Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
For any American who grew up during the Cold War, Berlin was a city torn between two worlds: the Kodachrome present of Western consumerist culture and what we imagined to be the gray, regimented East, still scarred by the war and therefore to be pictured in the grainy black-and-white of old newsreels.
Continue reading “Berlin in black-and-white”
I went this morning with Sir W. Pen by coach to Westminster, and having done my business at Mr. Montagu’s, I went back to him at Whitehall, and from thence with him to the 3 Tun Tavern, at Charing Cross, and there sent for up the maister of the house’s dinner, and dined very well upon it, and afterwards had him and his fayre sister (who is very great with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen in mirth) up to us, and looked over some medals that they shewed us of theirs; and so went away to the Theatre, to “The Joviall Crew,” and from hence home, and at my house we were very merry till late, having sent for his son, Mr. William Pen, lately come from Oxford. And after supper parted, and to bed.
Having done my sin,
I went back to the cross
and so I am late
for supper.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 1 November 1661.
Because the spirits had been here,
we picked up things and knew they
could not be merely of this world.
The clothespins by the hamper, the stain
on the ironing-board’s cover; good shirts
monogrammed with letters that once named
someone who walked and loved and bore
his weight among us, and drove
his secret need— who knows or cares now
the actual reason— into my mother’s body.
Once, twice, a hundred times, I will never know
the actual story. Only that I wish I could find
some antique remnant: brooch with a border
nubby to my touch, cuff links, postcard
inked in code; scent that must have risen
from bodies in the wake of such furtive love.
The glass trembled
away from its stem,
trying to speak
with the voice
of someone long dead.
No? You do not
believe? Explain
to me then how the leaf
reddens in the wind,
how grief after grief
falls from the branch
yet you remember
each vein
on its five-
pointed body.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
This morning comes Prior of Brampton to me about the house he has to buy of me, but I was forced to be at the office all the morning, and so could not talk with him. And so, after the office was done, and dined at home, I went to my brother Tom’s, and there met him. He demanded some abatement, he having agreed with my father for Barton’s house, at a price which I told him I could not meddle with, but that as for anything to secure his title to them I was ready, and so we parted.
Thence to Sir Robert Bernard, and as his client did ask his advice about my uncle Thomas’s case and ours as to Gravely, and in short he tells me that there is little hopes of recovering it or saving his annuity, which do trouble me much, but God’s will be done. Hence, with my mind full of trouble, to my uncle Fenner’s, when at the alehouse I found him drinking and very jolly and youthsome, and as one that I believe will in a little time get a wife. So home.
Come, buy, talk, dine,
demand, agree, use, meddle:
the client is a little god
of trouble—
one that I believe in.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 31 October 1661.
All the morning at the office. At noon played on my Theorbo, and much pleased therewith; it is now altered with a new neck. In the afternoon Captain Lambert called me out by appointment, and we walked together to Deptford, and there in his ship, the Norwich, I got him to shew me every hole and corner of the ship, much to my information, and the purpose of my going. So home again, and at Sir W. Batten’s heard how he had been already at Sir R. Slingsby’s, as we were all invited, and I intended this night to go, and there he finds all things out of order, and no such thing done to-night, but pretending that the corpse stinks, they will bury it to-night privately, and so will unbespeak all their guests, and there shall be no funerall, which I am sorry for, that there should be nothing done for the honour of Sir Robert, but I fear he hath left his family in great distraction. Here I staid till late at cards with my Lady and Mrs. Martha, and so home. I sent for a bottle or two of wine thither.
At my coming home I am sorry to find my wife displeased with her maid Doll, whose fault is that she cannot keep her peace, but will always be talking in an angry manner, though it be without any reason and to no purpose, which I am sorry for and do see the inconvenience that do attend the increase of a man’s fortune by being forced to keep more servants, which brings trouble.
Sir Henry Vane, Lambert, and others, are lately sent suddenly away from the Tower, prisoners to Scilly; but I do not think there is any plot as is said, but only a pretence; as there was once pretended often against the Cavaliers.
I am in every hole
and corner hip
to information—
a corpse they bury
privately,
a guest of fear,
a doll
who cannot talk, angry
at being a prisoner.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 30 October 1661.
Paper car
and steamer trunk,
wardrobe of ash—
Crows glossy
in undertakers’ suits,
conferring in the bush—
Tier after tier,
offerings strung
in the city of the dead.
In response to Via Negativa: Burnt Offerings.
This day I put on my half cloth black stockings and my new coat of the fashion, which pleases me well, and with my beaver I was (after office was done) ready to go to my Lord Mayor’s feast, as we are all invited; but the Sir Williams were both loth to go, because of the crowd, and so none of us went, and I staid and dined with them, and so home, and in evening, by consent, we met at the Dolphin, where other company came to us, and should have been merry, but their wine was so naught, and all other things out of order, that we were not so, but staid long at night, and so home and to bed. My mind not pleased with the spending of this day, because I had proposed a great deal of pleasure to myself this day at Guildhall.
This Lord Mayor, it seems, brings up again the Custom of Lord Mayors going the day of their installment to Paul’s, and walking round about the Cross, and offering something at the altar.
Kings of ash, we are
an evening company
and should have been merry
but the wine and all
other things stayed
on the altar.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 29 October 1661.
In those early years, before there was a garden,
we rented rooms to 2 college girls from Thailand.
They had first names with only one syllable,
which they taught me to write in their script.
Back then, perhaps our city was a destination:
little strip of airport in the hills, the sudden drop
at the end of the tarmac. Breathtaking view of one
road snaking up from the coast. Fog near noon, rain
half the year; postcards framed with pine
and sunflowers. They ate meals with us, dated
local boys. I watched them work on their hair
with rollers, play vinyl records on the turntable,
do their own manicures. Modern in miniskirts,
yet they creased in perfect folds the pleats
of silk-threaded costumes, adjusted gold
headdresses and ten curved brass points
over their fingers. What made me think
of them today, as I pulled sweaters
out of the dryer, picking off the little
balls of lint with my thumb and forefinger?
Inside an envelope of rain, a city sleeps
or stirs, making labyrinths, going about its
business. Has it known another fate than to be
a city teeming inside an envelope of rain?
An envelope of rain is still an enclosure,
whether it is mist that barely falls or a torrent.
Living inside, you cultivate belief in color:
saffron and juniper, even the drab of olive—
And even surrounded by dry dust, groves of olives flourish;
stands of cypress establish hardscrabble existence, root
footholds in landscapes of rock. You don’t see the enclosure:
where I’ve dug in my heels, cultivating this thing I love.