Amna Khalid's Blog: 2014

Tuesday 23 December 2014

That you were once unkind befriends me now,

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O, that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble slave which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
In the distraction of this madding fever!
O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuked to my content
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

Sunday 14 December 2014

Centrifugal

by Douglas S. Jones

The spider living in the bike seat has finally spun

its own spokes through the wheels.

I have seen it crawl upside down, armored

black and jigging back to the hollow frame,

have felt the stickiness break

as the tire pulls free the stitches of last night's sewing.

We've ridden this bike together for a week now,

two legs in gyre by daylight, and at night,

the eight converting gears into looms, handle bars

into sails. This is how it is to be part of a cycle—

to be always in motion, and to be always

woven to something else.

I am Trying to Break Your Heart

by Kevin Young

I am hoping

to hang your head

on my wall

in shame—

the slightest taxidermy

thrills me. Fish

forever leaping

on the living-room wall—

paperweights made

from skulls

of small animals.

I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve

& break

your heart like a horse

or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then

all at once, you're mine—

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy

along my knuckles. I assassin

down the avenue

I hope

to have you forgotten

by noon. To know you

by your knees

palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science—

consider the taxidermist's

tender hands

trying to keep from losing

skin, the bobcat grin

of the living.

Incident

by Amiri Baraka

He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came

back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the

shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt.

At the bottom, bleeding, shot dead. He died then, there

after the fall, the speeding bullet, tore his face

and blood sprayed fine over the killer and the grey light.

Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere. And his spirit

sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than

his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying

down the stairs.

We have no word

on the killer, except he came back, from somewhere

to do what he did. And shot only once into his victim's

stare, and left him quickly when the blood ran out. We know

the killer was skillful, quick, and silent, and that the victim

probably knew him. Other than that, aside from the caked sourness

of the dead man's expression, and the cool surprise in the fixture

of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.

In Memoriam, July 19, 1914

by Anna Akhmatova

We aged a hundred years and this descended

In just one hour, as at a stroke.

The summer had been brief and now was ended;

The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring

Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.

And so I covered up my face, imploring

God to destroy me before battle fell.

And from my memory the shadows vanished

Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.

The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—

A book of portents terrible to read.

Neighbors in October

by David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

A Poem for S.

by Jessica Greenbaum

Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,

Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and

Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,

Each letter would still have your attention if not

For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like

Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals

Hinged on a daisy. That's why I'll just use your

Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a

Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom

Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,

Looked into the darkness and realized he had

Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—

No congregation of figures needed, he could speak

One letter at a time because all of creation

Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then

Quietly, because it was from his heart, he

Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those

Sounds, all others were born, all manner of

Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to

Understand who he was, had been, how flaws

Venerate the human being, how aspirations return

Without spite. Now for you, may your wife's

X-ray return with good news, may we raise our

Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.

The Journey

by James Wright

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down

A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out

To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.

But far up the mountain, behind the town,

We too were swept out, out by the wind,

Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills

For days, and everything now was graying gold

With dust, everything we saw, even

Some small children scampering along a road,

Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,

And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

I found the spider web there, whose hinges

Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,

Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging

And scattering shadows among shells and wings.

And then she stepped into the center of air

Slender and fastidious, the golden hair

Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,

While ruins crumbled on every side of her.

Free of the dust, as though a moment before

She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped

Away in her own good time.

Many men

Have searched all over Tuscany and never found

What I found there, the heart of the light

Itself shelled and leaved, balancing

On filaments themselves falling. The secret

Of this journey is to let the wind

Blow its dust all over your body,

To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly

All the way through your ruins, and not to lose

Any sleep over the dead, who surely

Will bury their own, don't worry.

One Train May Hide Another

by Kenneth Koch

In a poem, one line may hide another line,

As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.

That is, if you are waiting to cross

The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at

Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read

Wait until you have read the next line—

Then it is safe to go on reading.

In a family one sister may conceal another,

So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view

Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.

One father or one brother may hide the man,

If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.

So always standing in front of something the other

As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.

One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide

The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another

On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;

One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica

one tomb

May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide

another,

One small complaint may hide a great one.

One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,

One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath

may hide another bath

As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.

One idea may hide another: Life is simple

Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein

One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory

One invention may hide another invention,

One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.

One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting

By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,

These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin

May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The

obstetrician

Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but

One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.

A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides

Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in

A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag

Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.

In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by

the mother's

And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker

May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee

Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or

the same love

As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers

The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"

Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"

And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the

Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.

Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.

When you come to something, stop to let it pass

So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,

Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory

Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,

The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A

Sentimental Journey look around

When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see

If it is standing there, it should be, stronger

And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore

May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk

May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and

One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs

Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the

foot of a tree

With one and when you get up to leave there is another

Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,

One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man

May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.

