Borges
BORGES
Life is a Story,
An Essay,
A Poem.
Its characters are not real -
Its lines are long,
Its rivers are in you
As you play games
With Time and Identity,
You write
And we see
readings
Never heard before.
Greater more humane writers
have been and will be-
But there is only one Borges.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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In The Manner Of Borges I Write Poems In My Old Age
IN THE MANNER OF BORGES I WRITE POEMS IN MY OLD AGE
In the manner of Borges I write poems in my old age
And dream that they are not only imitations
Of poems written by others
When we all were young.
Instead I go on now in the darkness of the night
Because the fear of what will be
Is always so deep in me
It does not need Poetry or Happiness or any other Meaning
Outside itself.
We are small sands drifting on the edge of stars
Lesser beings of a time we will never know
All that we have done comes back to us over and over again
As if we never were
I don’t believe I will ever write Borges lines
He wrote them in his own imagined words
And I must in my own little life
Suffer to the end of time
All I have not been
And never will be.
God Who is Good
God of Love
You gave me so much
You did not have to give me Poetry also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Read Borges Poems
I read Borges poems
And the Night opens up a vast and different kind of Memory
Histories of place I have never been
Faces I have never seen
Questions of Identity
Streets I will never walk in
Too long and deserted
To truly contemplate-
Fame and its follies
The delusions of a name
Death and destinies
Games of words
Encyclopedias of strange tribes
Anthropologies of gestures
A voice and tones of thinkers long unknown
Books rewritten
Literature as life
Reading as adventuring
Labyrinths, hourglasses, imaginary swords and battles
And loves whose only realization is their longing
Solitude and its self- deceptions
Escape and its consolations
The long road in poems and parables
Old age and the regrets of what one has never done-
I read Borges
And there is the joy of the real thing
What only Literature can give
Life is more when read about
Than when lived -
A seeming in the silence
Where even the most beautiful words on the page
Are best seen as echoes of past worlds greater and more glorious
Long lines on the page defining worlds far away and forever mysterious
Time passing unapproachable.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Bellow Can Only Be Bellow
BELLOW CAN BE ONLY BELLOW
Bellow can only be Bellow
Kierkegaard-Kierkegaard
Kafka- Kafka
Joyce- Joyce
Borges- Borges
Pessoa-Pessoa
There is only one of each of us-
And no matter how many pages we write
And how many names we give ourselves and our own characters
No matter how many styles we invent
Each one is only one-
And so this small poem too
Will not be for anyone else
Any more or other
Than so much else
Which has already failed to give me the kind of name
Only the truly great have-.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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All The Poems Remain Written Where They Once Never Were
ALL THE POEMS REMAIN WRITTEN WHERE THEY ONCE NEVER WERE
All the poems remain written where they once never were
The grass and the skies of Whitman form lines in the mind of Baudelaire
The trees and dark cities of the distance form single sounds in the heart of the poet who cares
Night is more than darkness and day more than an early setting out
Each thing influences the other and calls back its own origins and end
We are going somewhere we will never know whether we write eternal lines or not
Over everywhere can be heard in the morning light the selfsame sound that through the heart of Ruth burned the alien corn
Keats is not dead, and Borges is not dead and Kafka is not dead and Wordsworth and all those who wrote great lines are not dead
Poetry is the last first eternity of the living word
And those who can hear the sounds of others greater than themselves in their own lines know
We are all writing down this last poem for ourselves and no one else
Though as we go to pray each morning the minyan tells us secretly
All our prayers together are more than any single poem can be alone
In the grey long distance where no one hears any poem at all
God writes and rewrites for us all the book of the stars in which dread is no longer a name
And beauty bright bright beauty is heard and reechoed as more than we will ever be
God is the only Poetry in the End
God is the Only One who never will be dead..
