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“The Art of Music” by David Shapiro
You were practicing the early art of memory.
You would bestow twenty per cent of your attention on me
Then shut your eyes. From time to time since the invention of print
The phrase “elephant debt” would force itself to your lips.Only one thing exists: the universe.
The others by definition cannot; how rigid out theory is.
Without the flavor of paint however force seems useless.
Needless to say the stage was set, but what followed?Together we will sing in octaves. And the hairy bushes
And bleeding hearts develop like twining vines. -
“The Rescue of the Seven Cities of Atlantis: A Diary of the Engineer’s Wife” (parts 2 & 3) by Alexander Chee
A Letter to Her Majesty in Restless Triumph
“There was no way to know of the success with which the myrtles would take to their new beds here. They bloom now, scent the air vigorously and the children pass along their rows, tempted to take whole boughs away. My queen, I miss the sound of your skirts in the halls of this home, and all our seven cities scattered now makes me weep to think of you there in Attilan, without me. I watch the mermen here, their huge tails scatter the waves to foam as they race each other out to where their whales wait for them,
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“The Rescue of the Seven Cities of Atlantis: A Diary of the Engineer’s Wife” (part 1) by Alexander Chee
The Exile’s First Morning
The city had fled its moorings in the night, to race the clouds that had surrounded it while we slept. Now we float above the beach, the bottom will shave the dune-tops off if we continue on, and of course the subway tunnels are all in danger of filling with sand.
A boy on the beach, makes from bathing, waves at me when our eyes meet. He rises and walks, shining and wet, stays neatly ahead of our shadow. Our guide.
In the chapel below me the vicar rides his stone horse in a circle while angels somersault through the air above him,
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“Crisis” by Gerardo Deniz (translated by Mónica de la Torre)
Evangelista Cicindelli had no dark side. In vain
they spoke to him about Teilhard de Chardin, about mysteries,
the mysteries of the sea,
of life,
unexplained by positivism. In vain
they tried to shake his stool enameled white,
they spat in the histological preparations while he was out having lunch.By the rocky edge,
the ruinous and unfinished mansion, without windowpanes
so you can face the threatening sea
and welcome the wind carrying saltpeter and saliva, excoriate
the water’s torso,
and welcome your name between the clamor of the wind, -
“The Diagnosis” by James Tate
……………Lincoln was sixty years old when the
doctor told him he only had forty more years
to live. He didn’t tell his wife, with whom
he confided everything, or any of his friends,
because this new revelation made him feel all
alone in a way he had never experienced before.
He and Rachel had been inseparable for as long
as he could remember and he thought that if she
knew the prognosis she would begin to feel alone,
too. But Rachel could see the change in him
and within a couple of days she figured out
what it meant. -
“Love Song” by Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by David Shapiro)
How could I stop myself
from meeting you? Should I rise
up over you to some other things?
I could happily make a roof
with someone abandoned in the dark
in some dumb distant spot
that never shakes, as you are trembling now.
Yet everything that grazes you and me
ties us together like a violin bow
stroking two strings into one sound.
But on what instrument have we been bound?
And what musician has us in his hand?
Oh sweet song.*
Rainer Maria Rilke was a German-language poet and novelist,
