Now when all it does is rain
I suddenly understand that there are
two ways to write something
Morning and one can lean forward
over the desk and make note of months
and years     To in this way point out
an actual historic past is a way
to retreat from so much within poetry
as a result this is a way to write about
a particular form of disappointment
Richard Nixon’s gesture by the helicopter
August 1974

Afternoon also in the trees’ movements
outside the window     The wind says nothing
about the rest of us – it passes
through our hair – it is forgotten

This is the absent-minded writing
a possibility to approach childhood
and loneliness
Summer that gradually takes up
more space in the smell of summer cottages

(Fredrik Nyberg, from “Rotor Blades, movements (1–5)”, in A Different Practice, trans. Jennifer Hayashida.)

The U.S. is a small fish
with a false head; or a big fish
with false scales; or a dream
of the perfect fish
that turns into nightmare;
or a fish with a mouth as big
as an atom; or a secret fish
named Morgan, Mellon, Carlyle,
Rockefeller; or a fish that eats
its own tail; or an illegal
fish with respect to its own laws;
or a fish with a circulatory system
of black gold; or an army of robot fish;
or a fish that acts like it’s the only existing fish;
or a Japanese fish; or an Israeli fish;
or a fish that pollutes the whole sea;
or a fish that consumes the whole sea;
or a fish that ate its ancestors; or a
fish with a double life; or a fish
out of water hooked up to a respirator;
or a fried fish; or a fat fish; or a red fish;
or a fish unhappy with its own skin;
or a tin-straw-lion fish; or a Shiite Muslim
fish with a Protestant upbringing;
or a blind fish swimming thru a minefield;
or an extinct fish in a museum;
or a fish with fry full of hope;
or not really a fish but a gamba.

(Jeffrey Yang, p. 50 in An Aquarium.)

Astonishing that I can forget, forget so easily and for so long every time, the only principle according to which interesting works can be written, and written well. This is doubtlessly because I’ve never been able to define it clearly to myself in a conclusively representative or memorable way.

From time to time it comes to my mind, not, to be sure, as an axiom or maxim, but like a sunny day after a thousand which have been cloudy – or, rather, because it is not so much a natural as an artificial event, or, still more precisely, an artificial development – like the sudden illumination of an electric lightbulb in a house hitherto lit by kerosene. . . . But the next day, you’ve forgotten wiring’s been installed and you start again painstakingly filling the lamps, changing wicks, scorching your fingers on the glass, and being badly lit. . . .

(Francis Ponge, trans. C. K. Williams, Selected Poems, p. 3.)

     Mariano, 27th June 1916

I know a city
that every day is filled with sunlight
and everything is snatched away in that moment

I left one evening

In my heart lingered the rasp
of the cicadas

From that ship
painted white
I saw
my city disappear
leaving
a glimmer
an embrace of lights in the hazy air
hovering

(Giuseppe Ungaretti, trans. Maggie Evans, r.i.p.)