Léopold Sédar Senghor – Elegy Of Midnight

 

Summer, splendid Summer, nourishing the Poet on the milk of your light
I who grew up like the wheat of spring, which made me drunk
From green water, from the green steaming in the gold of Time
Ah! no longer can I tolerate the midnight light.
The splendor of such honors resembles a Sahara,
An immense void, with neither erg nor rocky plateau,
With no grass, no twinkling eye, no beating heart.
Twenty-four hours a day like this, and my eyes are wide open
Like Father Cloarec’s, crucified on a boulder by the Joal pagans
Who worshipped snakes. In my eyes the Portuguese lighthouse
Turns round and round, twenty-four hours a day,
A precise and restless mechanism, until the end of time.

I jumped out of bed, a leopard about to be snared,
A sudden gust of Simoom filling my throat with sand.
Ah! if I could just collapse in the dung and blood, in the void.
I turn around among my books watchilng me with their deep eyes
Six thousand lamps burning twenty-four hours a day.
I stand up lucid, strangely lucid. And I am handsome,
Like the one-hundred-runner, like the rutting black stallion
From Mauritania. I carry in my blood a river of seeds
That can fertilize all the plains of Byzantium
And the hills, the austere hills.
I am the Lover and the locomotive with a well-oiled piston.

Her sweet strawberry lips, her thick stone body,
Her secret softness ripe for the catch, her body
A deep field open to the black sower.
The Spirit germinates under the groin, in the matrix of desire
The sex is one antenna mong many where flashing messages are exchanged.
Love music no longer can cool me down, nor the holy rhythm of poetry.
Against this despair, Lord, I need all my strength
—A soft dagger in the heart as deep as remorse.
I am not sure of dying. If that was Hell: the lack of sleep
This desert of the Poet, this pain of living, this dying
From not being able to die, the agony of shadows, this passion
For death and light like moths on hurricane lamps at night,
In the horrible rotting of virgin forests.

Lord of light and shadows,
You, Lord of the Cosmos, let me rest in Joal-of-the-Shades,
Let me be born again in the Childhood Kingdom full of dreams,
Let me be the shepherd of my shepherdess on the Dyilôr tanns
Where dead men flower, let me burst out applauding
When Téning-Ndyaré and Tyagoum-Ndyaré enter the circle
And let me dance like the Athlete to the drum of this year’s Dead.
This is only a prayer. You known my peasant’s patience.
Peace will come, the Angel of dawn will come, the singing of birds
Never heard before will come, the light of dawn will come.
I will sleep at dawn, my pink doll in my arms,
My green- and gold-eyed doll with a voice so marvelous,
It is the very tongue of poetry.

—Translated from the French by Melvin Dixon

(from Nocturnes, 1961)

Joseph Ceravolo – Street Wise Romantic

The streets are empty and still,
between the red time,
then start again.
Trucks bouncing by,
cars to work, work.
The farms are disappearing as I noticed
years ago along this old route.
Now the farms lie beneath
hotels, office complexes whose beauty
is beyond the senses
in some economic realm fortified
by the delusions of power and inequity.
But the farms are lying beneath
and large poisonous plants
fusing the electrical circuits beneath.
No there’s no death to evil,
it rises again, now in war, now in bucks
now in land, now in power,
it rises up forever until the end,
when the light may intercede and remain.
Seek refuge from the fantasy
into one other fantasy.
We see violence done on subways on streets
but we don’t see violence done
in a new class system or economic twist.
Does it murder just as well?
Nothing can be done.
It will go on and on
until the intercessions of the sun.
Everything else has failed, and will,
but the innocence of youth
and the momentum of dawn.

 

 

the santa is coming

nsa tinsel and filament devices
elves a watching facebook and twitter
the santa is coming
who has been naughty or nice
on sled pulled by drones
war on terror so far unfinished
bringing gifts to a hurting poor
low pay, taxation and what of medicare
food bank turkey in a suspicious world
ho ho ho
debt advice and feeling jolly
check the tree for gps and listening devices
holly wreath marks the door
apocalpyse around the corner
automatic rifle and several handguns
a thousand tins of beans
wal mart generation
in a generation x world
fattened wealthy bulls work the market
bonuses pour from the sky
the santa is coming
ho ho ho
with foreclosure signs
and spooks past and present
the santa is coming
you must feel joyful and triumphant
hand on heart god bless everyone
one and all
primaries and elections
next on elves agenda
so use your time
and think
what do you want
ho ho ho

 

