This year saw many of us cross over! Paul Violi, great poet, lovely human being, generous spirit, among them! His poetry is pure pleasure. I (Codrescu) loved his poetry and thought it a holiday whenever one of his new books came. Another person to miss, another poetry to never read! Aye, Aye!
Ruxandra met two old-timers on the Chelsea's fifth floor instantly: they invited us into their ancient apartments & studios and nearly captured her. She'd still be there if she didn't have to be in Cluj and Galilee.
From Selected Poems by Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin
GOTAN
GOTAN
The woman was like the word never, a special charm rose up from her neck, a kind of forgetfulness where her eyes were safe, the woman settled in my left side.
Watch out watch out I'd scream watch out but she possessed me like love, like the night, and the last signals I made that autumn settled down quietly under the surf of her hands.
The Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square, I said, and then change for the Northern Line, But make sure it is the Edgware Branch, Get off in Hampstead, I’ll be waiting outside, Old, bald, worn, your classmate from grade school, Our old parochial school on Long Island, Many lives ago, when we still believed In the transubstantiation, and thought ourselves Quite cool souls migrating through the universe.
My flung careful few, steady bells at the pleat ends of the operating skirt our carburettori have draped over the planet, napkin framed around the unformed fontanelle of now, the soon-to-be-cicatricose present, for which, as the price goes up, many will be sacrificed: now, as the willow is in first bud like a giant whip of green pearls in a chthonic fist, and in the wind the metasequoia roars as if on fire, now they approach with scalpel and spoon, our polity lies on the metal tray in a pool of noxious black liquor, the semen of men fed on anthracite.
