Possibilities
Possibilities
Truths don't leap out of the darkness these days. Even the meteorite shower last night got me only half way to where you left off, at the "probably not." Though that seared through the atmosphere like the punctuation of a typewriter--you could feel the bump it left--I wasn't convinced.
I could sit here for a million nights and not know anything I most want to know, such as whether the New York Times freezes to your driveway before you get up to retrieve it, or if when I use one of the words in the dictionary for the very literate you gave me you'll stop to wonder what you're doing and I'll know that. If these are magical imaginings, they know their desires.
Will there be no more of love's enigmas of arrival, the way waves move outwardly when a boat docks inwardly, the way words pull time forward as they describe time backwards, the way subatomic particles know space so well they end up where they began, and we don't have a clue how that happens. We store our hope in a hypothesis we can't even begin to prove. It's saner than waiting for a letter from space, zip-coded something like *.*.*. Such a letter could blow us to bits. Why pull the rug right out from under myself all over again by believing you? I mean, why settle for certainty, or, in these days, even probabilities?
Look, the frustration of hearing time pass in the night by a little light altering its patterns of excitation, the frustration of saying something to you and not being able to see what it was I said, the frustration of feeling a thought I can't get my hands around, and thinking a feeling must have happened--these are what dreams bring us to--shaggy dog stories of what started out as a great revelation about stories: They end eventually.
I'm certain life is the story I see, or you see, or as anyone sees. But, love isn't a story, even though you and I might be.
Realizing that nothing I've ever loved has stayed put, even if I don't believe the myth of Jesus, I believe in some of the metaphors. "Do not work for the food that perishes." Metaphors are what's possible. At least I've got that nailed down, however it hurts.
May 2002.
E.M. Burke
The Bougainvillea
I returned to see the bougainvillea
take the land so madly, love couldn't be far off.
Great gnarled tendrils rose in the air
like explanations obfuscating everything.
Cool morning mist trapped in the branches
changed the key int he bird's throat.
Water hiding in the ditch beneath
rambled on about the pure nature of mud.
Scents of rose, pepper and lemon
evaporated out of the burnless fire.
Why say this is like something else?
It is something altogether something else.
November 2002
E. M. Burke
The Older One Speaks
Bothersome susceptibility to lips:
Attempting Ah's and living,
yet also like someone who wishes to be
forgotten, untyped, unwritten!
I understand myself enough to understand
Fear is feeling responsible for a child.
To my internal saboteur and a cold light
you are writing, if you see the light.
An epitaph: I was not what you wanted.
August 2001
E.M. Burke
Spider Poem
In the no-face of darkness
there goes on the spread
of star-like pale spiders
upon the death of the mother.
Then to return to the stone,
that chill, a reassurance
of one place on earth, on ground
that holds childhood in firmly,
its sure shocks and enormity:
of the chair by the window
to take up a season for years
the locus of change, fall,
and do nothing but watch
and listen to molecules move.
In a very few words
the soft wound of thinking
your piano makes
sings your grief.
Cars do not go anywhere.
Planes land in snow.
Buildings stand no better
than air, and some worse.
Or to crawl to the ledge,
let go, fall vagrant in air,
tack down threads in circles,
and weave webs, light years.
1986
E.M. Burke
Compliance
Whimsies lurch me into windows,
at dog-eared walls of April.
The nurses listen to my eyes;
they can do the tango.
I dance to anything that worries;
the postman hands me music.
I can walk straight if my bra does
to a clock that shimmies.
Paddling cross the morning
a bottle is my boat back.
A lady is escorted home;
she's gracious with a warning.
My guitar remembers being plucked,
but I'm too loved to care.
I want a trailor so I can travel
where my nightmares wake me up.
Time is mine when I have fallen:
It's written down "Who counts?"
I travel anywhere I want to,
except the known unthought.
2002
E.M. Burke
TRANSLATIONS from the Russian
And there my marble figure,
the face turned in the lake water,
stood, cast under the old maple
heeding the leaves' rustle.
And the light rain washes
its old cloying wound:
cold, white, though but wait ...
I am here, and stone-like grow.
1911
Anna Akhmatova
translated by E.M. Burke 1995
Poem
With a mere artless tune
Love wins, fraudulently.
Yet for some time, strangely,
You are not so gray and gloomy.
And when she smiled
In your house, fields, gardens,
Everywhere it seemed
You were free--and in freedom.
You were light taking of her
And drinking her poisons.
You see, the stars were tremendous,
The grass smelled differently ...
Autumnal grass.
1911, fall.
Anna Akmatova
Translated by E.M. Burke, 1995
Love
Now like a snake recurling--
That same heart that conjures;
Now like a dove it coos and bills
Its image in the barren window.
Now it strikes in the bright hoar frost
Like drowsiness from the clove pinks.
And doggedly, secretly it plods on
Out of a sense of dumb joy and peace.
It alone can sob sweetly.
And to the call of a lone violin, it goes
Only to recognize itself
In yet another estranged smile.
