R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 9

Asha

Knowing you cannot be caged
Knowing I cannot cage anything that sings,
I open myself to the energy of your wings
And the edicts of Mnemosyne, your mother.

But, Erato, I do not want to enrage you:
My ordeal is that you will not sing on cue
To me anymore, you will flit back
To your mountaintop, and frown
Down on me as I struggle to make a verse,
Finish a bloody stanza, and laugh
Behind a thin translucent hand,

“See: he is nothing, a human wreck and mess
Without me. His brain is clay unless
I carve rivulets of color, faces,
Sounds, improbabilities, and places
Into it. He loved me when he was younger
But now he has abandoned me for flesh,
Flesh deciduous. I may not return to him
For that. He uses words like “relationship”
Asks me a rhyme for “unconditional”
And “poly-amorous” great gods deliver me
From this abuse of Greek and Eros.
From this unplatonic fleshly fool.”

Dear Muse, just hold your fire:
I hear and love you. But Muses are liars.
Don’t stint and count your inspiration.
Don’t lecture her on Greek being best,
English a corrupt and bastard tongue.
She doesn’t care about you. She never will.
Aphrodite gave you me, not you to me.
But here’s the deal: It's your responsibility
To give me words perverse, my angel, or be disgraced
Among the gods that gave her me.
And gave me you and gave us poetry.

Sonnet XI: To a Sensual Girl At Sea

For A.G.




Yes, we will strike a bargain about this,
And predicate ourselves on what we say,
Avoiding the temptation of your lips
And tongue, and my hand tracing in its way
Across your flesh, the breasts I crave to taste and kiss.
I will not share the dream I had today
Of you astride me like the stern that flies
Beneath each wave.--Your tensed legs in a splay,
To receive the timbered mastery of our craft--
Within your rising on each wave a sound,
Within your falling and the turn-around
To ride again, to feel both wheel and shaft.
I will not speak my body's need for you
Knowing that all you know is false and true.

Hafiz: The Matrimonial Verses

Hafiz there is a distant grove,
different from the one you've known.
Here love is made for everyone,
not just for those the Book approves.

We call this place our Paradise
(all imams are forbidden there)
Only the pleas of lovers rise
to reach as-Sami's golden ear

Who enter here find gentleness,
not surah, ayot, reprimand
from bearded men, with muck for brains
untutored in Allah's command.

Who enter here find sheep agraze
and angel choirs with anthems sweet.
And here they find an earthly bliss
And in each other's image praise.

This grove is buried under brush
and thorn created by men lowly
imposing on the rest of us
the counterfeit of what is holy.

Who searches deep will find this grove
within his natural piety,
and he will taste the Prophet's love
beneath the expert's vanity.

One Art On Seal Harbour

"My favourite villanelle's for sale."
I just wanted to see if they got it,
A literary joke. How much one guy
In powder blue Bermudas asks.
Is it the one...you know near to...
The bridge? (I finish) No: she lost that,
Lost everything. Stoic really.
What did she lose. Her house?
Houses. Her mother's watch. Everything.
He sips, says the Pinot is young.
Well bungalows are not selling.
People with kids are not buying.
They come to play not stay (grins)
And touches my wrist for emphasis.
I guess, I say. She lost it years ago
Now (he says) he might buy a salt box
Of the right vintage as an investment.
Well not these I say in a darker tone
They're on a cheerless island years away,
Farther than Ile au Haut.
And here's the thing, they are only good
For losing not buying. For letting go,
Not playing in the yard. I see, he thinks.
Sounds like she's asking a lot.
Not for me. Not this year. What did you
Say this kind of house is called?
But the others are saying goodnight
moving from the bright gallery
Into a mist - clad island night.

By Moonlight

Come to bed the moon is flying,
The book is read, the dishes ready,
Neatly in the rack for drying.

Come and think about tomorrow
When you will be a holier woman
Than Heloise, and pure in furrow.

Come and lie and in the lying
Come and if you cannot promise
Come and share the body's striving.

In the middle of my dreaming
Lie and say you've come to touch me.
Speak only truth, feel only feeling.

Come and love me through the darkness
Of a night the moon's forsaken
While wolves chase deer into the corners.

Truth is uttered without speaking.
"Lie still," the gods command in whispers--
Tonight there is no room for sleeping.

Come and taste the human stirring
While the dead book floorward topples
And souls unspun rejoice in living.

There, in the lying and the forfeit,
In the shudder and the darkness
A truer light than any prophet.

At Time Out

We are sitting outdoors
Just as the heat breaks
And a timid breeze begins
To move between us,
Avoiding as much as caressing.

