Antony and Cleopatra (from Act 1. Scene iii)

MARK ANTONY:
What's the matter?

CLEOPATRA:
I know, by that same eye, there's some good news.
What says the married woman? You may go:
Would she had never given you leave to come!
Let her not say 'tis I that keep you here:
I have no power upon you; hers you are.

MARK ANTONY:
The gods best know,—

CLEOPATRA:
O, never was there queen
So mightily betray'd! yet at the first
I saw the treasons planted.

MARK ANTONY:
Cleopatra,—

CLEOPATRA:
Why should I think you can be mine and true,
Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!

MARK ANTONY:
Most sweet queen,—

CLEOPATRA:
Nay, pray you, seek no colour for your going,
But bid farewell, and go: when you sued staying,
Then was the time for words: no going then;
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor,
But was a race of heaven: they are so still,
Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,
Art turn'd the greatest liar.

MARK ANTONY:
How now, lady!

CLEOPATRA:
I would I had thy inches; thou shouldst know
There were a heart in Egypt.

by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Spilled Blood

The ashes which are the cigar's malady
imitate the concierges rushing down the stairs
after their broom that fell from the fifth floor
killed the gasman
that employee resembling a bug in a salad
The bird lies in wait for a bug and it's the broom that got you gasman
Your wife's hair will be white as sugar
and her ears will be unpaid bills
unpaid because you are dead
But why didn't this gasman have feet shaped like a three
why didn't he have the lucid look of a glovestore
why didn't he have his mother's dried-up breast hanging from his belly
why didn't he have flies in the pockets of his jacket
He would have passed away damp and cold like a smashed porcelain vase
and his hands would have caressed the bars of his prison
But the sun in his pocket had put on its cap




by Benjamin Peret (1899-1959)
Translated by Keith Hollaman

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love me not,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love me not.

by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

Squatter in the Foreground

--—for Ann Lauterbach


We rake the past, down to an ounce of wants.
Meant to begin in haybarn dorm of overall kerchiefs,
an empire of cow sphincters on the hook by May.
I think I’ll stare at the muss to endure
all I am: nonstop strands, new dues to pay up.


Air dense with leavings, fridge hum clicks off.
Nothing on the easel, so nothing melts.
The story thus far: pair of angels swish across grass
into dim room. Wrestlers. Big mirrors, stacks of ‘em.
White walls lift. An Anglo-Saxon pause for identification.



by Kenward Elmslie (b. 1929)

Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night –
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

by T.E. Hulme (1883 - 1917)

De Profundis

There is a stubble-field where a black rain is falling.
There is a brown tree that stands alone.
There is a hissing wind that encircles the empty shacks.
How melancholy this evening is.


Near the village
A gentle orphan gathers sparse corn.
Her eyes widen, round and golden in the dusk,
and her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.


On their way home
The shepherds found her sweet body
Rotting in the bushes.


I am a shadow far from dark villages---
I drank the silence of God
from a spring in the woods.


Cold metal steps on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
There is a light that dies out in my mouth.


At night I found myself in a pasture,
Rigid with refuse and the dust of stars.
In the hazelbush
Crystal angels kept on ringing.



by Georg Trakl
Translated by Daniel Simko

To Night

So thou art come again, old black-winged night,
Like an huge bird, between us and the sun,
Hiding, with out-stretched form, the genial light;
And still, beneath thine icy bosom's dun
And cloudy plumage, hatching fog-breathed blight
And embryo storms, and crabbéd frosts, that shun
Day's warm caress. The owls from ivied loop
Are shrieking homage, as thou cowerest high;
Like sable crow pausing in eager stoop
On the dim world thou gluttest thy clouded eye,
Silently waiting latest time's fell whoop,
When thou shalt quit thine eyrie in the sky,
To pounce upon the world with eager claw,
And tomb time, death, and substance in thy maw.

by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803 - 1818)