Tag: Original Compositions

Verses From Jerusalem

On By JonathanIn History, Islam, Judaism, Orthodoxy, Poetry4 Comments

If I forget thee O Jerusalem—but how much do you, O Jerusalem, forget? Here
Is what you forget: all the lives lived and buried under your warm old stones, and
Stones that lie buried under newer stones, that give way to older cold stones,
Fenced and labeled, dead stones, an inner bark exposed to the air, the sap dried.
You forget too much, and not enough, O Jerusalem. If I forget thee—but how
Could I? You are lodged in me like the new old name of God lodged in the tongue
Of the mystic from Buffalo roaming your streets,
Like the crosses and the names sunk in the threshold of the holy Tomb.
Will you forget me after the dust of my feet has risen up into your air
And fallen east over the ridgetop settlements, over the bright waters of En Prat,
Over the high concrete walls, over dead forgotten cities in the desert,
Over Nabi Musa’s stark domes, over sad black tarps in the nomad camps?
What is the skill of your right hand, O Jerusalem? Gathering stones,
And in another time or in the same time, scattering them. Yet, in your left hand
Is remembering, rising up like scents in Suq al-‘Attarin, all your names
And the names within names in the many tongues
Pooling in your left palm, ephemeral, eternal,
But the right hand, it does not know what the left hand has.

 

September Beside the Potomac

On By JonathanIn Nature, PoetryLeave a comment

Persimmon fruit hangs sweet and heavy in the air-
Bottomland forest along the Potomac,
First leaf falls whisp in and out, acorns, walnuts
Scatter and plop to the sandied floor, soundings.
Cool breeze washes the warm dense scent of the river
At end of summer up to us, promise of change. Memory’s scent,
Of my own late summer childhood nestling in
The sun-warmed receding pools, focusing the gentle force of drawn-
Down cascades in the Piney River, sniffing in the little river,
Shivering as the sun got low in afternoon
And we got out of the water. Now, my little son
Reaches out to feel the great round bole of a silver maple,
Smiling, two vigors, connecting. Together, we take in the
Touch, the forest and the river’s wafting multiplicities,
Such lines of continuity, untamed worlds, wild rivers,
Seasons in their turns and turns and turns.

Two Poems

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

Lightyears

Stars’ embers on almost endless delay, reach us,
Their light caught in these faded folds of the hills,
Where old oceans rolled, then rivers wound, palimpsests tracing,
Old houseplaces now under ground set round by heavy limbed
Oaks, settling. The waters move on to the living sea.
The stars flame out in the infinite distance.
Somewhere a kettle boils, steam clouds shimmer by the kitchen window
In someone’s eyes for the last time before they will close in death.

Lines for Epiphany

The voice of the Lord is over the waters
And the water’s voice also speaks
Of the hidden mystery of all things in their suchness.
Out of the veil of the six dusts, swirling about the Feet
The Baptizer was not worthy to unshod.
Out of the blood spilled by a brother on the thirsty
Ground, dried, eternally heavy.
His voice rises, warm and steady.
Not with water, but with Fire…

Who Can Say What the Years Will Bring

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

Boukoleon

We skirted the fencing, no trace of official care
Here. Up above, marble framed portals,
For balconies long crumbled
Where the purple-robed gazed upon the Marmara,
Hang on, to the end of time, Constantine’s return.
Below, across this ruined threshold
The stench is strong. Human debris, traces, wreckage.
The years have not been kind,
The present years least of all. Behind us, tour buses idle. Dogs
Wander and loll. In this sunsick city for the
First time in days, grey clouds
Skiff down. The waves across Kennedy Boulevard
Lick the shore, slicked and black in the lowing light.
If there are any Byzantine ghosts here, they keep close
To the earth, don’t raise a sound. The walls are charred.
We leave as quickly as we came.
‘The future slips imperceptibly away,
Who can say what the years will bring?’ says Tu Fu,
Surveying a similar scene,
Knowing what all who wander ruins know. I bow
My head, trying to remember. Our years,
Spare and thin, meet with the ruins. We cannot
Remember.

Autumn

My body slips further and further along, its
Numbered days receding. This is always known—
We come forth in fear, so already close to death.
These gyres turn and turn, that river of flux flows
Me closer, how I start to feel it. The rot and ruin. Yet,
I gather flowers from the roadside in autumn, and am glad.

Poems, Sarajevo, Late Summer

On By JonathanIn Culture, Current Events, Poetry, Travel3 Comments

IMG_3647

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Three poems written during my week-and-a-half in the capital city of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Prose and photographic reflections on my summer in Istanbul and, much more briefly, Sarajevo and Belgrade, to follow at some point this fall. Photo above is from the eastern edge of the city, looking back to the west, the Hadžijska Mosque in profile.

