Two years: "Proud and speechless"

  Jag har inte räknat på hur många dikter som publicerats i bloggen sedan premiären, 10 maj 2014. Idag fyller den två år.
  Det blir inget stort kalas och mitt emotionella tal spar jag till 18 augusti, då kommer jag att tacka poeten/poesin som räddade mitt liv.

Nog kan vi kalla dem:
Poetry with Blues

***

  Födelsedagen firar jag med att berätta om en annan av poesins eldsjälar, Mr. Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Han lanserade sajten Poem of the week.org för tio år sedan.
  Han startade POW som en liten e-postlista till vänner, familj och kollegor. Målet var att delge dikter till poesiälskare och lyrikstuderande och till de vars kunskaper om poesi började och slutade med Den gudomliga komedin.
  Hans enkla webbplats, älskad av många, är den femte inspirationskällan i tisdagskampen. Här följer dikterna till rond 9.

*

A walk is fact for the walker and fiction for everyone else, by Susan Tichy (f. 1952)
(from upcoming The Avalanche Path in Summer.)

Sunrise on the snowfields,
storm cloud snagged on a near ridge,
the high pastures, deep in flowers,
‘torrents plunging through cloven ravines,’
and so forth.

Or an easy shelf-trail, soft footing,
young oak, rain-wet, in a shaft of sun.
Only mist on the move, deadfall on the slopes:
one fragment of snow remaining
at the top of an avalanche run.

Say fluid geometry of hills
momentarily stilled. Say
one dead pine, rose-colored,
or a calculated hyperbole of rock.
Feel free to wander within the poem,

separate perceptions into points of view,
complete a sentence, divide a rhyme.
Yet facts remain:
‘new clouds born over high, bare rock,’
‘moonlight shining through open gates.’

Clarno Palisade, Oregon, USA

Feed stones on water,
assent in words
that nothing can be expressed in words.
Dipped boots in mud and walked the distance
in a spiral on the gallery floor.

***

Parts of speech, by Kapka Kassabova (f. 1973)
(from Geography for the lost. Tarset, Northumberland : Bloodaxe Books, 2007.)

There is a verb for when
the madness of a country
turns against you

There is an epitaph
for being fed to crocodiles
because they could

There is a sound for being
unable to forget, yet humming
small melodies of hope

I know someone who knows them
and translates them
for the world

When the world tires of listening
he wears them on his soul
tattoos against silence

***

The selves, by P.K. Page (1916-2010)
(from The Essential P. K. Page. Erin, Ont. : Porcupine's Quill, 2008.)

Every other day I am an invalid.
Lie back among the pillows and white sheets
lackadaisical O lackadaisical.
Brush my hair out like a silver fan.
Allow myself to be wheeled into the sun.
Calves’-foot jelly, a mid-morning glass of port,
these I accept and rare azaleas in pots.

The nurses humour me. The call me ‘dear’.
I am pilled and pillowed into another sphere
and there my illness rules us like a queen,
is absolute monarch, wears a giddy crown
and I, its humble servant at all times, am its least
serf on occasion and excluded from the feast.

Every other other day I am as fit
as planets circling.
I brush my hair into a golden sun,
strike roses from a bush,
rare plants into pots
blossom within the green of my eyes, I am
enviable O I am enviable.

Somewhere in between the two, a third
wishes to speak, cannot make itself heard,
stands unmoving, mute, invisible,
a bolt of lightning in its naked hand.