As is our custom, this is the ninth posting of poems and napkin art first posted on our Think in the Morning Facebook page.

 

Private Alamo

Tom Chandler

 

O’er the ramparts I watch you come

gallantly streaming, buckskin

cornlikker stinking of texas.

 

There must be a simpler way, I plead

to make this silly sacrifice.

Why can’t we all just get along?

Maybe we could offer to hate ourselves,

budget more flowers, build them a jetport,

import their sweaters.

 

But the walls of the mission are dark

tonight, damp with immaculate purpose.

You tamp the coonskin lid down tight,

wait grinning to guzzle pure fire

even as cruel Santa Anna prepares,

pomading his glistening hair in the mirror.

 

 

Adventures of Isabel

Ogden Nash

 

Isabel met an enormous bear,

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care;

The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,

The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.

The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,

How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you!

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry.

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,

Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.

Once in a night as black as pitch

Isabel met a wicked old witch.

the witch’s face was cross and wrinkled,

The witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled.

Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,

I’ll turn you into an ugly toad!

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry,

She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,

But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.

Isabel met a hideous giant,

Isabel continued self reliant.

The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,

He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,

I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She nibbled the zwieback that she always fed off,

And when it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off.

Isabel met a troublesome doctor,

He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.

The doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills

And the doctor’s satchel bulged with pills.

The doctor said unto Isabel,

Swallow this, it will make you well.

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She took those pills from the pill concocter,

And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.

 

 

The Way It Is

William Stafford

 

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

 

 

Cantares… (Songs….Machado’s Testament)

Antonio Machado

 

All goes, and all remains,

but our task is to go,
to go creating roads

roads through the sea.

My songs never chased

after glory to remain

in human memory.

I love the subtle worlds

weightless and charming,

worlds like soap-bubbles.

I like to see them, daubed

with sunlight and scarlet,

quiver, under a blue sky,

suddenly and burst…
I never chased glory.

Traveller, the road is only

your footprint, and no more;

traveller, there’s no road,

the road is your travelling.

Going becomes the road

and if you look back

you will see a path

none can tread again.

Traveller, every track

leaves its wake on the sea…

Once in this place

where bushes now have thorns

the sound of a poet’s cry was heard

‘Traveller there’s no road

the road is your travelling…

’
Step by step, line by line…

The poet died far from home.

Shrouded by dust of a neighbouring land.

At his parting they heard him cry:

‘Traveller there’s no road

the road is your travelling…

’
Step by step, line by line…

When the goldfinch can’t sing,

when the poet’s a wanderer,

when nothing aids our prayer.

‘Traveller there’s no road

the road is your travelling…

’
Step by step, line by line.

 

 

Half the People in the World

Yehuda Amichai

 

Half the people in the world

love the other half,

half the people

hate the other half.

Must I because of this half and that half

go wandering and changing ceaselessly

like rain in its cycle,

must I sleep among rocks,

and grow rugged like the trunks of olive trees,

and hear the moon barking at me,

and camouflage my love with worries,

and sprout like frightened grass between the railroad tracks,

and live underground like a mole,

and remain with roots and not with branches,

and not feel my cheek against the cheek of angels,

and love in the first cave,

and marry my wife beneath a canopy

of beams that support the earth,

and act out my death, always

s
till the last breath and the last
words and without ever understanding,
and put flag

poles on top of my house

and a bomb shelter underneath. And go out on roads

made only for returning and go through

all the appalling stations—
cat, stick, fire, water, butcher,

between the kid and the angel of death?

Half the people love,

half the people hate.

And where is my place between such well-matched halves,

and through what crack will I

see the white housing projects of my dreams

and the barefoot runners on the sands

or, at least, the waving kerchief

of a girl, beside the ancient hill?

 

 

Narcissus

David Ferry

 

There’s the one about the man who went into

A telephone booth on the street and called himself up,

And nobody answered, because he wasn’t home,

So how could he possibly have answered the phone?

The night went on and on and on and on.

The telephone rang and rang and nobody answered.

 

And there’s the one about the man who went

Into the telephone booth and called himself up,

And right away he answered, and so they had

A good long heart-to-heart far into the night.

The sides of the phone booth glittered and shone in the light

Of the streetlight light as the night went echoing on.

 

Out in the wild hills of suburban New Jersey,

Up there above South Orange and Maplewood,

The surface of a lonely pond iced over,

Under the avid breath of the winter wind,

And the snow drifted across it and settled down,

So at last you couldn’t tell that there was a pond.

 

 

Looking for Doorkins

Julia Bird

 

I started with Shakespeare. His alabaster lap

must, I thought, provide the ideal spot

for a cat the color of rain on stone to sleep.

