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223,408
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47552/janet-waking
|
John Crowe Ransom
|
Janet Waking
|
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave her mother,
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
"Old Chucky, Old Chucky!" she cried,
Running across the world upon the grass
To Chucky's house, and listening. But alas,
Her Chucky had died.
It was a transmogrifying bee
Came droning down on Chucky's old bald head
And sat and put the poison. It scarcely bled,
But how exceedingly
And purply did the knot
Swell with the venom and communicate
Its rigour! Now the poor comb stood up straight
But Chucky did not.
So there was Janet
Kneeling on the wet grass, crying her brown hen
(Translated far beyond the daughters of men)
To rise and walk upon it.
And weeping fast as she had breath
Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!"
And would not be instructed in how deep
Was the forgetful kingdom of death.
|
233,598
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54069/yom-kippur-1984
|
Adrienne Rich
|
Yom Kippur 1984
|
What is a Jew in solitude?
What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid
far from your own or those you have called your own?
What is a woman in solitude: a queer woman or man?
In the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert
what in this world as it is can solitude mean?
The glassy, concrete octagon suspended from the cliffs
with its electric gate, its perfected privacy
is not what I mean
the pick-up with a gun parked at a turn-out in Utah or the Golan Heights
is not what I mean
the poet's tower facing the western ocean, acres of forest planted to the east, the woman reading in the cabin, her attack dog suddenly risen
is not what I mean
Three thousand miles from what I once called home
I open a book searching for some lines I remember
about flowers, something to bind me to this coast as lilacs in the dooryard once
bound me back there-yes, lupines on a burnt mountainside,
something that bloomed and faded and was written down
in the poet's book, forever:
Opening the poet's book
I find the hatred in the poet's heart: . . . the hateful-eyed
and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them
Robinson Jeffers, multitude
is the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys
and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines
are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling its scrolls of surf,
and the separate persons, stooped
over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering skies of harvest
who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds have their various dreams
Hands that pick, pack, steam, stitch, strip, stuff, shell, scrape, scour, belong to a brain like no other
Must I argue the love of multitude in the blur or defend
a solitude of barbed-wire and searchlights, the survivalist's final solution, have I a choice?
To wander far from your own or those you have called your own
to hear strangeness calling you from far away
and walk in that direction, long and far, not calculating risk
to go to meet the Stranger without fear or weapon, protection nowhere on your mind
(the Jew on the icy, rutted road on Christmas Eve prays for another Jew
the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street: Make those be a woman's footsteps; as if she could believe in a woman's god)
Find someone like yourself. Find others.
Agree you will never desert each other.
Understand that any rift among you
means power to those who want to do you in.
Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.
But I have a nightmare to tell: I am trying to say
that to be with my people is my dearest wish
but that I also love strangers
that I crave separateness
I hear myself stuttering these words
to my worst friends and my best enemies
who watch for my mistakes in grammar
my mistakes in love.
This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me?
If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud.
To love the Stranger, to love solitude-am I writing merely about privilege
about drifting from the center, drawn to edges,
a privilege we can't afford in the world that is,
who are hated as being of our kind: faggot kicked into the icy river, woman dragged from her stalled car
into the mist-struck mountains, used and hacked to death
young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening walk, his prizes and studies nothing, nothing availing his Blackness
Jew deluded that she's escaped the tribe, the laws of her exclusion, the men too holy to touch her hand; Jew who has turned her back
on midrash and mitzvah (yet wears the chai on a thong between her breasts) hiking alone
found with a swastika carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs (did she die as queer or as Jew?)
Solitude, O taboo, endangered species
on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend you
In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can't have:
your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant's hand outspread
her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true
And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away?
have I traded off something I don't name?
To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist?
What will I do to defend my want or anyone's want to search for her spirit-vision
far from the protection of those she has called her own?
Will I find O solitude
your plumes, your breasts, your hair
against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird's
singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song?
in the old places, anywhere?
What is a Jew in solitude?
What is a woman in solitude, a queer woman or man?
When the winter flood-tides wrench the tower from the rock, crumble the prophet's headland, and the farms slide into the sea
when leviathan is endangered and Jonah becomes revenger
when center and edges are crushed together, the extremities crushed together on which the world was founded
when our souls crash together, Arab and Jew, howling our loneliness within the tribes
when the refugee child and the exile's child re-open the blasted and forbidden city
when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in multitude
in that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will solitude mean?
1984-1985
|
234,618
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54717/in-the-event-of-change
|
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
|
In the Event of Change
|
I am saying primroses lined the pathway of toothless hedges.
I am saying the ocean shimmered like corrugated steel in the
morning sun.
The context of my story changes when you enter. Then I am dung
on the wall of the nomad's field. Then the everyday waking person.
I am nodding in your direction like fissures between dandelion fur.
Seeing in your manner.
I am speaking your pace. Slippage of silk slippers.
I say you are losing sight. I say your breasts are dry shells.
I am afraid of what I am capable of doing.
This is all a manner of stating how I prepare myself to be loved.
|
218,678
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43534/for-christmas-day-hark-the-herald-angels-sing
|
Charles Wesley
|
For Christmas Day: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
|
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinner reconcil'd.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Joyful all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies,
With the angelic host proclaim,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Christ by highest Heaven ador'd,
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin's womb.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail, the incarnate Deity,
Pleased as Man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Immanuel!
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
|
235,114
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/54980/blast
|
Kay Ryan
|
Blast
|
The holes have
almost left the
sky and the blanks
the paths-the
patches next to
natural, corroborated
by the incidental
sounds of practical
activities and crows,
themselves exhibiting
many of the earmarks
of the actual. This
must have happened
many times before,
we must suppose.
Almost a pulse
if we could speed
it up: the repeated
seeking of our several
senses toward each
other, fibers trying to
reach across the gap
as fast as possible,
following a blast.
|
219,264
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44070/delia-6-fair-is-my-love-and-cruel-as-shes-fair
|
Samuel Daniel
|
Delia 6: Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair
|
Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair:
Her brow shades frowns although her eyes are sunny,
Her smiles are lightning though her pride despair,
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey;
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her:
Sacred on earth, design'd a saint above.
Chastity and beauty, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she pity to conjoin with those,
Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?
For had she not been fair and thus unkind,
My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.
|
172,434
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/19631/hunger-and-thirst
|
John Peale Bishop
|
Hunger and Thirst
|
CRAVINGS
HUNGER AND THIRST
Shrieks in dark leaves. The rumpled owl
disgorges undigested bones
and feathered bits of lesser fowl.
When black obese flies are few,
starved spiders have been seen to drink
gold mornings in a round of dew.
The charlatan beneath his tent
with a wide flourish of the hand
consumes a fiery element.
There have been soldiers, too, who drank
a yellow water from steel casques
not minding how the sunlight stank.
And some have fed on air that sang
from skulls where under hollow darks
dust sneered to show a horny fang.
And Ugolino's horrible hunger
we too have known, and known too well
the strength that stretches famine longer.
We too have known within our cell
voices entreat us that we feed
on flesh whose bone we loved too well.
|
179,904
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23719/pastorale-56d20e49c1ab4
|
George P. Elliott
|
Pastorale
|
TWO POEMS
PASTORALE
He had forgotten that he ought to worry
Watching the mouse beside the shock of corn,
Hearing the hens scuff, and one hedge-bird trill.
He'd never noticed that a mouse was flat and fat,
Only seen trouble when he saw the tan scurry.
Then in that distance where anything's a speck
He felt the high hover of a taloned menace
And wished that it were night, the perching time,
Time for descent beneath the corn to nests,
Wanted to scare the mouse he ought to hate
Into the ripe shock of corn. Instead
He left it to the hawk, and hutched the hens,
Taking home his want for dark, his want to be
Old and safe as a turtle, blind as a toe.
Instead, he kissed his wife and skimmed the milk.
|
249,345
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151759/castle-woods-dinefwr
|
G.C. Waldrep
|
Castle Woods, Dinefwr
|
Most things have hidden roots, why not piety, that crow's wing.
I bought a card at the shop, mailed it to my brother.
He asked nothing of me. Did you imagine some greater riddle,
then. A spindle whorl. A spool. Dog rose in flower at the Tywi's
edge. You may make an image if you like. The sheep do it.
Ants do it in and through their labors, their chemical mazes.
It is time, my friend said, to reckon our exhaustion, to tote it up.
That is, after all, what math is for, its foolproof schematic.
Dig deep into the eye, the saints advise. They remember time
but no longer understand it. I remember
the single crow drinking from the ancient well, that startled
as I drew near. This happened in time, its plague of roots
undermining every present motive. Here are some things
other people do inside buildings, give or take a thousand years-
is what I wrote my friend. The dedicated space
inside the chancel was very small. Whether to construct
a larger chancel was debated, and then rejected. Because,
it was argued, the dead lie sleeping there, in their natural forms.
It is easy to forgive measure: the wild garlic, the devastated
bluebells in the wood. My bruised ribs seek a shelter-
other than the body, I mean. Once, I talked in my sleep.
Now I watch workmen clear the failed plantation of everything
that resembles glass. I count, as every beast must, the flecks
of ash that fall upon my pelt. I was surprised, my teacher-
friend confessed, by how few children knew the name of that
old war. I am surprised by dog's mercury, pink campion,
bird's-nest fern at the path's clean edge. You can draw a town
on any map. Imagine the people who live there, what they stow
in their gardens, their medical anomalies, their sports teams.
Just the same we are never very far from an altar, here.
One can be very precise about worship, about the intensity
of the sun and other light that travels further to rest
within our cells, to mimic rest. The family arguing in Welsh
is not part of the permanent display, the docent clarified.
Remember the children's inflatable birthday pavilion
stripped of its gaudy hexachords. Perceptible matter goes a long
way toward explaining the universe, but never far enough.
That is why mammals engage in breath, ceramics, politics.
We are all guests at the Festival of the Senses:
some of us blindfolded, some of us the dispensers of blindfolds.
No one comes here to the lichen throne (which seats four)
except the aging groundsmen with their scythes.
Their tattoos remind them of other, distant loyalties, past loves.
As do mine, but mine are all, in the conventional sense, scars.
|
228,904
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51261/letter-to-gary-bottone
|
Jack Spicer
|
[Letter to Gary Bottone]
|
Dear Gary,
Somehow your letter was no surprise (and I think you knew that it was no surprise or you would have tried to break the news more gently); somehow I think we understand what the other is going to say long before we say it-a proof of love and, I think, a protection against misunderstanding. So I've been expecting this letter for five weeks now-and I still don't know how to answer it.
Bohemia is a dreadful, wonderful place. It is full of hideous people and beautiful poetry. It is a hell full of windows into heaven. It would be wrong of me to drag a person I love into such a place against his will. Unless you walk into it freely, and with open despairing eyes, you can't even see the windows. And yet I can't leave Bohemia myself to come to you-Bohemia is inside of me, in a sense is me, was the price I paid, the oath I signed to write poetry.
