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Bob Perelman
Thoughts sandwich with pure lust and beauty's in action when the beasts attempt stasis. Thorns are allowed to exist. The green beans steaming are themselves cousin to the good news they've been trying to give away. And whose body doesn't tremble with good night kisses, pebble relaxation confronting the amoeboid calendar.
The pictures we've been showing one another, the photographs of large numbers of people serve no purpose. As if we weren't private enough already. Too sensitive to the cut of our own diaries to bask in the blank pages. Let me lead you gently behind your next thought.
My grandmother had a true calendar,
a meaningful, eventful one.
“You were born four moons
after the heavy flooding
which killed half of the town,
twelve moons before
the communists dynamited the church.
It was just two moons after
the grapes were ripened,”
she used to say to me.
As a child, until I began school,
I knew nothing of the fact
that I was born on 1st October, 1963.
If I tell you my birthday
with the current calendar,
I tell you nothing about myself.
I wonder how long it has been
Since this old calendar hung here,
With my birthday date upon it,
Nothing else--not a word of writing--
Not a mark of any hand.
Perhaps it was my father
Who left it thus
For me to see.
Perhaps my mother
Smiled as she saw it;
But in later years did not smile.
If I could tear it down,
From the wall
Somehow
I would be content.
But I am afraid, as a little child, to touch it.