Ghost by KT McVeigh

I think
Maybe
A little bit of pain is a motivator
Like rolling out of bed feeling stiff
And you walk around with your welded hips
It’s a catalyst
Well the ghost came to me again last night
I was sitting in my bed
Which was pushed out so there was nothing protecting my head
In the middle of the room
Stationary floater in the nebulous womb
I sat above the sheets
Knees flat against the mattress
And I felt the cold touch of death press against my flesh
Instantly in my mind I recoiled in terror
And fled for the sheets
But that would have disheartened him
So I stayed
and I let the cold fingers move up my leg
And I stared at the spot where I knew he was
Because
I knew he was staring at me
Reaching out to me
Subtly
I’m intrigued
But I’ve had enough
And it ends.
But when the sun goes down so do human sounds
The only thing that keeps me safe
When they’re gone, it’s him and me
And then it begins
He cracks inside the walls
He writhes a thin board away from my head
A layer of plaster
‘Twixt me and the dead
I ask myself
Why me?
I’m not that interesting
Is it because I’m receptive?
I’m allowing you to unravel some spectral truth
That I’ve always suspected but never could prove
You’re leading me to your mystery
I’m afraid you’re decaying somewhere nearby
But I’m not the one
Please, not me

Journal entry by Lauren Castaldi

Walking up my driveway and seeing, for the first time that fall, the mysterious mushrooms sprouting through the cracks of my driveway. My brother and I would anxiously anticipate the appearance of these unusually large and oddly placed fungi, which for all the years of our youth walking to the bus stop, never failed to sprout. A ritual learned from our mother, we would wait until they grew to their full potential and then make a show of dancing and stomping on them, watching green fumes cloud around the pile of broken mushrooms. Puffy mushrooms we used to call them, because of the strange puff of green haze that exploded when they were crushed.

Weaving through the secret world of the woods in my backyard with my neighbor, looking for the perfect spot for a fort. Every fall a new one was built, in a new location with a new purpose. Gathering branches and twigs, and moving old furniture to be exposed to the elements of weather. We made secret undercover entrances, slowly built up these forts and eventually were completely enclosed in our private second world. Living in a home of nature, returning to civilization when we were pried back into our homes.

Catching dragonflies by day and fireflies by night. Mark and I would run through our field letting dragonflies crawl over our hands, comparing color and length and beauty of each. Naming them and giving them homes in our backyard, thinking those we saw the next day of the same color were the same dragonflies. By night, scanning the tree line for the flicker of light that exposed our prey. Running to the spot the light once was and standing still and silent until its next time to light up. Slowly we caught them and kept them for a few hours, releasing them when it was time to go inside.

Pretending to be lions when it snowed. Crawling on our hands and knees, protected by bulging snow gear through the mountains of our backyard. Naming rocks on the hillside and sneaking through paths we forced through the trees. Turning treacherous slopes into safe slides in the blanket of snow. Making lion homes in the hills and snow banks, living out lives of these animals until we were frozen, shaking, and so wet we were forced inside.

Elegy (interview of some sort) by Kirsten Bouthiller

Where do you go when you want to be alone?

I crawl deep inside of myself hoping to never be found.

If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?

To be alive in this hopeless sea. And what about you?

What do you think? Do you think there is more to all of this?

I would like to say I do not know or have the faintest clue

but you are onto something to say the least.

And is this life nothing more than lonesome thoughts,

silent walks, and a hunger to become complete?

Do you know what I mean?

It is a tad absurd, and perhaps on the side of dark and dreary,

but this is a life that I assure you must be worth living.

Would you sacrifice for a loved one?

A loved one would be nice, if only this stone heart

could feel an emotion as filling and true as this

that you have mentioned.

Do you find yourself questioning your existence, often?

Often, I do. And why do you think?

I think so I can know and believe the thoughts in my head.

You know that is not what I meant, but of course. Now, answer it truly,

Why do you think you are so incredibly alone?

