Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me…
Audre Lorde, from “Coal“
58 Okay, Ophelia ”
We’ve heard you were a victim.
Stop crouching in shadows, chewing your hair.
You can be graceful, not like a ballerina,
like a hedge of coral,
Built up and eaten and worn down
yet alive, carving the rhythms of the seas.
You can be a threshing sledge,
new and sharp with many teeth.
Stop crouching in shadows, chewing your hair.
like a hedge of coral,
yet alive, carving the rhythms of the seas.
new and sharp with many teeth.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, “Okay, Ophelia” (from her collection “Becoming the Villainess”
…You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone…
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love.
Adrienne Rich, from Part II of “Twenty-One Love Poems”
Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.
And far, far beyond the curb of her will,
were the blue hills where the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to the dying sun—
it seemed my human soul went down in flames.
Robert Duncan, “My Mother Would Be a Falconress“
On this winter night
my eyes were closed
with ice.
I wore out the darkness
until lazy dawn.
Izumi Shikibu, from “The Diary of Izumi Shikibu” (10th-11th century)
Will he always love me?
I cannot read his heart.
This morning my thoughts
Are as disordered
As my black hair.
I cannot read his heart.
Are as disordered
As my black hair.
Lady Horikawa, Untitled (12th century)
Don’t suppose that the weightless phantom
will disappear.
It is lurking in the other world like a huge angel
or beast,
waiting to return.
Passion floats away.
will disappear.
It is lurking in the other world like a huge angel
or beast,
waiting to return.
Betti Alver, from “The Titans” (translated by: Willis Barnstone and Felix Oinas)
It’d be great
if all I had to do was save my own soul;
but since other souls are mixed up with
mine
I can’t even say which soul is mine.
Shuntaro Tanikawa, from “Written at 14th E 28th Street, New York City” (1975)
And the swan keep swimming across the years,
Deeply in love with his disturbing double.
Anna Akhmatova, from “Summer Garden” (translated by: Stephen Stepanchev)
Eyes shut tight
I hear my brains go splat and scatter
like dry tea-leaves.
I must kill
one lovely languid serpent after another.
I hear my brains go splat and scatter
like dry tea-leaves.
one lovely languid serpent after another.
Sachiko Yoshihara, from “Madness”
I could not hope
to touch the sky
with my two arms.
Sappho (translated by Willis Barnstone)
I walk alone in the cold end of winter.
Perhaps we’ll meet when the moon is round.
What can I give my absent man?
In the pure light, my tears fall: a poem.
Perhaps we’ll meet when the moon is round.
In the pure light, my tears fall: a poem.
Yu Hsuan-chi, from “Spring Thoughts Sent to Tzu-an” (ca. 843-868)
I am too near to be dreamt of by him.
I do not fly over him, do not escape from him
under the roots of a tree. I am too near.
Wislawa Szymborska, from “I Am Too Near”
You dreamt on the immense river
devoured by a flame of moon…
Yvonne Caroutch, from an untitled poem
