Flânerie

Matins - Louise Glück

Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful
are always lied to since the weak are always
driven by panic. I cannot love
what I can’t conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing: are you like the hawthorn tree,
always the same thing in the same place,
or are you more the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up
a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,
and the next year, purple in the rose garden? You must see
it is useless to us, this silence that promotes belief
you must be all things, the foxglove and the hawthorn tree,
the vulnerable rose and tough daisy—we are left to think
you couldn’t possibly exist.  Is this
what you mean us to think, does this explain
the silence of the morning,
the crickets not yet rubbing their wings, the cats
not fighting in the yard?

The Quiet World - Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred  
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear  
without saying hello. In the restaurant  
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,  
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.  
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,  
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line  
and listen to each other breathe.

Out of Danger - James Fenton

Heart be kind and sign the release
As the trees their loss approve.
Learn as leaves must learn to fall
Out of danger, out of love.

What belongs to frost and thaw
Sullen winter will not harm.
What belongs to wind and rain
Is out of danger from the storm.

Jealous passion, cruel need
Betray the heart they feed upon.
But what belongs to earth and death
Is out of danger from the sun.

I was cruel, I was wrong—
Hard to say and hard to know.
You do not belong to me.
You are out of danger now—

Out of danger from the wind,
Out of danger from the wave,
Out of danger from the heart
Falling, falling out of love.

Dreaming of Li Bai - Du Fu

The pain of death’s farewells grows dim.
The pain of life’s farewells stay new.
Since you were exiled to Jiangnan
– Plague land – I’ve had no news of you.

Proving how much you’re in my thoughts,
Old friend, you’ve come into my dreams.
I thought you were still in the law’s
Tight net – but you’ve grown wings, it seems.

I fear yours is no living soul.
How could it make this distant flight?
You came: the maple woods were green.
You left: the pass was black with night.

The sinking moonlight floods my room.
Still hoping for your face, I stare.
The water’s deep, the waves are wide.
Watch out for water dragons there.

(Translated by Vikram Seth)

Stanzas from Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

*

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.

*

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

*

I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at the mirror?
I am the mirror, and here are the stones.

Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem - Bob Hicok

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
     of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
          at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
     staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
          is exactly what’s happening,

it’s what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
     of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.
          I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
     a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
          kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed
     anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
          to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
     My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
          something in the womb

but couldn’t hang on. One of those other worlds
     or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother’s belly
          she had to scream out.

Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
     somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again. And when I touch you
          in each of the places we meet,

in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying
     and resurrected.
When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,
          in each place and forever.