Your mother is here too--
Her eyes smile questions,
Wait openly for answers,
And the answers break
Like the breeze
To end the heat.
It is night now:
The sun has been wrestled to sleep
His gaze satisfied for another day.

We have come here
For understanding. My
Foreign words need to become
Familiar. There should be
No misunderstanding
By the light of this moon, No:
I want the haze of suspicion
To float by in laughter,
Emptied into the darkness,
Trailed by the right words,
The proper meanings of words.

I want every question answered--
Not with reasons or defenses
But in the reality of beauty
Which is what this moon reveals
And what we believe is true.

Outcomes

Fame's illusory wrote the therapeutes:
But I say show me a flute player
who gets bad reviews and toute suite
I will show you an unhappy flower.

A writer who lived in Juvenal's time
thought poetry was all all about rhyme
and didn't pay attention to meter.
Well, rhyme is very important.

An actor who'd read Stanislavsky
went to Russia to meet the maestro
who was then playing Hamlet in fact,
and fell in love with the sub-textual act

And then the horn player, undecided
between Satchmo and calls to arms
Got swept up in the War as a bugle boy
and Reveilled his way to death on the farm.

The priest said mass in passionate Latin
and called his black cassock monsignor soutane.
One day he thought I'll wear a red one
but he died and now is another dead one.

And here is a Crusader come from war
beside a gray mount and death so near
bargaining for time in his feudal mess
hoping life is as sensible as chess.

Three Cantos Ongoing

i.

You were saying
how you can never
come to this road again,
or these houses
surrounded by sand,
or to the broke-bleached walls
where you presided over coffee.
I do not expect you,
I do not wait for you here,
in a thirsty and obscene space
among dark and broken people.

ii.

A man cannot love
until he is stricken by
the love of others;
everything before that
is a child's calculation
that gratitude yields benefit.
It risks nothing, cheap or dear,
not even passion. For love given
cannot be returned,
does not fail,
cannot die a natural death
but hankers for replenishment
even when the seasoned mind knows
the source is empty, even in dust:
Sometimes, then, it is memory
trying to find real objects
among old symbols--
in letter, sound and art.
And sometimes it is fear.

iii.

Never return to this place,
its men bred out of the ground
in just two modes,
mud and dust--
or women's love tarnishing whispers.
The disapproving fathers
and loyal mothers. Love runs
for its life away from the
blazing sun of their deception
the parched and leafless
untruth of their truth.

Nadosha Unrecumbent

(For Richard Siken)



scolding finger
loaded and strict as an arrow,
call it danger or warning like
the approaching thunder,
never still
lighting the air,
a thin fist thumped,
a sum of histories between us
like spun marbles reversing
from forward motion to spinning
thumbward, no progress, action ever,
the same meaning the same:
the thieves in the cardboard
office listen to our laughter
like bats hung upside down
in a dark tree in January, black
as blood, laughter repelling
night recoiling like marbles
and if there's an end it is
too dark to see
and if there is an end
it is too bright to see,
but laughter cannot keep the bats
at bay, no they will swarm like gnats
across the rear window of an old Nash
these thieves, they will go for ears
and nose, eyes
and if you open your mouth
they will lodge between your teeth
everything you say
will come out gnats
nothing will be between us privately
oh milky goddess of derision,
not space not bubbles or foam
no fingers touching or taking
the circumference of your ankles
white roses bloom at night like flesh
things can still belong to us, so yes
Scheherazade cheat the sultan
with every breath you take

Hafiz at Ifthar

Now is fatoor and the stars
Leak through haze and the thinning spread of dust.
How the sun raises it to itself, then sets
It gently back to ground as the moon swells
And pastes itself against the dome of Ages.

I have drunk too much--mukhjikl--my shame,
But I cannot sleep on a full belly without
The sour taste of Syrah on my tongue.
And is there no one now to kiss me, to salve
My nethers with her touch or unguent ?

Once I danced at the docks while chipped boats
Rocked beside me. Once I sang qasida,
The plaints of Cordova, for girls and lonely زوجات,
Swirling as my voice punctured the soft Persian nights,
Rewarded in the flesh beneath my goatskin as I slept.

But now I watch the dust laid to bed
In slender piles along the road, and the sun,
Tired and sinking, and the evening star
Too dull tonight to show her deep ironic beauty.

The old men used to say, Sing, Hafiz, the songs
Of Persepolis, dance and spin like a wool-spinner.
But Hafiz the Watcher bears too much weight.

He has forgotten the girls, the lyrics of troubadours,
And the smell of a jasmine sprig in silken hair.
He will sleep until the sun regains its strength
And burns him awake to face this brightness alone.