memory & desire

Entirely Green

(Quelque Parfum)
- Rainer Maria Rilke -

Malgré le ciel encore bas
et cet air qui chancelle,
quelque chose nouvelle
flotte vers l'odorat.

Quelque parfum tout vert
discrètement se dégage.
Un plaisir déménage:
le printemps est ouvert.

(Some Perfume)
- Rainer Maria Rilke -

Despite the sky, still low,
and the hesitant air,
something new
floats into scent.

Some perfume, entirely green,
frees itself discreetly.
A pleasure begins to move;
spring is open.

French text from The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Graywolf Press, 1986. Electronic text via: http://www.rilke.de/gedichte/ebauches_51.htm

 

fathers, sons, and ghosts

My Father's Hats
- by Mark Irwin -

    Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
    on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
    the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
    through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
    his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
    crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
    held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
    was that of clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
    sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
    on water I can't be sure is there.

From Bright Hunger by Mark Irwin, 2004. BOA Editions, Ltd.
Electronic text: Academy of American Poets

taking down the tree

Taking Down the Tree
- by Jane Kenyon - 

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop. 

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.

"Taking Down the Tree" by Jane Kenyon from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. www.graywolfpress.org . Electronic text via Poetry Foundation

 

more ashtrays to empty

Smoking
- by Elton Glaser -

I like the cool and heft of it, dull metal on the palm,
And the click, the hiss, the spark fuming into flame,
Boldface of fire, the rage and sway of it, raw blue at the base
And a slope of gold, a touch to the packed tobacco, the tip
Turned red as a warning light, blown brighter by the breath,
The pull and the pump of it, and the paper's white
Smoothed now to ash as the smoke draws back, drawn down
To the black crust of lungs, tar and poisons in the pink,
And the blood sorting it out, veins tight and the heart slow,
The push and wheeze of it, a sweep of plumes in the air
Like a shako of horses dragging a hearse through the late centennium,
London, at the end of December, in the dark and fog.

from Winter Amnesties
Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL
Copyright 2000 by Elton Glaser.
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/071.html