favorite poems
I'm going to cheat and pick two:
Emigration by Tony Hoagland
Try being sick for a year,
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you
and you sail on in twilight,
with the sound of waves.
It's not a dream. You pass
through waiting rooms and clinics
until the very sky seems pharmaceutical,
and the faces of the doctors are your stars
whose smile or frown
means to hurry and get well
or die.
And because illness feels like punishment,
an enormous effort to be good
comes out of you --
like the good behavior of a child
desperate to appease
the invisible parents of this world.
And when that fails,
there is an orb of anger
rising like the sun above
the mind afraid of death,
and then a lake of grief, staining everything below,
and then a holding action of neurotic vigilance
and then a recitation of the history
of second chances.
And the illusions keep on coming,
and fading out, and coming on again
while your skin turns yellow from the medicine,
your ankles swell like dough above your shoes,
and you stop wanting to make love
because there is no love in you,
only a desire to be done.
But you're not done.
Your bags are packed
and you are traveling.
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico Garcia Lorca
1. The Goring and the Death
At five in the afternoon.
It was just five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime made ready
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death and only death
at five in the afternoon.
The wind blew the cotton wool away
at five in the afternoon.
And oxide scattered nickel and glass
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard fight
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-pipe sound began
at five in the afternoon.
The bells of arsenic, the smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Silent crowds on corners
at five in the afternoon.
And only the bull with risen heart!
at five in the afternoon.
When the snow-sweat appeared
at five in the afternoon.
when the arena was splashed with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
death laid its eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
at five in the afternoon.
At just five in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels for his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes sound in his ear
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull bellows on his brow
at five in the afternoon.
The room glows with agony
at five in the afternoon.
Now out of distance gangrene comes
at five in the afternoon.
Trumpets of lilies for the green groin
at five in the afternoon.
Wounds burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the people smashing windows
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ay, what a fearful five in the afternoon!
It was five on every clock!
It was five of a dark afternoon!
2. The Spilt Blood
I don’t want to see it!
Tell the moon to come,
I don’t want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.
I don’t want to see it!
The moon wide open,
mare of still clouds,
and the grey bullring of dream
with osiers in the barriers.
I don’t want to see it!
How the memory burns me.
Inform the jasmines
with their tiny whiteness!
I don’t want to see it!
The heifer of the ancient world
licked her saddened tongue
over a snout-full of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
part death, and part stone,
bellowed like two centuries
weary of pawing the ground.
No.
I don’t want to see it!
Ignacio climbs the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He was seeking the dawn,
and the dawn was not there.
He seeks his perfect profile
and sleep disorients him.
He was seeking his lovely body
and met his gushing blood.
Don’t ask me to look!
I don’t want to feel the flow
any more, its ebbing force:
the flow that illuminates
the front rows and spills
over the leather and corduroy
of the thirsty masses.
Who calls me to appear?
Don’t ask me to look!
His eyes did not shut
when he saw the horns nearby,
though the terrifying mothers
lifted up their heads.
And sweeping the herds
came a breeze of secret voices,
ranchers of the pale mist, calling
to the bulls of the sky.
There was never a prince of Seville
to compare with him,
nor a sword like his sword,
nor a heart so true.
His marvellous strength
like a river of lions
and like a marble torso
the profile of his judgment.
The air of an Andalusian Rome
gilded his head,
while his laughter was a tuberose
of wit and intellect.
How great a bullfighter in the arena!
How fine a mountaineer in the sierra!
How gentle with ears of wheat!
How fierce with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling at the fair!
How tremendous with the last
banderillas of darkness!
But now his sleep is endless.
Now the mosses and grass
open with skilled fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood goes singing:
singing through marsh and meadows,
sliding down numbed horns,
wandering soulless in mist
encountering a thousand hooves
like a long dark tongue of sadness
to form a pool of agony
near the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh white wall of Spain!
O black bull of sorrow!
Oh hardened blood of Ignacio!
Oh nightingale of his veins!
No.
I don’t want to see it!
There’s no cup to hold it,
no swallow to drink it,
no frost of light to cool it,
no song, no deluge of lilies,
no crystal to silver it.
No.
I don’t want to see it!!
3. The Body Laid-Out
The stone is a brow where dreams groan,
holding no winding water or frozen cypress.
The stone is a shoulder to bear time
with trees of tears, ribbons, planets.
I have watched grey rains running to the waves
lifting their fragile, riddled arms,
so as not to be caught by the outstretched stone
that unties their limbs without drinking their blood.
Because stone collects seeds and banks of cloud,
skeletons of larks and twilight wolves,
but gives up no sounds, crystals, fire, only bullrings
and bullrings, and more bullrings with no walls.
Now Ignacio the well-born lies on the stone.
Now it’s done. What passes? Contemplate his form!
Death has covered him with pale sulphur
given him the head of a dark minotaur.
