The Best American Poetry

Seven Haiku for a Mongolian Master [by David Lehman]

Seven Haiku for Mend-Ooyo

Lunch on the silver
edge of the wide bridal sky
in Mongolia.

Wife starlight blossom:
honeydew of honeymoon:
two melons ripe, sweet.

Man of the secret
code of the poet: ciphers
of Mongolia.

Paired pillows, the luck
of sweet violets, horses
on hills with white hats.

In Mongolia
seven Buddhas reign at night,
rain all afternoon.

Guest and host embrace
as the dark side of the moon
is loved by the night.

Evening's first star wears
her seven jewels and shines
in Mongolia.

Note: 

In Mongolia, Stacey and I spent time with Mend-Ooyo, an accomplished calligrapher as well as the nation's leading man of letters. After a leisurely and literary lunch he celebrated the occasion by giving us Mongolian names -- mine is Tsolmongerelt (meaning "light of the morning star") and Stacey's is Odontuya (meaning "starlight"). Mend-Ooyo's own name translates roughly as "Man of the Secret Code," and a woman we stopped to chat with is "Lucky Violet." When I wrote seven haiku for Mend-Ooyo, I incorporated some of these details and other examples of how in the Mongolian imagination images substitute for abstractions. Marriage, for example, means "linked pillows" in Mongolian. Stacey took the photo of me on camel after Mend-Oyoo drove us out to the desert. -- DL

Catullus #154 [trans Molly Arden]

Ode to His Love

Where are you my Lady I am waiting for you
I used to think that you would come but you
Proved to me that male and female are true
Distinctions "different but equal" do you rue
The three years you spent at law school
When I think of them I feel like such a fool

The man who bones his woman is a useful tool
Each time we fuck is greater than the golden rule
I wrote these lines in an effort to be cool
But it didn't work I felt like a ghost or a ghoul
You sat on me as if I were a stool
With you I'd swim in the deep end of the pool

O where are you my dove my sweet
Love is loveliest in the throes of heat

trans. Molly Arden

Epigraph of the Month: Scott Fitzgerald's for "The Great Gatsby"

“Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!’”

-Thomas Parke D’Invilliers (a fictional character in Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise]