Bartlett's Poems for Occasions

by Geoffrey O'Brien

  YOSANO AKIKO

  JAPANESE (1878-1942)

  TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH

  Terminus

  Wonderful was the long secret night you gave me, my Lover,

  Palm to palm, breast to breast in the gloom. The faint red

  lamp

  Flushing with magical shadows the common-place room of

  the inn,

  With its dull impersonal furniture, kindled a mystic flame

  In the heart of the swinging mirror, the glass that has seen

  Faces innumerous and vague of the endless travelling

  automata

  Whirled down the ways of the world like dust-eddies swept

  through a street,

  Faces indifferent or weary, frowns of impatience or pain,

  Smiles (if such there were ever) like your smile and mine

  when they met

  Here, in this self-same glass, while you helped me to loosen

  my dress,

  And the shadow-mouths melted to one, like sea-birds that

  meet in a wave—

  Such smiles, yes, such smiles the mirror perhaps has reflected;

  And the low wide bed, as rutted and worn as a high-road,

  The bed with its soot-sodden chintz, the grime of its brasses,

  That has born the weight of fagged bodies, dust-stained,

  averted in sleep,

  The hurried, the restless, the aimless—perchance it has also

  thrilled

  With the pressure of bodies ecstatic, bodies like ours,

  Seeking each other’s souls in the depths of unfathomed

  caresses,

  And through the long windings of passion emerging again to

  the stars . . .

  Yes, all this through the room, the passive and featureless

  room,

  Must have flowed with the rise and fall of the human

  unceasing current,

  And lying there hushed in your arms, as the waves of rapture

  receded,

  And far down the margin of being we heard the low beat of

  the soul,

  I was glad as I thought of those others, the nameless, the

  many,

  Who perhaps thus had lain and loved for an hour on the

  brink of the world,

  Secret and fast in the heart of the whirlwind of travel,

  The shaking and shrieking of trains, the night-long shudder

  of traffic;

  Thus, like us they have lain and felt, breast to breast in the

  dark,

  The fiery rain of possession descend on their limbs while

  outside

  The black rain of midnight pelted the roof of the station;

  And thus some woman like me waking alone before dawn,

  While her lover slept, as I woke and heard the calm stir of

  your breathing,

  Some woman has heard as I heard the farewell shriek of the

  trains

  Crying good-bye to the city and staggering out into darkness,

  And shaken at heart has thought: “So must we forth in the

  darkness,

  Sped down the fixed rail of habit by the hand of implacable

  fate —”

  So shall we issue to life, and the rain, and the dull dark

  dawning;

  You to the wide flair of cities, with windy garlands and

  shouting,

  Carrying to populous places the freight of holiday throngs;

  I, by waste land and stretches of low-skied marsh,

  To a harbourless wind-bitten shore, where a dull town

  moulders and shrinks,

  And its roofs fall in, and the sluggish feet of the hours

  Are printed in grass in its streets; and between the featureless

  houses

  Languid the town-folk glide to stare at the entering train,

  The train from which no one descends; till one pale evening

  of winter,

  When it halts on the edge of the town, see, the houses have

  turned into grave-stones,

  The streets are the grassy paths between the low roofs of the

  dead;

  And as the train glides in ghosts stand by the doors of the

  carriages;

  And scarcely the difference is felt—yes, such is the life I

  return to . . . !

  Thus may another have thought; thus, as I turned, may have

  turned

  To the sleeping lips at her side, to drink, as I drank there,

  oblivion.

  EDITH WHARTON

  AMERICAN (1862-1937)

  Alba

  When the nightingale to his mate

  Sings day-long and night late

  My love and I keep state

  In bower,

  In flower,

  ’Till the watchman on the tower

  Cry:

  “Up! Thou rascal, Rise,

  I see the white

  Light

  And the night

  Flies.”

  EZRA POUND

  AMERICAN (1885-1972)

  Vernal Equinox

  The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and

  my book;

  And the South Wind, washing through the room,

  Makes the candles quiver.

  My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,

  And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots

  Outside, in the night.

  Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and

  urgent love?

  AMY LOWELL

  AMERICAN (1874-1925)

  Fragment 113

  “Neither honey nor bee for me.”—Sappho

  Not honey,

  not the plunder of the bee

  from meadow or sand-flower

  or mountain bush;

  from winter-flower or shoot

  born of the later heat:

  not honey, not the sweet

  stain on the lips and teeth:

  not honey, not the deep

  plunge of soft belly

  and the clinging of the gold-edged

  pollen-dusted feet;

  not so—

  though rapture blind my eyes,

  and hunger crisp

  dark and inert my mouth,

  not honey, not the south,

  not the tall stalk

  of red twin-lilies,

  nor light branch of fruit tree

  caught in flexible light branch;

  not honey, not the south;

  ah flower of purple iris,

  flower of white,

  or of the iris, withering the grass—

  for fleck of the sun’s fire,

  gathers such heat and power,

  that shadow-print is light,

  cast through the petals

  of the yellow iris flower;

  not iris—old desire—old passion—

  old forgetfulness—old pain—

  not this, nor any flower,

  but if you turn again,

  seek strength of arm and throat,

  touch as the god;

  neglect the lyre-note;

  knowing that you shall feel,

  about the frame,

  no trembling of the string

  but heat, more passionate

  of bone and the white shell

  and fiery tempered steel.

  H.D.

