I took the name of this blog post from Jenny Xie’s (USA) “Chinatown Diptych”, one of her travel poems set in a summer in New York’s Chinatown. And allthough set in summer, many of these poems are melancholy, rather than frothy Hallmark tidings.

I decided to share some poems of a rather random selection of poets, varying in time and place, starting with one of my favourite poets, Greece’s George Seferis. Here I share the translation of Kimon Friar, although my personal preference is for the one by Edmund Keeley. In this poem, we can feel the frustration expressed by Seferis, at the dawning of the autumnal chill of fascism.

I look to the more recent words of Seamus Heaney, in Blackberry Picking, where the presaging of summer’s end harbours a transformative loss. And I follow that up with 2 seemingly light haiku by the great Japanese masters Matsuo Basho and Kobayashi Issa, where again, fruitlessness and frustration characterize the season and the compassionate nature of the haiku poets.

And ultimately, I leave the last word to Langston Hughes (1901-1967), as we remember now in mid-summer, the delight we felt only a few short months ago— at the coming of spring. And his fervent hope, that we might all experience a ‘spring ‘of society— where justice, equality and joy prevail.

A Word for Summer – George Seferis (Trans. Kimon Friar) Autumn, 1936

We have returned again to autumn; summer
like a notebook that has tired us with writing remains
full of erasures, abstract scribblings
on the margins and question marks; we have returned
to the season of eyes that gazeS
in a mirror beneath the electric light,
lips compressed and the people strangers,
to rooms, to roads under the pepper trees
while the headlights of motorcars kill
thousands of pallid masks
We have returned; we always set out to return
to solitude, a handful of earth in our empty palms.

And yet I once loved Syngros Avenue
the double rocking of the wide road
that would leave us miraculously by the sea,
the everlasting sea, to be cleansed of our sins;
I have loved a few unknown persons
suddenly met at the day’s ending
talking to themselves like captains of sunken armadas,
a sign that the world is wide.
And yet I have loved these very roads, these columns;
no matter if I was born on the other shore near
rushes and reeds, islands
where there were wells in the sand that a rower
might quench his thirst, no matter if I was born
by the sea which I wind and unwind in my fingers
when I am weary–I no longer know where I was born.

There still remains the yellow distillate, summer,
and your hands touching medusae on the water,
your eyes suddenly unveiled, the first
eyes of the world, and caverns of the sea;
bare feet on the red earth.

There still remains the blond marbled youth, summer,
a little salt dried up in the hollow of a rock
a few red pine-needles after the rain
scattered about like tattered fishing nets.

I do not understand these faces, I do not understand them;
sometimes they imitate death and then again
they shine with the lowly life of the glowworm
with an effort at once restrained and desperate
compressed between two wrinkles
on two soiled coffee-house tables;
they kill one another, they decrease,
they stick like postage-stamps to the windowpanes,
faces of the other tribe.

We walked together, we shared bread and sleep
we tasted the same bitterness of parting
we built our houses with whatever stones we had
we took to the ships, we left our native land, we returned
we found our women waiting for us
but they recognized us with difficulty, no one knows us.
And our comrades put on the statues, put on the bare
and empty chairs of autumn, and our comrades
slew their own faces. I do not understand them.
There still remains the yellow distillate, summer,
waves of sand receding as far as the last circle
a rhythm of drums pitiless and endless
blood-shut eyes sinking in the sun
hands with the manner of birds cutting the sky
saluting the ranks of the dead that stand at attention
lost to a degree I cannot control and which commands me;
your hands touching the untrammelled wave.

Matsuo Basho, Japan (1644-1694)

The dragonfly tries,
try as it might, but can’t land
on that blade of grass.

Kobayashi Issa ,Japan (1763-1828)

The dragonfly
takes off one hundred times
to Mount Atago temple

Blackberry Picking, Seamus Heaney, Northern Ireland (1939-2013)

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely can-fulls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Earth Song, Langston Hughes, USA, 1901-1967

It’s an earth song—
And I’ve been waiting long
For an earth song.
It’s a spring song!
I’ve been waiting long
For a spring song:
Strong as the bursting of young buds,
Strong as the shoots of a new plant,
Strong as the coming of the first child
From its mother’s womb—
An earth song!
A body song!
A spring song!
And I’ve been waiting long
For an earth song.