"POEMS"
by Curt Hopkins


Indice
DAYBOOK
THE ORANGE OF EUROTAS



DAYBOOK

I prefer sure awareness without precedent. 
								P. Neruda

I
We have conspired together to create a thing
that we have called Poetry and we have told
each other that life is about it, this Poetry.
I believe now that we may have made a mistake,
that we may have made this thing called Poetry
to excuse ourselves from mutability, from living.
Let me now suggest that, if we can,  
we end our desperate devotions at this misplaced 
altar, and admit to ourselves that all we really 
do, and all we need to do, is sing
a little, whistle out or hum a bit.
The only scripture, I'm trying to say, is recited 
by the day itself and all we can
do is listen to it, leaning up
against a seawall in our good coat
with nothing to do for the rest of the day.

II
It's in terms of the day we need to think  
the day's the universe's
clear link, the element from which 
vast and hidden words are constituted,
the blocks on which the temporal road unwinds,
unraveling like a spool of blue thread
into the yellow umbrellas of fennel that climb
the cliffs seaside to watch that great tumbler,
the ocean, roll over to zero.

III
This is a poem about the rest of the day,
the time that stretches comfortably before us 
with no expectations, the time after which 
we have done those things which justify us,
when we are free.  It is this rest of the day
for which we have truly worked.
Some things we cannot live without
a sense of meaning something, the dew-collecting 
spider webs that radiate like cold chandeliers,
vibrating with dawn in the chill fields by  
the sea, the delicacy and strength of love 
but when we have done
and seen and felt, taken and given
enough, then we can stand somewhere alone 
(and for this I would recommend Anywhere)
and watch the world flow around our 
arms and legs as though we were standing
backward to a strong rushing water
until we take a notion to lean slowly back
and let ourselves be carried down the day
like a leaf down a broad stream.

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THE ORANGE OF EUROTAS

after George Seferis

1.
The half-moon, a smoky golden boat
beached on the black gravel of the night sky
in a notch between two buttes
over Fairfield.  A semi 
hauling new cars down a siding road 
flashes its lights across the face 
of a boarded-up feed store.
Refineries smolder over dead water.
We are going down to the shore at Halicarnassus.

2.
Can the man who swam in the water
be the same one who now reads the paper?
I stood on the lower terrace 
of the bank of the Willamette, 
its clay green waters swollen with rain,
alone in the past, bored and useless,
alone now and in life.
And I looked up to the air 
and I saw the air in amazement.

3.
After the bridge we stopped
at the Iziz Han,
superb architecture, this old han,
two fireplaces in the middle
with four pillars each.
Now it's used as a sheepfold.
Outside the weather has turned grey.
We slept at Bursa.

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