Mourid Barghouti

Poem Of The Day

For what I did

And did not do

And do without

In my old age

Rue, not rage

Against that night

We go into,

Sets me straight

On what to do

Before I die–

Sit in the shade,

Look at the sky.

by Samuel Menashe

Optimistic Little Poem

Now and then it happens
that somebody shouts for help
and somebody else jumps in at once
and absolutely gratis.

Here in the thick of the grossest capitalism
round the corner comes the shining fire brigade
and extinguishes, or suddenly
there's silver in the beggar's hat.

Mornings the streets are full
of people hurrying here and there without
daggers in their hands, quite equably
after milk or radishes.

As though in a time of deepest peace.

A splendid sight.

by Hans Magnus Enzesberger

Poem Of The Day

The blacksmith slave

Captive in the rainforests of the West
they brought you to Rome, slave,
they gave you the blacksmith work
and you make chains.
The red iron that you carry out the oven
can be adapted as you want,
you can make swords
in order that your people could break the chains,
but you, this slave,
you make chains, more chains.

The Cuckoo (To A)

He heard the first cukoo at the beginning of April.

Because he'd been feeling on edge, maybe,

from his inclination to order the chaos, maybe,

he wanted to know which notes the cukoo sang.

He sat waiting with his pitch pipe

next afternoon: when

would the cukoo sing?

He finally achieved it;

The pitch pipe told no lies.

Si-sol were the cukoo's notes.

The discovery shook the countryside.

Everyone wanted to prove whether truly those

were the notes that the cukoo sang.

The measurements were not in harmony.

Each had his or her own truth.

One said it was fa-re, another mi-do.

No one managed to agree.

Meanwhile the cukoo went on singing in the forest,

not mi-do, not fa-re, not si-sol, either.

As it had a thousand years before,

the cukoo sang cuccu, cuccu.

Godzilla in Mexico

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You'd just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn't tell you we were on death's program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn't be afraid.
When it left, death didn't even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We're human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.

by Roberto Bolaño

May

Look. May has come in.
It’s strewn those blue eyes all over the harbor.
Come, I haven’t had word of you in ages.
You’re constantly terrified,
Like the kittens we drowned when we were little.
Come and we’ll talk over all of the old same things,
The value of being pleasant,
The need to adjust to the doubts,
How to fill the holes we’ve got inside us.
Come, feel the morning reaching your face,
Whenever we’re saddened everything looks dark,
When we’re heartened, again, the world crumbles.
Every one of us keeps forever someone else’s hidden side,
If it’s a secret, if a mistake, if a gesture.
Come and we’ll flay the winners,
Laughing at our self leapt off the bridgeway.
We’ll watch the cranes at work in the port in silence,
The gift for being together in silence being
The principal proof of friendship.
Come with me, I want to change nations,
Change towns. Leave this body aside
And go into a shell with you,
With our smallness, like sea snails.
Come, I’m waiting for you,
We’ll continue the story that ended a year ago,
As if inside the white birches next to the river
Not a single additional ring had grown.

Michel Houellebecq

A Poem, A Present

Dust

It seems we’ve left skin
in each other’s lungs. I should have

looked under your bed skirt
for my wallet, but how

could credit cards compare
to the sneeze after we’ve parted?

Gone and still you make me
reach for a tissue—still my palms

turn circles in the red
breakwater of your heartbeat.

I want to tell you, I have nothing
but respect for your ribcage

now that we both know
it’s not big enough to hold us.

by Michael Meyerhofer

Poets on TV

The poet WH Auden (1907-73) once said: "A poet – pardon me, a citizen – has one political duty, which is to try, and by one's own example, to protect the purity of the language. I'm a passionate formalist on hedonistic grounds." Were these words spoken in The Paris Review or the TLS? No, on Parkinson on BBC1 in 1972: they are recorded in Parky's People, a just-published collection of annotated transcripts.

Michael Parkinson often comments – has just done so again in the Radio Times – on the decline of televisual conversation and this encounter is compelling evidence: Auden on a mainstream talk-show! Can we imagine Seamus Heaney appearing with Graham Norton, or Carol Ann Duffy chatting to Paul O'Grady? And, even on late-night BBC2 or BBC4, that sentence about the hedonism behind his formalism would, to borrow the words of Philip Larkin, bring the men in their long coats running across the fields.

Perhaps this was a peculiarity of Auden who, as a frontline English verse writer, has always had an unusual overlap with popular culture: working on the earliest version of the musical Cabaret; achieving an international hit poem through Four Weddings and a Funeral; and appearing as a character in Alan Bennett's latest play, The Habit of Art. But many other literary figures, such as Anthony Burgess, Laurie Lee and Ben Travers, also appeared on Parkinson. Burgess even made half a dozen appearances at 7pm on BBC1 with Wogan.

So something has changed in the culture of television. The most popular explanation will be a drop in standards: that commissioners have become hedonistic in a formalistic way. The kinder reading is that British TV has become more generically complex: talk-shows are less highbrow, but news and current affairs more so: an Auden could now expect to appear on Newsnight or The Andrew Marr Show.

Even so, it's hard not to envy the schedules of the past: stop all the clocks, switch off the television, as Auden almost wrote.

