Cabbage Hearts

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me When we came.

Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near and saw you waiting: When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me and took you apart: Into his quietness.

Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage ours for the moment Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind worms grew fat upon Your substance.

Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house, as a memory of you. But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels in the marred shadow Of your gift.

Before I knocked and flesh let enter, With liquid hands tapped on the womb, I who was as shapeless as the water That shaped the Jordan near my home Was brother to Mnetha's daughter And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer, Who knew not sun nor moon by name, Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour, As yet was in a molten form The leaden stars, the rainy hammer Swung by my father from his dome.

I knew the message of the winter, The darted hail, the childish snow, And the wind was my sister suitor; Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew; My veins flowed with the Eastern weather; Ungotten I knew night and day.

As yet ungotten, I did suffer; The rack of dreams my lily bones Did twist into a living cipher, And flesh was snipped to cross the lines Of gallow crosses on the liver And brambles in the wringing brains.

My throat knew thirst before the structure Of skin and vein around the well Where words and water make a mixture Unfailing till the blood runs foul; My heart knew love, my belly hunger; I smelt the maggot in my stool.

And time cast forth my mortal creature To drift or drown upon the seas Acquainted with the salt adventure Of tides that never touch the shores. I who was rich was made the richer By sipping at the vine of days.

I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither A ghost nor man, but mortal ghost. And I was struck down by death's feather. I was a mortal to the last Long breath that carried to my father The message of his dying christ.

You who bow down at cross and altar, Remember me and pity Him Who took my flesh and bone for armour And doublecrossed my mother's womb.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights, Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights, Till age snow white hairs on thee, Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me, All strange wonders that befell thee, And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet, Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.

All that is uncared for. Left alone in the stillness in that pure silence married to the stillness of nature. A door off its hinges, shade and shadows in an empty room. Leaks for light. Raw where the tin roof rusted through. The rustle of weeds in their different kinds of air in the mornings, year after year. A pecan tree, and the house made out of mud bricks. Accurate and unexpected beauty, rattling and singing. If not to the sun, then to nothing and to no one.

I saw my friend to the front door I stood in the golden dust. Momentous sounds issued From the little belfry close by. Tossed! Such a made-up word What am I, a flower or a letter? But my eyes already gaze grimly Into the darkened looking glass.

- Anna Akhmatova (А́нна Ахма́това)

I was surprised my quilt and pillow were cold, I see that now the window's bright again. Deep in the night, I know the snow is thick, I sometimes hear the sound as bamboo snaps.

- Bai Juyi / Po Chu-i

夜雪 - 白居易

High and low, wise and simple, all busily hoard up the moments of life. How greatly they err!

Therefore I have to the uttermost exposed the bitterness both of Substance and Shadow, and have made Spirit show how, by following Nature, we may dissolve this bitterness.

Substance speaks to Shadow:

Heaven and Earth exist for ever: Mountains and rivers never change. But herbs and trees in perpetual rotation Are renovated and withered by the dews and frosts: And Man the wise, Man the divine— Shall he alone escape this law? Fortuitously appearing for a moment in the World He suddenly departs, never to return. How can he know that the friends he has left Are missing him and thinking of him? Only the things that he used remain; They look upon them and their tears flow. Me no magical arts can save, Though you may hope for a wizard's aid. I beg you listen to this advice— When you can get wine, be sure to drink it.

Shadow replies:

There is no way to preserve life. Drugs of Immortality are instruments of folly. I would gladly wander in Paradise, But it is far away and there is no road. Since the day that I was joined to you We have shared all our joys and pains. While you rested in the shade, I left you a while: But till the end we shall be together. Our joint existence is impermanent: Sadly together we shall slip away. That when the body decays Fame should also go Is a thought unendurable, burning the heart. Let us strive and labour while yet we may To do some deed that men will praise. Wine may in truth dispel our sorrow, But how compare it with lasting Fame?

Spirit expounds:

God can only set in motion: He cannot control the things he has made. Man, the second of the Three Orders, Owes his precedence to Me. Though I am different from you, We were born involved in one another: Nor by any means can we escape The intimate sharing of good and ill. The Three Emperors were saintly men. Yet to-day—where are they? P'ēng lived to a great age, Yet he went at last, when he longed to stay. And late or soon, all go: Wise and simple have no reprieve. Wine may bring forgetfulness. But does it not hasten old-age? If you set your hearts on noble deeds, How do you know that any will praise you? By all this thinking you do Me injury: You had better go where Fate leads— Drift on the Stream of Infinite Flux, Without joy, without fear: When you must go—then go, And make as little fuss as you can.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution's power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.

It opens, the gate to the garden with the docility of a page that frequent devotion questions and inside, my gaze has no need to fix on objects that already exist, exact, in memory. I know the customs and souls and that dialect of allusions that every human gathering goes weaving. I’ve no need to speak nor claim false privilege; they know me well who surround me here, know well my afflictions and weakness. This is to reach the highest thing, that Heaven perhaps will grant us: not admiration or victory but simply to be accepted as part of an undeniable Reality, like stones and trees.

I wrung my hands under my dark veil... "Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?" —Because I have made my loved one drunk with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling; his mouth was twisted, desolate... I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters, and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain." He smiled at me—oh so calmly, terribly— and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?"

- Anna Akhmatova (А́нна Ахма́това) (translated by Stanley Kunitz)

Сжала руки под темной вуалью... "Отчего ты сегодня бледна?" - Оттого что я терпкой печалью Напоила его допьяна.  

Как забуду? Он вышел, шатаясь, Искривился мучительно рот... Я сбежала, перил не касаясь, Я сбежала за ним до ворот.  

You live near the river’s source and I where it has run its course. Day after day, longed for but not seen, and yet we drink from the same stream. When will this water cease to flow? When will my regret cease to grow? I wish your heart were like my own, so I could know I did not pine alone.

- Li Zhiyi

卜算子 - 李之仪

I was always afraid of the next card the psychic would turn over for us—                              Forgive me for not knowing how we were every card in the deck.

A man who, as Voltaire wished, cultivates his garden. He who is grateful that music exists on earth. He who discovers an etymology with pleasure. A pair in a Southern café, enjoying a silent game of chess. The potter meditating on colour and form. The typographer who set this, though perhaps not pleased. A man and a woman reading the last triplets of a certain canto. He who is stroking a sleeping creature. He who justifies, or seeks to, a wrong done him. He who is grateful for Stevenson’s existence. He who prefers the others to be right. These people, without knowing, are saving the world.

When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine unspooled a bit, I could breathe again, and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole forty-five minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty- five minutes back from physical therapy. She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang, because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me, or how her day was before this chore. Today, at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment, singing along to some maudlin but solid song on the radio, and I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.