So what,
When in my homeland
The sparrow dies of starvation,
In exile, without a shroud,
While the earthworm is satiated,
Devouring God's food!

So what,
When the yellow fields
Yield no more to their tillers
than memories of weariness,
While their rich harvest pours
Into the granaries of the usurper!

So what,
If the cement has diverted
The ancient springs,
causing them to forget their natural course,
When their owner calls,
They cry in his face: "Who are you?"

So what,
When the almond and the olive have turned to timber
Adorning tavern doorways,
And monuments
Whose nude  loveliness  beautifies halls and bars,
And is carried by tourists
To  the farthest corners of the earth,
while nothing remains before my eyes
But dry leaves and tinder!

So  what,
When my people's tragedy
Has turned to farce in other's eyes.
And my face is a poor bargain
The even the slave-trader gleefully disdains!

So  what,
When in barren space the satellites  spin,
And in the streets walks a beggar, holding a hat
And the song of autumn is heard!
Blow, East winds!
Our roots are still  alive!







I wrote this next poem in 2010, a year of politics almost as virulent as the politics of today. Won't  it be wonderful when it's over and we can either celebrate or check out the cost of a moderate hacienda in Costa Rica.














The next poem from my library is by Luis J. Rodriguez, from his book The Concrete River,  published in 1991 by Curbstone Press. Published twenty years ago, it is not labeled a political poem, but it's about what this year's election is about.






Another poem from last week.











Next from the anthology, I have a poem by Bui Hoang Cam.

Born in 1922 in the Hal-duong province of northern  Vietnam, Hoang Cam was an officer in the Vietnamese People's Army during the war against the French colonial power. He was known both among  the nationalists and the communists for his patriotic poems. But after North Vietnam's independence in 1954, he became increasingly critical  of the Communist government and the Party because of the lack of freedom, the corruption and the excesses during the land reform campaign of 1954-56.

Following a brief period of artistic freedom called the "Hundred Flowers Movement" in 1956-58, the government cracked down on writers, artists, and other intellectuals, sending many to long-term imprisonment or re-education camps. Initially, Hoang Cam was forbidden to write, but after years of harassment by authorities, he was arrested in Hanoi in 1982 for giving a manuscript of his new poems to a Vietnamese visitor from Canada. At the time  of the publication of the anthology, nothing was known of the poet's whereabouts since his arrest. The editors speculate that he was known to have a serious heart  disease and asthma, and that he might not have survived imprisonment.

Everything I could find on the web that might have clarified his status is in Vietnamese which would not be translated.

The poem, one of his best known, was written during the time of the "Hundred Flowers Movement" and speaks to the injustices of the land reform movement that was ongoing. It was translated by David McAree.




Six Years Old

I

Six-years old and all alone
He looks for something to eat.
His father, the village landlord,
Had paid his blood-debt to the peasants,
Abandoning him his mother had gone South.

His bore him,
He ate, slept on soft bedding,
Wore soft pretty clothes.
He never knew how happy he was.

Then came the storm;
Who could spare thought for such a tiny pawn?
Yet humans  will always care for humans;
There will always be compassion.

A wretched, hungry old man
Trembles and shuffles as he hunts for crabs;
He feels pity for this skinny child
Who has neither mother nor father;
He gives him a handful of rice.

Limbs like sticks,
Swollen stomach but scrawny neck the orphaned child
Surveys the world through round bloodshot eyes:
"I bow to you madam, I beg a bowl of gruel;
please, madam, some rice..."

II

A young cadre working outside the village
Looks down the road,
Hears the forlorn cry.

She trembles as she recalls
The hunger years of long ago;
just five-years-old and she must lick
Leaves  found in the marketplace.

She runs down the lane,
Takes him by the hand and into her house.
From yesterday's supper
She gives him a bowl of rice.

Another girl, a peasant stock
Aspiring  to Party membership,
Turns her back to hide her tears:
"A landlord's child, too young to know his fault;
I gave him a bowl of gruel
And they questioned me for three long days."

The land reform cadre recoiled
And gazed at the child, searching for a trace
Of the enemy.
She saw only the child,
The child ate its fill,
Lay down on the ground to sleep.
She thought of the husband she would have
And of their pink, milk-fat children.

