At three in the morning,
A quietness descends on central railway stations.

A mail van, or an ambulance, may be there;
A man in pointed boots, a Miss Carew.

Quietness keeps them apart,
The quietness that descends on central railway stations.

It is not meant for me.
It is not meant for you.

(Christopher Middleton, from Torse 3: Poems 1949–1961.)

There must be many other such derelicts—
orphaned, abandoned, adrift for whatever reason—
but few have kept flying before the winds
of cyberspace so briskly as Drunk Driver
(the name of the site). Anonymous (the author)
signed his last entry years ago, and more years passed
before the Comments began to accrete
like barnacles on the hull of a ship
and then in ever-bifurcating chains
on each other. The old hulk became
the refuge of a certain shy sort
of visitor, like those trucks along the waterfront
haunted by lonely souls who could not bear
eye-witness encounters. They could leave
their missives in the crevices of this latter-day
Wailing Wall, returning at intervals
to see if someone had replied, clicking
their way down from the original message—

April 4. Another gray day. Can’t find the energy to get the laundry down to the laundry room. The sciatica just won’t go away.

—through the meanders and branchings
of the encrusted messages, the tenders
of love for a beloved who would never know herself
to have been desired, the cries of despair,
the silly whimsies and failed jokes, to where
the thread had last been snapped,
only to discover that no, no one had answered
the question posed. Because,
no doubt, there was no answer.
Is there an “answer” to the war
wherever the latest war is going on?
If one could get under the ship
and see all those barnacles clinging
to the keel, what a sight it would be.
Talk about biodiversity! But on deck,
so sad, always the same three skeletons,
the playing card nailed to the mast,
frayed and fluttering weakly, like some huge insect
the gods will not allow to die.

(Tom Disch, quoted by John Crowley here)

A box of matches on the patio
settles everything – by fifty, sister,
you will be master of close-up tricks,

excellent at sleight of hand. But first
you must set fire to wicker furniture
in the backyard, let the fumes

from the flaming table haze over
the rhododendrons. Seven minutes
unobserved is ample time to turn

into someone else entirely, someone
who has always been likely
but restrained, mistaken for mood.

The the grass catches. A peppery haze
clouds the rounded back windows
of the house. Presses its way inside.

(Idra Novey, from The Next Country.)

As an expression of a personality
to try to imagine the beginnings of a face
or a name or a body of water is pointless
when faces     names and bodies of water lack a beginning lack an end
These enormous lakes and rivers never arise
nor do they ever completely disappear     they just get bigger
or smaller
By way of example Victoria Lake (69000 km²) runs off
via the Nile (6700 km long) into the Mediterranean
on to Gibraltar     New York
I could continue for a long time – erect long catalogs
samples     encyclopedias     names of children who
grow up and become bigger than their parents     different types of
networks     generic memories of how Jerusalem Delivered
invokes The Aeneid which in turn invokes The Odyssey and so on
– but this is not an argument     it is just an attempt
to bring you into a new meaning     as in a dawning
(or darkening) beyond the leaves this spring

(Fredrik Nyberg, from “You . . .” in A Different Practice, trans. Jennifer Hayashida.)

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.)