Rilke's Sonnet to Orpheus 1.5

Errichtet keinen Denkstein. Lasst die Rose

nur jedes Jahr zu seinen Gunsten blühn.

Denn Orpheus ists. Seine Metamorphose

in dem und dem. Wir sollen uns nicht mühn

um andre Namen. Ein für alle Male

ists Orpheus, wenn es singt. Er kommt und geht.

Ists nicht schon viel, wenn er die Rosenschale

um ein paar Tage manchmal übersteht?

O wie er schwinden muss, dass ihrs begrifft!

Und wenn ihm selbst auch bangte, dass er schwände.

Indem sein Wort das Hiersein übertrifft,

ist er schon dort, wohin ihrs nicht begleitet.

Der Leier Gitter zwängt ihm nicht die Hände.

Und er gehorcht, indem er überschreitet.

my translation . . .

mark no grave     let the rose alone

flower for her     every year

orpheus is     her morphing

to & fro    we mustn’t re-

name her     everyone is orpheus

when singing     she comes & goes

isn’t it enough     when she stays

two days more     than the rose

yet she wanes     you know that

& fears     her waning

that her words     disappear the here

conjure the there     where you can’t follow

the strings of the lyre     don’t steer the hands

she yields     by going too far

Sulphur, Mercury, Salt

once the world was open space

now we’re larvae, honeycomb

walls between us, food delivered

death for those who go back

& forth, bound & fattened inside

we might mature, into what?

Cusp

she sends a postcard her scrawl

says she thinks I’ll like it the flipside

more writing not a visual not a pond

to slip into to be reflected by instead

a citation of someone else’s speech

not speaking, no, writing about lying

face down in the dirt fallen? slammed?

headlong will? the juddering blow

the smell of dirt leaves animals mold

dry damp sweet sour slimy prickly

five orifices face down in the dirt

penance? parody? prophecy?

 

Ride

I ride my bicycle down the empty

morning street, DiTullio’s selling his house

another is already contingent

the realtor sign in front of the Irma-flooded

house is now a dumpster titled

nature’s calling, the half-built house

rises to two peaks, a plywood bridge 

between, suppose one’s for he

the other for she, or one’s for lowly beasts

taro fills the ditches, rose of sharon

lavenders a green fan, parked trailers

bear boats, a concrete pig wears

a blue mask, caution tape & orange cones

swag a muddy verge . . . pedal, pedal on

Death Is Out of the Question

I’m the child, Aunt Lil is Aunt Lil

the grocer calls her Miss Jones

two aunts are Miss Joneses but Lil is

the Miss Jones wanted on the telephone

to take down the particulars about

the boy who fell from a tree & broke

two limbs, about grandparents Mr & Mrs

male name surname from Flushing

NY who are visiting their daughter Mrs

male name surname for two weeks

what a pittance Aunt Lil receives

to record these notes on her steno pad

transcribe them on her stiff-armed typewriter

onto off-white newsprint scraps, deliver

the small news to the local paper

she lets me type too, items I invent

for issues that never run — Aunt Lil

stirs the oatmeal & clothespins laundry

decides what we’ll eat for lunch & dinner

manages the funds, pays the bills

Mrs Smith her lifelong friend

gabbing at the kitchen table is common

by comparison — what Aunt Lil says

is firm & smiling & kind, she tends

to diabetic old Ma in her wheelchair

takes her to the toilet, bathes & dresses her

ties her shoes, takes her off to bed

afterward a lightness I never see any other

time of day — Aunt Lil trimly beautiful

never marries, I admire most the look

that comes into her eyes when someone

says something she thinks foolish

or doesn't believe, a blankness adults

ignore, or appear not to notice

a look nothing a child says ever receives

Late World

the poor starve

abandoned houses slump

shops & restaurants shutter

people kill each other & themselves

cities no longer bank on madding crowds

instead of schools open everything shuts down

the second shutdown
news would tell the bad were one to tune in, log on

better the bad news of some earlier day

social code fails, positions lost

many die — mostly the ill, the old, also the healthy, the young

the slightest sore throat panics

neighbor next door keeps saying

I only do what I’m told

                                   does she not hear the echo?

no one anticipates a world where all we need do

is stay away from each other

anyone who comes too close is backed away from

the secret universe of everyone

is known to all

Coda

the necessary factor is hope

hope for an intelligent conversation

for time with family, for time when you are not

alone — the young poets are sometimes

an inspiration, they tell the hard truths of

their lives, other times they fixate on sex

or self-justification, as if we old poets don’t —

are the old humbler? we feel less hope

yet still strive for a job well done, the plants

watered because rain has not come

I attended a young-poet-led seminar

about an old poet, thirty people came,

young read some of the old-poet's poem

then tossed out learned associations

terms like citational, syntax, lyric — not

what I’d hoped, these academic terms

failed to explore or honor the work —

to end the poem a coda repeats

loveless sleepless — no one seemed to know

she lives alone, the husband she found

dead — if you are old, loveless sleepless

coda, repeat, is something you know

Cave Canem, July 8, 2020

we are three hundred looking at our screens

more than three hundred if we have family in the house

Evie looks, Major looks — we look at a large face

at a gallery of faces, at bits of rooms behind faces

Major’s books, Evie’s yellow wall

brief howling of a needy cat

no texture, no smell, worrisome pixillations & audio stutters

the poets read polished published poems

then new poems — loose, conversational, raw

what have you written since this moment began?

I know these people, they haven’t forgotten me, we are apart

we want to see each other again

it is my annual day of sobbing

I do not regret my little bout with life

Evie says I’ve only written three poems, it’s hard to focus

Major says the pressure is building

afterward, no one says that, will there be an afterward?

after silence, art will burst like a tidal wave

Killed by a Cop

the condition of black life is one of mourning

— Claudia Rankine

what’s hardest for me to grasp 

when a black person is killed

in particular, killed by a cop

is that they are dead & will stay dead

not live another day of their life

while the cop will stay alive 

& stay a cop & possibly kill more

black people while the rest of us 

stand around as if we don’t mind

if we minded, no cop would ever 

kill another black person, it’s that

simple, that plain, we would rise up 

& take those bad cops down &

if we couldn’t tell the good cops 

from the bad cops, we would

take every cop down & start over

perhaps you & I would become cops

we with our wrinkles & thinning hair

& fake joints, we would be cops

simply because we could not kill

a black person, we would die first

Silence

some lurk, others conceal part or all

of their names — behind these masks

who lies? what tug might recall

their first cry, their toddler’s grasp

at freedom, their teen’s urge to try

everything — fearless iconoclast —

plunge into sex, drugs, protest, deride

received “truth” to dare the unknown

dark & deep where danger lies

she'll find it, suffer & claim her own

indelible story, what she’ll recall

while hiding, lost, silent, alone

Carolina Jessamine

thin clouds, a hot wind flattens

carolina jessamine, what climbs the rail

the way long loose hair flattens

slingshot wind, lively surf pounds

the near sand, spindrift pocks the dune

necklace of yellow flowers

ease the mind of present care

carolina jessamine, what climbs the rail

bee, butterfly, hummingbird midair

yes, the porch rail rotting sooner

rain & dust pressing on wood

paint wearing away, white going gray

two months the native vine flowers

carolina jessamine, what climbs the rail

fragrant yellow trumpets — this shower