I think that someday you'll enter Bohemia-not for me (I'm not worth the price, no human being is), but for poetry-to see the windows and maybe blast a few yourself through the rocks of hell. I'll be there waiting for you, my arms open to receive you.
But let's have these letters go on, whether it be days, years, or never before I see you. We can still love each other although we cannot see each other. We will be no farther apart when I'm in Berkeley than we were when I was in Minneapolis. And we can continue to love each other, by letter, from alien worlds.
Love,
Jack
[ c.1951-2 ]
|
166,748
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16459/the-fool-56d209858119c
|
Grace Fallow Norton
|
The Fool
|
The wise men said I'd miss the bar
And wher I tried I fell.
The fool dangled his trinket star
And cried, "You leap so well!"
"You leap so well now you must leap
This high and very much higher!"
So when the wise men were asleep
I jumped the tower and ıhe spire.
|
207,600
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37748/rising-to-meet-it
|
Chana Bloch
|
Rising to Meet It
|
Today I woke up missing
the pain of childbirth. The pain, not
the fixed clock-stare of the walls
or the fingers
combing my tangled hair.
All that night I lay
tethered to my breathing.
Ride out the waves, the doctor said.
The first time I touched a man,
what startled me more than the pleasure
was knowing what to do.
I turned to him with
a motion so firm it must have been
forming inside me
before I was born.
Pain is the salty element. Strapped
to the long night,
I struck out for land, sure strokes, the body
solid, bucking for breath, slippery,
wet. An ocean
rolled off my shoulders.
Today I woke up groping, and missed
the simple
pain of childbirth-
No, not the pain
but that rising to meet it like a body
rising toward pleasure,
buoyant, athletic, sure of its power.
|
208,682
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/38290/post-romantic
|
James Richardson
|
Post-Romantic
|
Now that it's over
between me and Nature
I like her better.
We've given up
senseless fear,
useless hope.
She's got herself together.
Just hanging on, but trim,
surprising, capable,
she shows, toward evening,
some of the old flashes.
If her solitudes,
amazed and kind,
can't be mine,
or her gaze of waters
stirs others,
no harm done.
She's on her own.
And don't misunderstand:
it's not yearning,
but the old courtesy
of life for life,
when sometimes, often,
out for nothing,
I stop for a minute
to hear our songs
high up, crossing.
|
220,772
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45354/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-121
|
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
|
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 121
|
Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen'd from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear'st the village hammer clink,
And see'st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last,
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
|
229,742
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51886/the-hackney-coachman-or-the-way-to-get-a-good-fare
|
Hannah More
|
The Hackney Coachman: Or the Way to Get a Good Fare
|
I am a bold Coachman, and drive a good hack,
With a coat of five capes that quite covers my back;
And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many miles
From the narrowest alley in all Broad St Giles.
Though poor, we are honest and very content,
We pay as we go for meat, drink, and for rent;
To work all the week I am able and willing,
I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling.
And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries,
The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries;
And I'd rather (said I), since it saves me from sin,
Be the driver without, than the toper within.
Yet though dram-shops I hate, and the dram-drinking friend,
I'm not quite so good but I wish I may mend;
I repent of my sins, since we all are depraved,
For a coachman, I hold, has a soul to be saved.
When a riotous multitude fills up a street,
And the greater part know not, boys, wherefore they meet;
If I see there is mischief, I never go there,
Let others get tipsy so I get my fare.
Now to church, if I take some good lady to pray,
It grieves me full sore to be kept quite away;
So I step within side, though the sermon's begun,
For a slice of the service is better than none.
Then my glasses are whole, and my coach is so neat,
I am always the first to be called in the street;
And I'm known by the name ('tis a name rather rare)
Of the coachman that never asks more than his fare.
Though my beasts should be dull, yet I don't use them ill;
Though they stumble I swear not, nor cut them up hill;
For I firmly believe there's no charm in an oath
That can make a nag trot, when to walk he is loath.
And though I'm a coachman, I'll freely confess,
I beg of my Maker my labours to bless;
I praise Him each morning, and pray every night,
And 'tis this makes my heart feel so cheerful and light.
When I drive to a funeral I care not for drink;
That is not the moment to guzzle, but think;
And I wish I could add both of coachman and master,
That both of us strove to amend a bit faster.
|
240,782
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58119/doctor-meyers
|
Edgar Lee Masters
|
Doctor Meyers
|
No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, Did more for people in this town than l. And all the weak, the halt, the improvident And those who could not pay flocked to me. I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, All wedded, doing well in the world. And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, Came to me in her trouble, crying. I tried to help her out-she died- They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, My wife perished of a broken heart. And pneumonia finished me.
|
1,304,688
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162125/a-river-slips
|
Cole Swensen
|
A river slips
|
a river slips
in shifting leaves
sifting. a river sifts
and falls to pieces
in which not seen
(this we never see)
in splices.
if fall a great distance, if a river
fall shelter, if a river fall find
several miles slightly off-center.
It took centuries
of falling-most rivers
are not actually
flowing, but falling
the length of themselves
times the sun.
|
171,060
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/18848/domine-deus
|
James J. Ryan
|
Domine, Deus
|
He rained the bread of heaven down
And men ate angels' food;
He raised an azure tent to crown
The straying multitude.
He caught the arrows of the sun
And crushed them in his hand;
He nursed the flowers one by one
And starred the trackless land!
|
236,050
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55556/crystal-meth-under-her-choir-robe
|
John Repp
|
Crystal Meth Under Her Choir Robe
|
No surprise. Bills to pay, pain to obliterate,
a favor to a friend desperate
for more time before facing facts,
or a reason less beholden to One-day-at-a-time
or I-don't-know-why or There-is-no-why-
I-just-like-getting-high or Then-Jesus-spoke-to-me
blather. Nothing's enough, not even the moments
when her voice - any voice, my voice -
vanishes into the Voice the hymn
wrenches from the throats of the spiritual
paupers up there swaying in black satin.
The God of the Garden is the God
of Chemistry, too, a single sniff
in a lifetime proof enough - nothing
can slough errands or heartbreak
so fast into the metaphysical ditch
where all of it belongs. Weren't we made
for better than the Fall, if Fall this is?
We all see what the Flood keeps doing.
A little while dry, please, a little while
with no chattering chimp between
the ears & the Wizard once more in Oz.
This is my mind, not hers. She's a story
I heard. I'm a story I can't stop hearing.
A plastic tarp in a monsoon may be
her future. A plush ride home to havoc.
A vision that delivers her from want,
deserving or not.
|
197,134
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32502/the-hand-56d2160d63435
|
Michael Magee
|
The Hand
|
I
I watch the sun rise in my hand,
the rays break light between my fingertips,
until sunshine fills my palm.
It stretches itself and yawns,
uncurling as the sun mounts higher,
extends those fingers spreading outward,
trembling before the heat of day.
And as the noon descends to dusk,
it marks the change and shivers.
Inside the thumb, a crescent moon emerges
as darkness creases a closing palm.
And as the night secures its hold,
knuckles whiten, fingers clench,
and veins grow blue with cold.
u
And when the dawn came, it opened again,
but I was closed and it had changed.
Veins stiffened like a mountain range,
rocky knuckles spiked the back country,
the fingers tightened to a fist.
The flesh raged on all day, all night:
I looked at it as though a world away.
|
221,006
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45523/inside-of-kings-college-chapel-cambridge
|
William Wordsworth
|
Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge
|
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned-
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only-this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering-and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
|
237,878
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56561/the-matyo-embroidery
|
Szilárd Borbély
|
The Matyó Embroidery
|
On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth
was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father
gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly,
faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by
an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate ,
and that if I consented to the injected dose,
we could all fall asleep. We would stay together
for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying
desperation. A fifteen-year-old's desire to live
cried out in me: "No!" To which
my father stated: "If you want to live, then
we too must keep on living, because we can't leave you
by yourself." My father was the village doctor. I grew up
with no siblings. My mother's sister lived next door,
with her husband and two children, Nelly and Gyurika.
In the evenings I prayed: "Merciful Lord of mine,
My eyes have closed, but thine, yet still are open, father mine,
Watch over me as I recline." Then this: "In one God
I believe, in one homeland I believe, in the eternal
divine truth I believe, in Hungary's re-
surrection I believe. Amen." Gyuri could not study in Pest,
he went to Brünn. Later, not even there. Then the family
sent him to Toulouse. My mind could not comprehend. Then
one of uncle Vilmos's servants murdered him with six ax-blows.
He screamed crazed into the courtyard: "That's what
the stinking Jew deserved!" I found him, his head smashed open.
I ran to my father, who didn't even believe it. And one after
the other, the horrors came. Nelly lived in Újvidék
with her husband. Uncle Ernő was in the middle of shaving when
Hungarians broke into the flat. They were looking for the family.
The nanny quickly threw a quilt onto six-month-old Tomika,
they didn't notice him. Peterke was out with Nelly. Uncle Ern ő
was executed on the ice of the Danube. Nelly did not recover.
She knitted pullovers, each more beautiful than the next, so as not
to feel the pain. She went to Pest to learn a trade,
so she could support her children. That's how it was when
nineteen-forty-four came. On March 15, one of my teachers said,
"You remain seated," while the class sang the Anthem,
"and be quiet." On the day of the nineteenth, the Germans
invaded. From then on, it was obligatory to wear the star.
Through the intervention of the medical officer and the Lord Lieutenant, my father
could have stayed out. I had to move to the ghetto with my mother. My
father said "The family should stay together." All up and down
our street they stood, to bid farewell. Father acknowledged
them, but already he was just waiting
for the end. He had aged by decades. Then the injection,
the one I already spoke of, turned up on the table with the
Matyó embroidery. We sat in the evening underneath the open sky
before being loaded onto the freight cars. The doctor from the next village
drank mercury chloride with his wife. Despite my father's stomach lavage,
they succumbed by the morning. There were eighty of us in the wagon.
An expectant mother gave birth on the way. But with no water, my father
could not save them. There were those who went mad in the freight cars.
My father taught me always to say "Ich will
arbeiten." On the seventh of July the train stopped. Father read
the plaque, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and said, "We are
lost!" Megaphones blared, "Leave your packages
in the wagons, they will be brought to you later. Special vehicles
are coming for the sick and the elderly, just remain sitting,"
they repeated, "everything will be fine. Men exit
the wagon to the left, women to the right." As farewell,
my papa said, "Always be my clever, my obedient, my good
little girl... " That is how we parted for eternity. Tomika and Peterke
were squeezing my hand tightly, but my mother said, "Don't
you want to sit down? We can walk. Come... "
We moved forward in a column of five rows. The bulbs of the searchlights
blinded us in the eyes. A German officer, legs wide apart. He stood there
somewhere far away. Sent us to the right. Had to get undressed
in a room. Then they sent us into another, and the iron door slammed,
bolted shut. Screaming, I pounded on it again and again. We truly
were lost, as last I understood.... Turning around, the others
already shaved bald. I didn't recognize anyone.