You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be

important

To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Keumgang-Gul / Diamond Cave

by Ko Un

What a relief

you cannot live everywhere all at once.

Today, here in Diamond Cave,

there's no longer any reason to live.

Stay one or two days:

this world

& the Other are drained of difference.

Wind blows.

As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony

out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness

here the wind blows from the depths.

I want to travel far & then return.

The wind blows as if I were eighty-five,

maybe eighty-seven.

Equinox

by Elizabeth Alexander

Now is the time of year when bees are wild

and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped

loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants

in the bright, late-September out-of-doors.

I have found their dried husks in my clothes.

They are dervishes because they are dying,

one last sting, a warm place to squeeze

a drop of venom or of honey.

After the stroke we thought would be her last

my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped

a nurse across the face. Then she stood up,

walked outside, and lay down in the snow.

Two years later there is no other way

to say, we are waiting. She is silent, light

as an empty hive, and she is breathing.

A Well-Traveled Coyote

by Nora Naranjo-Morse

John F. Kennedy

New York City

I saw him across the lobby

flight 161

St. Louis

Albuquerque.

Coyote looked in control

cool

fitting right into the city

smiling when a pretty woman passed him

figuring out his flight

making calculations from behind

the New York Times.

Slick

right down to his Tony Lamas

Coyote

I'd recognize him anywhere

Copenhagen

New York

Gallup.

People say

you can dress 'em up

but once a coyote

always a coyote.

Carnivorous

by Lucie Brock-Broido

I was lying loose from God. Strange is it not best

Beloved, in the New World, in this skinny life,

Intemperate with chance, my spirit quickens

For the fall's estate. In India, the half

Hour is the hour, we were like that then—

Jammed wrong & wrong in the diurnal

Mangy chambers of our carnall

Hearts, the rose robes rustling loose as velvet

Curtains at the stage prow, passing

Into the strange salt air of an Indian

Ocean, hoarding kindling, heading

West with hours, later than we might

Have known, counting tins of meats & oil left,

If they should lose or last the night.

Ode to Browsing the Web

by Marcus Wicker

Two spiky-haired Russian cats hit kick flips

on a vert ramp. The camera pans to another

pocket of the room where six kids rocking holey

T-shirts etch aerosol lines on warehouse walls

in words I cannot comprehend. All of this

happening in a time no older than your last

heartbeat. I've been told the internet is

an unholy place — an endless intangible

stumbling ground of false deities

dogma and loneliness, sad as a pile of shit

in a world without flies. My loneliness exists

in every afterthought. Yesterday, I watched

a neighbor braid intricate waves of cornrows

into her son's tiny head and could have lived

in her focus-wrinkled brow for a living. Today

I think I practice the religion of blinking too much.

Today, I know no neighbor's name and won't

know if I like it or not. O holy streaming screen

of counterculture punks, linger my lit mind

on landing strips — through fog, rain, hail —

without care for time or density. O world

wide web, o viral video, o god of excrement

thought. Befriend me. Be fucking infectious.

Move my eyes from one sight to the next.

Preludes

by T. S. Eliot

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

From the sawdust-trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes,

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,

You lay upon your back, and waited;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the light crept up between the shutters

And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,

You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands;

Sitting along the bed's edge, where

You curled the papers from your hair,

Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands.

His soul stretched tight across the skies

That fade behind a city block,

Or trampled by insistent feet

At four and five and six o'clock;

And short square fingers stuffing pipes,

And evening newspapers, and eyes

Assured of certain certainties,

The conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women

Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

For I Will Consider Your Dog Molly

by David Lehman

For it was the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah, New Year's Day, day of remembrance, of ancient sacrifices and averted calamities.

For I started the day by eating an apple dipped in honey, as ritual required.

For I went to the local synagogue to listen to the ram's horn blown.

For I asked Our Father, Our King, to save us for his sake if not for ours, for the sake of his abundant mercies, for the sake of his right hand, for the sake of those who went through fire and water for the sanctification of his name.

For despite the use of a microphone and other gross violations of ceremony, I gave myself up gladly to the synagogue's sensual insatiable vast womb.

For what right have I to feel offended?

For I communed with my dead father, and a conspicuous tear rolled down my right cheek, and there was loud crying inside me.

For I understood how that tear could become an orb.

For the Hebrew melodies comforted me.

For I lost my voice.

For I met a friend who asked "is this a day of high seriousness" and when I said yes he said "it has taken your voice away."

For he was right, for I felt the strong lashes of the wind lashing me by the throat.

For I thought there shall come a day that the watchmen upon the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God.

For the virgin shall rejoice in the dance, and the young and old in each other's arms, and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and neither shall they learn war any more.

For God shall lower the price of bread and corn and wine and oil, he shall let our cry come up to him.

For it is customary on the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah to cast a stone into the depths of the sea, to weep and pray to weep no more.

