The hand erasing writes the real thing.
—Henri Cole

The disappearance within a painting of a woman
on a swing under a mango tree

altered by the artist to disguise her identity
just two villages away
or perhaps
their change of heart
possibly even the newer alternatives of ink

Now there is only a tree, its branches,
not even the colour of her arms

where she floats in her own gale of stillness,
just ink, watercolour, opaque paper
Kangra, India 1850

~~ 'A Disappearance' by Michael Ondaatje from 'A Year of Last Things'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

I leave you to your ceremony of grieving
Which is also of celebration
Given when an honored humble one
Leaves behind a trail of happiness
In the dark of human tribulation.
None of us is above the other
In this story of forever.
Though we follow that red road home,
one behind another.
There is a light breaking through the storm
And it is buffalo hunting weather.
There you can see your mother.
She is busy as she was ever—
She holds up a new jingle dress, for her youngest beloved daughter.
And for her special son, a set of finely beaded gear.
All for that welcome home dance,
The most favorite of all—
when everyone finds their way back together
to dance, eat and celebrate.
And tell story after story
of how they fought and played
in the story wheel
and how no one
was ever really lost at all.
~~ 'The Story Wheel' by Joy Harjo from 'An American Sunrise'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poem @poetry

Once we had the world backwards and forwards:
—it was so small it fit in two clasped hands,
so simple that a smile did to describe it,
so common, like old truths echoing in prayers.

History didn’t greet us with triumphal fanfares:
—it flung dirty sand into our eyes.
Ahead of us lay long roads leading nowhere,
poisoned wells and bitter bread.

Our wartime loot is knowledge of the world,
—it is so large it fits in two clasped hands,
so hard that a smile does to describe it,
so strange, like old truths echoing in prayers.
~~ by Wisława Szymborska from 'Map', trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanisław Barańczak (an early poem from the 1940s)

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

“The blow fell from the most unlikely corner…”

So might begin the account
of life’s origins on earth
or any other irreversible event
~~ 'Blow' by Ryszard Krynicki, trans. by Clare Cavanagh from 'Magnetic Point'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry #books

At thirty-six
I finally stopped wanting to shower—
a caricature,
convinced I couldn’t do that right,
either.

#VerseThursday

saw this poem recently and remembered that I haven't done a #VerseThursday in a while

In Those Years, by Adrienne Rich

2 years ago, almost to the day, I posted this:

#VerseThursday

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Cold toilet seats away from home are ok with me, I can imagine no recent sitters,
How about you?

#VerseThursday because I don’t feel fine and I’m not going to write, so here is W.H. Auden

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

(to be contd.)