Dream Deep

The Sacred

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Stephen Dunn

A present from some poética or poético in
Linguistics and Literature, Fall 2007

http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/lawson/99w/sacred.html

Always before your voice my soul
half-beautiful and wholly droll
is as some smooth and awkward foal,
whereof young moons begin
the newness of his skin,

so of my stupid sincere youth
the exquisite failure uncouth
discovers a trembling and smooth
Unstrength, against the strong
silences of your song;

or as a single lamb whose sheen
of full unsheared fleece is mean
beside its lovelier friends, between
your thoughts more white than wool
My thought is sorrowful:

but my heart smote in trembling thirds
of anguish quivers to your words,
As to a flight of thirty birds
shakes with a thickening fright
the sudden fooled light.

it is the autumn of a year:
When through the thin air stooped with fear,
across the harvest whitely peer
empty of surprise
death’s faultless eyes

(whose hand my folded soul shall know
while on hills do frailly go
The peaceful terrors of the snow,
and before your dead face
which sleeps, a dream shall pass)

and these my days their sounds and flowers
Fall in a pride of petaled hours,
like flowers at the feet of mowers
whose bodies strong with love
through meadows hugely move

yet what am i that such and such
mysteries very simply touch
me, whose heart-wholeness overmuch
Expects of your hair pale,
a terror musical?

while in an earthless hour my fond
soul seriously yearns beyond
this fern of sunset frond on frond
opening in a rare
Slowness of gloried air…

The flute of morning stilled in noon-
noon the implacable bassoon-
now Twilight seeks the thrill of moon,
washed with a wild and thin
despair of violin

E.E. Cummings

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=85516186&blogID=143373337&Mytoken=F74FEA99-6BD2-4EE9-A4CB52ED2920127B36506786

Love Song: I and Thou

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it, I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

Alan Dugan (b. 1923)

A present from Kevin Wheeler

http://www.duke.edu/~cgc4/lovesong.html

The Sacred

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Stephen Dunn

A present from some poética or poético in
Linguistics and Literature, Fall 2007

http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/lawson/99w/sacred.html

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
played in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

Phillip Lopate
Quoted in Anne Lamott,
Bird by Bird – Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anchor Books, New York. (1995) pp. 11– 12.

Epigrama No. 8

Encostei-me a ti, sabendo bem que eras somente onda.
Sabendo bem que eras nuvem, depus a minha vida em ti.

Como sabia bem tudo isso, e dei-me ao teu destino frágil,
fiquei sem poder chorar, quando caí.

Cecília Meireles

                   Warning! Avis!! Achtung! Aviso!!

THE HERE EAST TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DREADFUL
TRANSLATIONS IT WILL BE GUILTY OF ANYTIME IT OFFERS ONE
FOR A POEM.   THE  OBVIOUS RATTINESS OF ALL SUCH SHOULD
BE USED AS A SPUR TO THE READER/VICTIMS WHO GO AHEAD
AND READ THESE TO LEARN THE TRANSLATED-OUT-OF                                
LANGUAGE THEMSELVES AND IMPROVE ON THEM. 

You have been warned.

Epigram Number 8

I leaned against you, knowing well that you were only wave.
Knowing well that you were only cloud, I entrusted you with my life.

As I knew well all of this, and gave myself to your fragile destiny,
There was no way for me to cry, when down I fell.