Tag short lyric poems

* congregating with tranströmer

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Tomas Tranströmer’s recent passing has me reading back into his work. Always, I am taken in by the immediacy of his line.

In this week’s poem, “The Scattered Congregation,” this immediacy plays out in quick turns. Whether in nuanced phrase or illuminating flash of image, Tranströmer always makes me a believer. Makes me proud to be part of the “congregation.”

* flockgregation *

* poetgregation *

The Scattered Congregation – Tomas Tranströmer

I
We got ready and showed our home.
The visitor thought: you live well.
The slum must be inside you.

II
Inside the church, pillars and vaulting
white as plaster, like the cast
around the broken arm of faith.

III
Inside the church there’s a begging bowl
that slowly lifts from the floor
and floats along the pews.

IV
But the church bells have gone underground.
They’re hanging in the sewage pipes.
Whenever we take a step, they ring.

V
Nicodemus the sleepwalker is on his way
to the Address. Who’s got the Address?
Don’t know. But that’s where we are going.

***

Happy don’t knowing!

Jose

* three years of the influence

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

This weekend marks the 3 year anniversary of this blog.

Yay!

This week’s poem – “A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport” by Yehuda Amichai – takes on the idea of attention in a way that ties into the spirit in which I started the blog. The first stanza evokes the kind of conflicted feelings one goes through in everyday life, the “combinations” that “wound” as well as “heal.” The second stanza, with its focus on one sound, evokes for me in a way the act of being engrossed while reading.

Each week I hope to share a poem that has, for a little while, been for me “the only sound in the world.”

I see this as a kind of reader’s blog, a way of putting a bit of good energy out into the world. I’m excited to still be going strong and to have you along for the ride.

* near the what now? *

* near the what now? *

A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport – Yehuda Amichai

A flock of sheep near the airport
or a high voltage generator beside the orchard:
these combinations open up my life
like a wound, but they also heal it.
That’s why my feelings always come in twos.
That’s why I’m like a man who tears up a letter
and then has second thoughts,
picking up the pieces and pasting them together again
with great pains, sometimes
for the rest of his life.

But once I went looking for my son at night
and found him in an empty basketball court
lit by a powerful floodlight.
He was playing all alone.
And the sound of the ball bouncing
was the only sound in the world.

***

Happy sounding!

Jose