Shon Papri

Any Color

Paint me a color … any color

You choose

I don’t care … it doesn’t matter

I just want to feel

I just want to care

I just want to remember

What it was like

When I was me.

~ hardtodescribe.tumblr.com

16 January 2010 • reblog: hardtodescribe • poetry any color hard to describe

I’ll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren’t in it?

No books, no pictures, no records, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting trumpet poised in black hands.
Saskia and her cordial little flower.
Joy the spark of gods.
Odysseus stretched on the shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labors of Book Five.
The moralists
with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the politicians braced their backs.

No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed—-that is, was still alive.

You think at least the note tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note—-
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

28 December 2009 • poetry quotes wislawa szymborska

Asked how old he was,
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.

— Kobayashi Issa

27 December 2009 • japan haiku poetry quote issa boy

Approaching my village:

Don’t know about the people,

but all the scarecrows

are crooked.

~ Kobayashi Issa

24 December 2009 • haiku kobayashi issa poetry quote japan

Lament

No permanence is ours; we are a wave
That flows to fit whatever form it finds:
Through day or night, cathedral or the cave
We pass forever, craving form that binds.

Mold after mold we fill and never rest,
We find no home where joy or grief runs deep.
We move, we are the everlasting guest.
No field nor plow is ours; we do not reap.

What God would make of us remains unknown:
He plays; we are the clay to his desire.
Plastic and mute, we neither laugh nor groan;
He kneads, but never gives us to the fire.

To stiffen into stone, to persevere!
We long forever for the right to stay.
But all that ever stays with us is fear,
And we shall never rest upon our way.

~ Hermann Hesse, Exerpt from The Glass Bead Game

18 December 2009 • poetry quotes Hermann Hesse lament the glass bead game

Psalm

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!

Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren’t enough, it won’t stop
bobbing!

Among innumerable insects, I’ll single out only the ant
between the border guard’s left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions “Where from?” and “Where to?”

Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn’t that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

And how can we talk of order overall
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?

Not to speak of the fog’s reprehensible drifting!
And dust bowling all over the steppes
as if they hadn’t been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!

Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

18 December 2009 • poetry quotes Wislawa Szymborska Psalm

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Exerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot

18 December 2009 • poetry quotes t. s. eliot prufrock peaches photography

The Joy of Writing

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word “woods.”

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they’ll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what’s here isn’t life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof’s full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

~ Wislawa Szymborska
(Transl. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)

9 December 2009 • poetry quotes Wislawa Szymborska The Joy of Writing

Utopia

island where it all becomes clear

solid ground beneath your feet

the only roads are those that offer access

bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs

the tree of valid supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial

the tree of understanding, dazzingly straight and simple
sprouts by the spring called now i get it

te thicker the woods, the vaster the vista
the valley of obviously

if any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly

echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds

on the right a cave where meaning lies

on the left the lake of deep conviction
truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface

unshakable confidence towers over the valley
it’s peak offers an excellent view of the essence of things

for all its charms, the island is uninhabited
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea

all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths

into unfathomable life

~ Wislawa Szymborska

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

9 December 2009 • poetry quotes Wislawa Szymborska utopia

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

~ Shel Silverstein

8 December 2009 • poetry quotes where the sidewalk ends shel silverstein

Five Flights Up

Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions—-if that is what they are—-
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins…
The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.

The little black dog runs in his yard.
His owner’s voice arises, stern,
“You ought to be ashamed!”
What has he done?
He bounces cheerfully up and down;
he rushes in circles in the fallen leaves.

Obviously, he has no sense of shame.
He and the bird know everything is answered,
all taken care of,
no need to ask again.
—-Yesterday brought to today so lightly!
(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)

~ Elizabeth Bishop

3 December 2009 • poetry quotes elizabeth bishop five flights up

Soap Bubbles

From years of study and of contemplation
An old man brews a work of clarity,
A gay and involuted dissertation
Discoursing on sweet wisdom playfully.

An eager student bent on storming heights
Has delved in archives and in libraries,
But adds the touch of genius when he writes
A first book full of deepest subtleties.

A boy, with bowl and straw, sits and blows,
Filling with breath the bubbles from the bowl.
Each praises like a hymn, and each one glows;
Into the filmy beads he blows his soul.

Old man, student, boy, all these three
Out of the Maya-foam of the universe
Create illusions. None is better or worse.
But in each of them the Light of Eternity
Sees its reflection, and burns more joyfully.

~ Hermann Hesse

3 December 2009 • poetry quotes hermann hesse soap bubbles

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she’s a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she’d tell it to go to hell,
and she’d find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.