Now it’s done! Rain penetrates his mouth.
Air rises mad from his sunken chest,
and love, soaked with tears of snow,
warms himself on the heights among herds.
What are they saying? A stinking silence settles.
We are with a laid-out corpse that vanishes,
with a clear form that held nightingales
and we see it riddled with countless holes.
Who disturbs the shroud? It’s not true what he says!
No one’s singing here, or weeps in a corner,
or pricks his spurs, or frightens off snakes:
here I want nothing but open eyes
to see that body that can’t rest.
I want to see the men with harsh voices here.
Those who tame horses and subdue rivers:
the men who rattle their bones and sing
with a mouth full of sun and flints.
I want to see them here. In front of the stone.
In front of this body with broken sinews.
I want them to show me where there’s an exit
for this captain bound by death.
I want them to show me grief like a river
that has sweet mists and steep banks
to bear Ignacio’s body, and let him be lost
without hearing the double snort of the bulls.
Let him be lost in the moon’s round bullring
that imitates, new, a bull stilled by pain.
let him be lost in the night with no singing of fish
and in the white weeds of congealed smoke.
I don’t want them to cover his face with a cloth,
so he can grow accustomed to death that he bears.
Go, Ignacio: don’t feel the hot bellowing.
Sleep, soar, rest: even the ocean dies!
4. The Soul Absent
Neither the bull nor the fig tree know you,
nor your horses, nor the ants under your floor.
Neither the child nor the evening know you,
because you have died forever.
The spine of rock does not know you,
nor the black satin where you are ruined,
Your mute remembrance does not know you,
because you have died forever.
Autumn will come with its snails,
grapes in mist, and clustered mountains,
but no one will want to gaze in your eyes,
because you have died forever.
Because you have died forever,
like all the dead of the Earth,
like all the dead forgotten
in a pile of lifeless curs.
No one knows you. No. But I sing of you.
I sing for others your profile and grace.
The famed ripeness of your understanding.
Your appetite for death, pleasure in its savour.
The sadness your valiant gaiety contained.
Not for a long time, if ever, will there be born,
an Andalusian so brilliant, so rich in adventure.
I sing his elegance in words that moan,
and remember a sad breeze through the olive-trees.
Christ, I just realized that both of these poems are about death. (One about bullfighting and one about -- I think -- AIDS, but still.) The Lorca is the best English translation I've ever been able to find, but if you are a Spanish speaker, you can read it in the original Spanish here.
Emigration by Tony Hoagland
Try being sick for a year,
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you
and you sail on in twilight,
with the sound of waves.
It's not a dream. You pass
through waiting rooms and clinics
until the very sky seems pharmaceutical,
and the faces of the doctors are your stars
whose smile or frown
means to hurry and get well
or die.
And because illness feels like punishment,
an enormous effort to be good
comes out of you --
like the good behavior of a child
desperate to appease
the invisible parents of this world.
And when that fails,
there is an orb of anger
rising like the sun above
the mind afraid of death,
and then a lake of grief, staining everything below,
and then a holding action of neurotic vigilance
and then a recitation of the history
of second chances.
And the illusions keep on coming,
and fading out, and coming on again
while your skin turns yellow from the medicine,
your ankles swell like dough above your shoes,
and you stop wanting to make love
because there is no love in you,
only a desire to be done.
But you're not done.
Your bags are packed
and you are traveling.
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico Garcia Lorca
1. The Goring and the Death
At five in the afternoon.
It was just five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime made ready
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death and only death
at five in the afternoon.
The wind blew the cotton wool away
at five in the afternoon.
And oxide scattered nickel and glass
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard fight
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-pipe sound began
at five in the afternoon.
The bells of arsenic, the smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Silent crowds on corners
at five in the afternoon.
And only the bull with risen heart!
at five in the afternoon.
When the snow-sweat appeared
at five in the afternoon.
when the arena was splashed with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
death laid its eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
at five in the afternoon.
At just five in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels for his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes sound in his ear
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull bellows on his brow
at five in the afternoon.
The room glows with agony
at five in the afternoon.
Now out of distance gangrene comes
at five in the afternoon.
Trumpets of lilies for the green groin
at five in the afternoon.
Wounds burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the people smashing windows
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ay, what a fearful five in the afternoon!
It was five on every clock!
It was five of a dark afternoon!
2. The Spilt Blood
I don’t want to see it!
Tell the moon to come,
I don’t want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.
I don’t want to see it!
The moon wide open,
mare of still clouds,
and the grey bullring of dream
with osiers in the barriers.
I don’t want to see it!
How the memory burns me.
Inform the jasmines
with their tiny whiteness!
I don’t want to see it!
The heifer of the ancient world
licked her saddened tongue
over a snout-full of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
part death, and part stone,
bellowed like two centuries
weary of pawing the ground.
No.
