only your savage heart

This poem is also for Lan Wangji, and for Wei Wuxian, and for my extraordinarily talented friend helcinda, who just posted her phenomenal vid album, The Black Parade: an Untamed Vid Album. It's a masterpiece, and I honestly don't have words for how good it is, or for how many times it has made me cry and clutch my heart with feelings. So, in honor of those feelings, here's some Pablo Neruda. I post a lot of Neruda, but let's be honest: he wrote some of the very best love poetry in any language, and I always spend at least a couple of hours narrowing down my choices. This seemed like the right one, today. ♥

De las estrellas que admiré, mojadas
por ríos y rocíos diferentes,
yo no escogí sino la que yo amaba
y desde entonces duermo con la noche.

De la ola, una ola y otra ola,
verde mar, verde frío, rama verde,
yo no escogí sino una sola ola:
la ola indivisible de tu cuerpo.

Todos las gotas, todas las raíces,
todos los hilos de la luz vinieron,
me vinieron a ver tarde o temprano.

Yo quise para mí tu cabellera.
Y de todos los dones de mi patria
sólo escogí tu corazón salvaje.


Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), XLVI from Cien sonetos de amor, or One Hundred Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

begin

It's my birthday! I turn thirty-five today, not completely in isolation: I'm going out for a long walk this afternoon to pick up the lemon meringue pie I ordered from a local family-owned bakery that's still open for pick-up orders, and I have plans for a small, low-key party on zoom tonight with some friends and family. I read some fic this morning, and then a bunch of poetry, and although it's fairly overcast, it's also fairly warm, and the sun is peaking out through the clouds. There are still a lot of things worth celebrating.

For almost all of the last thirteen years, I've posted poems by either Auden or Donne—two of my very favorite, best beloved, and remarkably prolific poets—on my birthday. I haven't run out of either Auden or Donne poems (as witness the fact that I already posted a Donne poem earlier this month), but I think it's time to change the tradition. Starting this year, I will be posting poems on my birthday by new-to-me poets, or at least by poets I haven't posted before. We'll see how long this plan lasts (you never know), but let's give it a try. Here's Linda Pastan:

For Anna

Let every tree
burst into blossom
whatever the season.
Let the snow melt
mild as milk
and the new rain wash
the gutters clean
of last year's
prophecies.
Let the guns sweep out
their chambers
and the criminals doze
dreaming themselves
back to infancy.
Let the sailors throw
their crisp white caps
as high as they can
which like so many doves
will return to the ark
with lilacs.
Let the frogs turn
into princes,
the princes to frogs.
Let the madrigals,
let the musical croakings
begin.

—Linda Pastan (b. 1932), "Proclamation at a Birth" from Carnival Evening, 1998, and posted on The Writer's Almanac on April 14, 2012.

let my words turn into sparks

It's April 30, which means that this is the last poem of the month. Time is kind of weird, right? This is not an April poem, or even a spring poem; it's actually a Yom Kippur poem, which is maybe a little weird to post in April. But for me, this time of year is always a transitional moment, and I think this poem is the right one to be going on with, this year.

On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?

How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.

—Marge Piercy (b. 1936), "The birthday of the world," from The Crooked Inheritance (2006), although in this case from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 (2012).

See you next year, friends. ♥

armed robbery boots

I almost posted Edna St. Vincent Millay today, but then I decided to post this one, instead. It's sort of startling that I've never posted this poem before.

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it

you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don't set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door

—Denver Butson, "What She Was Wearing," from Illegible Address, 2004.

l-o-v-e

It's my birthday, y'all! Have some Auden.

In an upper room at midnight
See us gathered on behalf
Of love according to the gospel
Of the radio-phonograph.

Lou is telling Anne what Molly
Said to Mark behind her back;
Jack likes Jill who worships George
Who has the hots for Jack.

Catechumens make their entrance;
Steep enthusiastic eyes
Flicker after tits and baskets;
Someone vomits; someone cries.

Willy cannot bear his father,
Lilian is afraid of kids;
The Love that rules the sun and stars
Permits what He forbids.

Adrian's pleasure-loving dachshund
In a sinner's lap lies curled;
Drunken absent-minded fingers
Pat a sinless world.

Who is Jenny lying to
In her call, Collect, to Rome?
The Love that made her out of nothing
Tells me to go home.

But that Miss Number in the corner
Playing hard to get. . . .
I am sorry I'm not sorry . . .
Make me chaste, Lord, but not yet.

—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), 'The Love Feast', May 1948.

Oh, Wystan.