PAGE F THE MONTH

January 2009

The terror of error
The error of terror
The terror of seeing
The error of being

 

TWO POEMS

by

Lediana Paja

Born in Korçe (Southern Albania) in 1980, now living in Boston,
her first collection, Nymph's Tears (Lotet e Nimfes), was recently published in Albania.

translated by Anthony Weir and the poet

1. THE NYMPH OF THE POOL OF TEARS

I am the Nymph of the Pool of Tears
Where you wash out your shame each night
And you trouble and stain my water
And you wait
And I wait
Until the swans hunch their heads in their shoulders
And a stillness settles on the pool
And you talk
And you sleep
And I, the Nymph of your sleep
Begin to renew
Your sodden body
With my tears.

 

2.THE TIME OF THE SAND-CLOCK

On the sands of time
fossils march:
their last parade.

Salute from the podium.
Jaws - triumphant - creak
as they grind old myths
with gritty teeth.

Crows have always fed on flesh,
and illusions destroy empires of illusion.

The sighing sand-clock has been turned afresh.

 

   click here for Albanian original

 

FIVE POEMS FOR LOUISE ERDRICH
by
Anthony Weir

1. SACRED

What is sacred
is secret -
which is why holy books
are no more
and no less
than literature.

2. DEVIANTS

tend to deviate in just
one respect; in all others
they are depressingly
conventional: they collaborate.
The same seems true of dissidents.
Almost every day I see and hear
the sleepwalkers, and feel
that I'm almost the only
person who's awake.

3. HOMO SAPIENS ELIMINATES
LARGE SLOW PREHISTORIC BEASTS
AND SINGING NEANDERTHALS

There was genocide in Eden,
naturally,
so we turned it
into an abattoir with
unmanaged theme-park.

4. GLOSS ON D.H. LAWRENCE's POEM, 'SNAKE'

The long, thin
invisible
snake-god knows
that a bigger sin
than pettiness
we need to expiate
is sentimentality
its twin.

5. DECLARATION OF INTENT

I will respect the stone
whether love
or nothing comes
out of it,
even if blood
comes out of it,

for my respect is moss.

 

 

NEW YEAR/PARASITE POEM

by

Anthony Weir
with apologies to Spiro Ilo and Lediana Paja
 

In the Beginning there was the Planet.
Then Paradise, then God the Parasite
(Never ever Paraclete)
Who bombed the Gaza Strip until the world ended.
There were false rumours of an iguana
Or python or something -
A pomegranate tree and
The sweet deception of knowledge
Inside the fig.
Camouflage of fig leaves, the birth of sin,
And God said
Adam, lie down in that hole in the ground.
And Adam lay down
And God poked him with his monstrous, scaly
Serpentine penis.
- What are you doing ?
Just a surprise for you Adam, don't worry, keep happy!
Adam laughs, excited.
Adam feels appalling and exciting pain.
Adam takes the surprise in his arms.
                        
Then there were progeny,
Cain, Abel and fratricide
And the bribing of God with burnt
Sheep, bloody, tattered foreskins,
And raped women stoned to death.
God dyed his beard (and pubic hair)
Blue, collected all his bribes
And counted them every night
Before he went drunkenly to bed with baby boys.

Then again there was a snake,
Followed by hyænas, jackals and wolves,
Gorillas, bears, and rats and all the fine animals
That Adam named Vermin.
And Holy Geese in flight without their innards
And pigs in dark, satanic concentration-camps.

And a golden bough
And a joker called Devil
And the pomegranates in bloom
And the earwigs in the flowers
And the mass graves forgotten
Till the dawning of the day of doom.
And the fire, the catapult, the arrow
The armour, the bullets, the steel,
The nuclear submarines (not painted yellow)
The interrogations, and
The bloody white cabinets
And the monumental monuments of killers
And occasionally their victims
In city squares -
Trafalgar, Tiananmen, Times,
Red, San Marco, Skanderbeg, Aleksanderplatz,
Concorde beside the bloody river -
And illusion.
Illusion (usually called Intelligence) grieves,
and stands bereft, pretending not to shiver
behind a bunch of plastic leaves.

 

 

MAXIM OF THE NEW YEAR:

The world is full of pots condemning kettles.
Poets only praise themselves.

 

DECEMBER'S MAXIM

Opprobrium is more trustworthy than praise.

 

NOVEMBER'S MAXIM

To get power over a living creature is to defile.
To possess is to defile.
- Simone Weil

 

OCTOBER'S MAXIM

The quickest of us walk about
with well-wadded stupidity.
- George Eliot

 

SEPTEMBER'S MAXIM

Sensible people are few and far between,
apart from those who share our opinions.
- La Rochefoucauld

 

AUGUST'S MAXIM

We try to make virtues out of the faults we don't want to correct.
- La Rochefoucauld

 

JULY'S MAXIM

Humility is not obedience -
nor is obedience humility.

 

JUNE'S MAXIM

The first step to Heaven
is to cut off your feet.
(after Rumi)

 

MAY'S MAXIM

Even the poor have more money than sense.

 

APRIL'S MAXIM

Love is
estrangement's
distorting mirror.

 

MARCH'S MAXIM

It's not what's going on that matters
but what's going off.

 

FEBRUARY'S MAXIM

Nothing that is guarded is worth having.

 

JANUARY'S MAXIMS

'Silence is always accurate.'
- Mark Rothko

'C'est en nous qu'il nous faut nous taire'.
- Louis Aragon.

more recent Maxims and Aphorisms can be read on the
weBlog

 

 

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making coffee

poetic work in progress >