What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes, Dream Deferred in The Panther and the Lash, May 1967
Photo: workers at cashew nut processing unit, Goa, 2016
What is Worth Knowing?
That van Gogh’s ear, set free
wanted to meet the powerful nose
of Nevsky Avenue.
That Spain has decided to help
NATO. That Spring is supposed to begin
on the 21st March.
That if you put too much salt in the keema
just add a few bananas.
That although the Dutch were the first
to help the people of Nicaragua they don’t say much
about their history with Indonesia.
That van Gogh collected Japanese prints.
That the Japanese considered
the Dutch to be red-haired barbarians.
That van Gogh’s ear remains full of questions
it wants to ask the nose of Nevsky Avenue.
That the vaccinations for cholera, typhoid and yellow fever
are no good – they must be improved.
That red, green and yellow are the most
auspicious colours.
That turmeric and chilli powder are good
disinfectants. Yellow and red.
That often Spring doesn’t come
until May. But in some places
it’s there in January
That van Gogh’s ear left him because
it wanted to become a snail.
That east and west
meet only in the north and south – but never
in the east or west.
That in March 1986 Darwinism is being
reintroduced in American schools.
That there’s a difference
between pigeons and doves, although
a ring-dove is a wood-pigeon.
That the most pleasant thing is to have a fever
of at least 101 – because then the dreams aren’t
merely dreams but facts.
That during a fever the soul comes out
for fresh air, that during a fever the soul bothers to
speak to you.
That tigers are courageous and generous-hearted
and never attacked unless provoked –
but leopards,
leopards are malicious and bad-tempered.
That buffaloes too,
water-buffaloes that is, have a short temper.
That a red sky at night is a good sign for sailors,
for sailors…..what is worth knowing?
What is worth knowing?
What is Worth Knowing? (1986)
Photo by J M P , Venice (2012)
There are no lies in the morning no cheating of age an illusion of eye smoothing skin over bone.
No portrait hidden away becoming skeletal and demanding release.
Another day to face, my confessor, so laugh at this charting of years.
Mirror by Adrian Greene
Photo: dresses by Gilbert Adrian at the LACMA
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan th‘ expense of many a vanish’d sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
Sonnet 30, William Shakespeare
My weekend was perfect because of Tiago Rodrigues’s play “By Heart”
My world is, after all, a place of beauty.
The purple breeze
Sings through the jacaranda
And wings away,
Leaving the shadows to flower
LAmerica
Cold treatment of our empress
LAmerica
The Transient Universe
LAmerica
Instant communion and
communication
lamerica
emeralds in glass
lamerica
searchlights at twi-light
lamerica
stoned streets in the pale dawn
lamerica
robed in exile
lamerica
swift beat of a proud heart
lamerica
eyes like twenty
lamerica
swift dream
lamerica
frozen heart
lamerica
soldiers doom
lamerica
clouds & struggles
lamerica
Nighthawk
doomed from the start
lamerica
“That’s how I met her,
lamerica
lonely & frozen
lamerica
& sullen, yes
lamerica
right from the start”
Then stop.
Go. The wilderness between.
Go round the march.
Jim Morrison, The Opening of the Trunk (fragment)
Late Monday Poetry
Photo (mine) Spring Street, DTLA June 2017
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,, ,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.
Notes on the Art of Poetry, Dylan Tomas
Photo at The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles, June 29 2017
I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.
Fernando Pessoa, English Poems (1921)
Photo (mine) Ponte de Lima, 21.05.2107
1.
Peony silks,
in wax-light:
that petal-sheen,
gold or apricot or rose
candled into-
what to call it,
lumina, aurora, aureole?
About gowns,
the Old Masters,
were they ever wrong?
This penitent Magdalen’s
wrapped in a yellow
so voluptuous
she seems to wear
all she’s renounced;
this boy angel
isn’t touching the ground,
but his billow
of yardage refers
not to heaven
but to pleasure’s
textures, the tactile
sheers and voiles
and tulles
which weren’t made
to adorn the soul.
Eternity’s plainly nude;
the naked here and now
longs for a little
dressing up. And though
they seem to prefer
the invisible, every saint
in the gallery
flaunts an improbable
tumble of drapery,
a nearly audible liquidity
(bright brass embroidery,
satin’s violin-sheen)
raveled around the body’s
plain prose; exquisite
(dis?)guises; poetry,
music, clothes.
