Download Three Japanese Tankas

Grape Sherbet
Heart, We will forget him!
Rita Dove
Emily Dickinson
The day? Memorial.
After the grill
Dad appears with his masterpiece –
swirled snow, gelled light.
We cheer. The recipe’s
a secret and he fights
a smile, his capp turned up
so the bib resembles a duck.
That morning we galloped
through the grassed-over mounds
and named each stone
after a milk tooth. Each dollop
of sherbet, later
is a miracle,
like salt on a melon that makes it sweeter.
Everyone agrees – it’s wonderful!
It’s just how we imagined lavender
would taste. The diabetic grandmother
stares from the porch,
a torch
of pure refusal.
We thought no one was lying
there under our feet, we thought it
was a joke. I’ve been trying
to remember the taste,
but it doesn’t exist.
Now I see why
you bothered,
father.
Heart, We will forget him!
You and I - tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave I will forget the light
When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you're lagging.
I may remember him!
since feeling is first
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
I Am Offering This Poem
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Three Japanese Tankas
Ono Komachi
1
Sent anonymously to a man who had passed
in front of the screens of my room.
Should the world of love
end in darkness,
without our glimpsing
that cloud-gap
where the moon’s light fills the sky?
2
Sent to a man who seemed to have changed
his mind.
Since my heart placed me
on board your drifting ship,
not one day has passed
tthat I haven’t been drenched
in cold waves.
3
Sent in a letter attached to a rice stalk with
an empty seed husk.
How sad that I hope
to see you even now,
after my life has emptied itself
like the stalk of grain
into the autumn wind.
I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,
I love you,
I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in the winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,
I love you,
Keep it, treasure it as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or a hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe,
I love you,
It's all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,
I love you.
Jazz Fantasia
Carl Sandburg
Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,
Sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.
Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy
tin pans, Let your trombones ooze, and go hushahusha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.
Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-tops, moan soft like
you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a racing car slipping away from a
motorcycle cop, Bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps,
banjoes, horns, tin cans-make two people fight on the top of a stairway
and scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.
Can the rough stuff ... now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night
river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo ... and the green lanterns calling to the high
soft stars ... a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills ...
go to it, O jazzmen.
Same Song
Pat Mora
While my sixteen-year-old son sleeps,
my twelve-year-old daughter
stumbles into the bathroom at 6 a. m.
plugs in the curling iron
squeezes into faded jeans
curls her hair carefully
strokes Aztec Blue shadow on her eyelids
smoothes Frosted Mauve blusher on her
cheeks
outlines her mouth in Neon Pink
peers into the mirror, mirror on the wall
frowns, at her face, her eyes, her skin,
not fair.
At night this daughter
stumbles off to bed at nine
eyes half-shut while my son
jogs a mile in the cold dark
then lifts weights in the garage
curls and bench presses
expanding biceps, triceps, pectorals
one-handed push-ups, and hundred sit-ups
peers into that mirror, mirror and frowns
too.
Ode to My Socks
Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.
Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.
The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.
SIMILE
N. Scott Momaday
What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight
Sonnet #18
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.