I can only blame myself, it is coming down to the sole fact that

for so incredibly long, I have hounded down that in which I love the most

and now I realize he is gone

like a kite with the string cut

on a windy day

No, I cannot cry. I am much too old for child’s play.

Your only regret?

Not having the courage to tell him all that I had to say.



after Gunnar Ekelöf

Kirsten Bouthiller: Journal Entry

The three most important resources of life are love, journals, and nature.

It was four o’clock, and mid-October. As the doors to the bus gave way, I stepped into the dying world. Orange, red, brown, and faint green leaves littered the ground. Beginning my trek through the private way that cut a path in the thickly wooded forest, I felt a slight breeze that brought a chill up and down my spine. The smell of decaying Earth filled my nostrils. The nostalgia that followed occurred every time. A flashback of memories. Halloween when I was four, running down the crowded street as Princess Leah, being a bumble bee at the age of two, a ninja at the age of ten. Pumpkin-picking with the family and getting lost in the corn fields. Raking leaves from dawn to dusk because when you live in the forest those sorts of things happen. I continued walking down the isolated road. The sun shone down through the canopy above, bringing the dead leaves a whole new life. The sound of the calm lake, the water rolling up onto the shore and lapping against the rock walls found its way up into my ears. A calling – but I had other plans. As the road began to bend after a steep slope downwards, my eyes searched for it. The brush was thick but it was in there. Somewhere. I could hear the water running and see the dip in the road where it flooded the previous year. Dropping my backpack to the ground, I began to clear the brush with my hands and found myself beside a small brook. The water flowed quick and was perfectly clear. I always find myself standing here, standing on a stone wall that divides the brook, the forest, and the lake all at once. Sometimes I don’t think, while other times I cannot stop. Once, during the winter when I was fifteen, a blizzard raged on for a week but the argument with my parents drove me outside to find myself again. I lay in the snow looking up through the canopy, watching the white snow fall silently. The only sound was the wind through the trees and the echoing as bubbles burst below the ice with a loud, eerie noise. I stood there, looking at the brook, forest, and lake. I chased the frogs, caught big trout, and climbed every tree. And when my mom would call me home for dinner, I would linger for that extra five minutes because nothing feels more like home than the forest where you found yourself.

[a response to John Burroughs, 'The Art of Seeing Things,' in American Earth, edited by Bill McKibben. In this essay, Burroughs writes: "If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature"]

Poems by John Alter

Rainy weather

Crowded with wet trees

each wearing as many badges & tags

as the suitcase of

a vagabond and

with a soaking rain

the path makes its way

through a junkyard. We

take so much for granted. The rain—the company

of trees—the wrecked automobiles.

And I

am here in this tree

house longing to be

long as the trees like

refugees for a moment in the early

afternoon pause and

I with them catching

our breath. O leafy

cousins I want to

call out to them and

to believe that the intricate display

of branches is some

how intended to

tell me a story.

October 4

Beyond this horizon of bare branches

today is coming off the press, scandalous

colloquial

offering its good news to anybody

I can turn its pages

read, in my own tongue

the lyrical ballad

Let the high priests—

let the captains of industry—

do what they will

2.

I ride my toy donkey out under

a sky cluttered with satellites

Once

there was only one, do you

remember, and it spoke Russian

3.

Anne Sexton—

you wrapped your bones up

in that old mink coat—took a last

long swallow of whatever drink you

could find—

and drove yourself to where death

always the gentleman, waited

stylish cigarette in one hand,

your life work in the other

Poem by Kirsten Bouthiller

Poem by Cola Hines

Princess of light and dark in equal measure,

your fluorescent brow hovers where I attempt

sleep. At ease, I urge inane,

inept, uninterested sentries of

my better sense, whose bosses left

by the last unannounced

thing that seemed...to want

to reach you: but better sense

impales, and fades, over

exposure left — & trusted instinct

tells you I preserve still

detachment. Blink and turn,

it’s night again, and we’re marooned,

unlit, unacknowledged: dark and light.

