Don Mager- Three Poems

Don Mager’s chapbooks and volumes of poetry are: To Track the Wounded One, Glosses, That Which is Owed to Death, Borderings, Good Turns, The Elegance of the Ungraspable, Birth Daybook, Drive Time and Russian Riffs.  He is retired with degrees from Drake University (BA), Syracuse University (MA) and Wayne State University (PhD).  He was the Mott University Professor of English at Johnson C. Smith University from 1998-2004 where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters (2005-2011). As well as a number of scholarly articles, he has published over 200 poems and translations from German, Czech and Russian.  He lives in Charlotte, NC.

 

Us Four Plus Four is an anthology of translations from eight major Soviet-era Russian poets.  It is unique because it tracks almost a half century of their careers by simply placing the poems each wrote to the others in chronological order.  The 85 poems represent one of the most fascinating conversations in poems produced by any group of poets in any language or time period.  From poems and infatuation and admiration to anger and grief and finally to deep tribute, this anthology invites readers into the unfolding lives of such inimitable creative forces as Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam.

 

 

 

April Journal:  Thursday, April 25, 2013 

 

Beyond the backyard gate, canopies

of woodland trees lift fresh swaying crowns,

black and lofty, against the darkly

lavender cream sky.  Along the tops,

over gently sloshing waves, the white

wholeness of the moon slowly rolls its

florescent ball.   The sweater clutches

its reluctant buttons tightly to

its chest.  It strives to fend off the night’s

settling chill.  It strives to lengthen out

the unsung orotund presence of

its presence here.  It fails.  Chill drives it

back indoors.  With no haste in sight, moon’s

dispassion turns its back and rolls on.

 

 

 

November Journal:  Sunday, November 3, 2013 

 

The midnight bastinado of wind’s

harsh strokes and rain’s thrashings abandon

the sunrise street to wet yellow

piles.  Light climbs out of the sky.  It parts

the Nile flood of clouds.  The street’s leaf paste

is lemon slick.  Early car treads crush

it into juice until four ruts—two

each side—cut through to the tarmac like

parallel black rails.  Mugginess lifts

off its clammy shirt.  Chills infiltrate

the air with clarity.  Breath draws ice

stream zest through nostrils down to the lungs’

secret folds.  Up through its throat, it lifts

tranquilities of salutation.

 

 

 

November Journal:   Monday, November 4, 2013 

 

Blue is singing a clean high flute like

an ancient Egyptian goblet’s blue. 

Wailing aqua microtones through the

sky, wet fingers brush their crystal rims. 

The eyes’ inner cave walls reflect their

cerulean song the way silent

ear caves hear the inner pulse of the

jugulars beside them.  The window

fails its woeful task.  The sky permits

no frame to shape the view.  It wants it all—

scope, height, attention.  Its blue requires

eyes to breathe in synchrony.  Forget

trees and lawns and earth and be this time

with me, it says, while silent azure holds.