Stephen Massimilla

A Gift for You

— after Rumi

You have no idea how hard I searched for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What good is bringing gold
to a gold mine, or water to the ocean?
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my soul—you already have these.
That’s why I’ve brought you this mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.

Last Night While I Was Sleeping

— after Machado

Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamed—wondrous error!—
that a fountain was flowing
through my heart.
I said: by what hidden channel,
water, are you coming to me,
a spring of new life
from which I’ve never drunk?

Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamed—wondrous error!—
that I had a beehive
inside my heart;
and the gilded bees
were working to turn
my old, bitter disappointments
into white wax and sweet honey.

Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamed—wondrous error!—
that a burning sun was blazing
inside my heart.
It was burning because it gave off
the heat of a red hearth,
and a sun because it illumined
and also made me cry.

Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamed—wondrous error!—
that it was God that I held
inside my heart.

Stephen Massimilla’s (co–authored) volume Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare, is just out from Tupelo Press. His latest collection, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (Texas A&M), was an SFASU Press Prize contest selection. Acclaim for his other books includes the Bordighera/CUNY Poetry Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday, the Grolier Poetry Prize for Later on Aiaia, and others. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, recently AGNI, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, and Verse Daily. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School.

More from Vol. 33, Issue 2

Dormant

Tasha Cotter

Ungulate in the Penthouse of the Winter Tick // The Mute Button

David Dodd Lee

Confederacy

Brian Johnson

Reversal: The Movement of Laozi's Dialectical Dao

Laozi, trans. Wong Yoo-Chong

Verses to an Unknown Soldier

Osip Mandel’shtam, trans. Don Mager