Denise Levertov – A Dark Summer Day

winters fold

sticky beaked crow

raucous over winter berries,

as i ran on frosted ground

grass unlikely to bend

silvered instead of green,

clouds would shake

their snow soon

blanketing and forming

a soft landscape for me

in snow,

i was protected

the chill and damp

reddened eyes and nose,

sticky beaked crow

a shadow on the ground

lengthening under a low sun,

my shadow would be longer

one day,

for now i was content

to lay upon my back

feeling spread of arms and legs

as i be came an angel

dVersePoets

blood of the cucurbita

we are myth

we are legend,

behind fences we are found

bred and sacrificed on all hallows eve,

generations past

gutted and carved in celebration,

so misunderstood seen only as decoration

as human skulls on poles once where,

unlike my wild cousins in mexico

scattered over landscape and mountain,

they do not suffer the tampering

of our genetics

79 loci,

phenotypic slides for frankenstein,s scientist

altered , inbred,

not realizing our beauty

in shape and color

palmate leaves , long tendrils

unisexual flowers touched by gentle bee

curling about stamen

stroking with long legs

collecting pollen my yellow stain

peponapis body thrumming

resonant on my petals,

10,000 years of domestication

treated worse than dogs

compliant in nature as man knows best

our flesh substance forgotten

as gourd display incised and flensed

to amuse and terrify

projects of another’s nature

that is more disturbing and cruel

sublime oranges

he measured the room

by volume of the dark

with light subtracted,

moving as ulysses did in hades

he would find breakfast on the sand,

ocean not so far away

as high tides where relevant,

rituals began

ideas stencilled on embryonic dna

created this path and outlook,

sometimes he felt it was only he

he revolving and the earth had stopped,

it was not a crisis of meaning

only an imbalance on his poetics,

even in the dark

he could place a pen nib and write

about placing kisses on her

naked arcitecture,

a finding in deep silence

what she had really meant

under that cloak of shuddering mysticism

pen scratched paper

it would be ten pages,

before images faltered and pen halted,

ignoring wine that had already spilled on

table top,

peeled an orange

segmented aspects from which to

derive a special calm,

her bewitching had been an interference

but now choking fumes cleared

and he was at last

truly free

@dVersePoets

descent and decay

iron blanket drawn

over graveyards shoulder,

time grizzles in the wind,

on haunches leaving flowers

new ones that repair the vase

to a certain brightness,

tattooed hand

pores darkened by labor

fingers stained by cigarette,

a tear would not fall

enough had shown at the time,

those fingers took a kiss

pressed it to headstone

no inhibition

despite the rumors that had become

a fiction contorted on nights breath,

driven within hours

in a landscape changing

mesh of community falling

into disrepair,

his longing had seen violence

memory carried weapons

and he could only think of

retribution,

slate wiped of all marks

that defined a normal history,

he still had a key

that room there own,

now cleansed and let to someone

else,

he visited sometimes

walking amongst others possessions

picturing his own

and her blood

scarring the walls

 

elephant looks in a broken mirror

when a thought becomes a fraction

divided into memory

and everyday fatigue

it settles not happy to remain

will divide again

into dreams and realization

long cerebral passageways

cluttered with electric snapshots

of a life lived long,

thinking was a process

started in the morning

after rinsing mouth and bathing

combed and prepared

opened the mind

some fractions found division harder

and became elongated spools

of tension and agitation

hands that tremor

ever so slightly

as sipping a glass of lemonade,

beneath this mass of

seething activity

normal had almost resumed

old fractions worked

looking at a photo album

your son found in the loft

other debris of a life in one place

gathered and divided

and will be when your

gone

 

 

a file cabinet on the east bound state road

six drawers of the universe

filled with life he could not leave behind

twenty year commitment gone,

thick neck and morning lit face

parked up station wagon

silver leaf scars rusting

doors with rattling windows,

behind a marriage gone like perspiration,

a third from the sun creature

pushed into the office

low humbled

shoulders shrugged into body,

grasped that file cabinet

dragged it to the door lifting carpet tiles,

tailgate flipped open,

company property someone shouted

another mentioned 911,

all other lives abandoned

this was all he had,

one last look

eyes like roses on granite,

pulled away

smearing rubber traces,

freeway surrounded by suburban houses

urban outcrops to his canyon

that became a void,

cassette music kept the corpses away

those corpses of the past

that seem to claw and linger,

a siren

was it for him,

tailgate flipped lock busted

as file cabinet slid progressively out,

braking hard

it dropped on blacktop

engine stalled

a dead bronze beetle

car horns swarmed about,

grunting stood upright that grey oblong

last piece of life

scuffed and scraped,

small key on his chain unlocked top drawer

took out a warm shaken bottle of whiskey

and the gun he kept here since his wife

became afraid,

sucked in air

climbed on top and sat crosslegged,

heaven had shadows that would not conceal him

as he waited,

bullhorn call on gentle breeze

curved outline of the day a flat surface,

and a smile so human appeared

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