The Stillness of the World Before Bach

There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-Tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano line of the Passion
never in helpless love twined round
the gentler movements of the flute,
broad soft landscapes
where nothing breaks the stillness
but old woodcutters' axes,
the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter
and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
the swallows whirring through summer air,
the shell resounding at the child's ear
and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
the world in a skater's stillness before Bach.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Lars Gustafsson
translated by Philip Martin

Oysters

Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,
They lay on their beds of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
and philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
in the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from the sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Seamus Heaney, 1979

Dunes

Taking root in windy sand
     is not an easy
way
to go about
     finding a place to stay.

A ditchbank or woods-edge
     has firmer ground.

In a loose world though
     something can be started -
a root touch water,
     a tip break sand -

Mounds from that can rise on
     on held mounds,
a gesture of building, keeping,
     a trapping
into shape.

Firm ground is not available ground.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by A.R. Ammons, 1972

Growing Up

I am reading Li Po. The TV is on
with the sound off.
I've seen this movie before.
I turn on the sound just for a moment
when the man says, "I love you."
Then turn it off and go on reading.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Linda Gregg, 2011

Psalm

Veritas sequitur ...

In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down -
That they are there!

                           Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

                            The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.

                            Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

                            The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by George Oppen, 1963