.. a song new like rain

   ..

   It gets more and more simplistic:

   Good and bad, evil and bad;

      what else do we know?

..

But there was that train of thought

That satisfied one nicely: how one was going to climb down

Out of here, hopefully

To arrive on a perfectly flat spit of sand

Level with the water.

  ..

  But for all you I 

  Have neglected, ignored,

  ..

  Not been that friend that is     approaching,

  I ask forgiveness, a song new     like rain.

  Please sing it to me.

John Ashbery

April Galleons

  Posture of Unease

  [fragments]

Collected Poems,

  1956-1987

op. cit.

Winchimes Cypress Point

Thorny

22 December 2012,

arriving late March

Qu'est-ce qu'un connoisseur?

     There is a film of dust

            on the lucid morning ..

     Flavors that keep us from

            caring too long.

John Ashbery

April Galleons

  Posture of Unease

  [fragment]

Collected Poems

  1956-1987

op. cit.

I feel this belongs
to Valéry Lorenzo.

In his own music, Britten

    The centenary of

    England's great-

    est composer af-

    ter Purcell will

    bring fine music

    forward to a new

    time, and infor-

    mation of sorrow.

Reform in postal servitude

    In the United States,

    there is talk of giv-

    ing our letter carri-

    ers Saturday off. But

    wholesome habits only

    find a new expression

    in the spirit of fine

    service.

Yet more good advice from the toffs ii

         The study 
         of man is the study 
         of perspectives.


        

Villiers David
Advice to my
  Godchildren
op. cit.

Letting it breathe

  

  As in a glass hive my soul moved inside me,

          a joyful bee-swarm

  that, secretly increasing, seeks to release into the trees

          its grapelike cluster.

  And I felt the earth was crystal beneath my feet,

          the soil transparent,

  for the strong and peaceful bodies of ancient plane trees

          rose up around me. 

   

  There the old wine was opened for me, smelling rich

          in the oaken jar,

  as mountain scents when the cool night dew

          falls on the bushes.

Angelos Sikelianos

Thalero

  [fragment]

Edmund Keeley and

  Philip Sherrard, translation

The Greek Poets

op. cit.

Taylor Cowan

What can I give him ii

    We came onto a vehicle track.

    Tires had gouged a glutinous

    dark brown strip, twenty feet

    wide. My boots stuck to the

    mud, so I walked on the ice 

    in the roadside ditches. This

    was better, except when the

    ice broke and my feet plunged

    into cold water. Babur was now

    coated in black mud. We had

    been walking for nine hours.

    Daulatyar was only fifteen

    kilometers away and there were

    probably two hours of daylight

    left, but I had forgotten how

    much deep mud and wet snow 

    slowed my pace. I felt muffled

    in the snow-fog and imprisoned

    by the rain hood I was wearing.

    I threw back the hood. I could

    hear and see again. The day was

    very silent and the plain seem-

    ed very large. The snow driving

    into my eyes at a forty-five de-

    gree angle made me feel much

    freer, but my left foot seemed

    frozen to a cold iron plate.

An immortal book? A certain

masterpiece, in the English

language; an act of inquiry

driven by the heart? I will

trade all majesty for words

to explain why he is thrown

into Aghanistan. Right now.

Rory Stewart

The Places in Between

Picador, 2004©

bring the flowers iii

Because I deeply praised and trusted earth

and did not spread my secret wings in flight

but rooted in the stillness all my mind,

the spring again has risen to my thirst,

the dancing spring of life, my own joy's spring.

Because I never questioned how and when

but plunged my thought into each passing hour

as though its boundless goal lay hidden there,

no matter if I live in calm or storm,

the rounded moment shimmers in my mind,

the fruit falls from the sky, falls deep inside me.

Angelos Sikelianos

Because I Deeply Praised

  [fragment]

Edmund Keeley and

  Philip Sherrard, translation

The Greek Poets

  Homer to the Present

op. cit.