These Fevered Days

By Tao Yuanming

translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

A long time ago

I went on a journey,

Right to the corner

Of the Eastern Ocean.

The road there

Was long and winding,

And stormy waves

Barred my path.

What made me

Go this way?

Hunger drove me

Into the World.

I tried hard

To fill my belly:

And even a little

Seemed a lot.

But this was clearly

A bad bargain,

So I went home

AMOAKO BOAFO

By William Ward Butler

Grocery store carnations

arranged on a kitchen table—

call things what they are—they’re dead,

the flowers, the water only delays

their dying. Online, a biology forum

debates what constitutes death:

Tissue dies, someone writes,

and everyone agrees though not

on a definition. Theory of mind,

theories of everything—I trained

to be an English teacher for years

before I suffered under a principal

who warned me: pronouns are heavy here,

and I agreed, though we meant

different things, he was telling me

to avoid teaching a part of speech.

My friend had a hysterectomy

before the state could take away

his right to do it; more friends

married last year for the same reason,

rings bought with a promise

to upgrade them in the future.

I like mimicry in nature, eyespots

on a moth, though I recognize

that change is one response to brutality—

like Judith slaying Holofernes,

her sword passing cleanly through

the despot’s neck; when the people

of her besieged city saw his severed

head, they must have applauded,

By W.S. Merwin

Long before daybreak

none of the birds yet awake

rain comes down with the sound

of a huge wind rushing

through the valley trees

it comes down around us

all at the same time

and beyond it there is nothing

it falls without hearing itself

without knowing

there is anyone here

without seeing where it is

or where it is going

like a moment of great

happiness of our own

that we cannot remember

By Kyle Carrero Lopez

any way you slice it i was born for a good time

some of my primary interests include pomp

circumstance

occasion

and carousing

love a kickback and a kiki

very much love a tea

weddings

graduations

meg’s monday night birthday function i stayed at waaaay too late for a monday night

i’m mariah carey on qvc repeatedly describing herself

and everything she loves as “festive”

i’m andré leon talley specifying he wear a caftan

for his cremation

my dearest ellery said he can’t remember a boring day in his life

i’m free will agnostic

but with each conscious choice toward that ethos

the need for sleep

the need to labor

two little devils strapped to my back who synergize

to ruin quality time

just rude

needy

and greedy

depending on who you ask

i’m going to hell and all my girls are too

i’m afterlife agnostic but if some kind of something comes next

what else to call it besides the afters, the very last afters

and if my girls are there with me

i’m good

we’ll know who to haunt and do it well

CARL MOLL

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

By Ravi Shankar

Trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.

—Herman Hesse

When the railroad first came to the edge of the mountain,

men in buckskin breeches called it the “gravity road.”

They pounded on solid rock from dawn to dusk, dangled

off cliff faces in woven reed baskets to drive steel spikes

into stone with a primal, accentual, hand-hammered beat.

When the railroad first arrived at the sedge edge of prairie,

bison were picked off from their herds, sometimes to cure

into hams, skin for coats, or cull for bones to ship east

and market as fertilizer, glue, plates or umbrellas handles;

other times, they were shot just to rot where they dropped.

When the railroad first built a station on the city outskirts,

families gathered on hillsides to watch black smoke plume,

hitched horses and abandoned stagecoaches to whisper

about “Pullman Palace Cars” with velvet seats, brass rails,

gas lights, knuckle couplers, air brakes: five stars for a fee.

When the railroad first threatened the forest’s tree line,

shackled men with skin dark as bark and forced to work

in quarries and mines began to hack at stumps in hummus

with shovels. They left their lives in leaf fall and the roots

regenerated. Unlike us, forests grow slow, in no time zone.

When the railroad first swam into the camera’s viewfinder,

no train had used its timber ties for a span only the rings

of a tree might tell (but won’t). Listen closely to the trunk:

when our hurtling headlong is blocked, we need to change

By Rita Dove

for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday’s burned voice

had as many shadows as lights,

a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,

the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,

magic spoon, magic needle.

Take all day if you have to

with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege

has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

ALEX KATZ

By Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled

this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it’s necessary

AMRITA SHER-GIL

By Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

CHILDE HASSAM

By Dorothea Lasky

There are roses

And then there are roses

In the distance an edge of green

Long and wandering the branches

You will see a bird

Or maybe three

Time is a heavy circle

The circular head

Of the dandelion

Thought by many

To be a pesky little weed

Mighty little dandelion

Keeper of the secrets

And secret lives

Friend to lonely children

Symbol of the sun

Dandelion, my friend

Beware!

They are out to get you

They are out to get

All of us

Blow your seeds

Directly

To me

Blow your soul

Directly to me

AMRITA SHER-GIL

By Kai Carlson-Wee

We were living in a blue room, somewhere near

the coast. The trees were tall and green as sleeping men,

bent against the wind. There were blackberries,

apple farms, roaring waves of storms. Long December

foghorn nights, the distant tinny ringing of a bell.

We watched the ships go by, the seagulls flock

and spread. We stayed up late and read Neruda

in the dark, returning every nerve. So close it seemed

the other person’s body was our own. Eyes for eyes,

hands for hands, waiting for the other one to come.

It wasn’t beauty but a lack of time. We saw the stars

dissolve, the shifting range of blues against the peaks.

Mountains in the distance. Black hills. Moon. There was

a time, a period of days and nights before the end.