Silet (by Ezra Pound)

Silet
by Ezra Pound
(from Ripostes, 1912)

When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen—ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.

It is enough that we once came together;
What is the use of setting it to rime?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather,
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time?

It is enough that we once came together;
What if the wind have turned against the rain?
It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again;

And who are we, who know that last intent,
To plague to-morrow with a testament!

Verona 1911

Tomorrow (by Alan Kleiman)

Tomorrow
by Alan Kleiman

Tomorrow never comes
but it’s here right now
in the living room with me
right next to my chair
the grayish one with the stripes
from the old days in the office
when sitting in the corner
in the cushy chair
was like taking a holiday
in Spain or Paris
even before the airlines needed
to whisk you away
to St. Tropez.

I had a trophy there
an award performance
remembered fondly by the walls,
the sheet rock
even the window
the fluorescent lights
that watched
from their off position
the whole dance
played out against gray carpet
a few chairs
and a table or two.

Well there it was in this setting
where those miraculous 40’s passed by
where the power of our life
was realized
where the strength of mature adulthood
took its mark and left it
in strength
as powerful as
we were going to be

That’s where we made our mark
That’s where we became
from our 30’s
boy wonders on the move
to our 40’s
boy wonders having moved life,
art, music, sex, divorce, children,
partnerships, new cars, new homes,
all these things took shape in the 40’s
so rich, so strident, so full
of taste buds’ delight,
yet filled with the lack of self awareness
that only hindsight brings to bear.

Here the 50’s redound
what do they speak of
but futures with a different sense of self
futures with a less powerful push
with less oomph than “I can do it”
Oh, I can do it, Oh yes,
but sometimes in the mirror
of my shadow on the walk
or just watching the flip
of a leg over a bike
I see the movement
of an old man
the stiffness that places
the fluid movements of youth
into old man categories
and straightens the curves
and makes the leg less swoopier
It’s a hint but it’s there.

We have all seen old men
and old women dance
It’s that dance that wants to audition now
for the new part that smiles
that says Polident instead of Crest
We see it as not bad or sad –
But changed so much
that even Autumn
can be tolerated now
even Autumn
that hurt me so in the past
that made me cry with its meanness
its stealing of the warmth
of the long days,
of the chirping nights,

That mean harsh Autumn
all dressed up in fancy clothes
never fooled me
I hated its mean endings
and its gifts
of ice cold gray streets
that Autumn, that same Autumn
comes now like an old non-friend
almost tolerable
sometimes showing
its good side
its sweetness smirking
behind its flash
and I can say, Ha –
Here’s old Autumn again –
He’ll be gone before the night is up
Let’s see his dress and his swank this year
because Spring, our beloved,
will be here before you can say blink.

Because with age comes speed
comes life as a roller blade wheel
that spins and circles
at its own momentum
with no rhyme or reason
and that’s how it is today
Some say hooray?

 

[“Tomorrow” comes from Alan Kleiman’s book Grand Slam, published in 2013 by Crisis Chronicles Press.]

 

Alan Kleiman’s poetry has appeared in The Criterion, Verse Wisconsin, Right Hand Pointing, Blue Fifth Review, The Bicycle Review, Pyrta, Eskimo Pie, The Montucky Review, Kinship of Rivers, Stone Path Review and other journals. He lives in New York City and works as an attorney.

The Code (by Robert Frost)

The Code
by Robert Frost
[from North of Boston (1914)]

There were three in the meadow by the brook
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay,
With an eye always lifted toward the west
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

“What is there wrong?”

                                     “Something you just now said.”

“What did I say?”

                              “About our taking pains.”

“To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower?
I said that more than half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.”
“You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his work.
That’s what the average farmer would have meant.
James would take time, of course, to chew it over
Before he acted: he’s just got round to act.”

“He is a fool if that’s the way he takes me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.
The hand that knows his business won’t be told
To do work better or faster—those two things.
I’m as particular as anyone:
Most likely I’d have served you just the same.
But I know you don’t understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your mind,
What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once:
I was up here in Salem at a man’s
Named Sanders with a gang of four or five
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider,
All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy
From a humped body nigh as big’s a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially
If by so doing he could get more work
Out of his hired help. I’m not denying
He was hard on himself. I couldn’t find
That he kept any hours—not for himself.
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:
I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind
And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.
I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks
(We call that bulling). I’d been watching him.
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield
To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with a rake and says, ‘O.K.’
Everything went well till we reached the barn
With a big catch to empty in a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job
For the man up on top of throwing down
The hay and rolling it off wholesale,
Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging
Under these circumstances, would you now?
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,
Shouts like an army captain, ‘Let her come!’
Thinks I, D’ye mean it? ‘What was that you said?’
I asked out loud, so’s there’d be no mistake,
‘Did you say, Let her come?’ ‘Yes, let her come.’
He said it over, but he said it softer.
Never you say a thing like that to a man,
Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon
Murdered him as left out his middle name.
I’d built the load and knew right where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for
Like meditating, and then I just dug in
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him treading-water-like,
Keeping his head above. ‘Damn ye,’ I says,
‘That gets ye!’ He squeaked like a squeezed rat.
That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck,
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the boys sings out, ‘Where’s the old man?’
‘I left him in the barn under the hay.
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.’
They realized from the way I swobbed my neck
More than was needed something must be up.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.
They told me afterward. First they forked hay,
A lot of it, out into the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle.
I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple
Before I buried him, or I couldn’t have managed.
They excavated more. ‘Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.’ Someone looked in a window,
And curse me if he wasn’t in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind
There was no one that dared to stir him up,
Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so’s not to meet me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn’t keep away from doing something.”

“Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?”

“No! and yet I don’t know—it’s hard to say.
I went about to kill him fair enough.”

“You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?”

“Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.”

*