R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 17

Artemis

You will find this
lonely hunter because
you were made to hunt.
Thrashed by your mother
you climb into the lap
of unloving Zeus
asking favors, but especially
virginity, freedom
from the scavenging of men.
You guard this grant
jealously like animals and art
because once given the heart
can never be given again.
You evaded Alphaeus
by covering your face with mud.
You kill men with your golden bow,
plundered of the Kykoples.
You mock women and girls for
being seamstresses and wives.
And whom did you love--
Action? Orion? Bright Apollo--
or only the fawn, the bear
the radiant five horned deer?
Perhaps Artemis only, 'Great among the Ephesians'.

It can be said

Of all elements you are earth, not fire
that burns to be noticed--and much less rain
that drowns you with its power.
You are subtle and quiet, but not the air.

Slowly you teach me to be quiet and still.
You remind me of the grass in its silence.
the innocent stupidity of chirping birds,
the beauty of the gray jaguar prowling,
the suicidal skittering of red squirrels.

I am a wild-eyed wading heron.
I am always watching, never satisfied.
I want to soar above you and overshadow
your fields with my wings and wallow
in marshes and reed-land and shallows--

At night I want to nestle in the branches
of a cypress tree whose roots
plunge deep below the water into you
and rise up in knees and jolts of defiance.

Pastime

Along the roadside outside Suzdal
hundreds of Russians with woven baskets
are foraging for mushrooms, the kind
with gold tops and speckled stems.
It is barely dawn but the hunters know
how to begin a morning.
The birch and aspen are high from the ground,
organized in rows like guardians
over the porcini, beloved of the czars,
standing with dew on their helmets
elf-like and stubborn sons of the damp earth.
Mushrooms manage to keep secrets, though
hundreds of calloused hands want them out
of the ground, want them home for dinner.

The day we went to Beloostrov was bright and textured.
The leaves of the aspens trembled and winked.
If you are normal, you hunt mushrooms in Russia,
my friend says as we move past.
And I think of you and the way you keep
a secret, close to the ground, deep
in your eyes where casual hunters will
never think to look, or, trembling, care.

Theology

No more bedtime stories,
no more fairy tales.
Snow White in the forest
wasn't being nice.

Rapunzel in the tower,
punished for her crime,
pregnant by her lover--
wanting one more time

Gretel's own sweet mother
loved the taste of flesh,
(hers but more her brother)
more succulent than fish.

Cinder's blood abhorred her
not some foreign lot--
enslaved and then ignored her.
She gave as good as got.

No more bed time stories.
No more fairy tales.
If what you need is Fairies
Go find them somewhere else.

Zolotse

I see you in Petrograd safe and warm
In an upper room, a quilt your grandmother made
Around you—and pillows stuffed with Eiderdown--
Like the ones I nuzzled as an unhappy child
Between rosaries and penances.
They were mother and father to me.
They sopped my tears and cushioned my breaking heart.
When you left me standing on Pushkin Street you said
‘Which hand do I wear it on, the ring?’
Vision is destiny: I cannot see you and so
For four days you do not exist, and Thursday
You exist again. And you said, ‘When did you know,
When did this begin?’ I smile and say, 'Uncle
Take care of this niece who is made of glass and gossamer,
Who is a treasure buried to herself,
Who deserves all gold and whose thoughts are rare:
Do not let her wade into the deep, cold waters of the Neva--
Keep her and her shining golden band
And bangs and braid safe for her return. Let her lie
upon the cotton pillows of her fate: Do not wake her, please.

Manuscript

I will fall in love again
with my unfinished book
and you will find a boy
who says I need you
like an Arab needs cardamon.
And when you laugh
he will say your laugh
is like water splashing
over smooth stones in early fall.
I will only think of you at noon.
as I check my notes,
for nothing must go
unnoticed, not
even the splashing
of your laughter or
the vein that rises
from your thin neck.
In the evening you will walk
with him toward a coppice
where he will kiss you.
The book is finished
and the notes rise from
the page like a swarm of
dark angels to protect me.
.

What the Angel Said

"And steadfast as Keats' Eremite, not even stooping from its sphere. . ."



This wing is offered freely for your care
and for your crying. It is soft as down--
though strong, and to the loudest Men unknown.
God beckons you to vantage from afar,
He beckons you to mark the rising star
and like it be predictable as night,
and like it learn the discipline of quiet
days without the day's enchanting glare.
God asks a little, we are told, a height
to fix our minds on what we cannot own.
He asks us sometimes to outwit the night
by choosing stars to earth, and soul to bone.
A heat unbearable burns in the breast
Of every saint who cannot find her rest.

A Spring Prayer for Newlyweds

Dear Lord of heaven, barns, and sheds
Deliver me from newlyweds,
Or those engaged to plight their troth,
Deliver me from all their froth:

The insipid smile, the knowing glances
The private moments, looks askances,
Exclusionary conversation,
Rhetori-coital digitation.

The juices on display and foaming,
The foot beneath the table roaming
(Contact made, the little giggle)
The partner made to squirm and wiggle.

O! happy days, O! breathless sighs
O! pilgrim hand upon her thighs
and hers upon your chest going southward,
O! puckered lips that drive lust mouthward.,

‘And have you reckoned from afar
How very cute we think we are?
This mild display, these subtle actions
we offer to enflame your passions,’

They think and as their interest grows
They glare with gently furrowed brows
Into each others' hungry eyes
That say ‘Come joy, come paradise!’

Nay partners: I will not disturb.
My role is simply to observe
These things made public out of bed,
These customs of the newly wed.

Of a Poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez

for SI



You are not you
today; you left walking
beside yourself
going nowhere, talking
quietly with your eyes.
I wanted to stop you:
you are always leaving
and I am always talking
when you leave.

Last night you came to me
in words and your hand
was raised above me, wanting
to touch my face.
I looked for signs of you
in the morning.
It will be like this
from now on, a whispering
white shadow in the night air,
invisible as a dove
flying against the moon.

A Psalm of Rescue (144)

There will be nothing left
but the brown curls of dry roses
at the end of May.
There will be
not even a scent of you
on a shirt or towel.
The slatless benches
will be passed by,
and the question of flowers
will be answered with a pot.
Your weeping for truth,
my carnival of certainty--
It passes.
It passes like your shadow
in front of me,
or like your breath
when you speak
across from me.
I do not see your breath
or feel the prick of your
words on my cheek,
the rouge and deadly imprint
of my desire for you.