Poet in the Aviary

1.

No more beating round the bush, boy--
Just murder for the thrill of it,

Fire at will.

2.

Bad chicks' blood seeping under the sill--
That's more like it,

No more mockingbirds to kill.

Hot off the Press

Jolted

from still one more slow in-
tense reading

of a hard, demanding article
on Williams' Spring and All

by my wife's shrill
come here quickly,

I shoot down
the stairs thinking

something's surely up,
only to find her

waiting, arms folded, looking
coolly at me from behind

a stack of freshly ironed
still steaming laundry,

her face beaming,
good news all around.


(First published in Poetry Salzburg Review #14, Autumn 2008)

No Haven

he eyes the heavens
infinity

the earth declines


(from The Intricate Evasions of As)

Song of No Rhyme, No Reason

here,
there--

a
non

se-
quit-
ur

ci-
ca-

da
wind-
ing
up

in air.

After A Day Spent Writing

--after William Michaelian


Going out after the end
Of still another hard-working day,

To see if the world is still
There or not, is it not always

This life-giving pleasure
That takes our breath away?


NOTE: Written after reading "Quitting Time" on
William Michaelian's blog.

Metanoia

Grey slate headstone

On which to right
Every wrong,

Black or white.

Constantine Cavafy Ars Poetica

Constantine Cavafy's Ars Poetica was first discovered and "deciphered" by Michael Perides and appeared in K. P. Kavafes: Anekdota peza keimena (C.P. Cavafy: Unpublished Prose Pieces), published by G. Fexis in Athens in 1963, on the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth.

I first became aware of this "poetics" of Cavafy through a subscription to the remarkable magazine known as The Charioteer: A Review of Modern Greek Culture, which began publishing in the early 60s and which, I think, continued up into the late 80s--an unassuming, beautiful little magazine of seminal importance to those readers who wanted to learn more about Modern Greek culture than what was then available to them--zilch.

From the Introduction to The "Poetics" of Cavafy, by A. Decavalles: "Mr. Perides was going through the poet's archives and came upon fifteen manuscript pages of varying length and age, written partly in ink, partly in pencil, with corrections, emendations, additions and deletions. All indicated that the text was meant for publication if the poet ever went back to give it its final form. He never did. . . The text was in English, a language which the poet was familiar enough from the days of his childhood so as to speak it fluently at home, with his brothers and friends, and even to use it extensively in his essays, notes, private diary and much of his correspondence. He, however, never wrote his verse in it. . . .It was Mr. Perides who gave the untitled text its quite justified title. The few pages we are in possession of give us a most revealing insight into the theoretical background, the poetics that stood behind and shaped Cavafy's poetry as we know it, its relationship to life and experience, its artistic and philosophical objectives. We regret only the fact that this essay was unfinished."

We do indeed!

Here is the link for those curious enough to read what Cavafy had to say about the Art of Poetry.