Zmiana sposobu prezentacji
A Japanese Haiku In Phonics With Translation
Tokyo toyota
mitsubishi kyoto
teriyaki sake.
translation:
September jonquil
you're a little late, here, pal,
the party's over.
If you see a man of a certain age,
still slim, hair determinedly dark
but having some time ago switched to khakis
striding Eastern Parkway Plaza,
professionally proud,
a bit self-absorbed, but unmenacing,
fireworks past,
backdropped by friezes of the Brooklyn Museum,
its reassuringly old-fashioned pantheon
despite the heat, still reassuring,
and wearing a T-shirt a lighter shade of red than blood
blazoned with a baby, white but black-outlined,
palisaded with hatch-marks, black, indicating radiance,
or kineticism or both--which?
that would be me, for you see
I have just been to the Keith Haring show--
the Keith Haring show which closes soon.
What did I think of it?
You will want to know the opinion of a man
who wears exactly that shade of red.
'it brought back the era well--
the era to end all eras,
but, now, a little Keith Haring goes a surprisingly long way.'
1,3,2,4,1,3,2,4,1,3,2,4,1...
3....2.....4......
stop,sit,scratch,slip,
under the fence and disappear.
If you thought them rare, or worse, extinct,
think again. Assure yourselves
there is a land where they abound
like birds on a telephone wire at enormous dusk
preening and pleasuring in each other's presence.
And you are almost there--
just another hundred miles or so to paddle
before that shore where you reach the beach the boat,
drag it over hot, pink sand, inverted, toward a stand of trees
near where rears a strangely quiet headland.
Out they slip, delighted to greet you
from between trees, singing songs in Portuguese
hands clasped behind them,
thin silks blowing like line-dried octupi, the golds
of their Olympian ideals slung about their necks.
E-mail home you have seen them
in short, terse phrases; cc
everybody. Say, yes, of course, you want to be in their number.
(...)
--- full text ---
Into the purple waves, feet first,
along a whale's back
stuck with barnacles and whorls of worms
slips the man from the boat
who used to be a priest, then a rabbi,
buttoning his macintosh.
kersplash!
the whale glides off, laughing and spouting
the boat drifts off, the sun comes out
the atolls drift and shift, the heaven popsicle green.
'Isn't it lovely?' sputters the man
(who has lost his stove pipe) emerging
back into the air. 'Isn't it lovely?'
Yes, she was a countess, she said,
but being of a mind concise and thrifty
sniffed 'that and a dollar fifty
will get you on the subway---'
A long time ago, clearly.
She rode to harriers
not like a lady, side-saddle,
she claimed, but daringly astraddle,
following the yelping, fanned-out pack
over the hills and back.
Later, she studied Medicine at Trinity
after getting a 'dispensation'
and became a gynecologist-obstetrition.
'Leave from the crown?' I frowned, expectantly.
'No, from the bishop', she replied.
But she never practiced--
first, there was the war; later the AMA
back home dealt her the no-way
so if you didn't ask, she would frankly say
'I spent my life in marine-salvage.'
(...)
--- full text ---
Breathless, in a net we captured you--
Ring around the yew tree
and threw you, bright-eyed, in a gilded cage
watched to see what would happen next: surprise!
you thrived and seemed happy enough.
At night you fluffed your feathers
and made yourself eggbig
for insulation--it was a nice trick:
warmth to your remotest toes.
The kitchen light suddenly turned on,
late, you'd be found head wedged
under your wing, asleep for a sec,
till you awoke, vigilant as ever.
Singing was not your forte. All day
instead, you belted out your one, sole note.
We'd hoped for better, but this was the
way you registered your will in the world.
That human obsession, Liberty, for you
meant, not unbridled skies
(...)
--- full text ---
Years've passed. Hate and distrust have expired.
Your synapses turn to something akin to wood
Your motor's slowing nicely, as it should.
Frankly, you're more or less healthy, love, but tired,
Tired, having seen so many kinds of folly, learning as you
Did all spring from the same rood:
Genuine Greed, imaginary Need--
Awful, loving, now, all points of view
Awful, loving all, now, clothed or nude
Necessary, illness, now, and good,
Even your teeth's, which presently grow forward--
God, an indemnity, as you trudge death's doorward.
All you wanted you now have, indeed,
But having, now, admit, no longer need.
She lived in a bowl
on the kitchen countertop
at the end of a shaft of light
in the company of a waterwheel.
Between the frill of the rim
where the glass thickened to a lip
and the bowl's bottom, carpeted
with Perl mutter shingle,
aligned, more or less,
to cosmic north and south
yellow bead-jeweled alongside
like the windows of an airbus.
balanced in her heaven
by fins that dimly beat
mouth gulping water in as
if fueled by a rubber band.
her eyes like ebony pinheads
her inchy form striped blue--
occasionally emitting a single bubble
(...)
--- full text ---
The moon leant down, her fingertips kindling
the pursed lips of each little wave of the pool
blue O, with watery fire, til it said 'oh' or 'oh'.
Tight in the grip of its meniscus the water bound
the drowned forms of tigerish moths, that wings
outflung, soddenly stalked our gleaming abdomens.
We beat them back in fear and sluggish disgust.
From somewhere in the yard there came a light.
How our feet were magnified in the depth's glass!
There, by the hose head the underwater wrinkled.
Another, striped and flattened like a snake run over,
pricked like arteries themselves, shot its piddling arcs
and the night ran on and we ran back onto the stoop
ankles stuck with blades of sticky, green grass, as
a new-moon colored band of pale convolvulus
white and yellow bells, a-swinging, un-ringing,
raced slyly around the cornice of the house and
anywhere the lawn was alive with little frogs
'Let us in, let us in', everywhere shouting.