They stood there like sheep. Upon their skin, the writing of gooseflesh.
|
227,430
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50366/the-chosen
|
Thomas Hardy
|
The Chosen
|
"A woman for whom great gods might strive!"
I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
And of how charms outwear.
I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.
And I thought of the fifth, whom I'd called a jade.
And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
Yet not of the favour sought.
So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,
Just at the falling of the mast:
"After scanning five; yes, each and each,
I've found the woman desired - at last!"
"-I feel a strange benumbing spell,
As one ill-wished!" said she.
And soon it seemed that something fell
Was starving her love for me.
"I feel some curse. O, five were there?"
And wanly she swerved, and went away.
I followed sick: night numbed the air,
And dark the mournful moorland lay.
I cried: "O darling, turn your head!"
But never her face I viewed;
"O turn, O turn!" again I said,
And miserably pursued.
At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.
I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
I cried, "My heart revives!"
"Look more," she said. I looked as bid;
Her face was all the five's.
All the five women, clear come back,
I saw in her - with her made one,
The while she drooped upon the track,
And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.
She'd half forgot me in her change;
"Who are you? Won't you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
Following since yesterday?"
I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.
And there she lies, and there I tend,
Till my life's threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend -
Not one, but all combined.
|
203,914
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35898/the-resurrected
|
James Wright
|
The Resurrected
|
two poems
THE RESURRECTED
Praying down the gulley,
Slowed by the rainy mire,
I will discern, across the void,
Two flies winding a fire,
And a long thick leaf |
Hanging on another,
And a leg of root and a leg
Of bough twining together.
That will be she forever:
Lightning bugs for eyes,
That see no farther in the dark
Than my own blind eyes;
A limp leaf for a cheek,
Cracking before it slips;
Tendril and twig for ankle bones,
And nothing at all for lips
But the unbodied mark
My mouth makes on the dark.
|
230,838
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52519/to-s-m-a-young-african-painter-on-seeing-his-works
|
Phillis Wheatley
|
To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works
|
TO show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!
And may the charms of each seraphic theme
Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!
High to the blissful wonders of the skies
Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.
Thrice happy, when exalted to survey
That splendid city, crown'd with endless day,
Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:
Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.
Calm and serene thy moments glide along,
And may the muse inspire each future song!
Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless'd,
May peace with balmy wings your soul invest!
But when these shades of time are chas'd away,
And darkness ends in everlasting day,
On what seraphic pinions shall we move,
And view the landscapes in the realms above?
There shall thy tongue in heav'nly murmurs flow,
And there my muse with heav'nly transport glow:
No more to tell of Damon's tender sighs,
Or rising radiance of Aurora's eyes,
For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,
And purer language on th' ethereal plain.
Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night
Now seals the fair creation from my sight.
|
184,176
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25932/the-milkman-56d20ffa534be
|
Isabella Gardner
|
The Milkman
|
five poems
THE MILKMAN
The door was bolted and the windows of my porch
Were screened to keep invaders out, the mesh of rust
Proof wire sieved the elements. Did my throat parch
Then I sat at my table there and ate with lust
Most chaste, the raw red apples; juice, flesh, rind and core.
One still and summer noon while dining in the sun
I was poulticing my thirst with apples, slaking care...
When suddenly I felt a whir of dread. Soon, soon,
Stiff as a bone I listened for the Milkman's tread.
I heard him softly bang the door of the huge truck
And then his boots besieged my private yard. I tried
To keep my eyes speared to the table, but the suck
Of apprehension milked my force. At last he mounted
My backstairs, climbed to the top, and there he stood still
Outside the bolted door. The sun's colour fainted.
I felt the horror of his quiet melt me, steal
Into my sockets, and seduce me to him from
My dinner. His hand clung round the latch like rubber.
I felt him ooze against the screen and shake the frame.
Thad to slide the bolt; and thus I was the robber
Of my porch, Breathing smiling shape of fright,
The Milkman made his entrance; insistent donor,
He held in leprous hands the bottled sterile fruit,
And gave me this fatal, this apostate dinner.
Now in winter I have retreated from the porch
Into the house and the once-red apples rot where
I left them on the table. Now if my throat parch
For fruit the Milkman brings a quart for my despair.
THIS NEIGHBORHOOD
"Now I am on the wing."
I have migrated to another place
|
213,542
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40731/figure-eight
|
Heidy Steidlmayer
|
Figure Eight
|
Score and torsion
Cut from the cold
Origin of figures.
Flat maps of planets
Follow the slow
Going of steel-lines
Lengthen to pure
Curve-O my arctic
Orbiting, end
In universe,
Carve from the frozen
Hour a far
Star of practice,
Mark the stark polarity
Of one become one
With the dark
Rink of eternal morning
Where infinity
Stands its only skater-
A wobbler tracing great
Stases of ice beyond
This wintry affinity.
|
246,315
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/145275/amor-fati-5a3bf63b02818
|
Sandra Lim
|
Amor Fati
|
Inside every world there is another world trying to get out,
and there is something in you that would like to discount this world.
The stars could rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts,
and you would not know if you were ruining your life or beginning a real one.
You could claim professional fondness for the world around you;
the pictures would dissolve under the paint coming alive,
and you would only feel a phantom skip of the heart, absorbed so in the colors.
Your disbelief is a later novel emerging in the long, long shadow of an earlier one-
is this the great world, which is whatever is the case?
The sustained helplessness you feel in the long emptiness of days is matched
by the new suspiciousness and wrath you wake to each morning.
Isn't this a relationship with your death, too, to fall in love with your inscrutable life?
Your teeth fill with cavities. There is always unearned happiness for some,
and the criminal feeling of solitude. Always, everyone lies about his life.
|
165,296
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15640/the-mist
|
Isidor Schneider
|
The Mist
|
Is death a mist
In which life becomes invisible?
Yesterday
The world ended in mist.
It lay shrunken by immobility
Into a gray coffin.
The steeple rose,
Prodded and pricked the mist
Like a question
Investigating doubt.
Its dim spire
Found the horizon new arranged
In stories.
The world became strange,
Ungrateful
Of the jagged lights
That seamed its veils.
To me, walking,
The long road unravelled
A guiding string;
And my eyes
Carried before and behind
Its constant small visibility.
I faced the mist-made microcosm-
Where pebbles are boulders,
Puddles lakes,
Sidewalk-cracks long chasms,
The curb a precipice;
Where towers flew,
Roofs floated like rafts;
And smoke wreaths
Were like dark veins
Under a skin.
Is death a mist
In which life becomes invisible?
|
190,036
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28934/a-boat-with-a-blue-canopy
|
John Tagliabue
|
A Boat with a Blue Canopy...
|
ALLEN KANFER
They want to prove their strength by daring God
To strike them dead, the oldest vaudeville joke;
Old men are ready to receive salvation
By ordering the troops out to keep order.
And I say in my house there's peace; it's tight.
Howl, tomorrow, and talk of fetid death,
Buzz like a saw and let the rumor stretch
The living out like auto-de-fé; burn love
And throw the ashes in the frightened faces.
Task you, who will immolate himself
In terror who likes the smell of bread and bed?
Not I. Rattle my shutters. I can hear
Myself make love. My house has peace. It's tight.
Leave that familiar other trick, tomorrow,
Serving the juices in your mushroom dreams
Spilling over in Edens, milk and honey,
And virgins running, singing first come first serve
To each Columbus who invades the moon,
The rutted lanes washed out by science fiction.
Tomorrow, lie down quietly; my neighbor sings
His child a lullaby; his house is tight.
|
224,218
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48076/stomackes
|
Albert Goldbarth
|
Stomackes
|
1
Yes. So we must reconnect
ideas of God, and the definitions of "liberty,"
and the psychology of our earliest models of governance, with
oyster peeces in barley beer & wheet,
chopt cod & venyson seethed in a blood broth ,
hominy pottage , also squirell .
Their heads might well have brimmed with heaven
and its airborne personnel, but still their mouths were a mash
of white meat [cheese] and a motley collation
of eel leavings , a fine samp , and a roast Fowl .
Worshipp first , then after-butter Biskuits!
David Ignatow:
"seeking transcendence
but loving bread"
2
And it is too easy to get lost in abstraction,
as if smoke, and dream, and quantum ersatz-states
are our proper environment... it's easy to conceptualize in "politics"
and not in the clack of the black or white dried bean
we drop in the voting bowl. In some tribes, there's a designated
"reminderer," and when the shaman novitiate-or sometimes
simply a mournful family member-follows the star trail
into the country of ghosts, and lingers there, this person tugs
the wanderer back home: perhaps a light thwack
with a broom-shock, or the rising steam of a broth that one
can hungrily shinny down to Earth like a rope.
In the Mesopotamian Inanna myth, it's water and bread
that resurrect the goddess and allow her
to begin the long ascent out from the craters of Hell.
We can spend all day, and many days, and years, in theorizing.
"A Computer Recreation of Proto-Hominid Dietary Intake:
An Analysis"
... we'll float off, through these foggy lands of argot,
in the way that someone else might dissolve in the blue cloud
of an opium den... no wonder there's such pleasure in uncovering
the solid fossil record of those appetites, and in emptying out
its evidence grain by grain, a stone piñata. How often
the stories bring us back to that grounding! In 1620,
a first exploratory party from the Mayflower went ashore
on the northern Cape Cod coast. The weather was bad
and disorienting: a half a foot of snow, in air
so thick as to be directionless. But we sense they recouped
their spirits that night, from three fat Geese
and six Ducks whitch we ate with Soldiers stomackes.
3
And it is too easy to lose ourselves in cyberthink,
untethered from the touchable, from even the cohesive force
suffusing through one atom. "What we keep,"
reports an archivist at the New York Times , "is the information,
not the paper"... everything e-storaged now.
A thousand years of pages, pffft : dismissiveness
as obliterative as a bonfire, in the long run. Oh, yes,
easy to cease to exist as an actual shape, inside the huge,
occluding mists of legalese: we say "repatriation
of native archeological remains," and we mean
human bones, that's what we mean: hard and dear
and contested. We say "ritual signifier of threat," but
what the Narragansetts sent to the colonists at Plymouth
was a bundl of thair Arrows tyed about in a mightie Snake skin .
I died. And I was stolen
into a land of strangers-of not-the-People .
I floated all day, many days. And here
the ribs of my cage were empty: always
I was hungry, for the things that People need .
But this was not the sun, and this was not the soil,
of the People; and I was restless, I had no one
for between my legs, and no drum in my chest .
There was much war from this: the People
desired me back, they said "this one
is part of many-ones," and after words and words ,
their word was so. One day the breezes sent the fishes
and savory beaver parts, and I knew at last
that I was home: my mouth of my skull watered .
4
"When hegemonic identity-structures systemize cognition-" whoa.
