THE CAPTAIN'S PRAYER

The following is the Captain's prayer from Alvaro Mutis' novella The Snow on the Admiral translated by Edith Grossman

THE CAPTAIN’S PRAYER

from The Snow of the Admiral

Alvaro Mutis

High calling of my protectors, those who have gone

before me, my constant guides and mentors,

come now in this moment of danger, extend your sword,

with firmness uphold the law of your purpose,

revoke the disorder of birds and creatures of evil omen,

wash clean the hall of innocents

where the vomit of the rejected congeals lieke a sign of

misfortune, where the garments of the supplicant

are a blemish that deflects our compass, makes our cal-

culations uncertain, our forecasts mistaken.

I invoke your presence at this hour and deplore with all

my heart the manacles of my equivocations:

my pact with man-eating leopards in the mangers,

my weakness and tolerance for serpents that shed their

skin at the mere shout of lost hunters,

my communion with bodies that have passed from hand

to hand like a staff to ford a stream, and on whose skin the

saliva of the humble is crystallized,

my ability to contrive the lie of power and cleverness

that moves my brothers away from upright steadiness in

their purposes,

my carelessness in proclaiming your power in customs

offices and guardrooms, in pavilions of sorrow and on pleas-

ure boats, in guard towers along the border and in the corri-

dors of the powerful.

Wipe away in a single stroke all this misfortune and in-

famy, save me,

certain of my obedience to your bitter laws, your abu-

sive haughtiness, your distant occupations, your desolate

arguments.

I give myself completely to the domination of your unob-

jectionable mercy, and with all humility I prostrate myself

at your feet

to remind you that I am a traveler in mortal danger, that

my ghost is worth nothing, that those who perish far from

home are like trash swept into a corner of the market,

that I am your servant and am helpless, and that these

words contain the unalloyed metal of one who has paid the

tribute

owed to you now and forever throughout pale eternity

Amen.

Here are two poems by Taylor Graham I really enjoyed. Hope you do as well and that she doesn't mind.

Taylor Graham

HOW THE STORY GOES

From heath-land to plain to escarpment,

broken reed at water’s edge, we’ve

searched for the bridging point, a way

across. Past summer, the air’s still

full of wasps, yellow swarms like tiny

ticking clocks too fast to count how time

passes into fall. We find their

paper-nests empty, deserted as winter.

I keep a paper-journey, journal

of passage place to place, always later.

Green rooms of grain-fields scythed.

Click-tick of rats in stubble, dry music

that repeats in dream. Night

watches, fires seen as far as the horizon,

swarming distant light. Life is always

a flight risk, time indigenous

as a rodent’s tooth. A king in exile

seeks home, memory, his mind. And so

we wander. How does this end?

Shadows drain color from landscape

on the other side. In time,

the page I write is paper consumed

to pulp. Tomorrow

we might find the bridging point.

MESSAGES TO EARTH

—Taylor Graham

We sent our Curiosity to Mars. But waiting

is so difficult for humans. What could we ever

solve? death, or love, peace, or hunger, life?

Late at night, might a computer record blips

from space, to chart them like French

or German for tense, mood, and person?

I follow rabbit-trails of dream in my sleep.

But my hair reaches out wild in all

directions, antennae for receiving signals.

One who knows names of stars

gazes into the night sky focusing on

the brightest body, visible at solstice

this bleakest time of year when the soul

seems ice-crystal. Planet or star?

Are its pulses a Morse code we might

decipher, to learn a language beyond

our grammar, our tongues to pronounce,

our human translations?

New Year

I liked these house images a friend of mine put up on Facebook. The poems are from last month at Medusa's Kitchen. Enjoy. Happy New Year.

O ALL THAT IS TRUE


O all that is true and beautiful
In the story books of children
Are the lights that make her
Skin glow so that the Powers
And the Principalities come
To sing before the Throne of her smile.

And she sees everything. The rat
Gnawing its way into the soldier's
Body, the claw and eyes of a great
Bird depends on her lovely eyes
And this dirt is made to run
With blood again and again.

O I believe in life. The sun cresting
The morning with its new light.
O I believe in love and all who do
Not are the enemy of truth.

And still they will come and bend
Their heads to please you but you will
Have wonder holding your hand,
The perfect shape of everything.

______________________

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Make no mistake, the darkness
Will come to the perfect world.
These songs are but the wings that carry
Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top
Of the hills. Their shadows are
Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb
Up past the house and the barn,
Where the cabbage has been planted.
It looks like a bouquet for giants,
But purple with leaves big as
An adagio lost on a plain
Or a field of ice. We, yes, we can
See you even there. See the sun
Is coming even at this hour to take
Itself from the tops of waves,
Huge sheets of light full from the
Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp
Fire, telling stories.

MEDUSA'S KITCHEN

medusaskitchen.blogspot.com has published two of my poems this morning, last day of 2011. I was surprised to find that "The Trees Learn Their Standing" a poem I wrote just before I went to sleep last night was published this morning in the Kitchen.

I was even more surprised to find that Taylor Graham and I, without every speaking to each other used a very similar image in our poems there this morning. The phrase was 'magic with the hands' Go to the kitchen and have a look.

