After his Death

It turned out
that the bombs he had thrown
raised buildings:

that the acid he had sprayed
had painfully opened
the eyes of the blind.

Fishermen hauled
prizewinning fish
from the water he had polluted.

We sat with astonishment
enjoying the shade
of the vicious words he had planted.

The government decreed that
on the anniversary of his birth
the people should observe
two minutes pandemonium.

poem by Norman MacCaig
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Three figures of Beethoven

Hawks could teach bullets a thing or two —
see one precisely repeating
the terrified unpredictable zigzags
of a mountain pipit.

And gulls and aeroplanes — can a plane
turn over and backwards and
slam stunningly into the sea — to re-emerge
with a ruffle and begin unwinding
the same long spool of flight?

These are swift and beautiful. But watch
for the gull, the slow flier, the airy loiterer
that can pause, dead still,
curved on the air
like a hand on a breast.

poem by Norman MacCaig
Added by Dan Costinaş
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian

Linguist

If we lived in a world where bells
truly say "ding-dong" and where "moo"
is a rather neat thing
said by a cow,
I could believe you could believe
that these sounds I make in the air
and these shapes with which I blacken white paper
have some reference
to the thoughts in my mind
and the feelings in the thoughts.
As things are,
if I were to gaze in your eyes and say
"bow-wow" or "quack", you must take that to be
a despairing anthology of praises,
a concentration of all the opposites
of reticence, a capsule
of my meaning of meaning
that I can no more write down
than I could spell the sound of the sigh
I would then utter, before

[...] Read more

poem by Norman MacCaig
Added by Dan Costinaş
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True Ways Of Knowing

Not an ounce excessive, not an inch too little, out easy reciprocations.
You let me know the way a boat would feel, if it could feel, the intimate support of water.

The news you bring me has been news forever, so that I understand what a stone would say if only a stone could speak. Is it sad a grassblade cannot know how it is lovely?

Is it sad that you can't know, except by hearsay (My gossiping failing words) that you are the way a water is that can clench it's palm and crumple a boat's confiding timbers?

But that's excessive and too little. Knowing the way a circle would describe its roundness, we touch two selves and feel, complete and gentle the intimate support.

The way that flight would feel a bird flying (if it could feel)is the way space that's in a stone that's in water would know itself

If it had our way of knowing.

poem by Norman MacCaig
Added by Dan Costinaş
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian