Bronzes

Carl Sandburg

I The bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointments for dinner and matineés and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by I have seen the general dare the combers come closer And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs and guns of the storm.

II I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow is falling. Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet. A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight and into the dawn.

From “The Windy City”

Carl Sandburg

Winds of the Windy City, come out of the prairie,      all the way from Medicine Hat.  Come-out of the inland sea-blue water, come where they      nickname a city for you. 

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands,      come off the whisper of the silk hangers,      the lap of the flat spear leaves. 

Blue-water wind in summer, come off the blue miles      of lake, carry your inland sea-blue fingers,      carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes. 

White spring winds, come off the bag-wool clouds,      come off the running melted snow, come white      as the arms of snow-born children. 

Grey fighting winter winds, come along on the tearing      blizzard tails, the snouts of the hungry      hunting storms, come fighting grey in winter. 

Winds of the Windy City,  Winds of corn and sea blue,  Spring wind white and fighting winter grey,  Come home here—they nickname a city for you. 

The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders.  The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles.  The winkers of the morning stars count out cities And forget the numbers. 

May is Here

Giovanni Francesco Buonamico

This short sonnet, composed by Giovanni Francesco Buonamico (c. 1672) is thought to be the second oldest extant poem in Maltese.

Translated by Elliott Cotta, original Maltese and Arabic translation below.

May has come, bringing roses and flowers

Gone the cold, lightning, and rain,

The earth now covered with bouquet and bud.

The winds have calmed, the sea gone silent.

From heaven’s face, the clouds have flown

On stony hills sprouts the green

Every bird returns to song

Every heart fills with joy

There would be little happiness on this island

Were it not for the one who keeps her company.

Were it not for the one who watches over her

You’d cry with hunger, seeing her as a prisoner.

You are happiness, and our joy

Cotoner, light of our eyes!

As long as heaven keeps you with us,

At the end of the biting cold, he warms us.

Mejju gie bil-Ward u Zahar / مايو جاء بالورد والزهر

Mejju gie' bl'Uard, u Zahar مايو جاء بالورد والزه ر Aadda l bart, e Sceta, u 'l Beracq عدى البرد الشتاء والبرق T'ghattiet l'art be nuar u l'Uueracq تغطّت الأرض بالنوار والأوراق heda e riech, seket el Bachar هدا الريح وسكت البحر

Tar e schab men nuece e'Sema طار السحاب من وش السما Sa f'l'e Gebiel neptet el chdura صفا الجبل نبتت الخضرة Regeet t'ghanni col Aasfura رجعت تغني كل عصفورة U' f' el fercol cqalb t'ertema وفي الفرح كل قلب ترتمى

E qaila ferh kien fe di Gesira وقلة فرح كان في دي جزيرة li ma Kiensce min i uuennesha إلا مكانش من يؤنسها li ma Kiensce min i charisha إلا مكانش من يحرسها Kecu tepki el giuh phl lsira كيشو تبكي الجوع في الأسيرة Enti el ferh, u 'l hena taana انتي الفرح والهناء تاعنا Cotoner daul ta aineina كوطونير ضوء تا عينينا Tant li e Sema i challic chdeina تانت السماء يخليك حذانا Fl'achar bart i colna e schana في الاخر برد يكلنا يسخنا

These Beautiful Days Have Been My Ruin

Orhan Veli Kanik translation by Nil Kocaoglu

These beautiful days have been my ruin, In this kind of weather I resigned From my job in the Foundation’s office In this kind of weather I got addicted to tobacco In this kind of weather I fell in love I forgot to bring home bread and salt In this kind of day My addiction to poetry Surged in this kind of weather These beautiful days have been my ruin.

Spring

William Billington

When rosy-fingered Morning bright Unbars the golden gates of light, And heralds in the peerless king Of day, who leads the blooming Spring, His dearest daughter, o'er the land, Who flings from her celestial hand The gladsome moments, glowing hours, The diamond dews and rainbow showers, And sprinkles upland, copse and dell, With cowslip, rose, and pimpernel— When blossoms break from bush and tree, Why should man not blithesome be? When mountains doff their wintry white And don a garment green and bright, Roll from their breasts the vapours dun And bare their foreheads to the sun; When fields put on a fresher green, And birds in brighter plumes are seen; When gardens sunset hues assume, And orchards seem ablaze with bloom; When skies glow with a deeper blue, And nature all is robed anew— Let man, "the noblest work of God," Upon the path of nature plod, And let his nobler part the mind, Be roused to homage, raised, refined, In truth and love and duty drest, To bloom and bourgeon with the rest!

October Sonnet

Adrian Matejka

Even on the 13th floor of a high building, Chicago’s  wind winds its slick way through any unsecured  window on its singsong to the lake. It’s fine-tuned, 

perfectly pitched in this sinister season  of cackling jack-o’-lanterns & candy corns  nobody eats unless they’re the last sweets left.

Bags of fun nonsense for all the little ninjas  & ghosts. It’s true, I weep too much when  the seasons partition: snack-sized tears dropping onto 

tear-sized leaves swirling in the autumn  of my reproduction. Occasional receipts & parking  tickets, too, yellowed during their own windy migrations. 