You may enjoy this.

THAT THE MOON

That the moon doesn't care for Spring.

That it doesn't fill itself out as an announcement

That a season is coming. It has its own games,

Water, the blood moving through mammals,

Huge hatches of insects making another music.

Still it shines brighter than all else in the night

Sky. It opens the earth itself in rain or clear

Light and gives names to the waking of the ground.

No matter where we go, if the night is open,

Clear and the course of this spinning planet

Is open and not just showing off the stars,

There she is, her royal majesty, directing everything

From the top of the night, not caring who or what

Sees her light, the llama races or mischief

In the eyes of old magicians somewhere in Mexico.

Slipping through the fog above the Great Lakes,

Holding court before the Northern Lights,

It is still the moon, careless and reclining

On the whole of our sky with us always loving it.

PENTECOST chapbook pubished

Today I've posted two etchings by Dore, a photo of Mount Fuji looking as mysterious as it may and Raphael's lovely angel.

Green Panda Press in Cleveland, Ohio has just published a chapbook of my work called PENTECOST. They have only done 65 copies. At $5.00, that's less than a $1.00 per poem.

Books In Print

D.R. Wagner 'Pentecost'. 6 poems, 9 pages. cover art by Gustav Dore. stapled, stamped, no fold. 2011. 60 copies made. $5.00 (shipping free in U.S

how to pay, u wonder? paypal (to greenpandapress@gmail.com),
check/cash (to Green Panda Press 3174 Berkshire Rd., Cleve. Hts.,
OH 44118).

Here's the title poem"

PENTECOST

The last of nothing drifts by.

All of space is now occupied.

We are now ready to receive

The Holy Spirit. It does not

Come as tongues of flame,

But occupies the cells of the body

Like crowded subway cars at night,

Full of dozing riders and people

Reading books as if their life depended on it.

We cross the tracks carefully.

We are unable to recognize anyone

We pass. Balloons of vision lift

From the clouds of people, rise up,

Are lost in a reaching of hands to grasp

The colorful strings dangling from them.

The gift of tongues is ours once more.

Touch our hand and you shall be healed.

No one believes this to be true. We buy food,

Giving away bars of chocolate and plastic

Wrapped sandwiches. Some shed tears,

Thanking us as we move forward.

Times like this will come again.

The seas lash the shores. Tornados

Sweep the kingdom. Fire consumes

All that is left. We suffer fools

With their predictions and admonitions.

This is indeed pentecost. We can not name it other.

Illuminated display boards at the exits flash

Our names and show grainy images of what

We are supposed to look like. We lose

Ourselves in the crowd, the buzz of understood

Conversations in every language of the world.

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Make no mistake, The darkness

Will come to the perfect world.

These songs are but the wings that carry

Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top

Of the hills. Their shadows are

Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb

Up past the house and the barn,

Where the cabbage has been planted.

It looks like a bouquet for giants,

But purple with leaves big as

An adagio lost on a plain

Or a field of ice. We, yes, we, can

See you even there. See the sun

Is coming even at this hour to take

Itself from the tops of waves,

Huge sheets of light full from the

Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp

Fire, telling stories.

MASK MAKERS BIRD after Taylor Graham and 3 photos

These poems first appeared in Medusa's Kitchen.

MASK-MAKER’S BIRD

It was only the mask of a bird

There was but a whisper of music,

A tempting scent of wild thing.

We could never remain inside.

A gleaming spell fashioned of mahogany

Seemed to pull us just beyond.

We felt we were but sweet captives of night

The mask would draw us down.

We studied the shape of the bench

Just below the mask. We wouldn’t

Let these shapes desert us, that his

Was a persistent thing, a wing a bird,

A shape of madrone but still forming

Itself, unfolding itself like a song.

We could not explain the piercing eyes as carving

Rather as a truth that we could know

Spreading toward us, opening a perfect emptiness

The point where imagination is as pure black,

Over the edge of understanding we watched

Or seemed to watch the way wood

Can find form as would bone.

We heard it sing this bird,

This mass of twigs, this truth, this mask.

THE TRANSFORMING ANGEL

Those were not tears at all.

They looked to be tears but

The purity of their crystal

Migration was like a spell,

The mouth of some errant wind

That had become confused when made

To carry the finest perfumes,

The memories of those near death,

The glass of children realizing

They have been left alone for too long

And no one is coming for them

Except the night. Corridors

Open to the cold but promising

Some safe haven, some exchange

Where trinkets are traded for

A few miles of dark woods

That have remained outside of history.

When we least expect it

The glittering of a star held

In the hand, the comforting

Word given as a token, unexplained,

Unexpected and undaunted by

Any disturbance in the atmosphere.

It is at these times when

Great silence enters any room

We occupy and holds us in its

Thrall. We will beg for any other

Answer. All we say will look

So like tears. All we feel

Will seem to be the purest

Liquid meant to redeem us,

But they will be rivers, rivers,

Truly rivers and we will find

Ourselves upon them knowing

That they are most powerful,

That they bear us where they will,

That we have no idea at all

Where we are going or what those

Choirs of angels could be or why

They might be here at all.