I don’t want to see it!
Ignacio climbs the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He was seeking the dawn,
and the dawn was not there.
He seeks his perfect profile
and sleep disorients him.
He was seeking his lovely body
and met his gushing blood.
Don’t ask me to look!
I don’t want to feel the flow
any more, its ebbing force:
the flow that illuminates
the front rows and spills
over the leather and corduroy
of the thirsty masses.
Who calls me to appear?
Don’t ask me to look!
His eyes did not shut
when he saw the horns nearby,
though the terrifying mothers
lifted up their heads.
And sweeping the herds
came a breeze of secret voices,
ranchers of the pale mist, calling
to the bulls of the sky.
There was never a prince of Seville
to compare with him,
nor a sword like his sword,
nor a heart so true.
His marvellous strength
like a river of lions
and like a marble torso
the profile of his judgment.
The air of an Andalusian Rome
gilded his head,
while his laughter was a tuberose
of wit and intellect.
How great a bullfighter in the arena!
How fine a mountaineer in the sierra!
How gentle with ears of wheat!
How fierce with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling at the fair!
How tremendous with the last
banderillas of darkness!
But now his sleep is endless.
Now the mosses and grass
open with skilled fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood goes singing:
singing through marsh and meadows,
sliding down numbed horns,
wandering soulless in mist
encountering a thousand hooves
like a long dark tongue of sadness
to form a pool of agony
near the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh white wall of Spain!
O black bull of sorrow!
Oh hardened blood of Ignacio!
Oh nightingale of his veins!
No.
I don’t want to see it!
There’s no cup to hold it,
no swallow to drink it,
no frost of light to cool it,
no song, no deluge of lilies,
no crystal to silver it.
No.
I don’t want to see it!!
3. The Body Laid-Out
The stone is a brow where dreams groan,
holding no winding water or frozen cypress.
The stone is a shoulder to bear time
with trees of tears, ribbons, planets.
I have watched grey rains running to the waves
lifting their fragile, riddled arms,
so as not to be caught by the outstretched stone
that unties their limbs without drinking their blood.
Because stone collects seeds and banks of cloud,
skeletons of larks and twilight wolves,
but gives up no sounds, crystals, fire, only bullrings
and bullrings, and more bullrings with no walls.
Now Ignacio the well-born lies on the stone.
Now it’s done. What passes? Contemplate his form!
Death has covered him with pale sulphur
given him the head of a dark minotaur.
Now it’s done! Rain penetrates his mouth.
Air rises mad from his sunken chest,
and love, soaked with tears of snow,
warms himself on the heights among herds.
What are they saying? A stinking silence settles.
We are with a laid-out corpse that vanishes,
with a clear form that held nightingales
and we see it riddled with countless holes.
Who disturbs the shroud? It’s not true what he says!
No one’s singing here, or weeps in a corner,
or pricks his spurs, or frightens off snakes:
here I want nothing but open eyes
to see that body that can’t rest.
I want to see the men with harsh voices here.
Those who tame horses and subdue rivers:
the men who rattle their bones and sing
with a mouth full of sun and flints.
I want to see them here. In front of the stone.
In front of this body with broken sinews.
I want them to show me where there’s an exit
for this captain bound by death.
I want them to show me grief like a river
that has sweet mists and steep banks
to bear Ignacio’s body, and let him be lost
without hearing the double snort of the bulls.
Let him be lost in the moon’s round bullring
that imitates, new, a bull stilled by pain.
let him be lost in the night with no singing of fish
and in the white weeds of congealed smoke.
I don’t want them to cover his face with a cloth,
so he can grow accustomed to death that he bears.
Go, Ignacio: don’t feel the hot bellowing.
Sleep, soar, rest: even the ocean dies!
4. The Soul Absent
Neither the bull nor the fig tree know you,
nor your horses, nor the ants under your floor.
Neither the child nor the evening know you,
because you have died forever.
The spine of rock does not know you,
nor the black satin where you are ruined,
Your mute remembrance does not know you,
because you have died forever.
Autumn will come with its snails,
grapes in mist, and clustered mountains,
but no one will want to gaze in your eyes,
because you have died forever.
Because you have died forever,
like all the dead of the Earth,
like all the dead forgotten
in a pile of lifeless curs.
No one knows you. No. But I sing of you.
I sing for others your profile and grace.
The famed ripeness of your understanding.
Your appetite for death, pleasure in its savour.
The sadness your valiant gaiety contained.
Not for a long time, if ever, will there be born,
an Andalusian so brilliant, so rich in adventure.
I sing his elegance in words that moan,
and remember a sad breeze through the olive-trees.
Christ, I just realized that both of these poems are about death. (One about bullfighting and one about -- I think -- AIDS, but still.) The Lorca is the best English translation I've ever been able to find, but if you are a Spanish speaker, you can read it in the original Spanish here.