A poem for National Poetry Month

O.C. CAN U C?
by Wendy Esterás

In the Irvine rhyme scheme, there’s no time
for dreaming, no room for treasonous themes
like looking, seeing, being. No one sits still
anymore. We’ll do three things at once
and they’re bound to be frivolous:
cruising the boulevards, texting on cell phones,
scanning the skies for cumulous threats
to freshly washed S.U.V.s.
But on the horizon, a forest beckons.
Perfect ferns and foreign palms feign greening
where oak and sycamore rise up speaking
a canyon’s cadence. Here, as skunks and
bees and bobcats scuttle among stones,
a creek freezes time in basketvine stanzas.



(Previously published as “Change For a Time.” Spring 2004: 8 in Booyah!

Jody Hoy
24/11/1936 - 25/03/2010
http://www.jodyhoyphotos.com/

UNE BATAILLE À LA MORT

by Wendy Esterás, for Jody

Qui j’étais et qui je serai,

les deux, ils se battent toute la journée.

Et entre ces lutteurs

c’est moi que je suis à l’instant:

la force gardienne de la paix.

Quant aux autres – ils montrent telle finesse

dans leurs coups à toute vitesse :

Aujourd’hui vainc Hier comme

Lendemain triomphe de Maintenant.

Leur rangs, ils métamorphosent sans cesse.

Les frontières entre temps, on les fait demolir.

C’est trop difficile de la maintenir :

cette bataille éternelle ayant lieu

seconde à seconde.

Le présent se dessine de l’équilibre

dans la guerre d’en devenir.

A BATTLE TO THE DEATH

Who I was and who I will be,

the two, they fight incessantly.

And between these adversaries

is me who I am at this instant:

the keeper of the peace.

As to the others – they display such skill

with their high-speed drills:

Today vanquishes Yesterday as

Tomorrow triumphs over Now.

Their ranks alter form without a standstill.

The borders of time are made to be demolished.

It’s too difficult to maintain this:

an eternal battle taking place

second by second.

The present is the balance point

in the war of self-evolution.

trad. Wendy Esterás

Ai (1947 - 2010)

Born Florence Anthony, her legally changed name is “love” in Japanese; the body may expire, but love lives on in conversation:

Conversation

BY AI

for Robert Lowell

We smile at each other

and I lean back against the wicker couch.

How does it feel to be dead? I say.

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.

And when you open your mouth,

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor

and burns a hole through it.

Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.

Did you ever, you start,

wear a certain kind of silk dress

and just by accident,

so inconsequential you barely notice it,

your fingers graze that dress

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,

you see it too

and you realize how that image

is simply the extension of another image,

that your own life

is a chain of words

that one day will snap.

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,

and beginning to rise heavenward

in their confirmation dresses,

like white helium balloons,

the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning,

and above all that,

that’s where I’m floating,

and that’s what it’s like

only ten times clearer,

ten times more horrible.

Could anyone alive survive it?


----------------------------------
Question: Is life the reality we dream, or is death ?