The Promise of Nostos


The sea is not bent on circularity: it says Here is an island,
anchor here.
_________But because love waits, the broken hull
is soon patched, a torn sail sewn to hold the wind,
and then once again they set course. The uncalled for jubilance
of departure, feigned tears, the make-believe dream
where so-and-so appeared to say fly away home.
They do not leave for home. They do not leave to return,
despite their promises. They leave to leave, and if I love them
it's because they come hungry as a dream, and like a dream
their stay distills a life, or what a life could be--

--Jessica Fisher

Reading list:

The Voyage of Saint Brendan
The First Voyage Around the World 1519-1522, Pigafetta (w/ Magellan)
Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World 1772-1775, John Reinold Forster (w/ Captain Cook)
The Arctic Whaling Journals of Wiliam Scoresby the Younger 1814-1816
Journal of a Voyage Around the World 1841-1842, Thomas Worthington King

*


An entry from the Pigafetta:

[44] The Antarctic Pole is not so starry as the Arctic. Many small stars clustered together are seen, which have the appearance of two clouds with little distance between them, and they are somewhat dim; in the midst of them are two large and not very luminous stars, which move only slightly: those two stars are the Antarctic Pole. Our loadstone, although it moved here and there, always pointed toward its own Arctic Pole, although it did not have so much strength as on its own side, and on that account when we were in that open expanse, the captain-general asked all the pilots: 'Are you still sailing forward in the course that we laid down on the maps?' All replied: 'By your course exactly as laid down.' He answered them that they were pointing wrongly, which was a fact, and that it would be fitting to adjust the compass, for it was receiving so much force from its side. When we were in the midst of that open expanse, we saw a cross with five extremely bright stars straight toward the west, those stars being exactly placed in relation to one another.

my horse my hound

Question


Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

--May Swenson

E.D.

CXXXIX.

TO pile like Thunder to its close,
Then crumble grand away,
While everything created hid–
This would be Poetry:
Or Love,–the two coeval came–
We both and neither prove,
Experience either, and consume–
For none see God and live.

from This Lamentable City, one of the many books purchased at AWP

Conjunction And

We met on a Sunday, no not exactly,
we met before, but it wasn’t that either:
you drank coffee through a straw but it was more like
a poor bird stopping in to see a horse in a coat
and you took me by the took me by the took me by the hand
and a tree with red berries and mountains and mountains
and we laughed and listened and Lord everything was bullshit
and the tree with its red berries and its bark and its bark
and we had each other like beasts without pausing
and if everything after the fact is sad we are not things
and we came from garbage and we played with garbage
and you caressed my skin with the seeds of pearls. Now it’s January
already and over us, pardon me, pink magnolias with their dog tongues
on the grey background of old snow have bloomed, and every time I pass
among these miracles I remember the smell of your hand
torn from me, and torn from you.

— Polina Barskova, translated by Ilya Kaminsky with Matthew Zapruder