III

She lost her job  because of it.
In a dark cold room by the light of a lamp
She wrote her confession.

The tongue has not strength
The  road  is crooked;
The eye is too small
There is no horizon;
The mind is lazy
The color of rusty iron.

Sleeping off years
On the page of a book;
The people are machines
Muscles but no heart.

IV

"The relationship with reactionaries,"
"Loss of revolutionary vigilance,"
Night after night she weeps beside the lamp
and asks herself:
"How could I pity the enemy's child?
How happy I would be if I could have
Hated the child!"










This is another older poem, but not that old, written last year.

With my old poems this week, I'm tried to avoid poems that have appeared in my books. That's easy with 2011 poems since I haven't done that book yet. But I'm working on it. Having completed my first elimination round, I'm stuck with about twenty more poems than I need and struggling with a final cut. Also working on a book of very short, short stories that I want to put out before the next poetry book. A holdup with both books is I really need an editor (especially with the short stories) and proof reader and haven't been able to find one for the pitifully tiny amount I can pay for the help. May have to do it myself, despite being very bad at editing/proofing my own stuff.

But that's another story, having nothing to do with this 2011 poem.

















This poem is by John Barr.  It is from his book, The Hundred Fathom Curve, published in 1997 by Story Line Press.

Barr is president of the Poetry Foundation and has served on the boards of the Poetry Society of America, Yaddo, and Bennington College. During a quarter century career on Wall  Street, he founded three companies, including one of the country's largest energy marketing companies and a prominent investment banking boutique.


Suburban Triptych

I.

No house outlasts its hill.
Here, especially, fifty years will see
bones, the basement scar,
something in its place.

But for now the half-moons of the hammer's miss
could have been carpentered yesterday;
kernels of resin sweated form joists,
still soft to the thumbnail shine.
In the room where the well probes the hill's heart
the tank, full of taking, sweats.
The furnace waits, on thing on its mind.

II.

Excavating for a septic tank,
my father shovels a rock from eight feet down,
"That's never been touch by human hands."
I hole it aloft: for history,
the cold whit thing from genesis.

Green algae, heavy hair
we pitchfork from the pond by wagon-loads.
In a week it dries to nothing, to stink.
Too many turtles, my father hooks  one, clips
off its head with pruning shears, tosses
the astonished body on the compost heap.
Our garden yields a crop of trilobite
and sea-worm (already dreaming stone
when glaciers crushed their seabed into soil):
dead ringers for the fat tomato worms
we hunt. In the green immediate
they burst and soak into thirsty dirt.

III.

Past grass, past banjo legs of insects
into loam; six inches down, moraine;
then, lodged in the towering clay,
deep in the hill's dome, be still:

You hear small gravel, Burrowing.
Then nothing.
Then
a breathing other than  your won,
so slow
the breathing in
continues from one glacier to the next.














A new poem, from last  week.














My next poet from the anthology is Roque Dalton.

Dalton was born in El Salvador in 1933. He studied law and anthropology. He was persecuted and imprisoned in his own country, and subsequently lived in exile in Guatemala, Mexico, Czechoslovakia and Cuba. He was murdered in 1975 after returning home to help organize the guerrilla struggle.

His poem was translated by Tim Reynolds.


"Jail again, dark fruit..."

     Jail again, dark fruit.
     In the streets and rooms of men,  someone at  this moment will be moaning in  love, will be making music or reading news  of a battle happening under the Asian night. In the rivers, fishes will sing of their disbelief in the sea, impossible dream, too good to be true. (I  speak of those fish, in reality blue, called Lily-Blacks, from whose spines violent and swift men extract perfumes of great durability.)
     And, in whatever place, the least of sunken or nailed down things will be less prisoner than I.
     (True, my having a piece of pencil and paper - and poetry - proves that some  puffed-up universal concept, born to be written in capitals - Truth, God, the Unknown - flooded me  one happy day, and that I have not fallen - fallen into this dark well - but into the hands of opportunity in order to give proper evidence of it before mankind.
     Nevertheless, I would prefer a walk in the country.
     Even without a dog.)










Here are two short poem from January of this year. I spent most of January doing my short stories, one a day, so I have few poems from that month.

But I did have fun with the ones  I did. The stories required much more discipline than poems, so I  was happy to get  away for a little ditty whenever I could.