By: Sarah Kirsch
Accidents of Birth
Je vois les effroyables espaces de l'Univers qui m'enferment, et je me trouve attaché à un coin de cette vaste étendue, sans savoir pourquoi je suis plutôt en ce lieu qu'en un autre, ni pourquoi ce peu de temps qui m'est donné à vivre m'est assigné à ce point plutôt qu'à un autre de toute l'éternité qui m'a précédé, et de toute qui me suit.
— Pascal, Pensées sur la religion
The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?
— Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House
Spared by a car or airplane crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.
For I've been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I've also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world's gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
But it's not this random
life only, throwing its sensual
astonishments upside down on
the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,
not just me being here again, old
needer, looking for someone to need,
but you, up from the clay yourself,
as luck would have it, and inching
over the same little segment of earth-
ball, in the same little eon, to
meet in a room, alive in our skins,
and the whole galaxy gaping there
and the centuries whining like gnats—
you, to teach me to see it, to see
it with you, and to offer somebody
uncomprehending, impudent thanks.
Tenor
After Jean-Michel Basquiat
Crows
and more crows.
One crow
with a rat
hanging
from its beak,
sloppy
and beautiful.
Another crow
with its wings
plucked
empty.
I wanted
so much of today
to be peaceful
but the empty crow
untethers
something in me: a feral
yearning for love
or a love that is so full
of power,
of tenderness,
the words
fall to their knees
begging for mercy
like tulips
in wind.
I don't wear the crown
for the times power
has tainted
my body,
but I can tell the difference
between giving up
and giving in.
If you can't, ask the crow
that watches me
through the window,
laughing as I drink
my third bottle of wine.
Ask the sound
the tree makes
when the crow has grown
disgusted
with my whining.
After years of repression,
I can come clean.
I was a boy
with a hole
other boys
stuffed themselves into.
I have wanted
nothing to do with blackness
or laughter
or my life.
But about love,
who owns the right,
really? Who owns
the crow
who loves fresh meat
or the crow who loves
the vibration
of its own throat?
Everything around me
is black for its own good,
I suppose.
The widow,
the picture of the boy
crying on the wall,
the mirror
with its taunting,
the crows
that belong
to their scripture.
Can you imagine
being so tied to blackness
that even your wings
cannot help you escape?
About my life,
every needle,
a small prayer.
Every pill, a funeral
hymn.
I wanted the end
several times
but thought,
Who owns this body, really?
God?
Dirt?
The silly insects
that will feast
on my decay?
Is it the boy
who entered first
or the boy
who wanted everything
to last?
Mayakovsky
By Frank O'hara
1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!
then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.
2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
