Off the Shelf Archive - October

Each month I post a few poems by other authors on the Off the Shelf page, which doesn't allow for multiple posts or comments. So I've decided rather than have them disappear, I'd archive them here in the regular stream, by month for reference, where people can find them, comment on them, read them again or for the first time.

In October there were two Off the Shelf poems:

I.

CONCERT IN THE GARDEN

It rained.
The hour is an immense eye.
Inside it, we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?
The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.
I wander, lost in my own center.

Octavio Paz

II.

The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top

The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top

Blood -- blood and torn grass --
Had marked the rise of his agony --
This lone hunter.
The grey-green woods impassive
Had watched the threshing of his limbs.

A canoe with flashing paddle,
A girl with soft searching eyes,
A call: "John!"
. . . . .
Come, arise, hunter!
Can you not hear?

The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top.

Stephen Crane