Innisfree, County Sligo, Ireland

After Zhao Mengfu’s Bathing Horses 

By Tarn MacArthur 

Now the warring is over

the ritual begins, and those

men we’ve come to know

in blood and barbarism

return again to the heart’s

work of tending to its love,

while set outside this frame

of mind the machinations

and skullduggery of empire

and dynasty go galloping

forever on. But for today

such ablutions are enough:

pouring water on a flank

or brushing down a fetlock,

the whole lakefront imbued

with red dun and chestnut,

skewbald and cremello,

those fashions of the day

stripped off along the shore.

See how every cleansing

touch is a gift gifted back

in fellowship and husbandry

rekindling a peacetime

faith all thought was lost?

Until we have to believe

that this tenderness exists

beyond acts of symbiosis,

that if the horses scatter

the men turn to each other,

bare chested and wading

through an eden they never

thought to enter, reaching

with their opened palms

as blackbirds script the air,

to be held but never tamed,

feel pain but never broken.

In the Lake Region

By Tomas Venclova （1937 - ）

Translated by Ellen Hinsey

When you open the door, everything falls into place—

the little ferry by the wharf, fir trees and thujas.   

An old woman, feeding ducks, seems as old as Leni   

Riefenstahl. At the base of the hill, chestnut trees, not yet in full bloom,   

are younger—but probably as old as her films.   

All is wet and bright. A hedgehog or God-knows-whose-soul   

is rummaging in last year's leaves. Dead water and living water   

fill the plain. The twins Celsius and Fahrenheit   

are predicting spring weather—while a shadow obscures   

the past (just like the present). The first serene weeks scour the bridges   

in a peaceful corner of Europe between Wannsee and Potsdam—where   

much has happened, but, probably, nothing more will.   

For days we have been watching a ragged crow—in the garden,   

sometimes on the roof. The ancients would have said her   

stubbornness augurs something. Emerging from the wood's   

depths, she lights on one antenna crossbar   

then another, her surface bright as mercury   

in a thermometer's glass. But these are fever marks   

we are incapable of understanding. The beginning of agony?   

The past does not enlighten us—but still, it attempts   

to say something. Perhaps the crow knows more about us   

and about history's dirt than we do ourselves.   

Of what does she want to remind us? Of the black photos, the black headphones

of radio operators, black signatures under documents,   

of the unarmed with their frozen pupils—of the prisoner's boot or the trunk   

of the refugee? Probably not. We will remember this anyway,   

though it won't make us any wiser. The bird signifies only stoicism   

and patience. If you ask for them, your request will be granted.

The Lake Has Swallowed the Whole Sky

By Silvia Curbelo 

Some dreams are like glass

or a light beneath the surface of the water.

A girl weeps in a garden.

A woman turns her head and that is all.

We wake up a hundred times and

don't know where we are. Asleep

at the wheel. Saved by

the luck of angels.

Everyone touching his lips

to something larger, the watermark

of some great sorrow. Everyone

giving himself away. The way

the rose gives up the stem and

floats completely, without history.

In the end every road leads

to water. What is left of a garden

is the dream, an alphabet of longing.

The shadow of the girl. Perfume.

The Lifeguard

By James L. Dickey （1923 - 1997）

In a stable of boats I lie still,

From all sleeping children hidden.   

The leap of a fish from its shadow   

Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.   

With my foot on the water, I feel   

The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.

I rise and go out through the boats.   

I set my broad sole upon silver,

On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,   

Stepping outward from earth onto water   

In quest of the miracle

This village of children believed   

That I could perform as I dived

For one who had sunk from my sight.   

I saw his cropped haircut go under.   

I leapt, and my steep body flashed   

Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.   

Like a man who explores his death

By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,   

I hung head down in the cold,

Wide-eyed, contained, and alone

Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone   

From clutching immovable blackness.   

Time after time I leapt upward

Exploding in breath, and fell back   

From the change in the children’s faces   

At my defeat.

Beneath them I swam to the boathouse   

With only my life in my arms

To wait for the lake to shine back

At the risen moon with such power   

That my steps on the light of the ripples   

Might be sustained.

Beneath me is nothing but brightness   

Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.   

As I move toward the center of the lake,   

Which is also the center of the moon,   

I am thinking of how I may be

The savior of one

Who has already died in my care.   

The dark trees fade from around me.   

The moon’s dust hovers together.   

I call softly out, and the child’s

Voice answers through blinding water.   

Patiently, slowly,

He rises, dilating to break

The surface of stone with his forehead.   

He is one I do not remember

Having ever seen in his life.

The ground I stand on is trembling   

Upon his smile.

I wash the black mud from my hands.   

On a light given off by the grave   

I kneel in the quick of the moon   

At the heart of a distant forest   

And hold in my arms a child   

Of water, water, water.

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