A Poetry Post For Emeriin

[rachelleneveu]

 

#89 – Vera Pavlova

 

Who will winter my immortality

with me? Who will thaw with me?

Come what may, I shall never trade

the earthly love for the subterranean.

I still have time to turn

into flowers, clay, white-eyed memory…

But while we are mortal, my love, to you

nothing will be denied.

 

 

#94 – Vera Pavlova
 

On the chin, on its edge,

under the chin many a kiss…

The golden boat trembles

on the surface of closed eyes.

Hair, rowlocks, clavicles,

fuzzy skin, lilies, reeds…

Every particle of me knows

what has happened, what is bound to be.

And I proffer my face, my shoulders

to the miracle as to the wind.

Come and row. A child again,

I will sleep curled up on the stern.

 

 

Untitled – Rainer Maria Rilke

 

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

 

These are the words we dimly hear:

 

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

 

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

 

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

 

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

 

Give me your hand.

 

 

 

Eternal Life – Carl Dennis

 

An immortal soul, that’s something for me to wish for,

To be off on a long trek after my body’s buried

And my friends have driven away from the graveyard.

 

Where am I headed? Not downward, if I’m permitted

To judge by the rules of fairness as I conceive them,

For nothing I’ve done seems ripe for eternal punishment.

 

Not upward, for nothing seems worthy of eternal bliss.

Odds are I’ll stay where I am, forever earthbound,

And face the problem of filing the endless return

 

Of earthly summers and autumns, winters and springs.

It won’t be easy for a being retired from action,

A shadow too weak even to hold open a door

 

When a friend among the living, bearing a tea tray,

Comes to join her guests on the verandah.

The conversation should hold my interest all evening

 

Even if I can’t participate, my voice too small.

But later, when strangers fill the familiar rooms,

I’ll seem to be listening to a script that’s conventional,

 

To acting forced and wooden, and slip outside.

What then? Do I keep my distance from other ghosts

Or join them in sharing stories about the old days

 

In cricket whispers? Either way, I’ll wonder about the joy

I imagined coming my way with death behind me,

Not looming ahead, and leisure, so scarce before,

 

Suddenly limitless. Not much solace is likely

When I compare the vague ghosts of my friends

With the living originals, whose particular lusters

 

Can’t be divorced from their lifelong gloom on birthdays,

Their protests against their mirrors, their witty admissions

In listing the enemies that creased their foreheads

 

And slowed their pace to a hobble, and made them forgetful,

Though they remembered their promises well enough

And tried to keep many till death released them.

 

But how can ghosts swear loyalty to the end

If there is no end for them, only a boundless ocean;

Or does a truth I haven’t a map to now

 

Wait in my ghostly existence to be discovered? If not,

It won’t surprise me if I find myself on my knees

Cupping my hands with others at the river’s edge

 

To sip forgetfulness. No surprise if I’m ferried back,

Oblivious, to be born again in the flesh

Among strangers it will take me years to recognize.