Happy summer solstice, dear readers. Here’s a bit of verse from the great Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) to celebrate the longest day of the year.
“In the Summer”
In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
(Translated by B. Frangieh and C. Brown)
There is no poet who brings me to all of my senses in this physical world quite like the magnificent Adrienne Rich (1929-2012).
“Itinerary”
i.
Burnt by lightning nevertheless
she’ll walk this terra infinita
lashes singed on her third eye
searching definite shadows for an indefinite future
Old shed-boards beaten silvery hang
askew as sheltering
some delicate indefensible existence
Long grasses shiver in a vanished doorway’s draft
a place of origins as yet unclosured and unclaimed
Writing cursive instructions on abounding air
If you arrive with ripe pears, bring a sharpened knife
Bring cyanide with the honeycomb
call before you come
ii.
Let the face of the bay be violet black the tumbled torn
kelp necklaces strewn alongshore
Stealthily over time arrives the chokehold
stifling ocean’s guttural chorales
a tangle
of tattered plastic rags
iii.
In a physical world the great poverty would be
to live insensate shuttered against the fresh
slash of urine on a wall
low-tidal rumor of a river’s yellowed mouth
a tumor-ridden face asleep on a subway train
What would it mean to not possess
a permeable skin
explicit veil to wander in
iv.
A cracked shell crumbles.
Sun moon and salt dissect the faint
last grains
An electrical impulse zings
out ricochets
in meta-galactic orbits
a streak of nervous energy rejoins the crucible
where origins and endings meld
There was this honey-laden question mark
this thread extracted from the open
throat of existence—Lick it clean!
—let it evaporate—
live in the layers 