Car poems
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Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?
© Thomas Hardy
"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"
A Chorus
© Elizabeth Jennings
Kept, in the resignation of old men -
This spirit, this power, this holder together of space
Is about, is aware, is working in your breathing.
But most he is the need that shows in hunger
And in the tears shed in the lonely fastness.
And in sorrow after anger.
Answers
© Elizabeth Jennings
I keep my answers small and keep them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.
In a Garden
© Elizabeth Jennings
When the gardener has gone this garden
Looks wistful and seems waiting an event.
It is so spruce, a metaphor of Eden
And even more so since the gardener went,
Wind Chill
© Linda Pastan
The door of winter
is frozen shut, and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them. How ceremonious snow is,
Jump Cabling
© Linda Pastan
When our cars touched
When you lifted the hood of mine
To see the intimate workings underneath,
When we were bound together
The New Dog
© Linda Pastan
Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
From A German War Primer
© Bertolt Brecht
AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.
United Front Song
© Bertolt Brecht
And because a man is human
He'll want to eat, and thanks a lot
But talk can't take the place of meat
or fill an empty pot.
To read in the morning and at night...
© Bertolt Brecht
Morgens und abends zu lesen
Der, den ich liebe
Hat mir gesagt
Da? er mich braucht.
Not What Was Meant
© Bertolt Brecht
When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom
Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats
There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity
But roaring above everything
Radio Poem
© Bertolt Brecht
You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
To Those Born After
© Bertolt Brecht
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The Mask Of Evil
© Bertolt Brecht
On my wall hangs a Japanese carving,
The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer.
Sympathetically I observe
The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating
What a strain it is to be evil.
Seaward
© Joseph Brodsky
Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Letter to an Archaeologist
© Joseph Brodsky
Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter
garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;
a scalp so often scalded with boiling water
that the puny brain feels completely cooked.
To Urania
© Joseph Brodsky
Everything has its limit, including sorrow.
A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgle down a swallow.
Loneless cubes a man at random.
May 24, 1980
© Joseph Brodsky
I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
Elegy
© Joseph Brodsky
It's not that the Muse feels like clamming up,
it's more like high time for the lad's last nap.
And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best
drives a steamroller across his chest.
