Somewhere there is a simple life and a world,
Transparent, warm and joyful. . .
There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl
Across the fence, and only the bees can hear
This most tender murmuring of all.
But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty
And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings,
When suddenly the reckless wind
Breaks off a sentence just begun --
But not for anything would we exchange this splendid
Granite city of fame and calamity,
The wide rivers of glistening ice,
The sunless, gloomy gardens,
And, barely audible, the Muse's voice.
~Anna Akhmatova
June 23, 1915, St. Petersburg
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
6/26/08
6/23/08
6/22/08
6/20/08
6/19/08
Some Men
Boys playing at being men and men and their pride and men with their wars and so many men willing to die and men and their valleys staring up and men on their mountains all alone and boys playing at being men with no idea.
Men watching other men cry and swearing that's not them and men trying to sleep
and men not sure of what move to make next and men listening to their children sleep and men unable to turn out the light or turn up the heat and men in their old age trying to get out of the chair one more time.
Men who build nothing but their remembering.
Los Angeles - 5/1/06
Men watching other men cry and swearing that's not them and men trying to sleep
and men not sure of what move to make next and men listening to their children sleep and men unable to turn out the light or turn up the heat and men in their old age trying to get out of the chair one more time.
Men who build nothing but their remembering.
Los Angeles - 5/1/06
6/16/08
6/12/08
6/10/08
6/8/08
6/6/08
6/5/08
Dream (Bonnie and Clyde)
We were in that hotel
by the ocean.
You and I in that bed
in that hotel room; the world outside behind
the curtains dipping in the late afternoon
breeze.
You buzzed about
with your things
to do list, your book with
all the places of interest, as if we could still pretend we had all the time in the world.
I looked up at
the tiled ceilings
so high,
the ancient frescoes
faded
and chipped so elegantly, you the countess of the crumbling villa of my mind.
And somehow we made it so it did not matter that they knew where we were. It did not matter that they were out to get us and we knew they would sooner rather than later. It did not matter that when they came for us it would be forever this time; we both knew we had put off the inevitable for as long as we could, passed through all the boundaries, our bodies together and apart, hand in hand hurdling head first through all the fears.
The doorbell chimed as the alarm rang out, and you, on cue, innocently went to unlock the door for the delivery men just as you once told me you would, for that was your destined role.
I called to you promising not to forget to make plans for our trip to the countryside, though we both knew there never would be one. But before I got up to shower, shave and accept our fate, I watched you and made myself remember what it was. No matter what happened now, as I watched you one last time, I swore that I would never forget what this room once was.
Then they burst through the door, guns drawn, murder and fire in the nozzles of their eyes.
Alone, I awaken calmly in my childhood bed (long ago converted into a guest room and office.) I'm not now an infant, there's no mystical return to innocence, the clean slate or tabula raza I've heard so much about. I'm just lying here in the bed I grew up in, me, who must now begin all over again knowing full well that there never really can be a beginning all over again for people like us...
Fort Washington, PA - 7/20/05
And somehow we made it so it did not matter that they knew where we were. It did not matter that they were out to get us and we knew they would sooner rather than later. It did not matter that when they came for us it would be forever this time; we both knew we had put off the inevitable for as long as we could, passed through all the boundaries, our bodies together and apart, hand in hand hurdling head first through all the fears.
The doorbell chimed as the alarm rang out, and you, on cue, innocently went to unlock the door for the delivery men just as you once told me you would, for that was your destined role.
I called to you promising not to forget to make plans for our trip to the countryside, though we both knew there never would be one. But before I got up to shower, shave and accept our fate, I watched you and made myself remember what it was. No matter what happened now, as I watched you one last time, I swore that I would never forget what this room once was.
Then they burst through the door, guns drawn, murder and fire in the nozzles of their eyes.
Alone, I awaken calmly in my childhood bed (long ago converted into a guest room and office.) I'm not now an infant, there's no mystical return to innocence, the clean slate or tabula raza I've heard so much about. I'm just lying here in the bed I grew up in, me, who must now begin all over again knowing full well that there never really can be a beginning all over again for people like us...
Fort Washington, PA - 7/20/05
6/3/08
6/1/08
'Star Valley' On A Sunny Day
To give account to none, to be one's own
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some things that
seems power but is a flunkey's coat...
~Pushkin
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some things that
seems power but is a flunkey's coat...
~Pushkin
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