Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Serf To My Heart

O LOVE, SWEET ANIMAL
—Delmore Schwartz

O Love, dark animal,
With your strangeness go
Like any freak or clown:
Appease the child in her
Because she is alone
Many years ago
Terrified by a look
Which was not meant for her.
Brush your heavy fur
Against her, long and slow
Stare at her like a book,
Her interests being such
No one can look too much.
Tell her how you know
Nothing can be taken
Which has not been given:
For you time is forgiven:
Informed by hell and heaven
You are not mistaken.

_______________________

Last Chance:

Today (Aug. 1) is the last day to enter the Quercus contest: the Quercus Review Poetry Series Annual Book Award, 2006 will get you $500.00 and 50 books! Send submissions to Quercus Review Press, MJC English Dept., 435 College Ave, Modesto, CA 95350. For complete guidelines and/or to review past winners: http://www.quercusreview.com/index.html.

Using the Net:

A wonderful daily source of poetry, interviews, and other articles is The Writer's Almanac (writersalmanac.publicradio.org). Daily poems, links such as poetryfoundation.org, and right now an interview with the next US Poet Laureate, Donald Hall. Check it out!

News From the Snake:

Yikes! Snakes alive!!! It’s time to start thinking about Rattlesnake Review #11! Next deadline is August 15; that’s only two weeks away. Send 3-5 of your dandiest poems, art, photos, or article ideas to kathykieth@hotmail.com or POBox 1647, Orangevale, CA 95662. No cover letters, no bios, no prev-pubs or simul-subs, pleez…

Snakebytes, the e-mail newsletter that goes out monthly, is headed your way. If you're not on the list and would like to receive it, write to me at kathykieth@hotmail.com. Heck, it's free....

The Snake is also gearing up this month for a reading/release of Placerville/Red Fox Underground Poet Irene Lipshin’s new chapbook, Shadowlines, next week on Wednesday, August 9 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30-9 PM. Also premiering that night will be littlesnake broadside #26, Out the Window, by Norma Kohout.

_______________________

I AM TO MY OWN HEART MERELY A SERF
—Delmore Schwartz

I am to my own heart merely a serf
And follow humbly as it glides with autos
And come attentive when it is too sick,
In the bad cold of sorrow much too weak,
To drink some coffee, light a cigarette
And think of summer beaches, blue and gay.
I climb the sides of buildings just to get
Merely a gob of gum, all that is left
Of its infatuation of last year.
Being the servant of incredible assumption,
Being to my own heart merely a serf.

I have been sick of its cruel rule, as sick
As one is sick of chewing gum all day;
Only inside of sleep did all my anger
Spend itself, restore me to my role,
Comfort me, bring me to the morning
Willing and smiling, ready to be of service,
To box its shadows, lead its brutish dogs,
Knowing its vanity the vanity of waves.

But when sleep too is crowded, when sleep too
Is full of chores impossible and heavy,
The looking for white doors whose numbers are
Different and equal, that is, infinite,
The carriage of my father on my back,
Last summer, 1910, and my own people,
The government of love's great polity,
The choice of taxes, the production
Of clocks, of lights, and horses, the location
Of monuments, of hotels and of rhyme,
Then, then, in final anger, I wake up!
Merely wake up once more,

once more to resume
The unfed hope, the unfed animal,
Being the servant of incredible assumption,
Being to my own heart merely a serf.

_______________________

I AM A BOOK I NEITHER WROTE NOR READ
—Delmore Schwartz

I am a book I neither wrote nor read,
A comic, tragic play in which new masquerades
Astonishing as guns crackle like raids
Newly each time, whatever one is prepared
To come upon, suddenly dismayed and afraid,
As in the dreams which make the fear of sleep
The terror of love, the depth one cannot leap.

How the false truths of the years of youth have passed!
Have passed at full speed like trains which never stopped
There where I stood and waited, hardly aware,
How little I knew, or which of them was the one
To mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives.

I no more wrote than read that book which is
The self I am, half-hidden as it is
From one and all who see within a kiss
The lounging formless blackness of an abyss.

How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?

________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)