Greetings

A young girl
puts her name on the missile
to say hello,
this is from me ...

Soldiers usually do this ...

Her handwriting is very beautiful,
she holds the pen
very carefully,
like a knife ...

Other words say
With Love ...

Mother looks on,
she´s relieved,
happy to have turned fear
into delight ...

This is magic being prepared ...

What fun this is,
let´s take a picture,
let´s remember this moment
for years to come ...

There they go,
the smiles ...

As the missile flies
in no one´s sky
does the air
feel her touch?

There they go, here they come ...

As the missile
slices someone open
do they read
her lovely name?

Do they feel the fun
going in?

My hello is your goodbye,
my smile is your cry,
I´ve got a better
name than you ...


by Chris Gutkind

Poem Of The Day

Democracy

Here´s a boat that cannot float.
Here´s a queue that cannot vote.
Here´s a line you cannot quote.
Here´s a deal you cannot note...
and here´s a sacrificial goat,
here´s a cut, here´s a throat,
here´s a drawbridge, here´s a moat...
What´s your hurry? Here´s your coat.


By Carol Ann Duffy

Tue Poem

TEA DEATH

When he passed out into his tea
he expected to wake up with his nose
warm and wet, lungs topped up
with Earl Grey, snorting

tea leaves which would gather
in the distant networks
of his blood. It might be a relief
to drown that way and not

in the fine wine he'd ploughed
an expert front crawl through
all these years. At tea time.
Splashing through Lapsang

towards scones even angels
fought over, where the Earl himself
would face him at table,
and they'd grin at each other

so hard that golden liquid
would strain through their teeth,
leak out under their nails,
from their ears, tear ducts, nipples

and then – if they laughed –
spout from their wobbling
belly buttons like the outward
breaths of whales.

by Jo Shapcott

The Sat Poem

I have not yet caught the bus, but we are all here
ready to play our parts: the housewife with her basket,
the barefoot mother nursing her child,
the boy gazing out the window just as later
he'll stare through the smeared pane and catch
the tram's advance, his eyes wide as globes.
The gringo holds his bag of gold dust.
I am next to him, sixteen, my body still
intact when the bag explodes and something
bright as the sun fills the air with humming motes
that stick to my splattered skin. Then the labourer
with his mallet will heave the silver post out of me.
His blue overalls are clean. He is not surprised to find me
alive. Here, in Coyoacán at the stop, where the six of us
wait on a bench side by side, just as we will sit
in the wooden bus, comrades in the morning of my life.

by Pascale Petit

The Raven

[First published in 1845]

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating `'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door - Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; - This it is, and nothing more,' Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, `Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; - Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!' This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!' Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. `Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore - Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; - 'Tis the wind and nothing more!' Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door - Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door - Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, `Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door - Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as `Nevermore.' But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered - Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before - On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.' Then the bird said, `Nevermore.' Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, `Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore - Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of "Never-nevermore."' But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore - What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking `Nevermore.' This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. `Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! - Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted - On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore - Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore - Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting - `Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!

by Edgar Allan Poe

Elena Shvarts (RIP)

Via Crucis

You know the crossroad very well
You cross it every day, by bike, in your way to work.
A big crossroad is not, neither a special one.
It´s small, humble, an ordinary one.
That´s why you were struck when you saw that Police notice:
“Fatal accident, if you have witnessed something please contact us”.

Since then
Week in- week out
You see fresh flowers
Attached to the lamppost
In the middle of the crossroad.
Someone even wrote a poem
Mourning the dead son.

Months passed by and today
You rode by there again.
There is the bunch of fresh flowers
There the hurting poem, wrapped in cello tape
So the rain doesn´t corrupt
An incorruptible feeling.

Every time you see it
It gives you goosebumps
Someone really did lose
Someone important
A certain number in the calendar
Brings sour memories to someone
A cyclic pain
The need of placing flowers
Flowers that will ease the pain
At least a bit
An I Love You to the gone one
A You Are With Me
An I Don´t Forget You.

Poem Of The Day

BEFORE WE GET INTO THIS

Before we get to know each other
And sing for tomorrow
And unearth yesterday
So that we can prepare our joint grave
You should know that I have no family,
Neither disowned nor distanced - none.

No birthdays nor Christmas,
No telephone calls. It's been that way
Since birth for what it's worth
No next of skin.

I am the guilty secret of an innocent woman
And a dead man - tell your parents, they'll want to know.

by Lemn Sissay

Chemotherapy (Poem of the Day 2)

The decomposing squirrel in the yard,
a plump sack. That night
I bled for hours, like a dumb animal.
The evening news: Mother’s doing fine today.
By Wednesday, I could smell the body from the porch.
I couldn’t make myself not look.
First the flies on its brown eyes,
then the mice in its tapering ribs.
Soon it looked like the remains of a fish,
a furry scalp, a plush dead thing.
I drank lemonade and gin in the shade
as the neighbor’s cat stalked the bossy blue jays.
(Mothers, in this case.)
They kept up the noise for hours.
Last night it was just a skeleton,
light enough to be lifted by the wind.

by Megan O´Rourke

Poem Of The Day

The Lone Survivor´s Tale

The sky recovered the next day.