Like the rest of us gusty apparitions, every  untethered thing ends up at the lake shore seasonally. 

Afternoon Rain in State Street

Amy Lowell

Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,

Slant lines of black rain

In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.

Below,

Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,

The street.

And over it, umbrellas,

Black polished dots

Struck to white

An instant,

Stream in two flat lines

Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.

Like a four-sided wedge

The Custom House Tower

Pokes at the low, flat sky,

Pushing it farther and farther up,

Lifting it away from the house-tops,

Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,

With the lever of its apex.

The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,

Scratching lines of black wire across it,

Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface

With the sharp precision of tools.

The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,

A chequered table of blacks and greys.

Oblong blocks of flatness

Crawl by with low-geared engines,

And pass to short upright squares

Shrinking with distance.

A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,

And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,

A narrow, level bar of steel.

Hard cubes of lemon

Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings

As the windows light up.

But the lemon cubes are edged with angles

Upon which they cannot impinge.

Up, straight, down, straight -- square.

Crumpled grey-white papers

Blow along the side-walks,

Contorted, horrible,

Without curves.

A horse steps in a puddle,

And white, glaring water spurts up

In stiff, outflaring lines,

Like the rattling stems of reeds.

The city is heraldic with angles,

A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable

And countercoloured bends of rain

Hung over a four-square civilization.

When a street lamp comes out,

I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds

To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.

Northumbria. A Dirge.

Thomas Runciman

Dirge the sorrows by time made dim: Seas are sullen in rain and mist. Regret the woes that behind us swim: Sullen's the north and grey the east.

Black boats speck the horizon's rim: The north is heavy and grey the east. They plash to shore in unison grim: The breakers roar through rain and mist.

Ah! the ravening Dane of old! Joys are born of time and sorrow. He was beautiful, cruel and bold: Death yesterday is life to-morrow.

The slain lie stark on bented mounds: Winds are calling in rain and mist. There's blood and smoke and wide red wounds, And black boats make to north and east.

Through murky weltering seas they row: Dirge the eyes their deeds made dim. Wives at their conning smile and glow, And hail them on the horizon's rim.

There's peace on low mounds and shallow dells, Yellow rag-wort and sea-reed grey, And thrumming and booming of village bells: Dirge the lives of that faded day

Winter with the Gulf Stream

Gerard Manley Hopkins -  the Victorian Jesuit imbued with a divine wealth of neologisms, alliteration and playfulness. 

The boughs, the boughs are bare enough, But earth has not yet felt the snow. Frost-fringed our ivies are, and rough

With spiked rime the brambles show, The hoarse leaves crawl on hissing ground, What time the sighing wind is low.

But if the rain-blasts be unbound, And from dank feathers wring the drops, The clogg’d brook runs with choking sound,

Kneading the mounded mire that stops His channel under clammy coats Of foliage fallen in the copse.

A single passage of weak notes Is all the winter bird dare try. The moon, half-orb’d, ere sunset floats

So glassy-white about the sky, So like a berg of hyaline, Pencill’d with blue so daintily—

I never saw her so divine. But thro’ black branches—rarely drest In streaming scarfs that smoothly shine,

Shot o’er with lights—the emblazon’d west, Where yonder crimson fire-ball sets, Trails forth a purfled-silken vest.

Long beds I see of violets In beryl lakes which they reef o’er: A Pactolean river frets

Against its tawny-golden shore: All ways the molten colours run: Till, sinking ever more and more

Into an azure mist, the sun Drops down engulf’d, his journey done.

Balcony sunset, November 24th, 2011

“We’re Not Going To Malta”

Richard Blanco

I often find myself blaming much of my discontent on the place where I live, though in my heart I know that’s not true, just as I know that moving someplace else is no guarantee for happiness. Still, I think we are “wired” to believe, or rather, hope that indeed there is a paradise somewhere waiting for us. This is especially true for me; as a child of exile, I was raised thinking someday we’d return to that paradise that my parents called Cuba. That desire often fuels my wanderlust and is the inspiration behind this light-hearted poem about my ludicrous quest for my Eden, my Avalon, my Shangri-la.

because the winds are too strong, our Captain announces, his voice like an oracle coming through the loudspeakers of every lounge and hall, as if the ship itself were speaking. We’re not going to Malta–an enchanting island country fifty miles from Sicily, according to the brochure of the tour we’re not taking. But what if we did go to Malta? What if, as we are escorted on foot through the walled “Silent City” of Mdina, the walls begin speaking to me; and after we stop a few minutes to admire the impressive architecture, I feel Malta could be the place for me. What if, as we stroll the bastions to admire the panoramic harbour and stunning countryside, I dream of buying a little Maltese farm, raising Maltese horses in the green Maltese hills. What if, after we see the cathedral in Mosta saved by a miracle, I believe that Malta itself is a miracle; and before I’m transported back to the pier with a complimentary beverage, I’m struck with Malta fever, discover I am very Maltese indeed, and decide I must return to Malta, learn to speak Maltese with an English (or Spanish) accent, work as a Maltese professor of English at the University of Malta, and teach a course on The Maltese Falcon. Or, what if when we stop at a factory to shop for famous Malteseware, I discover that making Maltese crosses is my true passion. Yes, I’d get a Maltese cat and a Maltese dog, make Maltese friends, drink Malted milk, join the Knights of Malta, and be happy for the rest of my Maltesian life. But we’re not going to Malta. Malta is drifting past us, or we are drifting past it – an amorphous hump of green and brown bobbing in the portholes with the horizon as the ship heaves over whitecaps wisping into rainbows for a moment, then dissolving back into the sea.

