POEMS

READING A POEM TO JOSEPH BRODSKY

If one must, how does one read a poem? 

With patience?
With circumspection?
Confusion
     considering meter, rhyme, tone
egg sacks hanging beneath the limbs in a murky pond,
red-legged frogs, newts or salamanders
with indifferent raccoons
at play

or
all in one whispered rush aloud
hearing tenses clash with allusion,
hearing the resonance of syllables weeping
echos of discordant regrets without resolution

or
nitpicking connotation that is as yet enslaved by arrogance,
allusion, illusion or handwringing objectivity
still and all deluded by greed
rendering all meaning ...

moot

Read related post at KBW

MAWKISH REGARDS

we leave as the air:

he and i depart

look for me

some hour after midnight

in the new moon

and foreshortened tide

where wood drifts and sand

look for me some day soon

come as you are

or will be

with sleeves all rolled

bald pate

and the stubble of yesterday's beard

look for me some day soon

i perch in the gloom

on my thin wire

preen in the hush

on my tight wire

i squat
and am vanished
in all our father's songs


Spring 1973 (10.24.74)

from PLUG NICKELS

枯    廻

   wither  wander  

病 んで 夢 は 枯 野 をかけ廻る

sick on my journey, dreams wander
over withered grass
---Bashō

from Withered Grass 16
photography and translation by gv simoni