There are times I think my friends might flimmer away in that
high-minded mush... and I concentrate, then, on the names
of those people from 1621, names that are true, specific
labor and specific, beautiful common things. Cooper.
Fletcher. Glover. Miller. Glazer. Mason. Carpenter.
Cheerfull Winter.
Oceanus Hopkins.
Lydia Fish, Nathaniel Fish and Steadfast Fish, of Sandwich.
Zachariah Field, father, and daughter Dutiful Field.
Pandora Sparrow.
Who wouldn't care to meet Peregrine Soule?
And who could wish to let go of this life
when faced by Countenance Bountie?
|
236,892
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56018/their-pleas
|
Kelly Cherry
|
Their Pleas
|
They pluck my sleeve, tug my hand, pull
my hair. They do not kneel to kiss my hem.
No, it's not like that but they want tokens.
Again, not souvenirs but something small
and useful, something that will help them out
after life, maybe in an underworld.
They need a sighted guide to lead them to
the river, and they need a remnant of
the old world as they embark for the older world,
the one that has existed since the first
grievous death. They need to feel they still
can touch and still be touched, as once they did
and were, and one would have to be a cold,
uncaring woman to deny their pleas:
a woman with a bulletproof heart,
without a memory of life on earth.
|
237,704
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56467/vessels
|
Paisley Rekdal
|
Vessels
|
Shouldn't it ache, this slit
into the sweet
and salt mix of waters
comprising the mussel,
its labial meats
winged open: yellow-
fleshed, black and gray
around the tough
adductor? It hurts
to imagine it, regardless
of the harvester's
denials, swiveling
his knife to make
the incision: one
dull cyst nicked
from the oyster's
mantle - its thread of red
gland no bigger
than a seed
of trout roe - pressed
inside the tendered
flesh. Both hosts eased
open with a knife
(as if anything
could be said to be eased
with a knife):
so that one pearl
after another can be
harvested, polished,
added to others
until a single rope is strung
on silk. Linked
by what you think
is pain. Nothing
could be so roughly
handled and yet feel
so little, your pity
turned into part of this
production: you
with your small,
four-chambered heart,
shyness, hungers, envy: what
could be so precious
you'd cleave
another to keep it
close? Imagine
the weeks it takes to wind
nacre over the red
seed placed at the other
heart's mantle.
The mussel
become what no one
wants to:
vessel, caisson, wounded
into making us
the thing we want
to call beautiful.
|
235,470
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55226/ancestral-lines
|
David Ferry
|
Ancestral Lines
|
It's as when following the others' lines,
Which are the tracks of somebody gone before,
Leaving me mischievous clues, telling me who
They were and who it was they weren't,
And who it is I am because of them,
Or, just for the moment, reading them, I am,
Although the next moment I'm back in myself, and lost.
My father at the piano saying to me,
"Listen to this, he called the piece Warum ?"
And the nearest my father could come to saying what
He made of that was lamely to say he didn't,
Schumann didn't, my father didn't, know why.
"What's in a dog's heart"? I once asked in a poem,
And Christopher Ricks when he read it said, "Search me."
He wasn't just being funny, he was right.
You can't tell anything much about who you are
By exercising on the Romantic bars.
What are the wild waves saying? I don't know.
And Shelley didn't know, and knew he didn't.
In his great poem, "Ode to the West Wind," he
Said that the leaves of his pages were blowing away,
Dead leaves, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
|
230,624
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52371/the-lady-of-the-lake-boat-song
|
Sir Walter Scott
|
from The Lady of the Lake: Boat Song
|
Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine!
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
Heaven sent it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow,
While every Highland glen
Sends our shout back again,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!"
Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade;
When the whirlwind has stripped every leaf on the mountain,
The more shall Clan-Alpine exult in her shade.
Moored in the rifted rock,
Proof to the tempest's shock,
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow;
Menteith and Breadalbane, then,
Echo his praise again,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!"
Proudly our pibroch has thrilled in Glen Fruin,
And Bannochar's groans to our slogan replied;
Glen-Luss and Ross-dhu, they are smoking in ruin,
And the best of Loch Lomond lie dead on her side.
Widow and Saxon maid
Long shall lament our raid,
Think of Clan-Alpine with fear and with woe;
Lennox and Leven-glen
Shake when they hear again,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!"
Row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Highlands!
Stretch to your oars for the ever-green Pine!
O that the rosebud that graces yon islands
Were wreathed in a garland around him to twine!
O that some seedling gem,
Worthy such noble stem
Honored and blessed in their shadow might grow!
Loud should Clan-Alpine then
Ring from her deepmost glen,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!"
|
175,052
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/21151/vine
|
Herman Salinger
|
Vine
|
Lord, I am withered and sick,
And grounded my seed and my sight.
My self is dead as a stick -
Let me climb again to the light.
Let me stretch to you as a vine
Stretches from stones and dust.
The climbing will be mine;
Then burn me if you must.
For a vine is not a tree
And its deaths are many and quick.
I have known what it is to be
A vine and to be a stick.
Now my life has shrunk to a thread
And hidden itself in sand.
The sun pulls overhead,
And under me the land:
To be a vine no more
Nor ever an airy leaf,
But seek the downward core
And be a root in my grief,
Till through me pulse the change,
And the urging in me turns
Upward into the strange,
Into the light that burns;
The open air that drifts
And will not let me be,
And the face of the sun that lifts
My root into stem and tree.
Long is the night underground
Where the sun is only a spark,
And slow the way is found
Out of this death in the dark.
|
165,052
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15508/a-green-stream-tr-by-witter-bynner-and-kiang-kang-hu
|
Wang Wei
|
A Green Stream
|
I have come on the River of Yellow Flowers,
Borne by the current of a green stream
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains
To journey less than a hundred li.
Rapids hum on scattered stones,
Light is dim in the close pines,
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns,
Weeds are lush along the banks.
Down in my heart I have always been clear
As this clarity of waters.
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock
And cast my fishing-line forever!
Translated from the Chinese
by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu
|
247,725
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/148118/standing-on-the-bridge-at-dolceacqua
|
Martín Espada
|
Standing on the Bridge at Dolceacqua
|
At forty, I studied the mirror. I poked my mouth to free a trapped grain
of hamburger, and a tooth broke off between my fingers. I felt nothing.
The dentist said: The tooth is dead. The root is dead. The X-rays show signs
of trauma to the lower jaw. What happened here? I said: Donald DeBlasio.
Donald DeBlasio punched me in the mouth. I was fifteen. My lip split,
my skull clanged, and my body smacked the floor like a mannequin
in a store looted by rioters. He stood over me and grinned
as he would grin at me for the rest of my life. Whenever I saw
him, in the hallway at school or on the street, he would pump
his right fist in my face, slowly curling an invisible barbell.
He was a centurion guarding the last outpost of the empire,
another Sicilian or Calabrese fleeing Brooklyn for Valley Stream,
Long Island, escaping the barbarians who sacked Rome, back
from the dead in 1972 to steal their cars, torch their houses,
piss in their swimming pools, stab the boys, and kiss the girls.
I was a barbarian drifting far from his tribe, a Puerto Rican
without a knife in hand or a leather jacket ablaze in gang colors.
Everybody understood, even the teacher who glanced away the day
I was late and sat on the floor, so the front row could take turns
jabbing a shoe in my spine. I refused to worship their gods, Jesus
on the crucifix or the Yankees in the sacred arena of the Stadium,
or the football deity who could bench press 300 pounds and slammed
me into a locker whenever he saw me. He never said a word to me.
I never said a word to him. I learned to swallow blood and words.
For years, I would mimic their rooster strut, the sneering lip stuck out,
the bellowing battle cry of ba fangool . I rooted against Rocky in all
the Rocky movies, cheering his choreographed pratfalls to the canvas.
When they rushed out the door of the pizza joint to gawk at the booming
car wreck on the corner, leaving my eggplant parm sub to burn black
in the oven, I called them goombahs and swore never to return.
I am sixty. The words flow over the wrinkled stone of my brain:
Dolceacqua, sweet water, fresh water, River Nervia in the province
of Imperia, region of Liguria. I stand on the bridge at Dolceacqua,
the same stone arch painted by Monet more than a century ago.
She contemplates the water gushing below the bridge, and I watch
at her shoulder to see the river as she sees the river, poet, teacher,
amati , like amada in Spanish, the word for beloved. Her mother's name
is Giovio, Calabrese from New Jersey, her grandfather a stonemason
before the beam rammed his head and the stroke crippled his right hand,
her great-grandmother a girl sewing buttons onto blouses who escaped
the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, as others leapt, hand in hand, eyes shut,
from the ninth floor. I can no longer remember the curses in the poetry
of Shakespeare and Donald DeBlasio. She takes my hand, and leads me
across the bridge to the ruins of the castle on the other side of the river,
through the labyrinth of stone, up to the jagged battlements, where we
listen to the silence of the builders, and the birds, and the silence again.
|
212,584
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40251/high-inside-fastball
|
Donald Caswell
|
High, Inside Fastball
|
has the awkward rhythm of a foreign tongue.
It's technically correct, but takes too long
to say. If that's what's on your mind
you'll never get out of the box in time.
You need the swift vernacular:
Beanball, chin music, wake-up call.
Leave the play-by-play to the man in the booth.
Hit the dirt. Hug your shoes.
|
233,096
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53776/dreams-in-war-time
|
Amy Lowell
|
Dreams in War Time
|
I
I wandered through a house of many rooms.
It grew darker and darker,
Until, at last, I could only find my way
By passing my fingers along the wall.
Suddenly my hand shot through an open window,
And the thorn of a rose I could not see
Pricked it so sharply
That I cried aloud.
II
I dug a grave under an oak-tree.
With infinite care, I stamped my spade
Into the heavy grass.
The sod sucked it,
And I drew it out with effort,
Watching the steel run liquid in the moonlight
As it came clear.
I stooped, and dug, and never turned,
For behind me,
On the dried leaves,
My own face lay like a white pebble,
Waiting.
III
I gambled with a silver money.
The dried seed-vessels of "honesty"
Were stacked in front of me.
Dry, white years slipping through my fingers
One by one.
One by one, gathered by the Croupier.
"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs."
I staked on the red,
And the black won.
Dry years,
Dead years;
But I had a system,
I always staked on the red.
IV
I painted the leaves of bushes red
And shouted: "Fire! Fire!"
But the neighbors only laughed.
"We cannot warm our hands at them," they said.
Then they cut down my bushes,
And made a bonfire,
And danced about it.
But I covered my face and wept,
For ashes are not beautiful
Even in the dawn.
V
I followed a procession of singing girls
Who danced to the glitter of tambourines.
Where the street turned at a lighted corner,
I caught the purple dress of one of the dancers,
But, as I grasped it, it tore,
And the purple dye ran from it
Like blood
Upon the ground.
VI
I wished to post a letter,
But although I paid much,
Still the letter was overweight.
"What is in this package?" said the clerk,
"It is very heavy."
"Yes," I said,
"And yet it is only a dried fruit."
