PANIS ANGELICUS

Mukojima

Hiroshi Yoshida

PANIS ANGELICUS

The hour of the Angelus.

The shortest day of the year.

The room all but deserted

But for the figure resting

On the bed, not on light depending.

Hail Mary. The grace of sleep

Through her fine bones

Lift her to vision.

Elizabeth in the next room

Hears nothing, but the soft light

Has a music to it.

Be it done unto me according

To thy word.  The language of flowers.

The angel may or may not have

Beautiful wings, may or may not

Be genuflecting next to Mary,

May or may not be whispering,

May or may not be a dreaming,

But the soft light has a music to it.

O res merabilis!  Unaque poscimus

Sic nos tu visita,  ad lucem quam inhabitas.

            Translation:

 What wonder! We beg of you

That you visit us, the light in which you dwell.

            The only known film footage of Anne Frank

MANHA DE CARNAVAL

Soyons Discrets - label

The Alphabet - The Letter 'E'

V. Cardadossi - Shooting Star

MANHA DE CARNAVAL

I am unable to do anything about it.

I stare for hours at the ocean.

I have been taken.  My thought

Listening to translations from

A language made of magic and swift gestures

Captured from dances performed 

By a hooded crowd who insist

We know them but they do not

Know time and we show the tattoos 

Of time all too clearly.

I am going to walk away from this

For a moment.  I am in danger of

Falling too far and becoming water,

Totally water, once again.

I saw spirits moving as clouds

Toward an infinite tomorrow.

I am unable to recall if we arrived

Here to do something special like dying

Or if there was to be a fiesta

That had another ending, a sky filled 

With fireworks.  We have seen such 

Things as we are not allowed to

Even attempt in explanations.

I sharpen my knives.  There will

Come a time when a dagger will

Hold all the language, when we 

Will garb ourselves for inclement

Weather and find our horses.

This might be a story but it does

Have horses. So we might want to

Leave before we know too

Much to begin insisting on a dawn,

A special fire that really gives

Nothing away at all.

And so I think I’m telling you a story 

But it seems all about a carnival 

That happens tomorrow in a poem

Left in a book so very long ago.

AN OLD DESCRIPTION OF NIAGARA FALLS

AN OLD DESCRIPTION OF NIAGARA FALLS

We could not see where

The end of the land came.

The French told us we must

Leave the water and walk

For a distance of many leagues

Because of a great waterfall

That would not allow us passage upstream.

These woods were old,

Filled with highways

And worn places, used by men.

The night we heard the

Waterfall was memorable.  It

Seemed a constant wind that

Did not move the trees at all.

All sound.  And then

The place itself.  The voice of water

Articulate and incessant

Filling all of consciousness

For enormous moments.

There could not be such a place.,

Yet there it was.

Day and night forever

Through such time as man

Cannot but fancy.

All the choirs of the angels

Singing together precisely,

In this manner, so it seemed.

The greens, the whiteness,

The bows of colored light

By day and pale ghosts of

Them in the moonlight.

This must be what prayer

Was like in power and in voice.

All our lives we bathed our

Memories in this gift.

We joined it to our children,

Drove it through our dreams,

Hovering near its mists as long

As soul would cling to flesh

And then we joined this voice;

The rapids and the rills,

The clicking of the rocks,

The huge sighing of the 

Place as it continues

Its descriptions with water.

I hear you hearing this.

All of us hear you hearing this.

It is a rushing through the seasons,

A mouth unlike any other.

We look into your eyes. You look into time itself,

The way all life understands it,

Full and incomplete,

Always moving.  Time is water.

Time is the huge falling

That we saw here, surely

A fair description.

THE ROADS ARE SLIPPERY WITH OIL

This poem was published in STAR * LINE, The Journal of the SFPA (Science Fiction Poetery Association) in the October-December 2012 issue #354.

THE ROADS ARE SLIPPERY WITH OIL

Occasionally tiny blue creatures

Glide across its surface,

Heads down, skimming for

Black algae.

The sun was flickering 

Electric blue.

We were sitting by the side

Of the roads, smoking.

“The sun was never

That color,” you said.

“It’s all the fires.”,

I replied.

“We always think it’s something 

Else.”, you said.

During the playback the image

Fluttered a lot and we

Couldn’t see the parts

With the gunfire clearly.

They advanced our ages

Very quickly.  We could say 

Nothing.

“Can we see it again?” you said.

“The tiny blue creatures

Look so different now.

Skimming, skimming.”

They led us away.

It was like being blind.

UNABLE TO EXPLAIN

UNABLE TO EXPLAIN

We sat on the edge of the blue

Inlet and listened for the question

To become complete. A slight

Drift of smoke carried the scent

Of the cities through our clothing,

Peeling layer after layer of feeling

From us as if it were the heart,

Caught in its room of ribs and breathing,

Unable to understand hands, the movements

Of high mountain goats among the pinnacles of forgetting.

Sounds poured forth from us,

Continents of them, ripe and with

A million yellow mouths, all wanting

Something other than words could

Give, caught in melody and stripped

Before our eyes of the darling vestments

So beloved by men everywhere;

Truth, Knowing, the Sublime, Instinct.

“All lost, lost,” the captain said, unable

To recognize the land any longer.

We have no maps for things like this.

We are forever thinking we know

What will happen. We are forever

Calling, searching for echoes, the voice of angels,

The smiles of children blessed with tenderness,

Founded in waking up to see the sun

Slipping between the window blinds,

Not a dream at all, rather a way of knowing.

We embrace them and weep endlessly.

We name ourselves rain forest. 

MAKING WITH FRAGMENTS

Bill W. H. Robinson - Happiness

This poem is from my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION published by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, Ca. 2011.  The book is out of print.

MAKING WITH FRAGMENTS

for Tom Kryss

There is a moment when the lights

Become dull memories and the territories

We have come to understand in our travels

Begin to unwind and contrive their own kind

Of knowing, one coupled with the notion that

Soon an emptiness will sidle up to us and clasp

Our hand, explaining the while that we will have

Little chance of understanding emptiness and the 

Damp that descends with the evening, even here

On these mountains or in this desert or along these

Trails still dusty with the echoes of elephants, ostriches,

Creatures of mystery.  They will crumble, we are told

And in that moment, we believe that we are hearing

The truth rather than the banging of cymbals played

By deaf men who sold their imaginations long ago.

The multi-colored lamps make this place seem dreamed,

Not found on maps we carry, nothing promised here,

Only the trail of words that leads us on.  We will recognize

Nothing but will continue so that we might see these places,

So that we may fall into the mouth of fables breathed

Over fires on some future night when the Nightjar’s wings

Begin their tale and summon us from the dust once again.

I will see you there, crossing the winter night just ahead,

Betting destinies on seasons, correcting the optics

So all may see mythical beasts and believe in them

If only for the telling. Make in your mouth a story now

While you walk and breathe here that it may be told

Again at some set date far beyond these landscapes.

Favor mystery and what is lovely. Avoid the invisible

That I may feel your hand and together we will build

Toward the favoring winds, tell the dates, catch the

Glint of light on our words as they dance away from us.