2.
Nothing needs to be this lavish.
Even the words I’d choose
for these leaves;
intricate, stippled, foxed,
tortoise, mottled, splotched
-jeweled adjectives
for a forest by Fabergé,
all cloisonné and enamel,
a yellow grove golden
in its gleaming couture,
brass buttons
tumbling to the floor.
Who’s it for?
Who’s the audience
for this bravura?
Maybe the world’s
just trompe l’oeil,
appearances laid out
to dazzle the eye;
who could see through this
to any world beyond forms?
Maybe the costume’s
the whole show,
all of revelation
we’ll be offered.
So? Show me what’s not
a world of appearances.
Autumn’s a grand old drag
in torched and tumbled chiffon
striking her weary pose.
Talk about your mellow
fruitfulness! Smoky alto,
thou hast thy music,
too; unforgettable,
those October damasks,
the dazzling kimono
worn, dishabille,
uncountable curtain calls
in these footlights’
dusky, flattering rose.
The world’s made fabulous
by fabulous clothes.
Couture
Mark Doty, 1953
Not for me a youngman’s death
Not a car crash, whiplash
John Doe, DOA at A&E kind of death.
Not a gun in hand, in a far off land
IED at the roadside death
Not a slow-fade, razor blade
bloodbath in the bath, death.
Jump under a train, Kurt Cobain
bullet in the brain, death
Not a horse-riding paragliding
mountain climbing fall, death.
Motorcycle into an old stone wall
you know the kind of death, death
My nights are rarely unruly. My days
of allnight parties are over, well and truly.
No mistresses no red sports cars
no shady deals no gangland bars
no drugs no fags no rock’n’roll
Time alone has taken its toll
Not for me a youngman’s death
Not a domestic brawl, blood in the hall
knife in the chest, death.
Not a drunken binge, dirty syringe
“What a waste of a life” death.
Not for Me a Youngman’s Death
By Roger McGough
POEMA A UN GATO
No son más silenciosos los espejos
Ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;
Eres, bajo la luna, esa pantera
Que nos es dado divisar de lejos.
Por obra indescifrable de un decreto
Divino, te buscamos vanamente;
Más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente,
Tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto.
Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa
Caricia de mi mano.
Has admitido,
Desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido,
El amor de la mano recelosa.
En otro tiempo estás.
Eres el dueño
De un ámbito cerrado como un sueño.
Jorge Luis Borges, El oro de los tigres, 1972
To a cat
Mirrors are not more wrapt in silences
nor the arriving dawn more secretive;
you, in the moonlight, are that panther figure
which we can only spy at from a distance.
By the mysterious functioning of some
divine decree, we seek you out in vain;
remoter than the Ganges or the sunset,
yours is the solitude, yours is the secret.
Your back allows the tentative caress
my hand extends. And you have condescended
since that forever, now oblivion,
to take love from a flattering human hand.
You live in other time, lord of your realm —
a world as closed and separate as dream.
Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Alastair Reid, 1977)
Para que ela tivesse um pescoço tão fino
Para que os seus pulsos tivessem um quebrar de caule
Para que os seus olhos fossem tão frontais e limpos
Para que a sua espinha fosse tão direita
E ela usasse a cabeça tão erguida
Com uma tão simples claridade sobre a testa
Foram necessárias sucessivas gerações de escravos
De corpo dobrado e grossas mãos pacientes
Servindo sucessivas gerações de príncipes
Ainda um pouco toscos e grosseiros
Ávidos cruéis e fraudulentosFoi um imenso desperdiçar de gente
Para que ela fosse aquela perfeição
Solitária exilada sem destino
For her to have such a slender neck
For her wrists to bend like flower stems
For her eyes to be so clear and direct
Her back so straight
Her head so high
With such a natural glow on her forehead
It took successive generations of slaves
With stooping bodies and patient rough hands
Serving successive generations of princes
Still a bit coarse still a bit crude
Cruel greedy and connivingIt took an enormous squandering of life
For her to be
That lonely exiled aimless perfection
Stories from A Closet of Errors 