VII
I had made a kite,
On it I had pasted golden stars
And white torches,
And the tail was spotted scarlet like a tiger-lily,
And very long.
I flew my kite,
And my soul was contented
Watching it flash against the concave of the sky.
My friends pointed at the clouds;
They begged me to take in my kite.
But I was happy
Seeing the mirror shock of it
Against the black clouds.
Then the lightning came
And struck the kite.
It puffed-blazed-fell.
But still I walked on,
In the drowning rain,
Slowly winding up the string.
|
204,816
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36351/cemetery-nights-v
|
Stephen Dobyns
|
Cemetery Nights V
|
Wheel of memory, wheel of forgetting, bitter
taste in the mouth-those who have been dead longest
group together in the center of the graveyard
facing inward. The sooner they become dust the better.
They pick at their flesh and watch it crumble,
they chip at their bones and watch them dissolve.
Do they have memories? Just shadows in the mind
like a hand passing between a candle and a wall.
Those who have been dead a lesser time stand
closer to the fence but already they have started
turning away. Maybe they still have some sadness.
And what are their thoughts? Colors mostly,
sunset, sunrise, a burning house, someone waving
from the flames. Those who have recently died
line up against the fence facing outward,
watching the mailman, deliverymen, the children
returning from school, listening to the churchbells
dealing out the hours of the living day.
So arranged the dead form a great spoked wheel-
such is the fiery wheel that rolls through heaven.
For the rats, nothing is more ridiculous
than the recently dead as they press against
the railing with their arms stuck between the bars.
Occasionally, one sees a friend, even a loved one.
Then what a shouting takes place as the dead
tries to catch the eye of the living. One actually
sees his wife waiting for a bus and he reaches out
so close that he nearly touches her yellow hair.
During life they were great lovers. Maybe
he should throw a finger at her, something
to attract her attention. Like a scarecrow
in a stiff wind, the dead husband waves his arms.
Is she aware of anything? Perhaps a slight breeze
on an otherwise still day, perhaps a smell of earth.
And what does she remember? Sometimes, when
she sits in his favorite chair or drinks a wine
that he liked, she will recall his face but
much faded like a favorite dress washed too often.
And her husband, what does he think? As a piece
of crumpled paper burns within a fire,
so the thought of her burns within his brain.
And where is she going? These days she has taken
a new lover and she's going to his apartment. Even
as she waits, she sees herself sitting on his bed
as he unfastens the buttons of her blouse.
He will cup her breasts in his hands. A sudden
breeze will invade the room making the dust
motes dance and sparkle as if each bright
spot were a single sharp-eyed intelligence,
as if the vast legion of the dead had come
with their unbearable jumble of envy and regret
to watch the man as he drops his head,
presses his mouth to the erect nipple.
|
211,772
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39845/what-goes
|
Hayden Carruth
|
WHAT GOES
|
People like my poems of old age, and I'm
surprised. I miss the old times
when I was in
my prime and full
of poetic energy -
concentrated in a kind
of frenzy
on the language, the form, the contents of my mind.
Now the poems come while I'm playing
my Nintendo game or
staring at the indigo bunting on my feeder,
so bright in the sunshine of May.
They come incidentally, haphazardly . . .
hap-hazard. Hap
Hazard.
The steady changeability of events-that's what people
like,
a loss of control
in the final nonchalance
as the grains of sand slip down.
|
179,012
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23257/the-anarchic-architecht
|
Gilbert Neiman
|
The Anarchic Architect
|
THREE POEMS
THE ANARCHIC ARCHITECT
for J. R.
que santa gloria haya
"This little hat from Miajares Caceres.
Look at it. See it turn. It is cordobés.
You put it on and flick it down like this.
My brother sent it, thinking the war had ended.
I sent him a little money, enough for his face."
His brother left a nose and a jaw with war.
Accomplished cook and clever dancer, my friend.
Andalusian wit and a graceful ego,
No better companions for a winter evening.
Now he too, without a mouth, speechless to no end.
His building still unbuilt. Fresh staring blueprints
Spread out like yellowed maps of the universe
On the strict, glasstopped table. Slow flies hop,
Dozing with winter over the etched design.
Smoke from a stale cigar outlives the hearse.
José's voice had wry lemons that cling to walls.
The restive sound of twenty ribald jokes
Dance down the thinning drain of twisted stems
Of stagnant zinnias on banal wallpaper.
His cold cigar butt tilts, no longer smokes.
Nine Chinese rim the ashtray, gaudy gift
That made him think that he had found China.
Each Chinaman is reaching for the purse
Of him ahead: the old design of business,
He discovered this curio in Carolina,
Mother and four brothers, starving in Spain.
Fold up the useless clothes and lock the trunk.
Stack up his records for another ear.
Drink down appendicitis with closing eyes.
Hear anything: last night's bombing, what boat's sunk.
The only facts of news. While shattered air
Cringes in steam-heated corners of the room
As twilight settles on bare furniture.
A dog coughs. A young boy screams down the street
The sullen headlines of the evening gloom.
|
240,148
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57783/the-flower-press
|
Chelsea Woodard
|
The Flower Press
|
It was the sort of thing given to little girls:
sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.
I stalked the pasture's rough and waist-high grass
for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass,
the star shaming the clouds of slighter,
ordinary blooms. The asters curled
inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed
in the parlor's stifling heat, I pried
each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws.
But flowers bear no ugly bruise,
and even now fall from the brittle page, dried
prettily, plucked from memory's hush.
|
210,520
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39214/belly
|
Elizabeth Holmes
|
Belly
|
The belly's big egg signals
wait, wait. The cat
won't sit anymore on the crowded lap.
Dark center line, seam
of a bruised peach. Navel,
that quaint reminder, now
extrudes, a brown seashell whorl,
an ear, the belly
listening, testing foreign air.
The belly is a hard
hill, and strange,
full of seismic murmurs. (A globe
has its tides; blue
whale rolls
languid in its own bay.).
These kicks regard me
as a dog its bed.
Warm layers of tissue receive
the thumps of a nine-month dream.
My waters stir
with lightless rowings, unremembered.
Emissary from a former life,
the cat abandons all.
Leaping to the sill he stares
where the spring sun erupts
a blaze of tulips:
open, open.
|
252,755
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158374/nestora-salgado1
|
Martín Tonalmeyotl
|
Nestora Salgado1
|
She was born in the mountains,
assigned a jaguar as her guardian.
She planted, by hand, a valley of flowers for the butterflies
and with their wings clothed herself.
Before taking her first step
she drank from the roots of the linaloe,
that tree whose gentle aroma filled her words
with a rare sweetness before they became wild and free.
She, like many women from here,
may have been born dozens of times.
How many doesn't matter; it was time enough to grow
into a gaze of a hundred eyes.
It was time enough to spread her wings and return to her trees
almost fallen over,
where her navel took root
in their slender crevices.
She came back and saw her town changed.
Still inhabited but overrun
by dogs and coyotes, hungry,
whose fangs and threats ruled over the people.
She, with her jaguar nahual,
called upon the people to strip those canines bare
to see what was hiding under their long, filthy tails.
The people listened and followed her.
But one day, with the help of white-collar rats,
these animals stole this leader and took her far away
where her people could not defend her, because in such places
to be a good leader is to become a problem.
So she was taken from them and smeared with lies.
They treated her like a dog for defending her people.
They tried to bury her name with political filth-
Mrs. Wallace, Riveros and the others. 2
They left her behind bars, citing
an obsolete constitution whose sole beneficiaries are
the sewer rats under San Lázaro. 3
In spite of it all, her wings remained intact,
their natural colors not yet lost.
Her words still roar like leaves in the wind,
they move like deer in the shadow of the mountains,
they move like echoes across the rivers of the streets.
Some of them have become
birds, creators of their own songs.
Others are etched into the leather of magic satchels
where ancestral secrets are kept:
like how to be a true bird
and fly, fly and fly toward the infinite.
Translated from the Spanish
|
167,154
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16678/words-of-the-weaver-of-nets
|
James Daly
|
Words of the Weaver of Nets
|
FINALITIES
WORDS OF THE WEAVER OF NETS
Incomparable gymnasts,
Trapezing dizzily on the bars of noon;
Falterers nowhere, safe on a wire,
Eluders of bewildered eyes-
Remember another hour,
When eyes are sluggish, when darkness
Takes all bars. Remember,
And dare to spin again!
|
229,200
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51508/cruising-99
|
Garrett Hongo
|
Cruising 99
|
I.
A Porphyry of Elements
Starting in a long swale between the Sierras
and the Coast Range,
Starting from ancient tidepools of a Pleistocene sea,
Starting from exposed granite bedrock,
From sandstone and shale, glaciated, river-worn,
and scuffed by wind,
Tired of the extremes of temperature,
the weather's wantonness,
Starting from the survey of a condor's eye
Cutting circles in the sky over Tehachapi and Tejon,
Starting from lava flow and snow on Shasta,
a head of white hair,
a garland of tongue-shaped obsidian,
Starting from the death of the last grizzly,
The final conversion of Tulare County
to the internal-combustion engine,
Staring from California oak and acorn,
scrubgrass, rivermist,
and lupine in the foothills,
From days driving through the outfield clover
of Modesto in a borrowed Buick,
From nights drinking pitchers of dark
in the Neon Moon Bar & Grill,
From mornings grabbing a lunchpail, work gloves,
and a pisspot hat,
From Digger pine and Douglas fir and aspen around Placerville,
From snowmelt streams slithering into the San Joaquin,
From the deltas and levees and floods of the Sacramento,
From fall runs of shad, steelhead, and salmon,
From a gathering of sand, rock, gypsum, clay,
limestone, water, and tar,
From a need or desire to throw your money away
in The Big City,
From a melting of history and space in the crucible
of an oil-stained hand-
Starting from all these, this porphyry of elements,
this aggregate of experiences
Fused like feldspar and quartz to the azure stone
of memory and vision,
Starting from all of these and an affectionate eye
for straight, unending lines,
We hit this old road of Highway Ninety-Nine!
II.
A Samba for Inada
Let's go camping
Let's go chanting
Let's go cruising
Let's go boozing
Let's go smoke
Let's go folk
Let's go rock
Let's go bop
Let's go jazz
Let's go fast
Let's go slow
Let's go blow
Let's go Latin
Let's go cattin
Let's go jiving
Let's go hiding
Let's go disco
Let's go Frisco
Let's go blues
Let's go cruise
Let's go far
Let's go near
Let's go camping
Let's go chanting
Let's go lazy
Let's go boozing
Let's go crazy
Let's go cruising
III.
Cruising in the Greater Vehicle/A Jam Session
"Well, goddamnit, Lawson! Whyn't you play in key and keep to the
rhythm? First you say you wanna go back to Fresno, back to the fish store
and Kamaboko Gardens on the West Side, and then you say, forget it, I
take it back, let's go to the Sacto Bon-Odori instead."
