The sound of this place is quiet,
is the echo of bare feet slapping on smooth mosaic floor,
the steps of men and women long dead who wove out the patterns of their lives between these now-crumbling columns,
in service to Jehovah, Allah, and God Almighty.

The shadows of ruins are fertile ground,
and these have fathered nations.

The towers, bent and crooked like old, old hands, reach
for the sky like the ancient poet, stand atop the highest hill, surrounded by the sound of slapping footsteps, and reach
with broken fingers like graceful claws to leave
their message writ across the roof of the world: I
am sacred.

Here, at the base of this
sacred hill,
walk men and women who cannot put a day to the birth of the ruin
that watches over them like an ancestor.
They cannot remember the sun-dark faces
of those who first slept beneath the golden dome that now catches
the sun with jagged edges and caresses
the southern corners of their kitchens with its benevolent silhouette.

Occasionally,
an old man may weave his silent thread through the ever-moving pattern
of men and women who will not remain in this place long enough to add
their footsteps to its sound.
He may stop a moment,
by a few unremarkable lumps of stone abandoned among brambles,
sunken heavy and sad with remembrance into soil
where once grew a home.
He may stop a moment,
to become as one of them,
to fold his poet’s hands, bent and crooked like old, old ruins,
and say to himself
“Our home was here.”

Our home, where we slept,
and drank tea in the cool of the evening,
and watched the doves carry our sorrows to rest
on the roof, supported by the walls of our days which bore the weight and sank
slightly
deeper
into the dirt.

“Our home was here.”
Our home, which we lost to men and women who thrust
us from this place for our differences.
For our differences, and so that they might say
“Our home is here.”
Our home, where we sleep,
and drink tea in the cool of the evening,
and watch the doves settle lightly
onto the backs of passing trucks.

“Our home was here,”
where now the marks of the walls are no longer
sunken into the dirt,
where now lie these few unremarkable lumps of stone
in the shadow
of an altar.

The sound of this place is quiet,
is the echo of the brother’s blood calling out
from fields of wheat.

He
attends religious services daily
but
with none of the self-importance of your
pretentious church folk.
He
attends with a humble lowering of the head,
a leaning into submission,
a bending of the back, a
reaching,
reaching
with open palms and
outstretched neck until
gently,
gently,
just the tip of his forehead brushes
the dirt.
Slowly,
slowly
the heart of God is surely swayed by such
prayer.

He
has at home a mother
and sisters
who do not live in fear because of him.
His
grandmother calls him fondly
by his fathers name and he
does not correct her.

He
rises in the hopeful chill of
not-quite-dawn and,
in much the same way the
corporate
American
businessman that
resides
within his
imagination dons
a power
tie,

(sliding
the knot
tightly,
tightly,
round his neck to the
rhythm
of his
internal pep-talk)

he
straps explosives to his chest.

They nestle
just beneath
the ticking
of his heart,
that steady ticking beat, that
dogged ticking beat, that
essential ticking beat that grows faster just before it
stops.

I loved you first when the stars were silent. We
sat beneath the sky in the bottom of a bowl the sides of which were formed by the reaching fingers of fourteen dead trees, and
you were so far away from me I could have reached out and missed you with the tips of my fingers. But
the stars were silent and so I listened to you and you listened to me and we felt at once cradled and exposed by the tree fingers and the open sky and the gravel that didn’t dig into our backs as we lay and gazed inwards.

I loved you later when there were no stars, and
the emptiness of the sky was frightening, and
pain so sudden it forced the breath from the front of my mouth in a little puff of shock communicated my loss.
It was cold air, not air drawn from the warm depths of my lungs, but air cold from where it sat in the roof of my mouth accompanied by the words
“well, ok then”
that waited behind my lips and caused a sharp cold burn to shoot through my teeth as if I had just drunk water too icy to be imbibed safely.

I love you now when the stars rattle, and
the stillness of my soul is disrupted by their noise, their
irritating rattle that rubs the back of my neck until the skin is raw, but
“Don’t shrug it off,” you say.
I would much rather mark this ending with the warmth of blood rushing through veins and muscles contracting and skin crinkling slightly over bare shoulders than with the chill of November words spoken in March, “well, ok then.” But
“Don’t shrug it off,” you say and so I try to ignore the rattle and the raw itch and I settle for “thank you.”

To my surprise, the words are spoken from my lungs.

With you, life is reading aloud,
sharing smiles in a crowd
and
midday bicycle racing.

Without you, life is a blanket in lazy sunshine
a mug of tea that fits my hand
and
the openness of country skies.

It is not the difference of ache and delight,
but simply
quiet and sound.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
He effortlessly, but with infinite creativity, brought beauty itself into being.
But more specifically, he spoke beauty itself into being.
He could have thought it, willed it, imagined or gestured or painted or written it.
but he spoke.

Let there be
Let there be
Let there be
And it was good
Let there be
Let there be
Let there be
And it was good
Poetry

Do you see it?

Spring into summer into fall into winter into
Spring into summer into fall into winter into
Spring into summer into fall into winter into
Spring into summer into fall into
The beat, into the rhythm, to the music, to the
Poetry.
Do you see it?

There is alliteration in the
spot where the sea meets the sand of the shore ‘neath the sky on the surface of a sphere that’s sustained by the sun
There is rhyme in the sound of the sea and the wind through the trees, and
similarities in the calling of birds and the laughter of children, it is
Poetry

Do you see it?

