Category: Other People’s Poetry

 
“Marilyn” (excerpt)

by Ooka Makoto

 
Written shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe

 
Death:
a mirror that
turns the film backward

–

The sweep of her eye no
longer reaches the dream’s crystal forest.
In the distance,
where the dim flames of death
carry her bed
will she be met by a
gentle white elephant or
a closed lead window?
Hair softly undulating, she
lies now rigid as a washboard
on a dark mirror in which still
quivers a scalpel.

But no scalpel can reach the soul’s truth.
 
 
 

 
from With Silence My Companion

 
I know how worthless this poem will be
under the scrutiny of daylight
and yet I cannot disown my words.

While others fill their baskets at market
I drink from a cup on the table,
utterly idle.

I see through the trees, by the distant pool,
a white statue
its genitals exposed
It is I.

I am immersed
in the past
and have become a block of dumb stone
and not the Orpheus I hoped to be.

 
Tanikawa Shuntaro

 
Translation from the Japanese by William I. Elliot & Kazuo Kawamura

 GENESIS

 
by David Day

 

Before Raven there was nothing much
It was quite dark

There was no mountain. There was no earth.
There was no sun or fish. There was
no dog or rainbow. There was no
noisy bird or tree. There
was no wind, stone or
Rain. There was no
people or
bugs.

It was pretty damn quiet
I’m telling you
I was bored

***

Then I did something – which
I’m not going to tell

Anyway, after that
Then there are things

Like the ocean, for instance
Like the earth – etcetera, for instance

And still later, there was
You – that is, humans, for instance

I make lots of other mistakes too
But at least I was not bored anymore

Which is better than nothing
As they say
And I think I know nothing
well enough to say
it also

 

 

As appeared in David Day’s collection, The Animals Within (Penumbra Press). For more information about the author, please click here.