The blossoms on the trees stir up the honey bees
March 27, 2010 § Leave a comment
Ed and friend
Spring came this year with Congress passing the healthcare bill; astrologers will tell you there was a mighty configuration of planets in the sky, not all benign or easy, by any means, but as full of portent as any ancient comet. I only read astrological sites when I have insomnia or am trying to convince myself that whatever is happening is just about to stop happening, so I can’t remember the details. But American politics makes sense if you imagine it controlled by light-years distant lumps of cold stone or boiling gasses, by geometries indifferent to human logic, by the attributes the Greeks saw in their gods—vengeance, jealousy, spite, lust, the coddling of the favored and the inclination to turn a woman your husband has raped into a white cow.
But enough of that. Spring is buds on the trees and flowers up and down 9th St. Spring is I can take long walks again, and soon will be lured out into the warm dark after dinner. Spring is poetry month and you should sign up here http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php to receive a poem in your inbox everyday.
Spring (May) will also bring the reissue of Charles’ Simic’s book of translations, The Horse has Six Legs: An Anthology of Serbian Poetry, which you must read if you like Simic’s work. In it you will find much that casts light on his poems, though not so much that they’ll come all the way out of the shadows where they hang out between readings, swapping lines and putting them back just in time.
Here’s one of the good ones from the book
LAST NEWS ABOUT THE LITTLE BOX
The little box which contains the world
Fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another box
The litle box of the little box
Also fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another little box
And so it went on forever
The world from the little box
Ought to be inside
The last offspring of the little box
But not one of the little boxes
Inside the little box in love with herself
Is the last one
Let’s see you find the world now
–Vasco Popa, trans. Charles Simic
Mostly in the Afternoon 
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