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After an Evening at the Mejtaš Tekija

Do not ask for its use.
Let your eye drift, and settle, on the moon’s face.
Marigold and lavender, lingering.
The cool dark. In the distance, towards the sudden opening
Of the Miljacka, the pigeons sleep, and a dog barks.
One day, you will be. Taste: the love of God,
Evening coffee, how the streets wind to nowhere.
God, and love, and God.
How bright the flowers
Are tonight!

Tout est ailleurs

The secret of the world is not readable.
It cannot be traced in secret lines over the land
Nor lies it in rune and script, descried by
Skilled eye. There is no formula, no numbered
Code. Perhaps in all these things, and in the
Sudden dusk time flight of the swallow
You may hear the hints, if your ear is right
And the light of your eyes be good,
But the secret is not there. It is elsewhere.
All is elsewhere. When you know it
You will know, and you will not know. And that
Is all that can be said, after which
Let us keep silence.

Political Geography

Thin gray lines on the map, almost—almost
Indeterminate. Where men, and women, and children,
And loves, died, staking it. The realest of things,
And the least. Other lines
Get denser and wider as you get closer. These
Get thinner, until, at the place itself, nothing. Dig down
A few feet. You’ll find only the martyrs’ bodies,
Slipped into unmarked dust.

Poems, Istanbul, Summer

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

Spending part of the summer in Istanbul, and briefly in Bosnia. More posts from my time here to follow, but for now, some poetry that’s come out of my stay, nothing very refined, just jottings, for now.

Nocturne, Pera, Istanbul

Lights fall. Ten thousand shards of ten thousand voices
Of the ten thousand things, but now all I hear is a muezzin’s cry. Punctuation.
On the long shelves of the night, the volumes shuffle
And rearrange, waiting the next reader.
Tight taunt bodies move and move without, there where
Under Galata’s tower old Pera sleeps, some bright faced, others wasted, they spin,
No worries for old men in the slumber of the dead. The Mevlevi house
Lies silent, though the cats roam, and the Commentator’s spirit
Hovers, listening. In the heart of all this ten thousanded place,
Volumes are being written, and others turn to dust, I breathe it in,
As I wind back, return, my brief reverie listing. Make
The eroded scrapings my evening bread, somber, clear eyed and tired.
A bass line pulses my
Window, ever so slightly. My mind follows the metro stairs down, down
Into the storied ground, saints and sinner jostle.
A busker packs up, his coins jingle. The muezzin
Winds it down, another light goes out, the alley’s all dark. Signs
And significances, the bar hoppers and the Qur’an on the wind,
Yes, yes, so, dear city eternally departing, sleep well.

Route-taking on Uludag, Which was Once Mt. Olympus

Down from the spent mine tailings, over
The resurge of growth and green, snowmelt waters falling
The clink and chime of the sheep’s bells, and the sheep dogs
Scent me, growl and bark from across the low-slung junipers
Snaking down the slope. The dogs
Are in slow retreat, back towards the herd, moving up towards
The old mine, a late century wreck, scarring, broken stones, dumped, gashes.
Costs outweighed profits. Above the sheep, higher up, snowbanks,
Also in retreat, August only a day off. I swat flies from my legs, insatiable
Creatures, until I reach the ridgecrest, and the sweep of the mountain’s
Winds, a relief. Down below, nomads’ tents. The state, capital,
Our collective inhumanity, flit through my mind. The big gashes.
But a thousand years from now, those gashes will be gone, and the thin,
Eternal traces of shepherds in the mountains, summer snow fields receding,
Will endure. One day the world will change, and glaciers will again creep out
From these cols, swallow the marks of our mechanical sins.
I take comfort in the thought, and move on.

To the unknown Armenian woman pulled from the ruins of the Great Beyoǧlu Fire, 1870

Some of the bodies they found cisterned, waterlogging, still burned.
Yours, under the rubble buried, not even the
Hope of a refuge found. The place, known, but you,
Your name is erased for us. It too has burned up in the embers. Still burning,
Those flames, how many names, how many names consumed? Yes.
This world we stand on
Is built on the names lost and singed, its bones are the forgotten bones
Of the crushed down dead, ashes and dust and souls, the cementing.
The tram clanks down Istiklal, a rock band in tow, summer nights, and all.
No monuments with your name on them. Do
Those old cisterns, charred, no salvation for the wretched, still ring
With those other sounds? I wonder as I fall asleep, paces, perhaps,
Away, comfortable, my fires all grown old, and cold.