There is meter in the pattern of breath:

Day and night, love and loss, birth and death
As each beginning fades into the next and the complexities of life are split into stanzas of time,
cycles that repeat according to the underlying beat
Poetry

Do you see it?

Do you see it? This is the meaning of He created, and
In the same way, we create.
Animals don’t write novels, the rocks beneath our feet do not (necessarily) compose symphonies, but we
We create poetry
in all its different forms.
We wrestle with words
And as we dance to the rhythm of the rhymes we find that inevitably we leave our footprints between the lines.
Do you see it?

If poetry and poet are by nature intertwined
then do you not believe that if we seek between the lines
where the ocean meets the sand then in nature we will find
that the one by whom everything we see was first designed
spoke it into being and in love did leave behind
the key to the Truth of the mystery divine
in the echo of His voice and His footprints ‘tween the lines?

A moment before this photo was taken President Truman complacently patted the reassuring outline of a folded piece of paper tucked neatly into his jacket breast pocket, a folded piece of paper containing two hastily written and incomplete sentences:

“Operated on this morning.”
(in darkness before artificial dawn)
“Diagnosis not yet complete, but
Results seem
Satisfactory
And already exceed expectations.”

A moment before this photo was taken President Truman complacently patted the reassuring outline of a folded piece of paper tucked neatly into his jacket breast pocket and did not feel the familiar thrill of concern when his elbows casually brushed the infinitely more calloused ones of General Secretary Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill.

A moment after this photo was taken, the great men rearranged themselves carefully with calculated presidential laughter to shake hands in an awkward and unrealistic manner, and it is this image which has come to symbolize their meeting.

Meanwhile, however, our cameraman, standing slightly left of center, preferred a picture of Harry, Joe, and Winston. And so they stand, invested with the sort of jolly pride one expects to encounter in the waiting room of the maternity ward.

Winston’s temple-tapping and
absent gaze
seem to suggest he should be sitting down with a blanket over his knees and a warm cup of tea,
while
Harry’s juvenile expression of tightly pressed lips and sparkling eyes proclaim the secret joke he’s playing,
Looking into the lens as though it is his wife,
and not we,
who stand behind it.
and Joe,
leaning slightly back as though preparing with his rounded belly to burst out in booming laughter and and whose moustache,
once bushy and intimidating,
at second glance seems suited to the gripping and pulling of little child fingers.

They stand smiling like indulgent grandpas
As the American in the background fittingly
steps on the Russian’s foot and
prepares to mumble apologies,

and the Englishman stares with haunted eyes into the glare,
reflected by the cameras lens,
of a nuclear explosion.

A moment after this photo was taken, the great men rearranged themselves carefully with calculated presidential laughter to shake hands in an awkward and unrealistic manner, and it is this image which has come to symbolize their meeting.

I Am a Paragraph 

Bound by constructs (mostly imagined) I reside within the lines of a single-spaced square that takes up roughly half of a standard-size page. And there I remain, without passion or power enough to launch letters like projectiles into the lens of my reader, requiring (re)action. My sounds may play harmoniously on the ear if read aloud, but the (dis)continuity of my sentences me to silence. I appear a sturdily constructed square – content, complacent, collegiate — and am left to be unlovely and unlyrical for lack of a voice; words ignored in their best order,

while poetry,
as you constantly remind me (somewhat smugly)
is the best words in the best order.
Just like that.
Just like that, emphasis on best because that’s what sets
Vibrant poetry
apart from
Vapid prose
and just like that,
Just like that I feel
superfluous.

Nocturne

The day is surprised.

Morning bends abruptly into afternoon, like an elbow,
trying to get a better view
when I step into the light.

grass leans in to sniff at the weight of my foot
as I stand blinking into the inquisitive glare of the sun,
the wind whistles at the rain to come and see,
and the willow quivers its curiosity
(poor emotional thing is too shy to speak above a whisper).

All the brightness of day surrounds with its questions,
big blue sky round as an “O” of astonishment
punctuated by an exclamation point of vivid greens and yellows and blinking reds
(as the hibiscus bush nods and pants in breezy wonderment).

The day is all amazement at my daring to appear
until the rays of sunset sweep across the landscape with authority
soaking up color and sinking with it beneath the horizon,
putting a stop to curious child-questions
sniffing grass and nodding red flower bushes
by muffling them in darkness or muting them in moonlight,
and night alone remains to wrap me in its embrace
and come to know me
intimately.

(click here to read a brief biography of the poet.)

Herbert was a master of more than one literary style — i’ve included here two examples of his work, one pure poetry and another example of “prose poetry.” And believe me, i love this poet so much it really took me quite a long time to decide which two examples to include here. Please, people, for your own good, if you enjoy these pieces then by all means look him up and read some more of his work. I highly suggest, among his more conventional poems, Two Drops, Three Poems by Heart, I Would Like to Describe, The Stars’ Chosen Ones, On Translating Poetry, Silk of a Soul, and Episode. Among his prose poetry works, some of my favorites are Tongue, Moon, Hen, Episode in a Library, Drunks, Shell, Objects, The Paradise of the Theologians, The Wolf and the Lamb, Elephant.

He is one of my favorite poets for a reason. Read the rest of this entry »

At a Certain Age

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me.”

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