The fan by KT McVeigh

I used to turn it on to drown out your snoring

Those random little screams and German exclamations you’d leak in your sleep

Urgent moans you’d emit every time I closed my eyes

I don’t think I got through one night without hearing you,

Before I got that fan

And then I couldn’t sleep without it

Even after you stopped talking to yourself

I convinced myself I needed it

And became accustomed to the sound of it

And turning it on meant it was finally time to pass through

To my beautiful second life

Where I was home and my mom was in the kitchen cooking something that wasn’t intended to feed 400 people and I would lie down in my room in complete darkness with the stars on my ceiling and consider that, cosmically, I may be completely worthless and that my life might begin and end without notice, but right where I was, I was happy.

Maybe this is all just a dream.

Do you ever think that what you think is happening isn’t even there?

What if the only things real are the things that you feel?

What if death is the end of the dream

And you wake up on the other side

Surprise! The state of your hair was a joke

And the clothes that you wore were a lie

Then something as simple as my mom downstairs

Is so wonderful it makes me want to cry.

And it was July

At my grandmother’s house

And my sister turned on the fan

And suddenly, unexplainably, there were tears in my eyes

And I was begging her to turn it off! Turn it off, please

Because I was in my old room with her

Eyes wide open in the dark

Trying to imagine myself away

Listening to its dull whir

And now, tonight

With so much left to do

It has only seemed fitting since I arrived to have the fan on

But the truth is, I am alone

And I reach up and flip the switch without a second thought

And it turns slowly and abruptly I am encompassed by this silence so loud

I feel like I’m swimming through jello

And since day one

The fan was white noise.

Translation of poem by Branko Miljković

In Vain I Wake Her

I wake her because of the sun explaining itself through plants

because of the sky spread between fingers

I wake her because of words that chafe the throat

I love her with my ears

one must go to the ends of the earth and find the dew on the grass

I wake her because of distant things that resemble things here

because of people with no foreheads and names passing in the street

because of anonymous names of squares I wake her

because of manufactured landscapes of public parks

I wake her because of our planet which might be a mine in the bloody sky

because of smiles in stone, of friends who fell asleep between two battles

when the heavens were no longer a huge cage for birds, but an airport

my love is full of others; it is part of dawn

I wake her because of the dawn because of love because of myself because of the other

I wake her although that is more hopeless than calling to a bird grounded forever

For sure she has said: Let him look for me and see that I’m not there

That woman with the hands of a girl I love

that child who fell asleep not wiping off the tears I wake her

in vain in vain in vain

I wake her in vain

because her lips won’t be able to tell her

I wake her in vain

somebody’s face in the sand must be promised to the forgotten name

if not then cut off my hands and transform me to stone

Translated by Nick Benson and Kristina Vušković

poem by Branko Miljković (1934-1961)

Poems by John Alter

The Ides of March

I am not much of a gardener. When

the ice breaks up on the lake I am not

the first to launch my canoe. Nature’s first

gold is not gathered by my eyes or hands.

I live through this change of seasons. A box

of last year’s potting soil patiently waits

for something—seeds, sunshine, rain—outside my

door. Somewhere in the attic paddles wait,

doggedly refusing to change into

something more relevant to who I am.

My thumb is not green, fertilizer does

not stain my fingers. What worms may do does

not provide me with reasons to go out.

I am neither mammal nor plant enough.

Listening to Stormy Weather, on Your Birthday

The nurses put a ribbon in your hair

before they showed you to your mother. Last

year a ribbon of snow on the far peaks

of Himalaya marked your eighty-

seventh birthday. Today, eighty-eight, you

pray in the midst of your life’s hallowed

clutter. Somewhere that first ribbon waits. We

could walk to your mother’s grave today, care-

fully, the sidewalks icy. Snow lasts in

the photograph hanging on your bedroom

wall—a ribbon of snow on the far peaks.

Avoid Commentary

Avoid commentary.

