F13


Ein Gleiches by JWvGoethe


Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.


A Similarity translated by JCWarren

Above all the hilltops
Is calm,
In all the treetops you sense
Scarcely a breath;
The birds are quiet in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

C28




Thinking about the Past

Certain moments will never change nor stop being—
My mother’s face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-hired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years--her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery’s, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs…


Donald Justice

J64




Oh swimmers
come back to us,
oh salmon people
altered by purity
of purpose, altered
by love and by lust
your flanks burning
red with desire
and with divinity,
your noses oh men
of the sea hooked
like the hawk’s beak,
scrambling in a drought year
through shallows, wriggling
walking almost, running legless
over the stones, waiting
for rain in the shadow
of tree shaded pools.

Oh swimmers
oh lovers
of the long way.


From COHO by Michael Whitt

S35

Just between you and me, Sister,
Will you marry me?
Most of it’s already done:
I know your nipples and that spot on your thigh,
You know my scar.
We own each other’s surfaces and holes,
Possess the mossy smell of baby teeth,
The place we store our secret words,
The sight of Daddy’s parts,
Mum’s breasts floating flatly in her bath
And the teardrops she washed from the chandelier.

Now I love our skin,
It’s texture of mirrors with a fading glaze,
Blue streams on the backs of our hands,
And I love our genetic compulsions
For earliness, lists, silence and scorn.
And I love our disputes, a rush of ire,
A skip of the heart and a quick peace.

We could let the brothers in once in a while,
And the life we’ve left might be worth discussing.
But we’ve plighted our troth.
Let’s elope.


JWBRogers

O6



Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.


T.S.Eliot

JA18


Our hands:
Grandmother’s, mother’s, and mine.
The same topography:
Brown backs, blue veins, gold bands.
The same work:
Turn the hem, turn the page, turn the earth.
The same motion:
To arrange, to direct, to align.
The same language:
Refusal, dismissal, farewell.

Hold hands a little longer, she yours and you mine,
I hers for a circle: thus we intertwine,
Until our strength falters, we loosen our grasp,
And I, empty-handed and idle, am last.


JWB Rogers