03.30.07
The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
The Fish
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside my boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
–the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly–
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
–It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
–if you could call it a lip–
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
of four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly into his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels–until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
1946
maryt
03.28.07
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Few writers who died so young have covered so much aesthetic ground.”
Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.
Two Poems by Rilke
maryt 
03.26.07
Anything Missing?
I
knew
something
was missing
before I went on
but no one noticed anything.
maryt
03.24.07
Some more fibonacci poetry
It
said
on a
big banner
“Bong hits 4 Jesus.”
Supreme Court ruled protection of
political speech not silly & meaningless speech.
based on a column by Chris Suellentrop “The Right to Be Meaningless and Funny”
maryt
03.23.07
Joe Hill’s Will
The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of
poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movement’s soundtrack.
Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University.
My Last Will
My will is easy to decide
For there is nothing to divide
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan
Moss does not cling to rolling stone
My body? – Oh! – if I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to live and bloom again
This is my last and Final Will
Good luck to all of you
Joe Hill
maryt
03.20.07
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
- Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia to parents of Chinese descent. He lives and writes full-time in the United States.
maryt 
03.15.07
Limericks for St Patrick’s Day
There was an old man from Cape Verde
Who captured a fabulous bird:
The nest that it built
Was lined with a quilt,
And the eggs that it sat on were shirred.
William K. Alsop
There was a young lady of Ulva
Who drunkenly said: ‘What a hulva
Party ya mizd,
Why I gozzo pizd
I saw more lil’ people than Gulva.’
Bill Greenwood
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
maryt
03.13.07
The Mother
03.10.07
Autumn day by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell
maryt:)
03.02.07
Il Postino (The Postman), film
Il Postino is a 1994 Italian language film directed by Michael Radford which tells the story of real-life Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and his relationship with a simple postman who learns to love poetry. It stars Philippe Noiret, Massimo Troisi and Maria Grazia Cucinotta.
Neruda won the 1971 Nobel Prize in literature.
Here is a poem of his:
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour, you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
maryt:)
