sundee pome

This poem helps me remember how happy I am.
I love it.


Things I Didn't Know I Loved

by Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing


it's 1962 March 28th

I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

night is falling

I never knew I liked

night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

I don't like

comparing nightfall to a tired bird



I didn't know I loved the earth

can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it

I've never worked the earth

it must be my only Platonic love



and here I've loved rivers all this time

whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills

European hills crowned with chateaus

or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see

I know you can't wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people before

                        and will trouble those after me

I know all this has been said a thousand times before

                        and will be said after me



I didn't know I loved the sky

cloudy or clear

the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino

in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish

I hear voices

not from the blue vault but from the yard

the guards are beating someone again

I didn't know I loved trees

bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino

they come upon me in winter noble and modest

beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish

"the poplars of Izmir

losing their leaves. . .

they call me The Knife. . .

                        lover like a young tree. . .

I blow stately mansions sky-high"

in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief

                                       to a pine bough for luck



I never knew I loved roads

even the asphalt kind

Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea

                                                         Koktebele

                              formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish

the two of us inside a closed box

the world flows past on both sides distant and mute

I was never so close to anyone in my life

bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé

                                       when I was eighteen

apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take

and at eighteen our lives are what we value least

I've written this somewhere before

wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play

Ramazan night

a paper lantern leading the way

maybe nothing like this ever happened

maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy

                                      going to the shadow play

Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand

  his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat

     with a sable collar over his robe

  and there's a lantern in the servant's hand

  and I can't contain myself for joy

flowers come to mind for some reason

poppies cactuses jonquils

in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika

fresh almonds on her breath

I was seventeen

my heart on a swing touched the sky

I didn't know I loved flowers

friends sent me three red carnations in prison



I just remembered the stars

I love them too

whether I'm floored watching them from below

or whether I'm flying at their side



I have some questions for the cosmonauts

were the stars much bigger

did they look like huge jewels on black velvet

                            or apricots on orange

did you feel proud to get closer to the stars

I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't

  be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract

  well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to

  say they were terribly figurative and concrete

my heart was in my mouth looking at them

they are our endless desire to grasp things

seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad

I never knew I loved the cosmos



snow flashes in front of my eyes

both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind

I didn't know I liked snow



I never knew I loved the sun

even when setting cherry-red as now

in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors

but you aren't about to paint it that way

I didn't know I loved the sea

                            except the Sea of Azov

or how much



I didn't know I loved clouds

whether I'm under or up above them

whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts



moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois

strikes me

I like it



I didn't know I liked rain

whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my

  heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop

  and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved

  rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting

  by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

is it because I lit my sixth cigarette

one alone could kill me

is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow

her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue



the train plunges on through the pitch-black night

I never knew I liked the night pitch-black

sparks fly from the engine

I didn't know I loved sparks

I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty

  to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

  watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return



                                                    19 April 1962

                                                  Moscow 

a thousand points of light

i've realized lately that as bent on avoiding conflict as i sometimes am, there's a part of my soul that thrives on tension and divergent viewpoints.

when i say i thrive on conflict, i mean that arguments often scare me and make me want to spontaneously end conversations in order to find what feels like peace again, but without them i feel uneasy, as if i can't quite trust the people i haven't come into some sort of conflict with. and by that i mean that it usually feels to me as if people are telling the truth when they disagree with me.

maybe that doesn't make any sense.


this poem makes me think about the simultaneous peace and uneasiness that can accompany conflict (and also what it means to love, which i always enjoy thinking about):

After the Movie
by Marie Howe

My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.

I say, No, that's not love. That's attachment.
Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come to a day

when you're forced to think "it's him or me"
think "me" and kill him.

I say, Then it's not love anymore.
Michael says, It was love up to then though.

I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word.
Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist even in the
  murderous heart.

I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what is it?

We're walking along West 16th Street—a clear unclouded night—and I hear my voice
repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action, I used to say
  to him.

Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at
  someone you want to eat and not eat them.

Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby.

Meister Eckhardt says that as long as we love images we are doomed to
  live in purgatory.

Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.
I can't drink enough of the tangerine spritzer I've just bought—

again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck the stuff from
the hole the flip top made.

What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says.
But what I think he's saying is "You are too strict. You are
  a nun."

Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things
  of me even if he's not thinking them?

Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer and colder.
Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen,

we both know the winter has only begun.

not gonna do it

obviously, i have been lax about sharing my brilliant, scintillating thoughts with the two point eight readers of this blog in recent weeks.

don't take it personally.

consider the other niceties i've been neglecting of late:

1) wearing deodorant and make up (not the first time i've gone through a phase like this, probably not the last)

2) bathing daily (i'd say i'm on a 4-5 showers a week vit-a-meat-a-regimen)

3) changing my clothes every day (if, by chance, the armpits of the previous day's outfit do not stink, i might wear it again... and again....)

