ISLAND

My “guest poet” this time is Langston Hughes, American,1902-1967.
He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue”. It’s a little poem I memorized long ago and sometimes recite to myself.

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ISLAND

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:

I see an island
Still ahead somehow.

I see an island
And its sands are fair:

Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.
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ISLAND

I KEEP THEM CLOSE

I keep the poets close
alive though most of them are dead

their names on spines arranged
in rows along the wooden shelves
just one large sleeping dog away
from where I lie abed

no rhyme or reason serves
to order them no alphabet
corrals their works— I know
them by their colors and their heft

Bashō is there and Emily
a little to his left—

I could not list them all
by heart but when I see them there

waiting to come forward
to be read and heard and savored
opened again to breathe from my
delight a fresh new air

I know them as my home—
a surety as exquisite
as anything on earth—
though I suspect they”ll end up closed

and likely tossed out on their own
when I turn up my toes

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I KEEP THEM CLOSE

ENCHANTED CIGARETTES

—-The French author Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) said that to dream of
literary projects—even those one may never write—is to smoke enchanted cigarettes.

Ah, yes, Balzac, I am a smoker
of enchanted cigarettes, daydreaming
literary wonders I will never write.

Should we meet for a petit’ aperitif
some evening at Les Deux Magots
together we might watch our fragrant puffs

rise potently in cupolas of silken smoke.
Or am I thinking of another almost novel
someone almost wrote?  Not cupolas but

parasols, I think—gossamer ethereals
above our heads.  Was that your bright
idea or mine?  Garçon!  Another drink!

There’s time yet to convince those parasols
to be black bumbershoots in fog or
even morph to mushroom clouds.

We are too loud to listen to
a limit for our skies.  Soon enough
a would-have-been becomes a never-was.

What never saw the light is no more
unto dust than many a blighted text
the western welkin proudly shone upon.

Allons, tonight let us to airy somethings
be enthralled.  Just think if the abode of angels,
our firmament, had not been hatched at all.
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ENCHANTED CIGARETTES

ON THE VANITY OF EARTHLY GREATNESS

Today I have a good chuckle from the poet Arthur Guiterman:

ON THE VANITY OF EARTHLY GREATNESS

The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is ferric oxide, known as rust.

The grizzly bear whose potent hug
Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself.

A FLOWER DOES NOT TALK

This morning I am reading the work of Zenkei Shibayama:

A FLOWER DOES NOT TALK

Silently a flower blooms,
in silence it falls away.
Yet here, now,
at this moment, at this place,
the whole of the flower,
the whole of the world,
is blooming.

AUNT MABEL

(A poem by William Stafford)

This town is haunted by some good deed
that reappears like a country cousin, or truth
when language falters these days trying to lie,
because Aunt Mabel, an old lady gone now, would
accost even strangers to give bright flowers
away, quick as a striking snake.  It’s deeds like this
have weakened me, shaken by intermittent trust,
stricken with friendliness.

Our Senator talked like war, and Aunt Mabel
said,”He’s a brilliant man,
but we didn’t elect him that much.”

Everyone’s resolve weakens toward evening
or in a flash when a face melds—a stranger’s, even—
reminded for an instant between menace and fear:
There are Aunt Mabels all over the world,
or their graves in the rain.