"Yeah. And this ain't even shoyu season yet, chump!"
"Awww, hell. What's wrong with you two? Can't you improvise? You
know, I'm just laying down a bass, man. Just a rhythm, a scale,
something to jam on, something to change, find our range, something to
get us going. Once we get started, we can work our way around to Weed,
put on some tire chains, or break down in Selma, refuse to buy grapes,
raisins, or Gallo, do a pit-stop at a Sacto sporting goods, pick up some air
mattresses shaped like pearl-diving women, and float all day downriver to
the deltas, sipping Cokes and saké in the summer heat."
"Shit. Whyn't you just solo and forget the rest of us? You start chanting
and pretty soon we're hearing the entire Lotus Sutra."
"You two Buddhaheads just a pair of one-eyed Japs with dishpan hands
and deadpan minds, man. This is the Champ Chonk talking, and we're
playing Chinese anaconda. Eight-card, no-peek pak-kai, roll your own,
hi-lo, three for sweep, four for hot-sour soup stud, and neither of you's
put down your ante yet. So shit or get off the shu-mai, fellas."
"Calm down and watch the road, Alan."
"Who's driving this heap, anyway?"
"I thought you were."
"I thought Lawson was."
"Don't worry. This is a dodo-driven, autopiloted, cruise-controlled, Triple-
A-mapped, Flying-A-gassed, dual-overhead-cam, Super-Sofistifunktified,
Frijole Guacamole, Gardena Guahuanco, Chonk Chalupa Cruiser with
Buddha Bandit Bumpers, Jack!"
"Where we going, Alan?"
"Where do you think? We're going to Paradise."
IV.
On the Road to Paradise
Distances don't matter
nor the roll of the road past walnut groves.
It's sky that counts,
the color of it at dawn or sunset,
a match more true to the peach
than a mix of oils by Matisse.
Or maybe it's actually the weather
we love most, the way it shifts
and scatters over the state
like radio waves bouncing off the face of the moon.
The one over there, near Yuba City,
rising over a backyard garden
of onions, tomatoes, squash, and corn.
The one with the spider
scrambling through celery,
harvesting moths and mayflies
from the web it has strung between stalks.
Sometimes I wish I could harvest the weather,
reap it like wheat or rice,
store it in a silo
announcing steady rain or clear skies on its sides.
When the prices rise,
I could ship hailstorms or Santanas in orange crates,
make Safeway go broke,
do something politically efficacious for a change.
But all I really do besides write these poems
is allow my mind to wander while I drive.
There it goes, down the arroyo,
through manzanita and Mormon tea.
Or there, up the mustard and Indian pipe on the hill.
Might as well let it.
Nothing but God and Country on the radio now.
Wolfman Jack's syndicated and the Dodgers
haven't made it to Vero Beach.
I wish this road would turn or bend,
intersect with a spy movie some Spanish galleon,
or maybe a Chinese poem with landscapes
in brocade, mist, wine, and moonlight.
This California moon is yellow most of the time,
like it was stained with nicotine,
or sealed in amber like an insect.
Why is it always better somewhere else?
Why do I always wish I were Tu Fu?
V.
Palmistry Fantasia
There, the pasteboard and neon hand!
Just past the interchange by the bowling alley.
The one with silver rockets, small green stars,
and a trail of red comets flashing through the smog.
It's still here, the hand
held up in greeting or command.
"Halt!" it says, or
"Peace be with you, brother,"
while the map across its palm
traces excursions into blue trees,
green skies, and mushroom-colored lives.
Blue dun is the color of its neon,
the same as the throat feathers of a teal
scudding over the marshes of Merced.
It matches the purple mascara the gypsy woman wears,
matches the pools of velvet-blue darkness in her eyes.
Her name is Alma Josephina,
and she designed the sign herself,
imitating the figure of her own hand,
the neon indicative of its natural aura.
That was twenty years ago
when Eisenhower was President
and all her customers wore pedal pushers
or Bermudas, and never noticed
the fireflies in the marshes at night.
*
You're Oriental, aren't you?
Can you read tea leaves?
I tried to once, years ago,
had a Chinese woman teaching me,
but her fees were too steep.
I like a joke.
It loosens up the customers.
Well, come here towards the light.
Let me get a good look
at the ghosts in the grave of your palm.
They're there, you know.
All the people you've ever been,
all the trips you've taken
and the towns you've settled in,
back before the birth of Christ,
back before people were people,
before this paw was a hand.
You see? The whole palm glows
like purple mist over a cemetery.
Move closer. Clamp it around the glass.
See it flare on the inside?
That's the light your bones make,
not the crystal at all.
Look at your hand now.
You can see yourself dancing
on the heel just above the wrist.
You must be a happy man.
You'll be born again and again,
get to the threshold of Heaven,
never enter but keep coming back,
here, for fun, for friends,
until this will be Paradise,
and Paradise just an old resort
the highway's passed by.
Well, have a nice trip.
You'll make it yet.
Says so right in that curvy line
around the Mound of Venus,
that thumbstump there,
right where the long straight line
cuts across like an interstate.
VI.
Postcards Sent Home
1.
Dust rolls out of the hills like fog,
and it's too hot for shoes or shirts.
I'd like to take my hair off too,
peel it from my head, dip it in a bucket of ice,
and wear it around my neck like a bandana.
2.
Crickets attend the night,
add a falsetto drone
to the sound of us
pissing in the tumbleweeds.
3.
There's a Tastee-Freeze in Fresno,
A & Dub's closed down,
Jack-in-the-Box keeps popping up,
and McDonald's owns the town.
4.
Somebody's drying tobacco leaves
on the laundry line.
There, see them furl
and flap next to the nylons?
5.
A giant oak uncurls over the road,
sprinkles a fine yellow powder on the windshield.
The sun hits, touches it off
in a spasm of golden-red light.
VII.
Body & Fender/Body & Soul
At the grill, the Indian girl with buckteeth and dimples serves us a round
of coffee and sweet rolls. We're waiting for the guy at Henley's Texaco,
down the street, to find us a fan belt that'll fit. It's early, the sky's still in
the john, shaving, and the sports page has to wait to get in. Everybody's
grumpy. We sit around, jab at raisins with our forks, and try to look as
tough as the waitresss.
Her name's Rita. Her brothers jump fires and pump
oil in Alaska. Her sisters string beads and make babies back on the Res.
Her ex is white, a logger who threatened never to come back and didn't.
She doesn't hold any grudges. That's why she's so nice, why she pops her
gum filling the salt and pepper shakers, why she adjusts her girdle so we
can see, why the egg spot on her dress doesn't show.
Outside, the sun eases up over
the parking lot, scrambles across the freeway, and runs for cover behind a
pile of pumpkin-colored clouds. 99 starts shuffling its deck of cars and
pickups, getting set to deal a hand of nine-to-five stud. We don't watch.
This is Redding, and ain't nothing thing going on besides the day shift.
Alan says, "Look, there's Venus," and
points to a piece of light draining the sky. I want to order a country-
fried steak, talk about the Dodgers, but there isn't time. Lawson hums a
few chords, stirring the changes with his coffee spoon.
Rita cruises back like
a bus bound for Reno, starts dealing some ashtrays. She says, "How's it
going boys?"
I answer for all of us-"Hey, Rita. It's almost gone."
VIII.
Pilgrimage to the Shrine
Six hours since
the Paradise Cutoff
and running on empty.
No gas stations or rest stops,
no weigh station, no cops.
Just miles of straight road
and a long double-yellow
unrolling in front of us.
Alan recognized nothing.
Lawson pops the glove,
pulls out a penlight,
and fingers the map,
pronouncing a few mantras.
Our headlights slide
over a scarecrow
made of tumbleweeds
standing by the road.
He's wearing a kimono ,
a dark-blue stovepipe hat,
his shoulders cloaked
in a wreath of chrysanthemums.
We pull over,
back up,
and he disappears
into the pale-
grey darkness.
It's smoke.
We can smell it,
so somebody's
got to be
close by.
But our eyes
go blined, fill
with tears and ashes
as we stumble
down the off-ramp.
The smell of
frying trout
and steamed rice
reaches us when
we come to.
An old hermit,
dressed like the scarecrow,
crawls out of his barracks
and brings us tea.
"Drink!" he says,
"It'll pick you up!"
And so we drink,
feeling drugged.
Soft blues
in the key
of sleep
suffocates the air.
From up the mountain,
the sound of obsidian,
flaking in the wind.
Clouds of black glass
waltz around us.
We dress ourselves
in shrouds of tule reeds
stitched with barbed wire,
stained with salt and mud.
We refuse to cry.
We drift back
to the highway,
holding our fists
like rattles,
shaking them
like bones.
IX.
Confessions of the Highway/The Hermit Speaks
I know the rituals, the spells of grapes,
the ceremonies of tomatoes, celery, and rice.
I know the color of wind dressed for fiesta,
and the names of carnivals in Spanish and Japanese.
I am familiar with the determination of campesinos
who migrate up and down the stretch of the state
in search of crops ready for harvest.
It's all a dull ache in my back,
small cuts on the throats of my fingers,
and the alkali of a dry lake in my lungs.
For me, the oracle of the giant orange
always predicts good fortune,
yet, it never comes true.
My stomach is full of sand and tar,
a little bit of paint, a few crickets.
I stand in swampwater up to my hips,
and the stink of rotting figs
escapes my armpits in small brown clouds.
Scrub oak and tumbleweed sprout from my scalp,
make a small grove behind my left ear.
I don't know why sparrows and starlings
refuse to approach me, to take the grass seed
tucked in the cuffs of my trousers.
Maybe it's the stain of asphalt around my ankles,
this copper sheen of sweat on my back.
Sometimes, when the valley heat
makes the bones in my feet
start to hiss and burn,
the desire to escape comes over me again.
I can't help it.
My arms pull down a few telephone posts,
my shoulders churn against the bindings.
I feel myself wanting to sit up,
begin to walk again, and thresh my way
across rice fields and acres of alfalfa.
For once I'd like to lift my face
straight above Shasta into the sky,
shout in unison with thunder,
roar with the assurance of Santana wind,
leap out of these bonds of copper and steel,
slough off this skin of cement,
and walk south or north or even west
into the weather and the sea.
|
215,050
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41486/casanovas-bossa-nova
|
Rich Murphy
|
Casanova's Bossa Nova
|
The dance shoes, seduction
and coercion, owned by male feet,
roam floors that beg for chandeliers.
In search of flat-footed beauty
and a bed, where ever they might be,
the handsome conversation attracts
female followers trading on the smiles
of curves. The next steps are dizzying
and leave dresses dipped and hung over
with a purse and heart opened at
their tops. The wallflowers can't say
when the tango with the rag doll began,
but witnesses toasted a conga line
of would-be brides that transcend
a retirement community in Florida,
each giving up their precious moments
on Earth to fandango's flimflam.
|
245,693
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/143654/with-the-ancient-dog-he-stepped-outside-at-midnight
|
Josephine Jacobsen
|
With the Ancient Dog, He Stepped outside at Midnight
|
With him went the black small beast.
