OCCUPY EARTH

small town

why do train whistles, red rooftops,
and abandoned row-boats somehow
make us feel safe, and with our true
souls revealed?

SMALL TOWN

You know.
The light on upstairs
before four every morning. The man
asleep every night before eight.
What programs they watch. Who
traded cars, what keeps the town
moving.
The town knows. You
know. You've known for years over
drugstore coffee. Who hurts, who
loves.
Why, today, in the house
two down from the church, people
you know cannot stop weeping.

Philip Booth

"Small Town" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. © Penguin Group, 1999.

1804

.山里や秋の雨夜の遠歩き
yamazato ya aki no ame yo no tô aruki

mountain village--
a rainy autumn evening's
long walk

Issa, translation by David Lanoue

images that should make us feel
lonely instead make us feel whole
and bathed in golden light.

PASSION FOR SOLITUDE

I'm eating a little supper
by the bright window.
The room's already dark,
the sky's starting to turn.
Outside my door,
the quiet roads lead,
after a short walk, to open fields.
I'm eating, watching the sky—
who knows
how many women are eating now. My body is calm:
labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.

Outside, after supper,
the stars will come out to touch
the wide plain of the earth.
The stars are alive,
but not worth these cherries,
which I'm eating alone.
I look at the sky, know that lights
already are shining
among rust-red roofs,
noises of people beneath them.
A gulp of my drink,
and my body can taste the life
of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.
A small dose of silence suffices, and everything's still,
in its true place, just like my body is still.

All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course:
a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness—
I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of
water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant,
and each stone,
lives motionlessly.
I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.

The night doesn't matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn't enough for itself,
it needs too many companions.
Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it's in charge.

Cesare Pavese

translation by Geoffrey Brock

"Passion for Solitude" from Disaffections:
Complete Poems 1930-1950.
Copyright © 2002 by Cesare Pavese.

it's neighborhood,
being tucked into bed,
the smell of fresh bread,
the human voice,
the slam of the
refrigerator door....

1805

.里の火の古めかしたる月夜哉
sato no hi no furumekashitaru tsuki yo kana

the village fires
old and familiar...
a moonlit night

Issa, translation by David Lanoue