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Emily Dickinson Is Not Borges
EMILY DICKINSON IS NOT BORGES
Emily Dickinson is not Borges
And Borges is not Kafka
And Kafka is not Dickens
And no one is Shakespeare-
Each one is only one self
Except for those who are many selves
And those who are many selves
Do not know
Who they themselves are-
Lear is not Falstaff
And Falstaff is not Hamlet
And Hamlet is not Shakespeare
And Shakespeare is not Donne-
No one is anyone but themselves
And even those who are really ‘someone'
Are not all the others who also are-
And we who are nothing at all?
What are we?
We are not nothing at all.
We are not great
And no one will remember our names
But we are still here now
Reading Borges and Dickenson and Kafka and Shakespeare
And wondering how and why
There are those in a world of their own
With names of their own
They themselves will never completely know.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I don't want to leave any message, I just advise them to read other authors' stuff and forget me; forget about Borges, there are so many others far superior.
Jorge Luis Borges in interview by Joaquín Soler Serrano (1980), translated by Dan Costinaş
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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It's Late To Write A Poem
It’s late to write a poem-
It’s almost time to go-
And yet now as I was about to leave
The spirit of poetry came to me
And I feel in me lines that want to be written-
So as I quietly calmly surely write these lines down now
I know
The world can wait a long time for a real poem-
But when it comes
Oh how the sky opens up and the dreams go on happily on their journey.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
quote by Jorge Luis Borges
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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I Find Us Between the Lines
I find myself between the lines
Of Marvin Bell's poem
'Prodigal? ' in his book
Of poems 'Mars Being Red'
It's like he's welcoming me
Back unconditionally
I'll put his words in brackets
So you can follow along
[I'm off to the front lines in the war to preserve
the privilege of myth-making]
That's me whenever I write
My poetic license tucked in my pants
I have [...the nerve to think
the future and remember the past...]
How does Marvin know how poems
Come to me and want to get back out
I still hink he is talking about me
In the last lines of the poem
[...They lived among the heroic
who did not want another life, and if
they erred in creating bigger-than-life characters,
they broke bread with the unspeakable,
and that is worth something.]
In case you are wondering
I think you too the other writers
Are the [heroic/who] also [did not
want another life, ...]
[and that is worth something.]
poem by Tom J. Mariani
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Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
quote by Jorge Luis Borges
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Poem Is A Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
A Long List
Of all things seen and known
All one’s memories
All the times and loves one has had
The great story of many other lives.
The Poem is a Catalogue of a Continent
Of a new world seen through fresh eyes
It is the night of all Rabelais body- functions
And Whitman’s wanderings
And Borges literary labyrinths
Of Joyce’s English language styles
Oxen of the Sun.
The Poem is a Catalogue of all the people
One has known
Their names and faces and lives
All the relationships one has wanted and regretted
And loved and lived in and needed to be.
The Poem is a Catalogue
Of a few small possessions
One takes in one’s hand
And goes far away with
The books on the desert island
And the last few things a hospice can hold.
The Poem is a Catalogue
Of all one will never be
All one wanted and did not get
The empty half glass.
The Poem is the Catalogue God makes
Of everything there is.
God’s Poems
And we if we can be
Privileged to be
Occasional readers
Or not.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.
quote by Jorge Luis Borges
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Not a Poem Poem
A Not a Poem Poem
I will not write a poem
For I am not a poet
I cannot makes things rhyme
I’ve tried for quite some time
So will I write a poem?
NO!
I can’t write poetry
I’ve tried to all my life
Once, I tried to write a poem
About a husband and his wife
It sounded really silly
So I crumbled it up into a ball
That’s why I decided
That I couldn’t write poetry at all
Am I gonna write a poem?
NO!
Well, I’ll try to write a poem
But it will be really bad
It will be absolutely lousy
It will be completely horrible
It won’t be up to snuff
People will say, “Who wrote this stuff? ”
Will my poem be good?
NO!
Can I write a poem?
NO!
Will I write a poem?
