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A Noun Sentence

by Mahmoud Darwish   
Translated by Fady Joudah

A noun sentence, no verb
to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed
after making love ... a salty perfume
or a sour one. A noun sentence: my wounded joy
like the sunset at your strange windows.
My flower green like the phoenix. My heart exceeding
my need, hesitant between two doors:
entry a joke, and exit
a labyrinth. Where is my shadow—my guide amid
the crowdedness on the road to judgment day? And I
as an ancient stone of two dark colors in the city wall,
chestnut and black, a protruding insensitivity
toward my visitors and the interpretation of shadows. Wishing
for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me
or ahead of me, barefoot. Where
is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where
is futility? Where is the road to the road?
And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present
tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate
and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam
of speech the dots on the letters,
wishing for the present tense a foothold
on the pavement ...

Darwish is considered Palestine's most eminent poet.  He was born on March 13, 1942 in Al Birweh, Palestine, into a land-owning Sunni Muslim family. During the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, his village was destroyed and his family fled to Lebanon. They returned the following year, secretly re-entering Israel.  As a young man, he became a Communist and attended the University of Moscow for one year.  Then he moved to Cairo. He lived in exile for twenty-six years, between Beirut and Paris, until his return to Israel in 1996, after which he settled in Ramallah in the West Bank.
poets.org

More Shriners

MORE SHRINERS

No, I don't think we would
be orthodox believers
had Charles Martel not turned back
the Moslems at Tours in 732,
thus allowing the West to grow up
Christian, Jewish, and,
for the most part, slightly perplexed
about but mainly oblivious to
such matters as good, evil,
and whether or not we will go
to Paradise when we die.
But even though my hometown
of Tallahassee contains the name
of Allah, and even though
we have Arabic words in our language,
such as algebra, which sounds
Arabic and even looks that way,
or did in the eighth grade,
still, this is America,
and while I cannot see us adopting
the placid temperaments of
the desert people, so self-composed
in their long, loose robes
yet struggling continuously with
the malicious djinn who rule
the kingdom of death that begins
just a few feet from the oasis,
we need, do we not,
more places in this country
that are solemn and serene,
although there can be only one holy stone
set in the corner of the Ka'aba
in Mecca, white when given
to Adam at the time of the fall
but black now from the sins of
those who have kissed it.
I like this: a kind of sin-magnet
that would pull all of
the wickedness out of us,
because, as it says in the Koran,
you can run, pretty momma,
but you can't hide.

Poem: "MORE SHRINERS" by David Kirby, in  I Think I Am Going to Call My Wife Paraguay (Virginia: Orchises Press, 2004).

Poem IV

Poem: IV

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand

Poem: "IV," by Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint).

Saying Goodbye To Very Young Children

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children

They will not be the same next time. The sayings
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.
Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in
the more securely to the worldly buzz
of television, alphabet, and street talk,
culture polluting their gazes' dawn blue.
It makes you see at last the value of
those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells
of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces
like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)
who knew you from the start, when you were zero,
cooing their nothings before you could be bored
or knew a name, not even your own, or how
this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.

John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems

Thoughts in a Garden

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Andrew Marvell, from Thoughts in a Garden