"What History Fails to Mention is" ... by Synder

What history fails to mention is

Most everybody lived their lives
With friends and children, played it cool,
Left truth & beauty to the guys
Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools.


- Gary Synder (1930-)

from Left Out in the Rain (1986)

The Shepard XXX ... by Pessoa

If they want me to be a mystic, fine. So I'm a mystic.
I'm a mystic, but only of the body.
My soul is simple; it doesn't think.

My mysticism consists in not desiring to know,
In living without thinking about it.

I don't know what Nature is; I sing it.
I live on a hilltop
In a solitary cabin.
And that's what it's all about.


- Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)

translated by Edwin Honig

Poet's Work ... by Niedecker

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoff
from this
condensery




- Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970)

The Advantages of Learning ... by Rexroth

I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.


- Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)

from The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1944)