NO!
Well, what do you know! ? !
I wrote a poem!
And it’s a pretty good poem, too!
I guess I can write poetry if I try
The next time I’m asked to write a poem,
Will I say no?
NO!
I Write To Write To Write
I WANT TO WRITE TO WRITE TO WRITE
I write to write to write-
A poem must be more than a straining against Emptiness-
A poem must be more than making a name.
A poem should be food for the heart and soul and mind
It should make us feel the world with new love
It should make us want to live more and more
A poem should make us love life
It should be written for its readers
And not for its poet alone
A poem should make us want to be in this world
In greater beauty and greater love.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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After The Long Run
AFTER THE LONG RUN
After the long run
I stand and wait
And write a poem
On no real subject for no one in particular-
Perhaps- No poem at all-
I write and rest
And in the writing live-
This has been my story for years
I write and live.
And thus in the quiet
Quickened by the soft morning breeze
Redeem another day – again.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Wanted A Poem Greater Than The One I Had
I WANTED A POEM GREATER THAN THE ONE I HAD
I wanted a poem greater than the one I had
I tried again and again to write it-
I could only write the poem I am
It was not all I wanted it to be-
It is here now in these lines
Simple and clear and superficial and me.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Hear Within Myself The Greater Lines Of Others
I HEAR WITHIN MYSELF THE GREATER LINES OF OTHERS
I hear within myself the greater lines of others-
I began to write ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’
I thought ‘Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way’
I felt ‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep’
I thought again ‘Doth God exact day – labor light denied? ”
I felt in my soul ‘Ah love let us be true to one another For the world which lies before us like a land of dreams ‘
Inside me I heard ‘The world is filled with the grandeur of God’
Time after time I repeated ‘O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right’-
All in me is poetry more than my own
‘Oh to be in England, now that April’s here’
'Oh wild west wind thou breath of autumn's being'
I do not know how to stop the lines -
More in me than myself is the Poetry of others
And where I begin must end a greater Beauty not my own-
Oh Poem Oh Poetry Oh Poets of the Past
Oh Light of the world greater than my own small light-
Oh singing in the wilderness a song not my own
Oh much more than I can ever be
Others’ Poetry.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Would Like To Write A Billy Collins Poem
I WOULD LIKE TO WRITE A BILLY COLLINS’ POEM
I would like to write a Billy Collins poem-
Not for Billy Collins
But to show that I could be as imaginative in story
As humorous and humane as he is-
But I can’t write that poem.
I don’t have his gift for the everyday experience
And for surprising metaphor
For those qualities good poets ordinarily have-
I would like to write a Billy Collins poem
To show that I can be a good poet too.
But probably I am just a different kind of thing entirely.
Still reading Billy Collins poems has added a bit
To my sense of what Poetry is-
It is remarkable all the wonderful gifts others have
One can appreciate
Without having oneself.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Games We Play
The Hollies
The Games We Play
(Allan Clarke/Tony Hicks/Graham Nash)
Track 12 (final) on album 'Evolution' june 1967
Well, I heard your mother say
what a pleasant boy you're going with.
That I don't mean any harm
and I only want to play.
Though I know she's just protecting you,
you're just a little girl.
Well, if your mother only knew the games we play.
When I take you home with me,
all the family get along with you.
Sitting all through tea,
wondering what we're gonna do.
Leaving us alone
the temptation's far too strong.
If your family only knew the games we play.
Are you sure we're getting away with this?
You cannot fool your mother or your father for long.
Only time will tell
if they are right and we are wrong.
{interlude}
Are you sure we're getting away with this?
You cannot fool your mother or your father for long.
Only time will tell
if they are right and we are wrong.
{mini interlude}
They know the games we play
there's no hiding things like this from them.
We know we're not the first
and we'll never be the last.
Everybody gets hung up,
we might have to pay,
and everybody knows the games we play.
song performed by by Hollies
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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