for Viren
'I am sick of this life of furnished rooms...
You know my strange life. Every day brings
Its quota of wrath. You little know
A poet's life, dear Mother: I must write poems,
The most fatiguing of occupations...
I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me.
I write from a café near the post office.' - Delmore Schwartz, from 'Baudelaire'
Dear brother,
this massive mother complex could
not, would not, be worked through
via poetry or booze or rooms chosen
in which to scribble and scribe what
was, as you said, heard in your head
or wherever such are heard
Just to report to you from here, a post
office also near, an ignorant bird on
the escape now makes a music at any
rate as was the mourning dove an hour
ago singing on the other side of pane
knows when to tone in tandem to
poem same or similar each one little
inflections familiar to childhood fields
felt not seen heard not named as if
improvising those few notes available
to doves for late afternoon sun blocked
by curtains green
green too my room
10 years now forced
upon me filled
with poet scrip -
'green how I want you green'1
'not my hands but green across you now'2
'When green was the bed
my love and I laid down upon'3
these and more pay no rent if
only pages were money then
but so many dusty
pantheon-ed singers
hand wringers
bringers on 'of
harbinger dawns'2 dusks
decry what rusty radiators here
might also in their own way suggest
as their heated season nears end,
and mine, what may be known
if ever known of afterglow surmise
when third snows in fever weeks
give surprise for never guessed Bestowals
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1 Lines from poems by (in order of quote) : 1Garcia Lorca,2Richard Hugo, and 3John Wieners
2 'of harbinger dawns' a line, and a reframe, of Hart Crane's poem title, The Harbor Dawn
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Surmise when third snows in fever this provokes thought. This homage poem is brilliantly penned...10