酷我-北美枫

[anna]

Winner of the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize

Tim Bowling
The Book Collector

for Harry Elkins Widener 1885-1912


I have less than twenty-seven minutes to write this poem
about Harry Elkins Widener who drowned
on the Titanic April 1912 with or without
his recently-purchased second edition (1598)
of Bacon's Essais which, romantic accounts
insist, he leaped out of a lowering lifeboat
to retrieve, less than twenty-four minutes now
to tell you I've struck a seemingly-benign iceberg
in my life and I'm hastily yet tenderly
ushering the consequential memories
into the ice-jagged sea and standing back
as the ropes creak and my father's
pipe smoke aspires with the hymns
to a heaven almost universally believed in,
eighteen minutes to acknowledge the death
of youth's purchase, seventeen minutes
to blink at my mother's diminishing shade
as the china slides and crashes
and the crushed velvet in the ballroom
loses forever the echo of the steps
of the past. An old man cries
composedly and, out of the dark, a woman
shrieks words in the just-learned tongue
of terror, I am down to twelve minutes
and what am I going to say to you,
stowaways at the rail of another's heart,
that can bring you faster across
the killing waters? I must address
myself instead to the running-out sand
in the glass of Harry Elkins Widener
who did not live to spend the whole
of the family fortune on Shakespeare Folios
and Gutenberg Bibles but slipped into
the relentlessly-clattering
press of tragedy and history
and became blank, void
as the sea and the sleepless hours
of the woman who bore him. Harry,
I have six minutes, and after them
I will live, I will walk in this body
on the earth as the iceberg
that will kill me bows and
retracts like a dancer from your era
to wait in the wings for ten
or twenty or forty years,
but tell me, what is the material
to what can only be, at essence,
spirit? Should I in my dwindling minutes
divest myself of the armature
of belief in printed expression to succor
and sustain? Three minutes. Two.

I have less than twenty-seven minutes to write this poem
about Harry Elkins Widener who drowned
on the Titanic April 1912 with or without
his recently-purchased second edition (1598)
of Bacon's Essais which, romantic accounts
insist, he leaped out of a lowering lifeboat
to retrieve, less than twenty-four minutes now
to tell you I've struck a seemingly-benign iceberg
in my life and I'm hastily yet tenderly
ushering the consequential memories
into the ice-jagged sea and standing back
as the ropes creak and my father's
pipe smoke aspires with the hymns
to a heaven almost universally believed in,
eighteen minutes to acknowledge the death
of youth's purchase, seventeen minutes
to blink at my mother's diminishing shade
as the china slides and crashes
and the crushed velvet in the ballroom
loses forever the echo of the steps
of the past. An old man cries
composedly and, out of the dark, a woman
shrieks words in the just-learned tongue
of terror, I am down to twelve minutes
and what am I going to say to you,
stowaways at the rail of another's heart,
that can bring you faster across
the killing waters? I must address
myself instead to the running-out sand
in the glass of Harry Elkins Widener
who did not live to spend the whole
of the family fortune on Shakespeare Folios
and Gutenberg Bibles but slipped into
the relentlessly-clattering
press of tragedy and history
and became blank, void
as the sea and the sleepless hours
of the woman who bore him. Harry,
I have six minutes, and after them
I will live, I will walk in this body
on the earth as the iceberg
that will kill me bows and
retracts like a dancer from your era
to wait in the wings for ten
or twenty or forty years,
but tell me, what is the material
to what can only be, at essence,
spirit? Should I in my dwindling minutes
divest myself of the armature
of belief in printed expression to succor
and sustain? Three minutes. Two.

Young Mr. Widener, Harry,
you didn't go back for the book,
you didn't even think of it
or of Shakespeare or Gutenberg
as the ship tilted like a parched throat
beneath a cracked glass. Romance
is a luxury of the living and you
were several staircases on your way to death,
and we who have made a start behind you,
gathering and spending, turning the rare pages
with delight, shelving and re-shelving
the accumulated wisdom
of the world, adherents
to the faith in permanence,
sniff the Alexandrian smoke
and turn over in our first-class berths
and steerage bunks or play
another hand of poker
as the lights flicker
and at last go out.

This is the final moment
of the final poem of my youth
which will be printed and bound
between covers and found perhaps
by others as I found your name, Harry,
by the serendipity of our common passion
for the rescue ship to arrive in time
and the tragedy to be told as comedy
by firelight some far-off year.

Goodbye, Harry. Goodbye who you were,
who I was, who we all were.
Peace to your un-recovered bones,
the hours lived.
Peace to the eternal ligatures.