1911
Anna Akmatova
translated by E.M. .Burke 1995
Truths don't leap out of the darkness these days. Even the meteorite shower last night got me only half way to where you left off, at the "probably not." Though that seared through the atmosphere like the punctuation of a typewriter--you could feel the bump it left--I wasn't convinced.
I could sit here for a million nights and not know anything I most want to know, such as whether the New York Times freezes to your driveway before you get up to retrieve it, or if when I use one of the words in the dictionary for the very literate you gave me you'll stop to wonder what you're doing and I'll know that. If these are magical imaginings, they know their desires.
Will there be no more of love's enigmas of arrival, the way waves move outwardly when a boat docks inwardly, the way words pull time forward as they describe time backwards, the way subatomic particles know space so well they end up where they began, and we don't have a clue how that happens. We store our hope in a hypothesis we can't even begin to prove. It's saner than waiting for a letter from space, zip-coded something like *.*.*. Such a letter could blow us to bits. Why pull the rug right out from under myself all over again by believing you? I mean, why settle for certainty, or, in these days, even probabilities?
Look, the frustration of hearing time pass in the night by a little light altering its patterns of excitation, the frustration of saying something to you and not being able to see what it was I said, the frustration of feeling a thought I can't get my hands around, and thinking a feeling must have happened--these are what dreams bring us to--shaggy dog stories of what started out as a great revelation about stories: They end eventually.
I'm certain life is the story I see, or you see, or as anyone sees. But, love isn't a story, even though you and I might be.
Realizing that nothing I've ever loved has stayed put, even if I don't believe the myth of Jesus, I believe in some of the metaphors. "Do not work for the food that perishes." Metaphors are what's possible. At least I've got that nailed down, however it hurts.
May 2002.
E.M. Burke
The Bougainvillea
I returned to see the bougainvillea
take the land so madly, love couldn't be far off.
Great gnarled tendrils rose in the air
like explanations obfuscating everything.
Cool morning mist trapped in the branches
changed the key int he bird's throat.
Water hiding in the ditch beneath
rambled on about the pure nature of mud.
Scents of rose, pepper and lemon
evaporated out of the burnless fire.
Why say this is like something else?
It is something altogether something else.
November 2002
E. M. Burke
The Older One Speaks
Bothersome susceptibility to lips:
Attempting Ah's and living,
yet also like someone who wishes to be
forgotten, untyped, unwritten!
I understand myself enough to understand
Fear is feeling responsible for a child.
To my internal saboteur and a cold light
you are writing, if you see the light.
An epitaph: I was not what you wanted.
August 2001
E.M. Burke
Spider Poem
In the no-face of darkness
there goes on the spread
of star-like pale spiders
upon the death of the mother.
Then to return to the stone,
that chill, a reassurance
of one place on earth, on ground
that holds childhood in firmly,
its sure shocks and enormity:
of the chair by the window
to take up a season for years
the locus of change, fall,
and do nothing but watch
and listen to molecules move.
In a very few words
the soft wound of thinking
your piano makes
sings your grief.
Cars do not go anywhere.
Planes land in snow.
Buildings stand no better
than air, and some worse.
Or to crawl to the ledge,
let go, fall vagrant in air,
tack down threads in circles,
and weave webs, light years.
1986
E.M. Burke
Compliance
Whimsies lurch me into windows,
at dog-eared walls of April.
The nurses listen to my eyes;
they can do the tango.
I dance to anything that worries;
the postman hands me music.
I can walk straight if my bra does
to a clock that shimmies.
Paddling cross the morning
a bottle is my boat back.
A lady is escorted home;
she's gracious with a warning.
My guitar remembers being plucked,
but I'm too loved to care.
I want a trailor so I can travel
where my nightmares wake me up.
Time is mine when I have fallen:
It's written down "Who counts?"
I travel anywhere I want to,
except the known unthought.
2002
E.M. Burke
TRANSLATIONS from the Russian
And there my marble figure,
the face turned in the lake water,
stood, cast under the old maple
heeding the leaves' rustle.
And the light rain washes
its old cloying wound:
cold, white, though but wait ...
I am here, and stone-like grow.
1911
Anna Akhmatova
translated by E.M. Burke 1995
Poem
With a mere artless tune
Love wins, fraudulently.
Yet for some time, strangely,
You are not so gray and gloomy.
And when she smiled
In your house, fields, gardens,
Everywhere it seemed
You were free--and in freedom.
You were light taking of her
And drinking her poisons.
You see, the stars were tremendous,
The grass smelled differently ...
Autumnal grass.
1911, fall.
Anna Akmatova
Translated by E.M. Burke, 1995
Love
Now like a snake recurling--
That same heart that conjures;
Now like a dove it coos and bills
Its image in the barren window.
Now it strikes in the bright hoar frost
Like drowsiness from the clove pinks.
And doggedly, secretly it plods on
Out of a sense of dumb joy and peace.
It alone can sob sweetly.
And to the call of a lone violin, it goes
Only to recognize itself
In yet another estranged smile.
1911
Anna Akmatova
translated by E.M. .Burke 1995
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