Life is not a sporting event, much of the time, and

even if it is that, a sporting event

let me watch it in peace, drawing my own conclusions, or

gently,

respectful of what it takes to observe, point out

what strikes you as interesting—if I ask,

explain,

if I turn you on, speak until I am tired of your speaking.

—thanks to John for sharing his work with Green Hill! click here to see more

Translation of poem by Antonia Pozzi

If this is it (Così sia)

Since I too have fallen,

Lord,

at a doorstep —

like a pilgrim

who has used up bread, water,

and sandals,

whose vision is dim

and whose breath burns,

life’s edge

and the street would have her

laid flat out there —

dead there,

before she could touch

a stone of the Sepulchre —

since I too have fallen,

Lord,

and am nailed here

to this street

as to the cross —

oh, won’t You grant me

this evening

from the depths of Your

nocturnal immensity —

as to the corpse of a pilgrim —

the mercy

of stars.

April 9, 1933

for Lawrence

translation by Nick Benson

On Miguel Hernández (1910-1942)

A version of this text was delivered as the intro for the evening of songs by Pedro Avila y Los Tres Galanes, based on the poems of Miguel Hernández, at the Stone Church in New Preston last Sunday. Thanks to Pedro for asking me to contribute something to a powerful evening of song. - NB

Typically poets are thought of as having hyperactive imaginations. They’re thought of as flighty and emotional, given to wild associations and uncanny leaps of faith. But the facts of Miguel Hernández’s life might have that effect on you. He was a farmboy, a goatherd, a pastor who wrote pastorals; he was educated by Jesuits and as Catholic as expected in his rural corner of Spain, Orihuela in the province of Alicante, and one of his early works was a religious ‘mystery’ or ‘miracle play’; but his father gave him beatings for neglecting the flock, and at the age of fourteen he left school and became largely self-educated. He fell in love with Josefina, who happened to be the daughter of an officer in the local Guardia Civil, the force of Catholic order and conservatism that would become the Fascist guard under Franco. Miguel would come to the Guardia compound wall and whistle as he would to the goats and shepherd dogs so that she’d know he was out there, waiting for her. Later Miguel impressed Neruda with his imitation of the nightingale’s song, which he delivered from the treetops so Neruda would get the full effect. By some miracle, Josefina’s father allowed their love to go on. When the father was killed by Republicans in August 1936, Miguel, who was by then a staunch Republican, nevertheless did what he could to help support the family. The couple were married in March 1937, eight months into the Civil War. Their honeymoon lasted one day.

How did Miguel Hernández support himself and his family? He wrote entries on famous bullfighters for the encyclopedia Los Toros at the publishing house of a friend, who would later try to protect him from persecution by the Fascists. By the time he was twenty-five, Hernández had made his way to Madrid and after some struggle to establish himself there, he became great friends with Vicente Aleixandre, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, who was the Chilean consul at the time, and numerous other writers. Hernández’s writing and his views on society changed dramatically because of his exposure to the city, the urban working class, and the socially committed poetry of Neruda. “I am tired of so much pure and minor art,” Hernández wrote, as he turned away from the intricacies and inwardness of traditional verse toward ‘impure’ forms, surrealism and song. When Neruda won his friend the favor of a potential appointment by the government of Spain, Hernández could think of only one post that would suit him: he asked to be put in charge of a herd of goats.

In January of 1936 Hernández was arrested for no reason while on a stroll in the outskirts of Madrid. Evidently his statement that he was there just ‘for pleasure’ was provocative enough for the Guardia Civil to beat him severely and it was only due to the intervention of Neruda, still the Chilean consul, that Hernández did not spend a length of time in prison. The incident thrust Hernández to the forefront of the Left, and by July 1936, when the Civil War broke out, he had become a prominent figure; after the assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca in August 1936, Hernández joined the Republican army, where he would become ‘commissar of culture.‘ Hernández wrote songs of and for the defenders of the Republic, the Loyalists, the laborers in country and city alike pitted against the Fascist alliance of Church and capital. In his book from 1936, The Unending Lightning, Hernández wrote:

I call myself Clay though Miguel is my name.

