R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 4

The First Poem is Honesty

I am finding it hard
to say goodnight
or stay quiet
after it's said again.
I want to know
your favourite composer,
(Chopin nocturnes
on rainy days?)
and whether when
you go to a museum
you rush for modern art or
Egyptian jewelry
and whether
you think the best way to
see a film is ins Kino.

So this goodnight
is temporary,
a way of prolonging
the newness of meeting
the stirring of feeling
the blue light drowning in wax
that does not want to die,
the wish that in his shutting eyes
circles your head like a butterfly.

A Girl in the East

'Beauty is momentary in the mind.' (Wallace Stevens)



Is it too late for beauty
after the sun falls into the ocean
between the two lights?
We stretch our days by the little lights
we have made for ourselves,
scenes we have created
in books, or walls--anywhere--
on stages and screens--
to pretend the light flows from us,
knowing the truth at every flash.


But silent words do not test me,
invisible scorn does not bite,
in books or screens:
they have no eyes or soul
to make me
look away, startled
by desire or fear,
or shame.
They delight me in their
sightlessness.

Not like her eyes which
test with every glance,
answering, concluding, soundless
measuring distance, risk,
--attention and inattention.

And what by nature she gives
our lights and works cannot give.
They cannot give.

Learning from Mermaids

She is gone
I knew her twin
She is gone, too.

All is breath,
Breath and fading
And ingathering light.

She was a wave
And waves loved her
And I Loved her.

All is breath
And ingathering light
And growing oceans

Life uses us
It uses us
It is never still.

She drifts like days

She drifts like days, and doesn't see how I
want the day to stretch to capture her
and bend back towards me. like a cocked sapling
to place her quietly on the coarse sand floor.

She drifts away from me on phantom oceans
rushing in her mind, and in her eyes,
her pale eyes. that see time without grace, men without promise, full of boasts and Everydayness.

She will say she cannot marry them
and cannot love what she cannot imagine,
an island created by necessity--
and disappointment so clear it has etched
a weariness on her beauty, that I cannot lift.

She drifts like days away and still a part,
so that the day will never capture her,
the sapling never bend in offering her grace,
her pale and disappointed eyes
never brighten
knowing she is now my fire,
my island against a turbulent grey sea.

17 06 2021

What He Knows

Every night she leaves me
sleeping, Every night she flies
higher and farther
than when I was a boy.
She puts dreams in my head
because my eyes are shut
and she is hoping I won't notice
she is missing, going home again.
But I do, my whole body quivers,
and knows her contempt, ridicule,
knows she has done
what she came to do,
taught me the greenness of spring
the sadness of love,
the smallness of time--
taught me to describe
the things that will disappear.
I occasionally wake, trembling like a bird,
when my body feels her deceit;
But now she has done
what she came to do
and the terror of her absence--
Only that is left.

Under Water

It is always serious with you--
always slightly tragic like
Italian opera, like Butterfly,
and I wonder if he said,
in an indifferent accent,
I love you let me touch you--
and because you wanted love,
wanted his touch,
only his, you said--
Oh yes, of course
you are my pleasure
and delight -- yes
I love you.

And he went away,
the words echoing in your ears
and the need pulsing Inside you,
the half lies
flailing like stricken insects
on the floor of your heart.

If anyone says I love you
she must have your voice,
For love drowns innocence
and breathes life into lies
and loving hearts know how to choose.

I Look for Your Name

I look for your name.
I imagine your deep eyes
tracing the words
I have written for you
written to give you
the breath straight
from my soul
words that must live in tokens
or said in whispered
satisfaction, seeing yourself
in the web of syllables
I spun to catch your deep eyes,
my miraj, my quiet
unhappy illusion
of you my own sound
reverberating you.

A Vow

I love you. But will not mention it again.
Love cannot see its image in the glass;
it uses others' dark insouciant eyes
and other people's beauty as its own
--grace, irony, and mercy--love has none.
Say the words, you are its target, and
its jape.
Or say that saying it creates a bond.
Yet nothing given in return would be
enough to make this obligation square.
Not lips, not promises, not paradise
would make us equals in the worlds of men,
and the generosity your eyes convey
says, 'I am alone in this; you cannot be
the oarsman where I'm travelling, or my guide'.

Roxanna

Την αγαπούσε αμέσως, είπαν

In Bactria he gathered round him
three thousand boys, and spoke in Greek.
The boys stared back in spite and fear,
'Give them time', a magus said.
Alexander said, 'A year.'

When evening fell three thousand girls
danced beneath the moon and faded into night.
And the Greeks drank, all but Alexandros,
and the old men sang dull songs
until the ground began to sway.

Roxanna danced towards him in kyklos
and semi-swirls. so close a silk strand
grazed his cheek.
He closed his eyes to remember her.
to memorise her --
thinking that by day
he could not tell one from another.
The old men began to murmur
'He loved her instantly"
but no one knew for sure.

And when he woke the girl was gone.
Drums were still, the amphora dry.
The harpists retreated.
Roxanna had swirled away
(perhaps into the sky)
a bright star to favour him in war.

At dawn an old priest came to him
with a blazing torch
they say was lit by Zarathustra,
He knew his thoughts
He felt the weight of love

'You will only find her
In the night, in sleep
In the deepest quiet
Of inmost thought
She can be loved
but never sought,'

When Apollo brought the sun
Alexander commanded three thousand men
To look for her among the Persians.
But he could not describe her.
And she could not be sought.

Each night therefore he thought her
--sometimes dancing
sometimes whispering in her own tongue,
and best of all in Greek.
The trances deepened
Until all Persia thought him mad.

La danse de la peste

Dancing is out of the question,
So you find your way
to the same position
you took when you saw
she frowned,

her eyes unstained by love,
not sure of you--
when touch would prove
her right, and she would fly.
You say, instead,
Some tea?

Do you like dancing?
not with me, of course
-- watching others dance?

As in ballet, trained bodies
touching without feeling,
moving within circles,
now close,
now apart far
knowing from the first note
the human tangle
of the final position,
What we cannot know.