Fav Poems & Short Stories # 6

Miroslav Holub's SELECTED POEMS
Linda's Hearth favs ~~Three Poems I love ~ ~
further acknowledgement below selections

Truth

He left, infallible, the door itself
was bruised as he
hit the mark.
We two sat awhile
the figures in the documents
staring at us like
green huge-headed beetles
out of the crevices of evening.
The books stretched
their spines,
the balance weighed just for the fun of it
and the glass beads in the neclace
of the god of sleep whispered together
in the scales.

'Have you ever been right?' ine if us asked.
'I haven't.'

Then we counted on,
It was late
And outside the smokey town, frosty and purple, climbed to
the stars.




The Harp

Of all stringed instrumemts I like best
the hard stretched from hand to hand,
From blood to blood. From disaster to deliverance. From
error to perfction.
Of all the stringed instruments I like best
the harp of healaing.
Its music sounds at man's deep centre.
And King David plays it,
He who never was,
He who always will e when the candle
gutters and the flesh
is lifting off the bone.



In the Microscope

Here too are dreaming landscapes,
lunar, derelict.
Here too are the masses
tillers of the soil.
ANd cells, fighters
who lay down their lives
for a song.

Here too are cemeteries,
fame and snow.
and I hear murmuring,
the revolt of immense estates.


~3 by Miroslav Holub


Linda's Hearth note: I love the voice of this poet!

I am hopeful the above all 3 from Section One of Selected Poems, a Penguin Modern European Poets publication, is a good sample of his brilliant, lush and ironic perspective. Because I couldn't narrow down to a favorite. I love his (?) mingling of "earthy" metaphor and scientific precision with language.
~*~Translations (c) 1967 by Ian Milner and George Theiner.

Beginning p-graphs of back cover for bio:
Miroslav Holub would like people to read poems as naturally as they read the papers, or go to a football match, "not to consider it as anything more difficult or effeminate, or praisworthy." Miroslav Holub, an internationally distinguished scientist, is Czechoslovakia's most lively and experimental poet. The scientist in him is always creatively present in his poems, lurking behind his restless experiments in free verse and his constant probing below the obvious surface of things. Above all he shows an unwavering sense of the realities of life.

My apologies for not knowing how to set the spacing beyond this blog's default, but I will get back in here and fix to match the published poetry as soon as I find a helper/techie/buddie.


Linda's Hearth: note to self reg Truth~ fluish left: "He left...", We two sat...", "The books stretched..." and "the balance weighed." &after "in the scales." indented, the rest lines flush left. est 32-space indent. lasts line: 3-sp indent. Note reg Harp: put 3 sp indents: 2nd line, 4th line,6th line,11th n 12th lines.