I Am Afraid - Nizar Kabbani (translated by B.K. Frangieh & C.R. Brown)

I am afraid

To express my love to you

Wine loses its fragrance

When poured into a goblet.

The Wish - Louise Glück

Remember that time you made the wish?

           I make a lot of wishes.

The time I lied to you

about the butterfly. I always wondered

what you wished for.

           What do you think I wished?

I don’t know. That I’d come back,

that we’d somehow be together in the end.

           I wished for what I always wish for.

           I wished for another poem.

The Swan At Edgewater Park - Ruth L. Schwartz

Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans

Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers,

condoms

          in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

          into the body of a Great Lake,

Swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,

While Clevelanders walk by saying Look

          at that big duck!

Beauty isn’t the point here; of course

          the swan is beautiful,

But not like Lorie at 16, when

Everything was possible—no

More like Lorie at 27

Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

Her kid with asthma watching TV,

The boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna

Leave him, washing his car out back—and

He’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

It’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

Really does, he loves them both—

That’s the kind of swan this is.

To the One Upstairs - Charles Simic

Boss of all bosses of the universe.

Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller,

And whatever else you're good at.

Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight.

Dip in ink the comets' tails.

Staple the night with starlight.

You'd be better off reading coffee dregs,

Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac.

But no! You love to put on airs,

And cultivate your famous serenity

While you sit behind your big desk

With zilch in your in-tray, zilch

In your out-tray,

And all of eternity spread around you.

Doesn't it give you the creeps

To hear them begging you on their knees,

Sputtering endearments,

As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll?

Tell them to button up and go to bed.

Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice.

Your hands are empty and so are your eyes.

There's nothing to put your signature to,

Even if you knew your own name,

Or believed the ones I keep inventing,

As I scribble this note to you in the dark.