Nathan Zach's Love
Event Details
A boy hammers on a girl’s door. The girl doesn’t open it. The boy’s head is spinning. The girl’s head is spinning. Thousands of angels escort the sun on its way,
Event Details
A boy hammers on a girl’s door.
The girl doesn’t open it.
The boy’s head is spinning.
The girl’s head is spinning.
Thousands of angels escort the sun on its way,
LOVE
A boy hammers on a girl’s door.
The girl doesn’t open it.
The boy’s head is spinning.
The girl’s head is spinning.
Thousands of angels escort the sun on its way,
Flying in that unique formation peculiar to angels.
Have you ever loved me? he asks.
I love you, she answers, in a halting voice.
A boy hammers on a girl’s door.
The girl doesn’t open it.
I love you, answers the girl,
And for the first time the boy discovers
In himself true generosity.
The angels get tired. Everything made of earth
Gets tired. The boy does not get tired.
A boy hammers on a girl’s door.
Be astonished, O ye heavens and earth! Who knows
why a boy discovers the meaning the meaning of true generosity?
Like the mountain, says the mother. Like the mountain,
Says the child, learning by rote his mother’s old saw.
Like the mountain, says the boy, putting two and two together.
Who understands why the boy is hammering on the girl’s
door? Who knows why the girl doesn’t
open it?
I love you whispers the girl. I love you,
Repeat the stars, the pets in the house.
I love you, whispers the Angel of Death
in his pure, geometric voice.
A boy hammers on a girl’s door.
How does it happen that precisely now
He learns the true meaning of generosity?
From VARIOUS POEMS: 1960
BE CAREFUL
Be careful. Open your life
only to the wind that has touched distance.
Suffer the absent. Speak up
only in the nights of solitude. Know the day,
the fixed season, the moment,
and don’t beg. Pay attention to what is still. Learn to bless
the shadow just beneath the skin. Don’t
hide in words. Sit with the counsel of worms,
the wisdom of the maggot. Don’t expect.
From EARLY POEMS: 1955
WORDS
Such joy, such pain, these are only words.
Conceal you joy. Gather your pain
into a safe place. Write only when your hand
needs nothing, not even the loose change
of the world. That which is crooked
cannot be made straight.
Don’t go on repairing it.
Such joy, such pain, people say.
They mean something other: themselves.
Lie in wait; surprise yourself
in secrecy, in blood: when such joy appears,
such pain, tell yourself that a man
is not suited for such joy,
such pain forever, has no right
to strut it out on stage, no right
with such joy, such pain
to wound himself,
more, to wound others. Such joy,
such pain—didn’t you know?—
they come and go.
From ALL THE MILK AND THE HONEY: 1966
Image: Mario Cavaglieri, Giulietta lean on a table, 1922
Reading by Alessandro Cassin
