the Enemy

The skies held angry clouds when I was young,
Shot through from time to time with sudden sun;
My garden has raked by rain so long
It’s barren of the fruit it might have borne.

Now autumn’s come, and harvest time again.
I must reclaim my solitary grove.
All that I should have reaped and gleaned is gone;
Tidewaters washed it all into the grave.

In such sick soil, eroded by the brine,
What mystic aliment for seeds like mine?
Can flowers from dream burst into bloom?

And how much human life can Time consume?
The Enemy within keeps growing fat
On lifeblood that it leeches from the heart!

- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

the Grand Canyon

Flash after flash across the horizon:
tourists trying to take the canyon
by night. They don't know
every last shot will turn out black.

It takes sixty years for Rothko
to make his way to the rim.
He goes there only after dark.
As he stands at the railing, his pupils open
like a camera shutter at the slowest speed.

He has to be patient. He has to lean
far over the railing to see
the colors of darkness:
purple, numb brown, mud-red, mauve.
At first he can see only black-on-black.
"Something you don't want to look at," he says.

As he waits,
the waves of color vibrate in the canyon
like voices.
Pilgrim, bring back something
from the brink
of nothing
to make us see.

- Chana Bloch

Your Feet

When I can not look at your face
I look at your feet.

Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.

I know that they support you,
and that your gentle weight
rises upon them.

Your waist and your breast,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.

But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

- Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)