Tagged: poetry

New strand


Once I sat in a room with a monkey who told me he was not
a monkey. I understood his anguish being trapped in a body
he detested. “Sir,” I said,” I think I know what you are feeling,
and I would like to help you.” “Treat me like a monkey,” he
said. “It serves me right.”


MARK STRAND, The Social Worker and the Monkey from his new collection, Almost Invisible New York : Knopf, 2012. 44.

Neck

Why are the young so beautiful—
a foal or a fledgling sparrow, head
half hidden in a ruff of feathers;
a human infant with the milky,
demanding innocence;
even an adolescent boy, awkwardness
shadowed by grace, in his own
invisible force field of desire?

LINDA PASTAN, from “On Seeing an Old Photograph,” in her new collection Traveling Light. New York: Norton, 2011 p9.
see also: “The Burglary” “Eve on Her Deathbed” “Accidents” “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?”

Photo: KIRBY

The body’s lines




At beauty I’ve gazed so much
that my vision is filled with it.

The body’s lines. Red lips. Limbs made for pleasure.
Hair as if it were taken from Greek statues:
always lovely, even when it’s uncombed,
and falls, a bit, upon the gleaming brow.
Faces of love, exactly as
my poetry wanted it . . . in the nights of my youth,
secretly encountered in my nights. . . .


C. P. CAVAFY, I’ve Gazed So Much— , from Collected Poems translated, with introduction and commentary, by Daniel Mendelsohn. New York : Knopf, 2009.

Something between breaths




You can’t say it that way any more.
Bothered about beauty you have to
Come out into the open, into a clearing,
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers,
People who look up to you and are willing
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .



JOHN ASHBERY, from And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name