Clay is my profession and my destiny

whose tongue stains as long as it licks at time

[...]

Tired of yielding to the whirling

knives of the wagon and the hoof,

from clay beware a spawn of avenging

beasts with corrosive skin and claws.

Beware for clay renews itself almost instantly,

beware lest it grow and rise and cover

softly, softly and jealously

your slender ankle, my torment of woe

[...]

Beware lest it raise a hurricane

in the mild territory of winter

and explode and thunder and rain

upon your blood harshly tender.

(trans. Geoffrey Holiday; 68-69. All page references are to Ted Genoways, ed. The Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández. Chicago: The U. of Chicago P., 2001).

By 1937 Hernández was famous around the world for the poems of his Viento del pueblo - Wind of the people - which was first published in the pages of El mono azul, The Blue Overall, named after the work clothes of the campesino loyalists, a publication of the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. In June 1937 he helped to organize the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers, attended by Auden, Neruda, Cowley, Malraux, Spender, Vallejo, Octavio Paz, and many others. William Carlos Williams translated his poetry. Meanwhile, Hernández was spending his time in the trenches, reciting his poetry and boosting the morale of his comrades. He barely saw his son, his firstborn, Miguelin, who died in October 1938 of a disorder caused by malnutrition. In March 1939, the Civil War was officially over. Josefina had given birth to a second son, Manolo, but Hernández’s time with his family was brief; after a failed attempt to escape Franco’s Spain through Portugal and a brutal internment in prison, from which he was saved by the intervention of a sympathetic Cardinal Neruda had contacted in France, Hernández again returned to his native Orihuela, against his friends’ advice. It was mid-September 1939. By the end of the month, he was arrested again. From prison, Hernández wrote to his wife:

“The thin-fingered ones will never forgive me for having placed my poetry, all the intelligence I have, and my unselfish heart - two things of course bigger than all of them put together - in the service of the people in a straightforward and open way. They’d prefer me to be an ordinary coward. They haven’t succeeded in that yet, and they won’t. My son is going to inherit from his father not money, but honor. But not the ‘honor‘ gained by lying and playing along with these worst types disguised as the best” (274).

Hernández was appointed a lawyer who was only made aware of the charges the day before his trial. He was formally charged with treason and condemned to death, later commuted to thirty years’ imprisonment, just as fatal due to the harsh conditions of the prison and obstructions to getting medical attention. The official description of his case reads as follows: “Miguel Hernández, condemned to death. Crime: Poet and soldier of the mother country. Aggravating, intelligentsia. Death to the intelligentsia” (275).

Hernández refused to sign a ‘confession’ in exchange for permission to go into exile. After three miserable years of being transferred from prison to prison, and after suffering from bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis, Hernández died of tuberculosis, on March 28, 1942. From his prison poems, here is one you’ll hear tonight, ‘El sol, la rosa, y el niño’:

The sun, the rose, and the child

were born day-flowers.

Every day things are new

suns, new flowers, children.

Tomorrow I’ll no longer be:

someone else will be real.

And I won’t exist beyond

whoever desires the memory.

A day-flower is biggest

at the foot of what is smallest.

Flower of light the lightning,

flower of time the moment.

Among the flowers you went away.

Among the flowers I lag behind.

(trans. Edwin Honig; 289)

This year, the centenary of his birth, the Spanish government will rehabilitate the poet’s memory and officially annul the original death sentence.

Tonight you’ll hear songs that tell of the Spanish people’s struggle to arrive beyond partisanship, to realize the freedom expressed in Para la libertad: “Thinking of freedom I break loose in battle/from those who have rolled her statue through the mud./And I break loose from my feet, from my arms,/from my house, from everything.//Because where some empty eye-pits dawn,/she will place two stones that see into the future,/and cause new arms and new legs to grow/in the lopped flesh.//Bits of my body I lose in every wound/will sprout once more, sap-filled, autumnless wings./Because I am like the lopped tree, and I sprout again:/because I still have my life” (trans. James Wright; 237).