Dry Spell
November 25th, 2006Save as PDF
Dry Spell
Sometimes nothing happens. The brain lies there on the rug and refuses to take a walk.
Part of writing is just waiting. And hoping. Hoping some kind of nourishment will fall from the sky in the form of inspiration, like a dog looking down at the kitchen floor hoping a chunk of food will miraculously appear on it. The best way I can keep this site interesting as I sit out the drought is to keep posting poems by other (far more accomplished) poets whose work has somehow reached me, down here on the kitchen floor. The best poems contain ideas or images that often trigger my own urge to write. In the poem below, by the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, the image of the burning station found its way into a very different poem I wrote — a poem that has never made it out of my "Works in Progress" folder. If it ever does, you’ll be the first to know.
The Three Kings
We’ll arrive too late …
Andre Frenaud, “The Three Kings”
If it hadn’t been for the desert and laughter and music –
we’d have made it, if our yearning
hadn’t mingled with the highways’ dust.
We saw poor countries, made still poorer
by their ancient hatred;
a train full of soldiers and refugees
stood waiting at a burning station.
We were heaped with great honors
so we thought – perhaps one of us
really is a king?
Spring meadows detained us, cowslips,
the glances of country maidens
hungry for a stranger’s love.
We made offerings to the gods, but we don’t know
if they recognized our faces
through the flames’ honey-gold veil.
Once we fell asleep and slept for many months,
but dreams raged in us, heavy, treacherous,
like surf beneath a full moon.
Fear awakened us and again we moved on,
cursing fate and filthy inns.
For four years a cold wind blew,
but the star was yellow, sewn carelessly to a coat
like a school insignia.
The taxi smelled of anise and the twentieth century,
the driver had a Russian accent.
Our ship sank, the plane shook suddenly.
We quarreled violently and each of us
set out in search of different hope.
I barely remember what we were looking for
and I’m not sure if a December night
will open up someday
like a camera’s eye.
Perhaps I’d be happy, live content,
if it weren’t for the light that explodes
above the city walls each day
at dawn, blinding my desire.