A dark wind shook the tamerisks
But could not blow the stars and moon about.
The dog had always vanished;
Never, once, come back unasked
Till now, tonight, quick as though menaced
By something in the humor
Of signals: the wind's tentative sound,
That watch-and-wait of eyes, stellar and lunar.
For close to the dog was a shape.
By the lit door love stood its ground.
The dog looked up in fear, in habit and hope.
At just this balance, beast and human,
The windy midnight spoke two words
Old and new for them to hear in common
Distinctly: love and death.
Then they moved, separate, and the door
Shut them inside together, for tonight at least.
And through the smallest hours
The still house like a brittle spar
Rode out the night among the jagged stars.
|
217,636
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42818/the-man-who-married-magdalene
|
Louis Simpson
|
The Man Who Married Magdalene
|
The man who married Magdalene
Had not forgiven her.
God might pardon every sin ...
Love is no pardoner.
Her hands were hollow, pale, and blue,
Her mouth like watered wine.
He watched to see if she were true
And waited for a sign.
It was old harlotry, he guessed,
That drained her strength away,
So gladly for the dark she dressed,
So sadly for the day.
Their quarrels made her dull and weak
And soon a man might fit
A penny in the hollow cheek
And never notice it.
At last, as they exhausted slept,
Death granted the divorce,
And nakedly the woman leapt
Upon that narrow horse.
But when he woke and woke alone
He wept and would deny
The loose behavior of the bone
And the immodest thigh.
|
239,970
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57687/steady-steady
|
Jennifer Michael Hecht
|
Steady, Steady
|
I believe you can build a boat.
I believe you can get to water.
I do not believe you can get the boat on water.
How do other people bear
what you are still afraid of? The answer
is that when big things happen
you do go through the looking glass,
but it is still you who goes through,
the inner text is all still right to left,
so you just keep reading.
Because there is no boat and there is no water.
I stare at my tiny baby's face
but he so wriggles he can't quite be seen.
He grows steadier, more the blur
is gone; joins us in the myth of the stable.
Of the quakiness of infancy and old age
we shimmer and shimmy into being
and out again. In the mean-
time, we're horses in the stable of the myth.
A quick check of the ocean, or any fire,
is a reminder of how things seem;
I can't seem to see them.
You're on the beach and you find out the secretary
of defense thinks calico cats are agents of the devil.
Your friend asks if they get 10 percent.
She was funny, your friend.
The water in this metaphor
is unreal because of the way time passes,
so you can't quite get the boat on water,
but you can build the boat,
and a boat is good for a lot of things
not just on water.
Will we, without the boat on water,
always feel that we are missing
something basic to the picture?
No. That is what I'm trying to say.
It is important to let sense quiver;
even in this stable of the myth of stable,
even living aboard a boat mired
in mud in view of the sea.
Who wants yet another world?
It's enough already.
|
190,920
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29387/processions
|
Donald Junkins
|
Processions
|
I just want to lie down on the Appian Way
in the sun, like an old pheasant in the off-season
forgetting shotguns and the Plymouth cold
and watch the Pines of Rome tail-feathering
green, into the sky. Under wind, the earth moves
in an ether dream, as when a building sways
for a moment, then stops. Plumage lines the sky
like Caesars coming home. Giddy with heat, my eye
whirls colors, beaded, crested, out of North
Massachusetts, white auditoriums, rainy Sundays
and the intimate ministry,
into Italy like a long distance runner
who runs for the love of his legs
and carries no message.
|
186,728
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27248/a-canon-for-two-voices
|
Hayden Carruth
|
A Canon for Two Voices
|
I
Waves knit over fish,
Combers like staves,
And the droves below,
Skittish or savage,
Are woven ornately
In silver and gold,
Figures and shapes
In the wool of the Lord,
Fish in the loom,
The seine of the word.
Il
Now minnow and shark,
Whirring like stars,
Are a golden voice
Closing around us-
In pleasure, in sorrow,
The music is high;
Hear how we burn |
In the sky of the Lord;
Masters, rejoice,
The world is his eye.
|
207,688
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37793/for-our-fifth-anniversary-seven-days-late
|
John Daniel
|
For Our Fifth Anniversary, Seven Days Late
|
We count these years, but it's a different kind
of counting. Not milestones, which only mark
how far we've come, and not like birthdays, not
collecting numbered years. The years themselves
count less than what they slowly pearl around us-
around our pleasures and our irritations-
the gradual surprise of this shared life,
this mingling that we wear. We count on that,
and though I know that no arithmetic
can make us more than we are, I also know
five years and seven days are not our sum,
and whatever else I am, I know I'm here-
a happy man tapping my foot to music,
counting the time (in my forgetful way)
to this singular song we learn day by day.
|
178,192
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22841/port-royal
|
Clark Mills
|
Port-Royal
|
His life is simple now.
Under the bough
the cool stone bench on massive carven limbs
breathes the damp chill of ancient vaults, and the light swims
golden and green and blue
down a familiar path, past a clipped hedge, and through
leaves like a green immobile flame that sheds no heat.
Sweet
after his longing and the exhaustion of his longing,
after his fear of people and the desire for people thronging,
after the power is gone
and the dilemma like a sword to fall upon,
oh sweet, sweet,
the evening years, with cassock folded about his feet;
and the clear certitude that agony and blood and fire,
the criminal uplifted and the saint low in the mire
and even the ambiguous path he trod
shone and had shone forever within the mind of God.
-Now from cool stone he drinks his peace and rest
as clouds and sunlight mingle in the west
and with one phrase
the thrush disperses the old ways and days.-
Like stone, he rises from the stone,
veined like a leaf he drifts down the long path alone,
spins outward from the immemorial green tree of grief
into the sourceless light of his belief.
|
165,836
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15962/the-peril-of-happiness
|
Leland Davis
|
The Peril of Happiness
|
Who to see us now would guess
That we had known unhappiness?
We must not live too happily;
We might forget there's misery.
For happiness contentment breeds,
That's like a stream all choked with weeds
Where green scum grows and dead things bide.
We must not be too satisfied.
A stricken heart bleeds song sometimes,
And I think grief is kin to rhymes.
There are things pent within us crying
That only out when joy seems dying.
And there are wounds so wide and deep
That the whole world pours in to seep,
And comes forth wisely turned to song.
We must not keep our joy too long.
|
180,804
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24181/shells-of-exile
|
Mary N. S. Whiteley
|
Shells of Exile
|
Then were the wanderers with sea shells for a symbol
led by conquest, feared by the conquerors,
leading the conquered to a strange new way...
Lonely and praying they built and carved old stone
where the god of earthquake threw it,
forever separate and alone
in their cassock beads and tonsure
they had nothing to remember for a home,
no thoughts except of sea-like shells of ocean
they were cast up on beaches of the world.
Shells then they carved, so like themselves
all hollow vessels holding no memory
but the waste of wandering,
fluted shells (like hands that cut
the hard resistance of earth-fossiled things)
to cleave the 'rolling mountains of the sea;
perfect shells to guard the lintel, bless the altar arch:
they made a symbol of their emptiness
chiseled where feet have worn the corridors of exile,
where hands recorded only things sea-thrown
‚on shores of the world, vessels emptied of forgotten dreams
to hold a barren heaven hardly won.
|
221,202
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45750/paradise-regaind-book-2-1671-version
|
John Milton
|
Paradise Regain'd: Book 2 (1671 version)
|
MEan while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'd
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
Him whom they heard so late expresly call'd
Jesus Messiah Son of God declar'd,
And on that high Authority had believ'd,
And with him talkt, and with him lodg'd, I mean
Andrew and Simon , famous after known
With others though in Holy Writ not nam'd,
Now missing him thir joy so lately found,
So lately found, and so abruptly gone,
Began to doubt, and doubted many days,
And as the days increas'd, increas'd thir doubt:
Sometimes they thought he might be only shewn,
And for a time caught up to God, as once
Moses was in the Mount, and missing long;
And the great Thisbite who on fiery wheels
Rode up to Heaven, yet once again to come.
Therefore as those young Prophets then with care
Sought lost Eliah , so in each place these
Nigh to Bethabara ; in Jerico
The City of Palms, Ænon , and Salem Old,
Machærus and each Town or City wall'd
On this side the broad lake Genezaret ,
Or in Perea , but return'd in vain.
Then on the bank of Jordan , by a Creek:
Where winds with Reeds, and Osiers whisp'ring play
Plain Fishermen, no greater men them call,
Close in a Cottage low together got
Thir unexpected loss and plaints out breath'd.
Alas, from what high hope to what relapse
Unlook'd for are we fall'n, our eyes beheld
Messiah certainly now come, so long
Expected of our Fathers; we have heard
His words, his wisdom full of grace and truth,
Now, now, for sure, deliverance is at hand,
The Kingdom shall to Israel be restor'd:
Thus we rejoyc'd, but soon our joy is turn'd
Into perplexity and new amaze:
For whither is he gone, what accident
Hath rapt him from us? will he now retire
After appearance, and again prolong
Our expectation? God of Israel ,
Send thy Messiah forth, the time is come;
Behold the Kings of the Earth how they oppress
Thy chosen, to what highth thir pow'r unjust
They have exalted, and behind them cast
All fear of thee, arise and vindicate
Thy Glory, free thy people from thir yoke,
But let us wait; thus far he hath perform'd,
Sent his Anointed, and to us reveal'd him,
By his great Prophet, pointed at and shown,
In publick, and with him we have convers'd;
Let us be glad of this, and all our fears
Lay on his Providence; he will not fail
Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall,
Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence,
Soon we shall see our hope, our joy return.
Thus they out of their plaints new hope resume
To find whom at the first they found unsought:
But to his Mother Mary , when she saw
Others return'd from Baptism, not her Son,
Nor left at Jordan , tydings of him none;
Within her brest, though calm; her brest though pure,
Motherly cares and fears got head, and rais'd
Some troubl'd thoughts, which she in sighs thus clad.
O what avails me now that honour high
To have conceiv'd of God, or that salute
Hale highly favour'd, among women blest;
While I to sorrows am no less advanc't,
And fears as eminent, above the lot
Of other women, by the birth I bore,
In such a season born when scarce a Shed
Could be obtain'd to shelter him or me
From the bleak air; a Stable was our warmth,
A Manger his, yet soon enforc't to flye
Thence into Egypt , till the Murd'rous King
Were dead, who sought his life, and missing fill'd
With Infant blood the streets of Bethlehem ;
From Egypt home return'd, in Nazareth
Hath been our dwelling many years, his life
Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,
Little suspicious to any King; but now
Full grown to Man, acknowledg'd, as I hear,
By John the Baptist, and in publick shown,
Son own'd from Heaven by his Father's voice;
I look't for some great change; to Honour? no,
But trouble, as old Simeon plain fore-told,
That to the fall and rising he should be
Of many in Israel , and to a sign
Spoken against, that through my very Soul
A sword shall pierce, this is my favour'd lot,
My Exaltation to Afflictions high;
Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest;
I will not argue that, nor will repine.
