for Janis Ouvrez-moi cette porte où je frappe en pleurant. …………—Apollinaire Open this door where I knock weeping. I I will come to you with a candle burning light a stick of incense comb and braid your hair with sparrows’ feathers gathered from the sidewalk … Read More →
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Sonnet 149: I wake the snakes on the way to the lake
… I wake the snakes on the way to the lake Coiling in leaves, slithering at my feet Half-seen in the low branches, thick brown waists Headless, tailless stone still in wait for me To trip them into slithering again. Are they going to bite? … Read More →
Sonnet 176: There was a transitory spider’s web
… There was a transitory spider’s web clinging to a metaphoric branch of birch that I undid stupidly touching it as I was going down the mountain side, the troubled spider in the middle clinging to a strand of its work in the wind. Happily … Read More →
Carmina Catulli: 1 – 5
What follows are the first five poems of Catullus in Latin with humble translations by me; I also do a reading in Latin of Catullus 2: Passer. Hope you enjoy it and get a feeling for the sounds. The poems of Catullus come from a … Read More →
Where the Heart Is
I’m on a grand jury, state of New York, special narcotics, ten in the morning to one in the afternoon every weekday for a month. It takes thirty-five minutes to get there by bus, forty-five minutes if I walk through the Lower East Side, Little … Read More →
Sonnet 200: Out of the drizzle and the fog boys dressed
Out of the drizzle and the fog boys dressed Up like soldiers come although they’re more the Hands that wind around a clock when they change the Guards. In the cry of gulls and the Scotch mist Outside the castle’s walls they stop and Click … Read More →
Sonnet 79: A squirrel just walked across my shoulder
A squirrel just walked across my shoulder Like I wasn’t there and didn’t matter Part of the bench, a kind of nothingness Who thought for a moment that a hand pressed On him like an old friend’s familiar Enough to touch, but that was peculiar … Read More →
Sonnet 108: How do you teach someone something they don’t
How do you teach someone something they don’t Know? The first thing that comes to mind is by Example. Look a student in the eye Even if she’s blind; otherwise she won’t Understand you. The stone deaf will hear love When they are touched by … Read More →
Sonnet 92 (a Willa Cather sonnet): To be understood words are objective
To be understood words are objective though we understand them subjectively. Do you feel it as I do when I read that words not only are but also live? When Willa Cather writes, “The long main street began at the church, the town seemed to … Read More →