de kat

Katten
sit i tunet
når du kjem.
Snakk litt med katten.
Det er han som er varast i garden.


De kat zit
in de voortuin
wanneer u komt.
Praat even met de kat.
Hij is de gevoeligste hier.


The cat is sitting
out front
when you come.
Talk a bit with the cat.
He is the most sensitive one here.

 -Olav H. Hauge-, 1966- 

[English translation Robin Fulton (?), 

 Dutch translation (from the English) by me]

black squirrel

Outside a black squirrel has wiggled
to the end
of a very skinny branch.

When the squirrel breathes
the whole tree shakes,

as if the squirrel were the soul
of the tree.

Have you ever felt like
such a tree?

Not sayin'
I have

-Joanna Fuhrman, excerpt from Song for Future Books 2014-

thanks

 

Listen 

with the night falling we are saying thank you 

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings 

we are running out of the glass rooms 

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky 

and say thank you 

we are standing by the water thanking it 

smiling by the windows looking out 

in our directions 

 

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging 

after funerals we are saying thank you 

after the news of the dead 

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you 

 

over telephones we are saying thank you 

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door 

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you 

in the banks we are saying thank you 

in the faces of the officials and the rich 

and of all who will never change 

we go on saying thank you thank you 

 

with the animals dying around us 

our lost feelings we are saying thank you 

with the forests falling faster than the minutes 

of our lives we are saying thank you 

with the words going out like cells of a brain 

with the cities growing over us 

we are saying thank you faster and faster 

with nobody listening we are saying thank you 

we are saying thank you and waving 

dark though it is

 

-W.S. Merin, 1988- 

(oh ja, het was thanksgiving vandaag...)

what is true

one must be one
to ever be two

and if you
were a day
I'd find a way

to live
through you

-Ben Kopel, 2013-

sugar is smoking

it's amazing how death
is always around the corner,
or not even so far away
as that, hiding in the little pleasures
that some of us would go
so far as to say
are the only things
keeping us alive

-Jason Schneiderman, 2013-

the snowdrop

-Anna Bunston De Bary, 1921-

(picture with HTC Wildfire S)

an eternity

There is no dusk to be,
   There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
   And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of
   Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
   White peach bough.

Dying shall never be
   Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
   Death never was.

-Archibald MacLeish, 1917-

the year

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1910-

reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?

-Robert Frost, 1913-

on life (6)

life is a series of

coincidences  inconsistensies
inconsequences  insights
perceptions  impressions
bewilderments  enchantments
acknowledgements  attentions
all given and taken

life is anagrammatically lief

characteristics of life

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                                        of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                                                        I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
                        one thing today and another tomorrow
        and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

              I move as the currents move, with the breezes.

What part of your nature drives you? You, in 

   your cubicle

ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter 

   all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of 

   distances
        between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                                                        I will speak
                        the impossible hope of the firefly.

                                                You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must 

   understand
        such wordless desire.

                         To say it is mindless is missing the point.

-2012,  Camille Dungy-

gather

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.

-Rose McLarney, 2012-

horses at midnight without a moon

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

-Jack Gilbert, 2005-

come my cantilations

Come my cantilations,
Let us dump our hatreds into one bunch and be done with them,
Hot sun, clear water, fresh wind,
Let me be free of pavements,
Let me be free of the printers.
Let come beautiful people
Wearing raw silk of good colour,
Let come the graceful speakers,
Let come the ready of wit,
Let come the gay of manner, the insolent and the exulting.
We speak of burnished lakes,
And of dry air, as clear as metal.

-Ezra Pound, 1914-

your catfish friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
     one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
     of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
     somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
     at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them." 

-Richard Brautigan, 1967-

dust of snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

-Robert Frost, 1923-

automatic teller machine

If you work at a steady rate
you may reach the river by nightfall
and if you have the will

a canoe will be waiting
by the ash factory
for you to take upstream

to the takoyaki shack
where you can eat delicious food
and drink as much beer as you like

until late into the night.
In other words you have
your whole life ahead of you

and no one can tell you
what to do or how to act
or what to say or anything

said the machine in the wall
before dispensing my receipt
in a tiny wadded ball

-Ben Mirov, 2012-

approach of winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.

-William Carlos Williams, 1921-

today is remembrance day

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

-John McCrae, 1915-

theme in yellow

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

-Carl Sandburg, 1916-