For John Berryman, an Imitation

Man color and noise its all washed out look
Pale like the skin under my hand under my breath yesterday’s
Peripheral memory logged and lost lost lost never worth keeping.
Shoot.
Yes. Henry yes I said your footsteps are still there. Yes Mr Bones.
Whats the good of all this noise under the noise?
Whats the good of this other speak slow-and-measured?
Why Henry wrote is the question and why you read
Let it man,
Let.

No Matter How Much I Write I Keep Coming Back to One Thing

On By JonathanIn History, PoetryLeave a comment

Our heart’s a crepe myrtle in the earlysummer heat gleam
Bright pink and purpled bits, folded into themselves and drifting
One two three slow seconds down, ground graved of fire ants languid. Yes.
I ease off the shoulder back onto the sunrotting coarse blacktop narrowing down
Muscadine and pine easing in, time’s suddenness.
I drove through the town I grew up in today… well.
We are vessels of decay, and none of our
Works will last. That’s the resounding message in the lay of this land, let me tell you.
Even our memory, the memory of our bones and our blood and the broken banners
Of our fathers and our fathers’ fathers, it’s split to nothing and wasting away,
Its own weight and the weight of the sins of the world. With every hurricane
Another empty space. Ten years, twenty, even the shards of bricks will be swallowed.
I turn my heart to the sun burning off in the west. October comes, and the last bit of color
Is gone. The leaves turn brown, and cling to the weary limbs. Metaphor? It’s so much
Deeper than that, man. All our lives are ruins, return, and red with sword and speech.
Some of us have worse ruins than others. These innerscapes of history—God how
I wish I could escape that word—are the brown leaves clinging, the crepe myrtle heart,
The swathe of the storm, the hidden cotton rows secret,
Our forefathers’ and mothers’ sweat and sins, our birth and others’ scarred redemption.

Sweeney’s Dream Flight to the Juniper Tree of the Furthest Limit

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

A somewhat apologetic note to the reader: the following is an experiment on my part; what little poetry I’ve published here has been rather different. Written deep in the night in a bit of a blur with all the perhaps too obvious (or not) echos and influences whirling about in my head, and polished up in the morning, which is how these things usually come to be, I suppose. Enjoy.

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When you sleep into the dream world, you might—might—see me. Spit three times in your left
Hand—or is it the right one?—and make sure. Abjure.
Wake it up, lit. Take your heart’s writ, tear, and sprinkle
The bits of the words on the tip of your tongue, encausticate them. Honey’s a fix, sure, but
Some wounds, they only take their mirrored selves—a lesson?
Others, warm milk and honey, perhaps. The bees, they know, ask ‘em, but take mind,
They’re liable to sting, even, perhaps, in a dream. Or not.
If you wake up, and you’re already smiling, take it as a token,
A very good sign. Not the sort that leaves you flat-backed and singed—not that good.
St. Patrick’s Purgatory, the wet stones traprock, blink and you’ll miss them, the good folk there—
Well, he said. Some days sure it don’t rain. Though this damp don’t help your cold none, son.
Cut and burn, your labors pass. Wind on the weary uplands, up and out.
What you saw, anyway, was me in the stars, swinging the scythe, harvesting
Sounds and portents. Now we’re away on the far ends, the utmost limit,
And a scraggly juniper tree at the start of old field succession, digging roots
Into the old star stuff, left alone. The heavens. Man, it’s deep, deep I say.
Straight from that hunkered down isle within an isle, to that bower, I took, mad Sweeney beside,
And sheared all day, found rest under that tree. Sweeney flew on. Now, stick around, we’ll
See all that, and see what we see, so. Prop your eyes open, sleep, and dream.

Salt Marsh Cosmology

On By JonathanIn Nature, Poetry1 Comment

Sitting here afloat, pockmarked and saltstreaked cordgrass
Shivering up in the gathering morning heat,
I search for a word for the waters under me.
Creek, the map says, but flowing up,
Against the world’s plane,
Reached by the moon, hard to believe,
Like the best things that also are true.
I listen.
Everywhere, motion and sound, just above silence—
An infinite city in reduced scale, plunging
The five or six feet down in the turbid flow, then into
The mud, the worn-away of the ages,
Ancient Appalachians crumbled,
Creatures great and small alive in the bubbling wash,
The ten thousand things circling in and out.
I hover overhead.
I’d say I’ll withdraw, but there is no real away,
Only a slight difference of distance.
Every moment, earth, under
Moon, self, triangulated, over, below
The waters. Here, and everywhere.