she's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
that line should definitely end with a period.
i was going through my poetry archives and two poems hit me:
tony hoagland's a color of the sky (where this line comes from)
& final faith by yevgeny yevtushenko
A COLOR OF THE SKY
Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.
I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.
Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.
Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spray paint letters,
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossom foam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.
FINAL FAITH
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
translated by Albert Todd
Is it possible that we are so twisted
there is no salvation for any of us,
and that ideas have become wingless
in an age of winged rockets?
Is it possible that a crippled birch,
bending over to the last river,
will see the last man
in its boiling water?
Is it possible there’ll be no Big Ben,
Saint Basil’s, or Notre Dame
and that neutron foam will gush
over our final steps?
But that planet, cherry trees,
birds, and children will perish,
I don’t believe. This disbelief
is my final faith.
Skull after skull will not
be piled up in towers again.
The final Nuremberg approaches us
before, not after the war.
And the last soldier on earth
will throw his shoulder strap in a stream,
and watch how peacefully
dragonflies sit on it.
All rascality will end.
All people will understand--we are a family.
The last government
will abolish itself.
The last exploiter,
opening his toothless mouth,
will gobble the last money
furtively like a delicacy.
The last cowardly editor
will be doomed forever
to read from the stage in sequence
everything that he destroyed.
So that the last bureaucrat
can rest and be silent,
his gullet will be stuffed in payment
with the last rubber stamp.
And the earth will turn
without fear of the last years,
there never will be born
the last great poet.
i was going through my poetry archives and two poems hit me:
tony hoagland's a color of the sky (where this line comes from)
& final faith by yevgeny yevtushenko
A COLOR OF THE SKY
Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.
I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.
Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.
Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spray paint letters,
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossom foam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.
FINAL FAITH
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
translated by Albert Todd
Is it possible that we are so twisted
there is no salvation for any of us,
and that ideas have become wingless
in an age of winged rockets?
Is it possible that a crippled birch,
bending over to the last river,
will see the last man
in its boiling water?
Is it possible there’ll be no Big Ben,
Saint Basil’s, or Notre Dame
and that neutron foam will gush
over our final steps?
But that planet, cherry trees,
birds, and children will perish,
I don’t believe. This disbelief
is my final faith.
Skull after skull will not
be piled up in towers again.
The final Nuremberg approaches us
before, not after the war.
And the last soldier on earth
will throw his shoulder strap in a stream,
and watch how peacefully
dragonflies sit on it.
All rascality will end.
All people will understand--we are a family.
The last government
will abolish itself.
The last exploiter,
opening his toothless mouth,
will gobble the last money
furtively like a delicacy.
The last cowardly editor
will be doomed forever
to read from the stage in sequence
everything that he destroyed.
So that the last bureaucrat
can rest and be silent,
his gullet will be stuffed in payment
with the last rubber stamp.
And the earth will turn
without fear of the last years,
there never will be born
the last great poet.