Afternoon Rain in State Street

Amy Lowell

Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,

Slant lines of black rain

In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.

Below,

Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,

The street.

And over it, umbrellas,

Black polished dots

Struck to white

An instant,

Stream in two flat lines

Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.

Like a four-sided wedge

The Custom House Tower

Pokes at the low, flat sky,

Pushing it farther and farther up,

Lifting it away from the house-tops,

Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,

With the lever of its apex.

The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,

Scratching lines of black wire across it,

Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface

With the sharp precision of tools.

The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,

A chequered table of blacks and greys.

Oblong blocks of flatness

Crawl by with low-geared engines,

And pass to short upright squares

Shrinking with distance.

A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,

And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,

A narrow, level bar of steel.

Hard cubes of lemon

Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings

As the windows light up.

But the lemon cubes are edged with angles

Upon which they cannot impinge.

Up, straight, down, straight -- square.

Crumpled grey-white papers

Blow along the side-walks,

Contorted, horrible,

Without curves.

A horse steps in a puddle,

And white, glaring water spurts up

In stiff, outflaring lines,

Like the rattling stems of reeds.

The city is heraldic with angles,

A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable

And countercoloured bends of rain

Hung over a four-square civilization.

When a street lamp comes out,

I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds

To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.

On this long storm the Rainbow rose

Emily Dickinson

On this long storm the Rainbow rose— On this late Morn—the Sun— The clouds—like listless Elephants— Horizons—straggled down—

The Birds rose smiling, in their nests— The gales—indeed—were done— Alas, how heedless were the eyes— On whom the summer shone!

The quiet nonchalance of death— No Daybreak—can bestir— The slow—Archangel's syllables Must awaken her!

Here is the Feather WarCast

Trevor Millum

In the South it will be a dowdy clay with some shattered scours. Further North there'll be some hoe and snail with whales to the Guest. In the East the roaring pain will give way to some psalmy bun.

Sunshine

Hervey Allen (from ‘The Sea Islands’) Showing its age in a gentle, evocative way...

Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat For nothing in these islands by the sea? No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields, Bleeding with scarlet juicy pith deliciously; And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; And white potatoes in grave-rows, With leaves as rough as cat-tongues, And pearly onions and cabbages With white flesh sweet as chicken-meat.

These the black boatmen bring to town On barges, heaped with severed breasts of leaves, Driven by put-put engines Down the long canals quavering with song, With hail and chuckle to the docks along; Seeing their dark faces down below  Reduplicated in the sunset glow, While from the shore stretch out the quivering lines Of the flat palm-like reflected pines That inland lie like ranges of dark hills in lines. And so to town -  Weaving odd baskets of sweet grass Lazily and slow, To sell in the arcaded market Where men sold their fathers not so long ago.

For all their poverty, These patient black men live A life rich in warm colors of the fields, Sunshine and hearty foods; Delighted with the gifts that earth can give, And old tales of Plateye and Bre’r Rabbit; While the golden-velvet cornpone browns Underneath the lid among hot ashes, Where the groundnuts roast Round shadowy fires at nights -  With tales of graveyard ghost, While eerie spirituals ring And organ voices sing, And sticks knock maddening rhythms on the floor To shuffling youngsters “cutting” buck-and-wing; Dogs bark;  And woolly pickaninnies peek about the door. Sundays, along the moss-draped roads, The beribboned black folk go to church By threes and twos, carrying their shoes; With orange turbans, ginghams, rainbow hats. Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily ties and cobalt suits, Smoking cob pipes and faintly sweet cheroots. Wagons with oval wheels and kitchen chairs screech by, Where Joseph-coated white-teethed maidens sit Demurely,  While the old mule rolls back the ivory of his eye. Soon from the whitewashed churches roll away, Among the live-oak trees, Rivers of melancholy harmonies, Full of the sorrows of the centuries  The white man hears, but cannot feel.

But it is always Sunday on sea-islands. Plantation bells, calling the pickers from the fields, Are like old temple gongs; And the wind tells monodies among the pines, Playing upon their strings the ocean’s songs. The ducks fly in long trailing lines; Geese honk and marsh-hens quank Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank. On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young, And the quick mocker catches From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches And trolls them as no lips have ever sung.

Oh, it is good to be here in the spring, When water still stays solid in the North, When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, And the wild wistaria puts forth; But most because the sea then changes tone -  Talking a whit less drear, It gossips in a smoother monotone,        Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth’s ear.