Tenebrae

Near are we, Lord,
near and graspable.

Grasped already, Lord,
clawed into each other, as if
each of our bodies were
your body, Lord.

Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near.

Wind-skewed we went there,
went there, to bend
over pit and crate.

Went to the water-trough, Lord.

It was blood, it was
what you shed, Lord.

It shined.

It cast your image into our eyes, Lord,
Eyes and mouth stand so open and void, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.

Pray, Lord.
We are near.

-Paul Celan

I Taught Myself To Live Simply

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

-Anna Akhmatova

I've been seeing--and hearing--sandhill cranes flying overhead, migrating north. It's spring!

Another Spring

White birds over the grey river.
Scarlet flowers on the green hills.
I watch the spring go by and wonder
If I shall ever return home.

-Tu Fu

The Hoe

In March the earth breaks open, stirs
from its suspension: Water
puddles and floods
our road. You take your hoe
when we go walking, and you fold
soaked earth into soft pleats,
to let the water flow. You free
the orphaned pools to travel and rejoin
their brooks and streams,
and the braided water leaps
between new wet walls, and falls
over the edges of the road
and into the woods.
With your hoe you scoop
sodden leaves into woven walls, so
these floodgates open, this drawbridge unlocks,
these little excesses of ice and rain and snow
run off, without turning back.
I stay, and watch you clear our way,
parting mud with sure true strokes,
leading water where it wants to go.

-Alice B. Fogel, 1990

Light at the end of the tunnel--it's spring break!

Everyday History

To rise
and make fire in the stove,
in the brain after the reeling of the smoke,
in the ducts of the bones cold from sleeplessness,
and to seek the way to the hand,
from the hand to the drinking glass,
the remnants of yesterday's ashes in the hollow of the face,
perhaps a bird-blown windstorm will revive them yet,
and to wander
from one body to another,
and like nomadic kinds: to seek the everyday motherland,
and, having found it
or not,
to spend the night in a single smile's tent,
and to walk in the Creation like a stranger,
to breathe in the dawn
poison of the trees,
the iron dust of the towns,
to go to all the wars,
to wear the lilac leaves around the neck
like a dogtag
and understanding everything
and understanding nothing, to part with what I love
and rage for what I loved,
brazenly, like my own life's
hired man.

-Sandor Csoori, 1992