For the stone represents all the sins of the people.

For I asked you and Molly to accompany me to Cascadilla Creek, there being no ocean nearby.

For we talked about the Psalms of David along the way, and the story of Hannah, mother of Samuel, who sought the most robust bard to remedy her barrenness.

For Isaac said "I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the offering?"

For as soon as I saw the stone, white flat oblong and heavy, I knew that it had summoned me.

For I heard the voice locked inside that stone, for I pictured a dry wilderness in which, with a wave of my staff, I could command sweet waters to flow forth from that stone.

For I cast the stone into the stream and watched it sink to the bottom where dozens of smaller stones, all of them black, gathered around it.

For the waterfall performed the function of the chorus.

For after the moment of solemnity dissolved, you playfully tossed Molly into the stream.

For you tossed her three times, and three times she swam back for her life.

For she shook the water off her body, refreshed.

For you removed the leash from her neck and let her roam freely.

For she darted off into the brush and speared a small gray moving thing in the neck.

For this was the work of an instant.

For we looked and behold! the small gray thing was a rat.

For Molly had killed the rat with a single efficient bite, in conformance with Jewish law.

For I took the rat and cast him into the stream, and both of us congratulated Molly.

For now she resumed her noble gait.

For she does not lie awake in the dark and weep for her sins, and whine about her condition, and discuss her duty to God.

For I'd as lief pray with your dog Molly as with any man.

For she knows that God is her savior.

George Moses Horton, Myself

by George Moses Horton

I feel myself in need

Of the inspiring strains of ancient lore,

My heart to lift, my empty mind to feed,

And all the world explore.

I know that I am old

And never can recover what is past,

But for the future may some light unfold

And soar from ages blast.

I feel resolved to try,

My wish to prove, my calling to pursue,

Or mount up from the earth into the sky,

To show what Heaven can do.

My genius from a boy,

Has fluttered like a bird within my heart;

But could not thus confined her powers employ,

Impatient to depart.

She like a restless bird,

Would spread her wing, her power to be unfurl’d,

And let her songs be loudly heard,

And dart from world to world.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

by Pablo Neruda

I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

The Meaning of the Shovel

by Martín Espada

This was the dictator's land

before the revolution.

Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis,

his army brooding in camps on the border,

and the congregation of the landless

stipples the earth with a thousand shacks,

every weatherbeaten carpenter

planting a fistful of nails.

Here I dig latrines. I dig because last week

I saw a funeral in the streets of Managua,

the coffin swaddled in a red and black flag,

hoisted by a procession so silent

that even their feet seemed

to leave no sound on the gravel.

He was eighteen, with the border patrol,

when a sharpshooter from the dictator's army

took aim at the back of his head.

I dig because yesterday

I saw four walls of photographs:

the faces of volunteers

in high school uniforms

who taught campesinos to read,

bringing an alphabet

sandwiched in notebooks

to places where the mist never rises

from the trees. All dead,

by malaria or the greedy river

or the dictator's army

swarming the illiterate villages

like a sky full of corn-plundering birds.

I dig because today, in this barrio

without plumbing, I saw a woman

wearing a yellow dress

climb into a barrel of water

to wash herself and the dress

at the same time,

her cupped hands spilling.

I dig because today I stopped digging

to drink an orange soda. In a country

with no glass, the boy kept the treasured bottle

and poured the liquid into a plastic bag

full of ice, then poked a hole with a straw.

I dig because today my shovel

struck a clay bowl centuries old,

the art of ancient fingers

moist with this same earth,

perfect but for one crack in the lip.

I dig because I have hauled garbage

and pumped gas and cut paper

and sold encyclopedias door to door.

I dig, digging until the passport

in my back pocket saturates with dirt,

because here I work for nothing

and for everything.

To the Light of September

by W. S. Merwin

When you are already here

you appear to be only

a name that tells of you

whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though

you are still summer

still the high familiar

endless summer

yet with a glint

of bronze in the chill mornings

and the late yellow petals

of the mullein fluttering

on the stalks that lean

over their broken

shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know

that you have come

the seed heads of the sage

the whispering birds

with nowhere to hide you

to keep you for later

you

who fly with them

you who are neither

before nor after

you who arrive

with blue plums

that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

Lychees

by Meena Alexander

Terrace deep as the sky.

Stone bench where I sit and read,

I wandered by myself

Into the heart of the mountains of Yoshino.

In one hand a book, in the other, a bag made of newsprint—

No weather-beaten bones here

Just lychees bought in the market,

Thirty rupees per kilogram.

Stalks mottled red tied up with string,

Flesh the color of pigeon wings—

Sweet simmering.

Sunlight bruises air

Pine trees blacken.

Where shall I go?

The Dhauladhar peaks

Are covered in snow.

Pages