weather of the body

Can someone please give me a reason to continue trying to use Tumblr when it is such a huge pain to share poems with proper formatting?

And as Far as Abu Ghosh

And as far as Abu Ghosh we were silent

and as far as old age I will love you

at the foot of the hill of horrors,

in the den of the winds. And in Sha’ar Ha-Gai

the angels of the three religions stepped down into

the road. Faith in one god is still heavy. And with words

of pain I must describe the fig trees

and what happened to me, which wasn’t my fault. Sand

was blown into my eyes and became tears. And in Ramla

small planes were parked, and large nameless dead. The scent

of orange groves touched my blood. My blood looked

over its shoulder to see who touched. Winds, like actors, began

to put on their costumes again so that they could act before us,

their masks of house and mountain and woods,

makeup of sunset and night.

From there other roads began.

And my heart was covered with dreams, like my shiny

shoes, which were covered with dust.

For dreams too are a long road

whose end I will never reach.


-Yehuda Amichai 

A Majestic Love Song

You are beautiful, like prophecies,

and sad, like those that come true,

calm, like the calmness afterward.

Black, like the white lonliness of jasmine.

With sharpened fangs: she-wolf and queen.

Your very short dress is in fashion,

your weeping and laughter come from ancient times,

perhaps from some book of other kings.

I’ve never seen foam at the mouth of a war horse,

but when you lathered your body with soap

I saw.

You are beautiful like prophecies

that never come true.

And this is the royal scar;

I pass over it with my tongue

and with pointed fingers over that sweet roughness.

With hard shoes you knock

prison bars to and fro around me.

Your wild rings

are the sacred leprosy of your fingers.

Out of the earth emerge

all I wished never to see again:

Pillar and window sill, cornice and jug, broken pieces

of wine.

There is so much face hiding here

(Whose from whose?)

And at night, to stir with that

Blind golden scepter

In pleasures.

With the weight of kingdom and tiredness.


-Yehuda Amicahi (tr. the author & Ted Hughes) 

Beginning With His Body And Ending In A Small Town
 

It’s true I can’t forget any part of him,
not the long vein rising up along the underside of his cock,
or the brushy hair around his balls, dank star of the asshole,
high arches of his feet, strawberry mole on his left cheek-
imperfection that made his face exquisite-
and the freckles scattered over his back,
white insides of his wrists, I remember those too,
and the scar on his belly oh I’m kissing it now,
he belongs to me so purely now he’s left me,
he’ll never come back, his face as he lets go inside of me,
I’ll never see it again, I stand dripping
in the shower where I once knelt
before him to drink whatever came
out of him, sometimes he would watch
me as I walked naked around the room,
here I am, it’s the same room, I’m still
seeing his face the night it closed
to me forever like a failed business, iron grillwork
across the door, dirty windows, trash scattered
over the floor and the fixtures taken out, I turned
away and stumbled down the street, the one bar
was open, the saddest bar in the world, filled
with painted clowns and a few drunks, the owner had passed out
in a booth, covered by his coat, his girlfriend was working
and said The usual, right? and I couldn’t say a word
except Please, and I took a stool and drank
what she served and served and served.

-Kim Addonizio