  AMERICAN (1886-1961)

  Recuerdo

  We were very tired, we were very merry —

  We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

  It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —

  But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

  We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;

  And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

  We were very tired, we were very merry
—

  We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

  And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

  From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

  And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

  And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

  We were very tired, we were very merry,

  We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

  We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,

  And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

  And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,

  And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

  EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  AMERICAN (1892-1950)

  I Want to Die While You Love Me

  I want to die while you love me,

  While yet you hold me fair,

  While laughter lies upon my lips

  And lights are in my hair.

  I want to die while you love me,

  And bear to that still bed

  Your kisses turbulent, unspent,

  To warm me when I’m dead.

  I want to die while you love me,

  Oh, who would care to live

  Till love has nothing more to ask

  And nothing more to give?

  I want to die while you love me,

  And never, never see

  The glory of this perfect day

  Grow dim or cease to be!

  GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON

  AMERICAN (1886-1966)

  in spite of everything

  in spite of everything

  which breathes and moves,since Doom

  (with white longest hands

  neatening each crease)

  will smooth entirely our minds

  — before leaving my room

  i turn,and(stooping

  through the morning)kiss

  this pillow,dear

  where our heads lived and were.

  E. E. CUMMINGS

  AMERICAN (1894-1962)

  somewhere i have never travelled . . .

  somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

  any experience,your eyes have their silence:

  in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

  or which i cannot touch because they are too near

  your slightest look easily will unclose me

  though i have closed myself as fingers,

  you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

  (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

  or if your wish be to close me,i and

  my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

  as when the heart of this flower imagines

  the snow carefully everywhere descending;

  nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

  the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

  compels me with the colour of its countries,

  rendering death and forever with each breathing

  (i do not know what it is about you that closes

  and opens;only something in me understands

  the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

  nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

  E. E. CUMMINGS

  AMERICAN (1894-1962)

  Lay your sleeping head, my love

  Lay your sleeping head, my love,

  Human on my faithless arm;

  Time and fevers burn away

  Individual beauty from

  Thoughtful children, and the grave

  Proves the child ephemeral:

  But in my arms till break of day

  Let the living creature lie,

  Mortal, guilty, but to me

  The entirely beautiful.

  Soul and body have no bounds:

  To lovers as they lie upon

  Her tolerant enchanted slope

  In their ordinary swoon,

  Grave the vision Venus sends

  Of supernatural sympathy,

  Universal love and hope;

  While an abstract insight wakes

  Among the glaciers and the rocks

  The hermit’s sensual ecstasy.

  Certainty, fidelity

  On the stroke of midnight pass

  Like vibrations of a bell,

  And fashionable madmen raise

  Their pedantic boring cry:

  Every farthing of the cost,

  All the dreaded cards foretell,

  Shall be paid, but from this night

  Not a whisper, not a thought,

  Not a kiss nor look be lost.

  Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

  Let the winds of dawn that blow

  Softly round your dreaming head

  Such a day of sweetness show

  Eye and knocking heart may bless,

  Find the mortal world enough;

  Noons of dryness see you fed

  By the involuntary powers,

  Nights of insult let you pass

  Watched by every human love.

  W. H. AUDEN

  ENGLISH (1907-1973)

  The Kimono

  When I returned from lovers’ lane

  My hair was white as snow.

  Joy, incomprehension, pain

  I’d seen like seasons come and go.

  How I got home again

  Frozen half dead, perhaps you know.

  You hide a smile and quote a text:

  Desires ungratified

  Persist from one life to the next.

  Hearths we strip ourselves beside

  Long, long ago were x’d

  On blueprints of “consuming pride.”

  Times out of mind, the bubble-gleam

  To our charred level drew

  April back. A sudden beam . . .

  —Keep talking while I change into

  The pattern of a stream

  Bordered with rushes white on blue.

  JAMES MERRILL

  AMERICAN (1926-1995)

  Having a Coke with You

  is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

  or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

  partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

  partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

  partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

  partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

  it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

  as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

  in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

  between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

  and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

  you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

  I look

  at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

  except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

  which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time

  and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

  just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

  at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

  and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

  when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

  or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

  as the horse

  it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

  which is not going to go wasted
on me which is why I’m telling you about it

  FRANK O’HARA

  AMERICAN (1926-1966)

  23rd Street Runs into Heaven

  You stand near the window as lights wink

  On along the street. Somewhere a trolley, taking

  Shop-girls and clerks home, clatters through

  This before-supper Sabbath. An alley cat cries

  To find the garbage cans sealed; newsboys

  Begin their murder-into-pennies round.

  We are shut in, secure for a little, safe until

  Tomorrow. You slip your dress off, roll down

  Your stockings, careful against runs. Naked now,

  With soft light on soft flesh, you pause

  For a moment; turn and face me —

  Smile in a way that only women know

  Who have lain long with their lover

  And are made more virginal.

  Our supper is plain but we are very wonderful.

  KENNETH PATCHEN

  AMERICAN (1911-1972)

  Elegy

  Body, beloved, yes; we know each other you and I.

  Perhaps I ran to meet you

  like a cloud heavy with lightning.

  Ah, that fleeting light, that fulmination,

  that vast silence that succeeds catastrophe.

  Whoever looks at us now (dark stones, bits

  and pieces of used matter)

  won’t know that for an instant our name was love

  and that in eternity they call us destiny.

  ROSARIO CASTELLANOS

  MEXICAN (1925-1974)

  TRANSLATED BY MAGDA BOGIN

  I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

  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

  CHILEAN (1904-1973)

  TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN TAPSCOTT

  DISAPPOINTMENT

  Hate whom ye list, for I care not

  Hate whom ye list, for I care not:

  Love whom ye list and spare not:

  Do what ye list and dread not: