After That One Night (poem)

After That One Night

I hold you tight because

I never held you up.

– Rilke

What if we met and the meadow stayed –

our arms didn’t surround,

didn’t encircle,

didn’t enscythe,

never enwreathed,

never enshrined,

left the green

that came to be around us

standing not ending,

growing not gone?

Do all forms close? close

in, wall out? Is there embrace

that leaves the open in,

does not hide the face?

-- Lloyd Haft

Risen Rock (poem)

Risen Rock[1]

There is no other being than being other

-Carry van Bruggen

1. Viewing an errant boulder on the shore at Dai Kee, Taiwan, I see in it a human face.

Nearing the rock

at last I see its eyes,

seemingly an I’s,

more than of dust that lies,

spray that scatters.

Marker of the morning

where I see it now

it comes to light,

joins me in the going.

2. If the stone’s name is ‘errant,’ the stone is human...

Likeness

nearing mine

above the sea

that never knew to say

but up and under,

up and ever down again.

Stone that earth refused –

earth that gave no ground,

showed no place of peace –

stone arising, weight along with me,

stay me here in light against the wind.

Be along in standing

never to dissolve,

never to resolve

into a wave among the waves.

Open as mine your eye,

open as one the other,

skull and stone one likeness.

Over the unbespoken and asunder,

out of the lightless wallowings

and echoings of ends,

out of the seething settlements

now here:

one seen.

3. ...and obstinate...

Not to save the stone –

I came to see it rise

where I arrive,

rising as I rise against the setting,

the lying of land’s end.

Leaving the very sea behind

to stand and sign and be:

that where we were denied we rise

in countersign and coming:

peer and counterpart.

4. ...and odd.

Stave or stela

staying in this light,

staying more than saying,

rather tall than told,

better with than worded,

rather along. Here beyond proscribing

I am seen in what I see:

over the dumb and boom and doom

of all the sea

and all that was surrounding.

5. The stone will never ask me what I am, or if I am.

Over I stand,

standing ever over.

Behold the stone:

housing not on land,

not in the word-enwalled stockade

but here in overstanding,

here in the not inhering

that is ours,

open that is own.

Standing out against the wind:

here against the setting sun,

here against all setting.

6. Blessed are they that stand.

So be I ever, seeming

in a distance that is near,

apart

and yet a part,

touching on whatever

is to touch

and now is near,

with in waiting,

waiting in the wind

for more of wind.

--Lloyd Haft

October 2015

---

[1] This is my English version of a poem I originally published in Dutch in De gids 2011: 4.

For the Dutch version, see http://www.athenaeum.nl/boek-van-de-nacht/gids-2011-4

For Katie Su’s Chinese version, see http://lhaftblog.blogspot.nl/2015/09/blog-post.html

Waterfall at Taroko (poem)

  

Emerging where the rivers were

I leave the valley under me,

clouds and lungs together now,

filling alike in freedom,

fingers and twigs alike

touching wind.

Where I am the mountain is:

one standing.

Left and right the dark rocks:

one stone.

Water falling clear between:

one light,

one ray open above,

through to beneath.

Where are the trees?

here where I am,

standing with me in one,

one in the wideness of wind.

--Lloyd Haft

Reflections (three poems)

(1) TRAWLER

The true net is widest,

strong-knotted,

stays most open,

catches nothing,

lets in,

lets waves be,

lets the pull be

that fills it in going.

Don’t untie a knot,

don’t dissolve a single eye

till the fin that found it opening

is shining, clearly caught,

fisher and fish a single freight,

one faring.

(2) FOCUS

See how the treetops

bend, seek shelter,

throng around the empty like a hearth,

leave the wind outside,

leave a window at the top,

an open,

eye to let the light be there

and how above to skyward

clouds too seek shelter,

throng around the empty like an eye,

open to the earth they circle.

And where the two,

the eyes are,

there we stand,

we that see the branches,

name the sky,

join the never-shutting circle

holding earth and light together

in a moment’s open,

sheltering the open from the wind.

(3) TRANSLATOR’S HINDSIGHT

The names we spoke were never true,

we who never knew where surf would end

and song begin,

scrying always, signing always

under what was there,

coming late to scavenge shells

of what would never feed us,

seeing ever just ahead,

waiting where our feet would follow:

fallen grains, seeds of storm

that seemed to go together,

fall together into shadow shape,

with us in their silence,

speaking only so.

We take away,

gather home

what fell beyond the finding,

whispered out of mind,

called, still

calls for a word

where the wind around us

– all we had to breathe –

roared without reason,

shrieked out unspoken,

broke trees untold.

We heard,

still hear

an after,

a nearer:

hear, never know.

--Lloyd Haft

In memoriam Li Shenquan (poems)

'Blest Are They That Stay...'
in memoriam Li Shenquan

(1)

'Blest are they that stay.'
So the trees would say:

see how the tallest longest of them
leafless at the end

receive the good,
reap the golden traces

of the longest-setting sun.
What we say is other: say

young, stay young.
'Later comers longer last' -

and what is last?
Ask it not of us who waver,

ask it of the wind.


(2)

No one writes them in.
Wind it is that blows,
blights them in:

pine's dark green,
bough's down bend.
Wind it is that makes,

takes: breath that comes
and in it was,
out it is

quicker than the light
that came and was,
quickly ending as the twig it wrung.


(3)

What you see of the wind that was
is the tree
that it gutted,

like every form an after:
trace of a could,
wreck of a would -

stump where the winged of a moment
showed,
glowed and did not stay.

--Lloyd Haft (for Dutch version and painting by Li Shenquan, see the post 'Li Shenquan 李神泉 in memoriam (gedichten)' with label 'NieuweGedichten', in the February 2011 archive)

St. Paul's Epistles read anew (in poems)

Word of a New: After St. Paul

I.

        On Colossians 1:24-27 and 1:14-19

We suffer the one becoming

letting our flesh conceive or clasp

the rumor that is warm about us:

one we are becoming

is within us, in us,

wider in birth than all the wounds we were.

The one we are becoming

is the one that dies to death,

living us on and over,

on to the earth of other, which is joy.

II.

        On 2 Corinthians 12:9

Ever it is in me

the one becoming says abundantly

you are, in me.

Abyss we saw between us

is our place Now, of light.

Wherever I thought to hide my face

I’m shying into sight –

every Now a clearing,

a nearing of the one becoming.

III.

        On Ephesians 4:7-13

In and out of each of us

is given all,

all of the one becoming,

called in our writings Risen,

clasping who were kept alone,

holding who were held apart

for what is risen other

than of down and in and with? –

reaching to the full,

the body of becoming,

tallest in its telling

of our provenance of love,

telling all together

in the love we limn.

IV.

        On 1 Corinthians 13:12

We stare into our darkness

as a mirror, call it Now,

not saying the name,

not knowing the name, the later,

wider face of We –

We that we’ll be known as

where we’re known, home in the length of every limb.

V.

        On Philippians 3:10-12

May that be where I’m known:

where all of me is known to suffer

one becoming

coming forth,

party to a death that brings together.

Becoming brings together

out of death. We touch the We

wherever we are touched.

VI.

        On Colossians 2:9-12, 14

There in the one becoming

is the fulness of the living

where to live is to be known

and to be going,

be come along in every limb

before beginnings,

after all the answers,

not departing out of flesh

but undergoing what is ever going,

going on and over every word of man

that ever did forbid us.

--Lloyd Haft