Poem of the Day
Yellow Striped Pajamas
By Shamsher Bahadur Singh
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
Lie facedown in the pulsating mantra:
dried flowers bathed in sunshine
Of slowly submerging monograms
this is Walt Whitman speaking
I’ll compare Jew-love to Roman light,
stone palazzi in travellers’ perspectives
obelisks and domes,
The scenes that were on the inside of his ribs,
when he willed them outward, they appeared,
tattooed, in front, behind, strips of pictures
The real is a wilderness
that ambitions calls a garden.
“Well, what’d you dream of this time, Gorbunov?”
“Oh, mushrooms, mostly.” “Mushrooms! What the hell!
Again?” “Again.” “You really make me laugh.”
Down in the lobby three elderly women, bored.
Take up, with their knitting, the Passion of Our Lord
As the universe and the tiny realm
Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high above
the dove-gray, crimson, umber, brown
Connecticut Valley. Far beneath,
Everything has its limit, including sorrow
A windowpane stalls a stare; nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgling down a swallow.
Oh! was it in woman’s nature to hear him, and not to cherish
every word? It was Glenarvon—that spirit of evil whom she
beheld; her soul trembled within, and felt its danger.