remembering: POETRY

VERA PAVLOVA



If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.


Enough painkilling, heal.
Enough cajoling, command,
even if your fiery joys
mean endless inequality
and melt our vessels
that are dispensable.
Enough rehashing, create.
Enough lying to the sick:
they will not get well.


I do not mind being away from you.
That is not what the problem is.
You will step out to get cigarettes,
will come back, and realize I have aged.
Lord, what a pitiful,
tedious pantomime!
A click of a lighter in the dark,
one puff, and I am no longer loved.

“If you want, we can part with a smile,
or you can cry a little, if you want.”
The sole profession in the world
for men only: the executioner.
Has all been properly done:
the verdict duly announced,
the scaffold set nice and comfy,
the axe razor-sharp?

Why is the word YES so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it . . .

e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands



may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old


may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young


and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile