Continued. Piotr Sommer
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Название: Continued

Автор: Piotr Sommer

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Поэзия

Серия: Wesleyan Poetry Series

isbn: 9780819569752

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ habits of mind set on their head, likewise your expectations of how language and meaning interrelate. So be alert. Exercise caution. Go slowly. And enjoy the ride.

      August Kleinzahler

      San Francisco August 2004

Shepherd’s Song

       Morning on Earth

      Morning on earth, light snow, and just when

      it was so warm, practically spring.

      But the thermometer in the kitchen window

      says seven degrees,

      and pretty sunny.

      Here’s

      the electric company guy I like,

      and no sign of the gas guy

      I can’t stand.

      And all of a sudden two Misters M. —

      one I’ve fallen for, the other

      a bit of a hotshot —

      coming back, both nine years old,

      just passing the jasmine bush,

      a huge bouquet of sticks.

      Behind the door

      the dog’s excited, nothing’s

      at odds with anything.

       Yesterday

      Autumn on small plots ringing the houses —

      except for the few jasmines still

      clothed and sparrows

      hopping from one lilac bush

      to another — does it really make for such a naked

      moral? such a come-down? a message

      of leaves behind the rusted fence

      protecting us so nicely

      from the eyes of the passer-by and of the neighbor

      who long long ago worked in the passport office,

      and from the headlights chasing leaves

      like the wind, only faster faster and

      maybe it’s because of this momentum

      you quicken your pace

       Visibility

      We ride the ridge, by track and tunnel,

      then after a while

      descend, but first

      there are brooks and bridgelets, because

      how can they call them bridges,

      yesterday Smithy, before that Hebden,

      and now Sowerby and purple foxgloves

      on the embankment. And still

      I haven’t figured out who

      I’m saying this to, or even who

      would care that through the leaves

      you can see Halifax

      and someone’s life, June being so transparent,

      though yesterday it rained and clouds came out.

       Municipal Services

      On the second anniversary, oddly, there wasn’t time,

      just snow, which amounts to the same thing.

      I was moving in water up to my mouth,

      though the streets were cleared faster

      than the snow could fall.

      I was waving my arms about, I was gathering air,

      I went back to my rented home

      but I couldn’t concentrate on sleeping.

      I got the order confused, and the new one

      seemed to me more beautiful.

      If you have any plans of coming back,

      at most I’ll miss my stop, I’ll overshoot

      a continent, I’ll open my mouth and won’t reply

      to the question I have no answer for.

       Continued

      Nothing will be the same as it was,

      even enjoying the same things

      won’t be the same. Our sorrows

      will differ one from the other and we

      will differ one from the other in our worries.

      And nothing will be the same as it was,

      nothing at all. Simple thoughts will sound

      different, newer, since they’ll be more simply, more newly

      spoken. The heart will know how to open up and love

      won’t be love anymore. Everything will change.

      Nothing will be the same as it was

      and that too will be new somehow, since after all,

      before, things could be similar: morning,

      the rest of the day, evening and night, but not now.

      i.m. Milton Hindus 1916–1998

      And later just to look into their papers,

      half-read in their lifetime, letters —

      if there were a place to keep them

      and they hadn’t been chewed up by mice in the attic

      or soiled by the marten

      which СКАЧАТЬ