"Psalm"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Kontext: And how can we talk of order overall
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
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“Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.”
"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Kontext: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.
“Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists.”
The Poet and the World (1996)
Kontext: Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."
“Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy.”
"A Film from the Sixties"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)
Kontext: Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him, OK?
God of humor, do something about him today.
“Our times are still not safe and sane enough
for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”
"Smiles"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Kontext: The going's rough, and so we need the laugh
of bright incisors, molars of goodwill.
Our times are still not safe and sane enough
for faces to show ordinary sorrow.
"Clouds"
Poems New and Collected (1998), New Poems 1993 - 97
Kontext: I'd have to be really quick
to describe clouds —
a split second's enough
for them to start being something else. Their trademark:
they don't repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.
"I Am Too Close..."
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
“Our humans
don't know how to talk to one another.”
"An Unexpected Meeting"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Kontext: Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don't know how to talk to one another.
“Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy”
"An Unexpected Meeting"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Kontext: Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don't know how to talk to one another.
“I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition”
I'm Working on the World"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
Kontext: I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition,
featuring fun for fools
blues for brooders,
combs for bald pates,
tricks for old dogs.
Quelle: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.”
Quelle: Nothing Twice: Selected Poems
Quelle: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
"An Opinion Concerning the Question of Pornography"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
"In Heraclitus' River"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
"Atlantis"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
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