someone told me all poets write about birds.

poetry sideblog / main @wizardysseus.

[weltenwellen]

Buttercream Joy Sullivan

[apoemaday]

There Are Mornings

by Lisel Mueller

Even now, when the plot calls for me to turn to stone, the sun intervenes. Some mornings in summer I step outside and the sky opens and pours itself into me as if I were a saint about to die. But the plot calls for me to live, be ordinary, say nothing to anyone. Inside the house the mirrors burn when I pass.

[ololygas]

Love Song, Henry Dumas

[dearminotaur]

— Smoke Rising from Ithaca by Faye George

[poem-locker]

Nathan McClain, “Odysseus, Delayed”

You stand in front of the airport window, watching the planes arrive, or leave. Or you watch the sky, dark now, smog where—weren’t there stars here before? Wait long enough

and you’ll find yourself alone with this evening—though beautiful women pass with their sons, boys like your own who you may never see again. Listen. A name’s called again, over the intercom.

He has kept everyone waiting; whoever he is—still not responding.

[baroque-art-appreciation]

Ulysses and Nausicaa on the Island of the Phaeacians, 1627, Peter Paul Rubens

Size: 207x128 cm Medium: oil, wood

[luthienne]

Wouldn’t you, if you could? Step out of your own story, to lean against a doorway of the Five & Dime, sipping your coffee, your life, somewhere far behind you, all its heat and toil nothing but a tale, resting in the hands of a stranger, the sidewalk ahead wet and glistening.

Danusha Laméris, from The Moons of August; “Fictional Characters”

[weltenwellen]

Tony Hoagland, from “Entangle”, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God: Poems

[paper-wounds]

“If I Am Killed For Simply Living” — Althea Davis

[aboutbirds]

The trees stand silent. As if to conquer time, for the sake of a thousand years. Purity was not the difference between water and beer. I found being unable to see the sky from between the trees suffocating.

Chika Sagawa, excerpt of "When Passing Between Trees," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

I step on a still-lit cigarette butt. Someone has already gone ahead of me. His failure, and her error, lay in the finding of something man-made in the discontinuities of this endless nature. As I walk into the woods, I become aware of the roaring wind. I find it hard to believe that Kashiwagi Shunzō, many of whose poems were just like the sound of the wind, was in love with treetops—as well as inorganic substances like the air and the wind. Rather, I imagine it was quite the opposite. He must have written those useless things out of a desire to depict people at the moment the wind passes through their bodies, or the sight of himself staring at whinnying ponies in the woods. Am I the only one who feels something akin to suffering in the poetry of this man who wanted to portray the human, stripped bare, but simply could not depict a person shouting this, and so instead wrote only echoes, only the tracks left behind by earlier passages?

Chika Sagawa, excerpt of "When Passing Between Trees," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

I made my way through the daytime in a haze, but when evening came, those wonderfully detailed spirits flooded my empty head and filled up all the spaces. In my dreams, the dead never aged, broken objects had shapes, and there were no gaps in either time or space. It is a delightful thing to have everything moving forward in the present.

Chika Sagawa, excerpt of "Like Fairy Tales," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

Perhaps the way poetry finds expression is by taking materials that had once been reflected into reality and returning them to the realm of thought.

Chika Sagawa, excerpt of "Had They Been the Eyes of Fish," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

Through the tunnel in the woods, following the telegraph line that stretches to the foot of the mountain Once again a childhood memory comes back to me The valley is dark, and it is cold O wandering voice You were right there Twilight chasing the merchants who cross the streets of melting snow A swarm of mosquitos circles higher and higher under the eaves Ah—won't you return. Right away In the form of joyful cries. Deepening the melancholy of the boy's day that shakes the mountains and seeps into the distant sky, all traces of people fade into the distance

Chika Sagawa, "Tree Spirits," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

A cloud has collapsed on the pavement Like the horse's white struggle for air Night, screaming and shouting into the darkness Arrives with the intention of murdering time Wearing a mask plated with light beams Lining up single-file from the window People moan in their dreams And fall from sleep to an even deeper sleep There, a stem that has gone pale Like an exhausted despair Supports the tall sky An empty city with neither roads nor stars My thinking is to escape That pitch-black metal house Steal away the glimmer of pistons And smoldering embers of noise Retreat into a shallow ocean Collide, get battered to the ground

Chika Sagawa, "The Street Fair," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

The cradle rings loudly. A spray shoots up, As if tearing off feathers. I wait for the return of those able to sleep. Music marks the bright hour. I try to complain, raising my voice— The waves come erase it from behind. I was abandoned in the ocean.

Chika Sagawa, "Ocean Angel," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu

[aboutbirds]

Distant peaks swaying like the wind In the orchard at the mountain base, bright white flowers bloom Paused in mid-winter, the hillside Is beautiful like a spread of silk over every morning Water flows noisily through my eyes And I wish to bow down in gratitude—thank you—to an invisible being But no one is listening there is no forgiveness Will the turtle dove cry in sympathy And echo my voice back to me The snow will disappear And laurel flowers and red lilies will bloom in the valley Creating a covering of green In the nettles, too, the slow summer will lurk And in our hearts How beautiful the flames that will flare up in a ring

Chika Sagawa, "Mountain Range," from The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, tr. Sawako Nakayasu