Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Invincible Is My Myopia, Great Is My Waist, Choral Are My Ideas, Wingéd Are My Eyebrows, Deep Is My Obscurity












PONDERABLE

Lyn Hejinian

The pine branches reach—the rain! the sun! the edge of the moving air!
       three goats!
Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot
Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision
I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train
Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the shoveler is
       prepared to exclaim, “Grief exterior, grief prison”
Beastly pine cones are falling from the sky
Down in the middle, and a soft wall, the midnight breeze billows
Check the role, the rock, the rule!
From cardboard pressed to ginger, water spilled on a list, salt sprinkled
        over…
Why so many references to dogs, purple, and bananas?
Then the carnival—it came up afterwards like a vermillion buttress to
        say of itself “it appears”
Wren in a ragged bee line, flora sleeping live
Yuki, Felicia, and Maxwell have between them $13.75, and they are
             hungry as they enter the small café, where they see a display of
             pies and decide to spend all their money on pie there and then—
             how much pie will each get to eat if each pie costs $5.25?
Invincible is my myopia, great is my waist, choral are my ideas, wingéd
             are my eyebrows, deep is my obscurity—who am I?




2 comments:

  1. Yes the title! And trolling is my dark heart.

    Thanks, too, for the link.

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  2. some say april is poetry month

    Two Tramps in Mud Time Poem by Robert Frost

    Out of the mud two strangers came
    And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
    And one of them put me off my aim
    By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
    I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
    And let the other go on a way.
    I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
    He wanted to take my job for pay.

    Good blocks of oak it was I split,
    As large around as the chopping block;
    And every piece I squarely hit
    Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
    The blows that a life of self-control
    Spares to strike for the common good,
    That day, giving a loose my soul,
    I spent on the unimportant wood.

    The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
    You know how it is with an April day
    When the sun is out and the wind is still,
    You're one month on in the middle of May.
    But if you so much as dare to speak,
    A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
    A wind comes off a frozen peak,
    And you're two months back in the middle of March.

    A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
    And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
    His song so pitched as not to excite
    A single flower as yet to bloom.
    It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
    Winter was only playing possum.
    Except in color he isn't blue,
    But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

    The water for which we may have to look
    In summertime with a witching wand,
    In every wheelrut's now a brook,
    In every print of a hoof a pond.
    Be glad of water, but don't forget
    The lurking frost in the earth beneath
    That will steal forth after the sun is set
    And show on the water its crystal teeth.

    The time when most I loved my task
    The two must make me love it more
    By coming with what they came to ask.
    You'd think I never had felt before
    The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
    The grip of earth on outspread feet,
    The life of muscles rocking soft
    And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

    Out of the wood two hulking tramps
    (From sleeping God knows where last night,
    But not long since in the lumber camps).
    They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
    Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
    They judged me by their appropriate tool.
    Except as a fellow handled an ax
    They had no way of knowing a fool.

    Nothing on either side was said.
    They knew they had but to stay their stay

    And all their logic would fill my head:
    As that I had no right to play
    With what was another man's work for gain.
    My right might be love but theirs was need.
    And where the two exist in twain
    Theirs was the better right--agreed.

    But yield who will to their separation,
    My object in living is to unite
    My avocation and my vocation
    As my two eyes make one in sight.
    Only where love and need are one,
    And the work is play for mortal stakes,
    Is the deed ever really done
    For Heaven and the future's sakes.

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