Tim Bowling is a poet and novelist living in Edmonton. His third novel, The Bone Sharps, will appear with Gaspereau Press in April, 2007.

from http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Fiddlehead/current.html
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Winner of the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize

Tim Bowling
The Book Collector

for Harry Elkins Widener 1885-1912


I have less than twenty-seven minutes to write this poem
about Harry Elkins Widener who drowned
on the Titanic April 1912 with or without
his recently-purchased second edition (1598)
of Bacon's Essais which, romantic accounts
insist, he leaped out of a lowering lifeboat
to retrieve, less than twenty-four minutes now
to tell you I've struck a seemingly-benign iceberg
in my life and I'm hastily yet tenderly
ushering the consequential memories
into the ice-jagged sea and standing back
as the ropes creak and my father's
pipe smoke aspires with the hymns
to a heaven almost universally believed in,
eighteen minutes to acknowledge the death
of youth's purchase, seventeen minutes
to blink at my mother's diminishing shade
as the china slides and crashes
and the crushed velvet in the ballroom
loses forever the echo of the steps
of the past. An old man cries
composedly and, out of the dark, a woman
shrieks words in the just-learned tongue
of terror, I am down to twelve minutes
and what am I going to say to you,
stowaways at the rail of another's heart,
that can bring you faster across
the killing waters? I must address
myself instead to the running-out sand
in the glass of Harry Elkins Widener
who did not live to spend the whole
of the family fortune on Shakespeare Folios
and Gutenberg Bibles but slipped into
the relentlessly-clattering
press of tragedy and history
and became blank, void
as the sea and the sleepless hours
of the woman who bore him. Harry,
I have six minutes, and after them
I will live, I will walk in this body
on the earth as the iceberg
that will kill me bows and
retracts like a dancer from your era
to wait in the wings for ten
or twenty or forty years,
but tell me, what is the material
to what can only be, at essence,
spirit? Should I in my dwindling minutes
divest myself of the armature
of belief in printed expression to succor
and sustain? Three minutes. Two.

I have less than twenty-seven minutes to write this poem
about Harry Elkins Widener who drowned
on the Titanic April 1912 with or without
his recently-purchased second edition (1598)
of Bacon's Essais which, romantic accounts
insist, he leaped out of a lowering lifeboat
to retrieve, less than twenty-four minutes now
to tell you I've struck a seemingly-benign iceberg
in my life and I'm hastily yet tenderly
ushering the consequential memories
into the ice-jagged sea and standing back
as the ropes creak and my father's
pipe smoke aspires with the hymns
to a heaven almost universally believed in,
eighteen minutes to acknowledge the death
of youth's purchase, seventeen minutes
to blink at my mother's diminishing shade
as the china slides and crashes
and the crushed velvet in the ballroom
loses forever the echo of the steps
of the past. An old man cries
composedly and, out of the dark, a woman
shrieks words in the just-learned tongue
of terror, I am down to twelve minutes
and what am I going to say to you,
stowaways at the rail of another's heart,
that can bring you faster across
the killing waters? I must address
myself instead to the running-out sand
in the glass of Harry Elkins Widener
who did not live to spend the whole
of the family fortune on Shakespeare Folios
and Gutenberg Bibles but slipped into
the relentlessly-clattering
press of tragedy and history
and became blank, void
as the sea and the sleepless hours
of the woman who bore him. Harry,
I have six minutes, and after them
I will live, I will walk in this body
on the earth as the iceberg
that will kill me bows and
retracts like a dancer from your era
to wait in the wings for ten
or twenty or forty years,
but tell me, what is the material
to what can only be, at essence,
spirit? Should I in my dwindling minutes
divest myself of the armature
of belief in printed expression to succor
and sustain? Three minutes. Two.

Young Mr. Widener, Harry,
you didn't go back for the book,
you didn't even think of it
or of Shakespeare or Gutenberg
as the ship tilted like a parched throat
beneath a cracked glass. Romance
is a luxury of the living and you
were several staircases on your way to death,
and we who have made a start behind you,
gathering and spending, turning the rare pages
with delight, shelving and re-shelving
the accumulated wisdom
of the world, adherents
to the faith in permanence,
sniff the Alexandrian smoke
and turn over in our first-class berths
and steerage bunks or play
another hand of poker
as the lights flicker
and at last go out.

This is the final moment
of the final poem of my youth
which will be printed and bound
between covers and found perhaps
by others as I found your name, Harry,
by the serendipity of our common passion
for the rescue ship to arrive in time
and the tragedy to be told as comedy
by firelight some far-off year.

Goodbye, Harry. Goodbye who you were,
who I was, who we all were.
Peace to your un-recovered bones,
the hours lived.
Peace to the eternal ligatures.

Tim Bowling is a poet and novelist living in Edmonton. His third novel, The Bone Sharps, will appear with Gaspereau Press in April, 2007.

from http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Fiddlehead/current.html
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

It is interesting to see how the contents connected.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

It is interesting to see how the contents connected.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com