She wasn’t there. Nor could I find her stretched out

in the chapel or curled among the tombs.

or tucked like a hassock underneath a pew.

The candle flames I saw were candle flames

and not the flicker of a feral, feline eye.

So now, you try. You play this game of hide

and seek. That squeak in the organ – was it her?

Is that her in the scratches on the Bishop’s Throne?

Stand by a stained glass window, count to a hundred

and perhaps you’ll see her padding by, her fur

a flare of green and gold and purple sun.

 

 

Smokers of Paper

By Cesare Pavese

Translated by Geoffrey Brock

 

He’s brought me to hear his band. He sits in a corner

mouthing his clarinet. A hellish racket begins.

Outside, through flashes of lightning, wind gusts

and rain whips, knocking the lights out

every five minutes. In the dark, their faces

give it their all, contorted, as they play a dance tune

from memory. Full of energy, my poor friend

anchors them all from behind. His clarinet writhes,

breaks through the din, passes beyond it, releasing

like a lone soul, into a dry, rough silence.

 

The poor pieces of brass have been dented too often:

the hands working the stops also work in the fields,

and the obstinate brows stay fixed on the ground.

Miserable worn-out blood, weakened

by too many labors—you can hear it groan

in their notes, as my friend struggles to lead them,

his own hands hardened from swinging a hammer,

from pushing a plane, from scraping a living.

 

He’s lost all his old comrades, and he’s only thirty.

Part of the postwar group that grew up on hunger.

They all came to Turin, to look for a life,

and discovered injustice. He learned, without smiling,

how to work in a factory. He learned how to measure

the hunger of others with his own fatigue—

injustice was everywhere. He tried to find peace

by walking, at night, down streets without ends,

half-asleep, but found only thousands of streetlamps

blazing down on iniquity: hoarse women and drunks,

staggering puppets, far from their homes, He came,

one winter, to Turin—factory lights, smoke and ash—

and he learned what work is. He accepted that work

was part of a man’s hard fate; if all men did that,

there just might be some justice in this world.

 

And he found new comrades. He suffered their long words,

he listened and waited for them to be over.

He made them his comrades. Families of them

in each house, the city surrounded by them, the face

of the world covered with them. And each of them

felt desperate enough to conquer the world.

They sound harsh tonight, despite all the time

he spent coaching each player. He ignores the loud rain

and the flickering lights. His face is severe,

fixed on some grief, almost biting the mouthpiece.

I’ve seen this expression before, one evening, just us

and his brother, who’s ten years sadder than him.

We were up late in the dim light, the brother studying

a lathe he had built that didn’t work right,

and my poor friend cursing the fate that kept him there,

bound to his hammer and plane, feeding a pair

of old people he never asked for.

That’s when he yelled

that it wasn’t fate that made the world suffer

or made the daylight spark blasphemous outbursts:

man is the guilty one. If we only could just leave,

and be hungry and free, and say no

to a life that uses our love and our piety,

our families, our patches of dirt, to shackle our hands.

 

 

Living With the News

W.S. Merwin

 

Can I get used to it day after day

a little at a time while the tide keeps

coming in faster the waves get bigger

building on each other breaking records

this is not the world that I remember

then comes the day when I open the box

that I remember packing with such care

and there is the face that I had known well

in little pieces staring up at me

it is not mentioned on the front pages

but somewhere far back near the real estate

among the things that happen every day

to someone who now happens to be me

and what can I do and who can tell me

then there is what the doctor comes to say

endless patience will never be enough

the only hope is to be the daylight

 

 

Nine Haiku

Matsuo Basho

(various translators)

 

Cedar umbrellas, off

to Mount Yoshimo for

the cherry blossoms.

 

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

 

Wrapping dumplings in

bamboo leaves, with one finger

she tidies her hair

 

The shallows –

a crane’s thighs splashed

in cool waves

 

On the white poppy,

a butterfly’s torn wing

is a keepsake

 

On the cow shed

A hard winter rain;

Cock crowing.

 

The banana tree

blown by winds pours raindrops

into the bucket

 

under my tree-roof

slanting lines of april rain

separate to drops

 

Awake at night–

the sound of the water jar

cracking in the cold.

 

 

A New Poet

Linda Pasten

 

Finding a new poet

is like finding a new wildflower

out in the woods. You don’t see

 

its name in the flower books, and

nobody you tell believes

in its odd color or the way

 

its leaves grow in splayed rows

down the whole length of the page. In fact

the very page smells of spilled

 

red wine and the mustiness of the sea

on a foggy day – the odor of truth

and of lying.

 

And the words are so familiar,

so strangely new, words

you almost wrote yourself, if only

 

in your dreams there had been a pencil

or a pen or even a paintbrush,

if only there had been a flower.