4) answering my phone

5) returning phone calls

6) covering my mouth when i yawn, burp, say bad words

7) pretending to be a reasonable and/or kind and/or sentient being when i am on a date

8) acting interested in the things other people have to say

9) chewing and swallowing my food BEFORE speaking

10) giving cashiers my phone number or zip code when they ask for it


BUT i haven't completely let myself go: i've lost four pounds in the last ten days, and right now i am wearing mascara (it's kinda smudged, but it should count for something).

what I did this summer

My past three weeks have looked something like this:

Blues
by Elizabeth Alexander

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

As you read this, I am likely stretching my arms out, v-shaped, as I lie in bed, willfully unrepentant.

my brain is clogged

This conversation with my 14-year-old sister made me laugh.

Olivia: What are you going to do when volleyball camp is over?
Zanna: I'm doing tennis...and maybe clogging...
Olivia: Tennis is awesome. But clogging is a gross word. CCCCCKKKKLLLLOOOGGGGG. See? It's gross.
Zanna: Well, when you say it like that....
Olivia: I don't even think clogging exists outside of Utah. In California, there's no such thing. You take jazz, tap, and ballet. That's it. Those are the only dancing classes. Utah invented clogging because they didn't want girls to do sexy dances.
Zanna: You're making that up.
Olivia: No I'm not. Have you ever seen the movie Footloose?
Zanna: Well... clogging is actually called "power tap..."
Olivia: laughs out loud, HARD
Zanna: What?
Olivia: Power tap. POWERTAP! POWER tap... Nice.
Zanna: You always laugh for no reason.

Return of the Jedi

Here's a lovely poem for you.
Make that two.
..because you've been so patient with me and are still, apparently, reading this blog even though I abandoned it like so many unwanted kittens for a few weeks. (Alie, please forgive that simile.)

Numero Uno goes out to Laner, who taught me about Naomi Shihab Nye eleven years ago.

Making a Fist
by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

Numba Two:

A Boat
by Jordan Davis

When I am sitting at my desk and I have feelings
It is like I am the lone passenger in a little boat
On a sunny windy day.  When we are lying down
And we have good feelings it is a speedboat skipping
Like a stone among the islands I feel we’re in.
When we are sitting in bed at five a.m. talking the light
On I don’t feel so good I feel like we’re on a ferry
For another six hours going back and up and forth
And down.  At least it’s a boat.  When I sit and talk to girls
Someplace I feel like I’m in a maritime museum.
When we walk together to the pool or park it’s like
I’m rowing you across to Banff, and when I
Take you in a car to your mother’s house, the Bay of Fundy.
At work the coast guard, walking there the merchant
Marine, me in my pea coat.

It helps me to know that there are so many ways to understand.

Leave the Dreaming to Me

When I was a kid, my family had a collection of less than a dozen records that WEREN'T classical music, among them: Sesame Street's "C is for Cookie"; a Carpenters 2-record Greatest Hits album; The Beatles' "White Album"; Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler"; Huey Lewis and the News' "Sports"; and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (those last two were late additions, I remember thinking my mom was AWESOME for buying "Thriller"... I don't think she purchased music not produced during her youth again until until she bought a Wilson Phillips CD in 1990). Another of those records was the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof, which I loved. Every once in awhile a Fiddler song pops into my brain, and yesterday I found myself humming "Sabbath Prayer," a beautiful song about parents' hopes for their children.

I've realized that, even though I'm nobody's parent, I often hope and dream for other people. When I see people with talents and opportunities that I don't have, I imagine what they could do with them (e.g. what I would do if I had them). I'm not sure how healthy or sane this is, but I do it. I bug other people all of the time about whether or not they are working toward the dreams or meeting the expectations I've invented for them. Some of these are big things (i.e. deciding that Juice should get a PhD and teach at a university) and some are kinda small (i.e. it's become very important to me that Nicole has a morning-sickness-free pregnancy; she's said that she worries about getting sick because she doesn't want to let me down).

I hope that I want these things because I want the best for the people I love the best, but it probably means I'm a busybody who needs to get a life.

This poem is kind of about hoping for something wonderful, but letting that hope take whatever form it will.

Chance
by Molly Peacock

may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held.  Mostly your life
will be voices and images.  Information.  You
may go a long way alone, and travel much
to open a book to renew your touch.

GOAL: I will try to make my vicarious hoping look more like this from now on.