But where delays he now? some great intent
Conceals him: when twelve years he scarce had seen,
I lost him, but so found, as well I saw
He could not lose himself; but went about
His Father's business; what he meant I mus'd,
Since understand; much more his absence now
Thus long to some great purpose he obscures.
But I to wait with patience am inur'd;
My heart hath been a store-house long of things
And sayings laid up, portending strange events.
Thus Mary pondering oft, and oft to mind
Recalling what remarkably had pass'd
Since first her Salutation heard, with thoughts
Meekly compos'd awaited the fulfilling:
The while her Son tracing the Desert wild,
Sole but with holiest Meditations fed,
Into himself descended, and at once
All his great work to come before him set;
How to begin, how to accomplish best
His end of being on Earth, and mission high:
For Satan with slye preface to return
Had left him vacant, and with speed was gon
Up to the middle Region of thick Air,
Where all his Potentates in Council sate;
There without sign of boast, or sign of joy,
Sollicitous and blank he thus began.
Princes, Heavens antient Sons, Æthereal Thrones,
Demonian Spirits now, from the Element
Each of his reign allotted, rightlier call'd,
Powers of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth beneath,
So may we hold our place and these mild seats
Without new trouble; such an Enemy
Is ris'n to invade us, who no less
Threat'ns then our expulsion down to Hell;
I, as I undertook, and with the vote
Consenting in full frequence was impowr'd,
Have found him, view'd him, tasted him, but find
Far other labour to be undergon
Then when I dealt with Adam first of Men,
Though Adam by his Wives allurement fell,
However to this Man inferior far,
If he be Man by Mothers side at least,
With more then humane gifts from Heaven adorn'd,
Perfections absolute, Graces divine,
And amplitude of mind to greatest Deeds.
Therefore I am return'd, lest confidence
Of my success with Eve in Paradise
Deceive ye to perswasion over-sure
Of like succeeding here; I summon all
Rather to be in readiness, with hand
Or counsel to assist; lest I who erst
Thought none my equal, now be over-match'd.
So spake the old Serpent doubting, and from all
With clamour was assur'd thir utmost aid
At his command; when from amidst them rose
Belial the dissolutest Spirit that fell,
The sensuallest, and after Asmodai
The fleshliest Incubus, and thus advis'd.
Set women in his eye and in his walk,
Among daughters of men the fairest found;
Many are in each Region passing fair
As the noon Skie; more like to Goddesses
Then Mortal Creatures, graceful and discreet,
Expert in amorous Arts, enchanting tongues
Perswasive, Virgin majesty with mild
And sweet allay'd, yet terrible to approach,
Skill'd to retire, and in retiring draw
Hearts after them tangl'd in Amorous Nets.
Such object hath the power to soft'n and tame
Severest temper, smooth the rugged'st brow,
Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve,
Draw out with credulous desire, and lead
At will the manliest, resolutest brest,
As the Magnetic hardest Iron draws.
Women, when nothing else, beguil'd the heart
Of wisest Solomon , and made him build,
And made him bow to the Gods of his Wives.
To whom quick answer Satan thus return'd.
Belial , in much uneven scale thou weigh'st
All others by thy self; because of old
Thou thy self doat'st on womankind, admiring
Thir shape, thir colour, and attractive grace,
None are, thou think'st, but taken with such toys.
Before the Flood thou with thy lusty Crew,
False titl'd Sons of God, roaming the Earth
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,
And coupl'd with them, and begot a race.
Have we not seen, or by relation heard,
In Courts and Regal Chambers how thou lurk'st,
In Wood or Grove by mossie Fountain side,
In Valley or Green Meadow to way-lay
Some beauty rare, Calisto , Clymene ,
Daphne , or Semele , Antiopa ,
Or Amymone , Syrinx , many more
Too long, then lay'st thy scapes on names ador'd,
Apollo , Neptune , Jupiter , or Pan ,
Satyr, or Fawn, or Silvan? But these haunts
Delight not all; among the Sons of Men,
How many have with a smile made small account
Of beauty and her lures, easily scorn'd
All her assaults, on worthier things intent?
Remember that Pellean Conquerour,
A youth, how all the Beauties of the East
He slightly view'd, and slightly over-pass'd;
How hee sirnam'd of Africa dismiss'd
In his prime youth the fair Iberian maid.
For Solomon he liv'd at ease, and full
Of honour, wealth, high fare, aim'd not beyond
Higher design then to enjoy his State;
Thence to the bait of Women lay expos'd;
But he whom we attempt is wiser far
Then Solomon , of more exalted mind,
Made and set wholly on the accomplishment
Of greatest things; what woman will you find,
Though of this Age the wonder and the fame,
On whom his leisure will vouchsafe an eye
Of fond desire? or should she confident,
As sitting Queen ador'd on Beauties Throne,
Descend with all her winning charms begirt
To enamour, as the Zone of Venus once
Wrought that effect on Jove , so Fables tell;
How would one look from his Majestick brow
Seated as on the top of Vertues hill,
Discount'nance her despis'd, and put to rout
All her array; her female pride deject,
Or turn to reverent awe? for Beauty stands
In the admiration only of weak minds
Led captive; cease to admire, and all her Plumes
Fall flat and shrink into a trivial toy,
At every sudden slighting quite abasht:
Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy, with such as have more shew
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise;
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd;
Or that which only seems to satisfie
Lawful desires of Nature, not beyond;
And now I know he hungers where no food
Is to be found, in the wide Wilderness;
The rest commit to me, I shall let pass
No advantage, and his strength as oft assay.
He ceas'd, and heard thir grant in loud acclaim;
Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band
Of Spirits likest to himself in guile
To be at hand, and at his beck appear,
If cause were to unfold some active Scene
Of various persons each to know his part;
Then to the Desert takes with these his flight;
Where still from shade to shade the Son of God
After forty days fasting had remain'd,
Now hungring first, and to himself thus said.
Where will this end? four times ten days I have pass'd
Wandring this woody maze, and humane food
Nor tasted, nor had appetite; that Fast
To Vertue I impute not, or count part
Of what I suffer here; if Nature need not,
Or God support Nature without repast
Though needing, what praise is it to endure?
But now I feel I hunger, which declares,
Nature hath need of what she asks; yet God
Can satisfie that need some other way,
Though hunger still remain: so it remain
Without this bodies wasting, I content me,
And from the sting of Famine fear no harm,
Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts that feed
Mee hungring more to do my Fathers will.
It was the hour of night, when thus the Son
Commun'd in silent walk, then laid him down
Under the hospitable covert nigh
Of Trees thick interwoven; there he slept,
And dream'd, as appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, Natures refreshment sweet;
Him thought, he by the Brook of Cherith stood
And saw the Ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing Even and Morn,
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
He saw the Prophet also how he fled
Into the Desert, and how there he slept
Under a Juniper; then how awakt,
He found his Supper on the coals prepar'd,
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,
The strength whereof suffic'd him forty days;
Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
Thus wore out night, and now the Herald Lark
Left his ground-nest, high towring to descry
The morns approach, and greet her with his Song:
As lightly from his grassy Couch up rose
Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream,
Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting wak'd.
Up to a hill anon his steps he rear'd,
From whose high top to ken the prospect round,
If Cottage were in view, Sheep-cote or Herd;
But Cottage, Herd or Sheep-cote none he saw,
Only in a bottom saw a pleasant Grove,
With chaunt of tuneful Birds resounding loud;
Thither he bent his way, determin'd there
To rest at noon, and entr'd soon the shade
High rooft and walks beneath, and alleys brown
That open'd in the midst a woody Scene,
Natures own work it seem'd (Nature taught Art)
And to a Superstitious eye the haunt
Of Wood-Gods and Wood-Nymphs; he view'd it round,
When suddenly a man before him stood,
Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad,
As one in City, or Court, or Palace bred,
And with fair speech these words to him address'd.
With granted leave officious I return,
But much more wonder that the Son of God
In this wild solitude so long should bide
Of all things destitute, and well I know,
Not without hunger. Others of some note,
As story tells, have trod this Wilderness;
The Fugitive Bond-woman with her Son
Out cast Nebaioth , yet found he relief
By a providing Angel; all the race
Of Israel here had famish'd, had not God
Rain'd from Heaven Manna, and that Prophet bold
Native of Thebes wandring here was fed
Twice by a voice inviting him to eat.
Of thee these forty days none hath regard,
Forty and more deserted here indeed.
To whom thus Jesus; what conclud'st thou hence?
They all had need, I as thou seest have none.
How hast thou hunger then? Satan reply'd,
Tell me if Food were now before thee set,
Would'st thou not eat? Thereafter as I like
The giver, answer'd Jesus. Why should that
Cause thy refusal, said the subtle Fiend,
Hast thou not right to all Created things,
Owe not all Creatures by just right to thee
Duty and Service, nor to stay till bid,
But tender all their power? nor mention I
Meats by the Law unclean, or offer'd first
To Idols, those young Daniel could refuse;
Nor proffer'd by an Enemy, though who
Would scruple that, with want opprest? behold
Nature asham'd, or better to express,
Troubl'd that thou shouldst hunger, hath purvey'd
From all the Elements her choicest store
To treat thee as beseems, and as her Lord
With honour, only deign to sit and eat.
He spake no dream, for as his words had end,
Our Saviour lifting up his eyes beheld
In ample space under the broadest shade
A Table richly spred, in regal mode,
With dishes pill'd, and meats of noblest sort
And savour, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boyl'd,
Gris-amber-steam'd; all Fish from Sea or Shore,
Freshet, or purling Brook, of shell or fin,
And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd
Pontus and Lucrine Bay, and Afric Coast.
Alas how simple, to these Cates compar'd,
Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve !
And at a stately side-board by the wine
That fragrant smell diffus'd, in order stood
Tall stripling youths rich clad, of fairer hew
Then Ganymed or Hylas , distant more
Under the Trees now trip'd, now solemn stood
Nymphs of Diana 's train, and Naiades
With fruits and flowers from Amalthea 's horn,
And Ladies of th' Hesperides , that seem'd
Fairer then feign'd of old, or fabl'd since
Of Fairy Damsels met in Forest wide
By Knights of Logres , or of Lyones ,
Lancelot or Pelleas , or Pellenore ,
And all the while Harmonious Airs were heard
Of chiming strings, or charming pipes and winds
Of gentlest gale Arabian odors fann'd
From their soft wings, and Flora 's earliest smells.
Such was the Splendour, and the Tempter now
His invitation earnestly renew'd.
What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?
These are not Fruits forbidden, no interdict
Defends the touching of these viands pure,
Thir taste no knowledge works, at least of evil,
But life preserves, destroys life's enemy,
Hunger, with sweet restorative delight.
All these are Spirits of Air, and Woods, and Springs,
Thy gentle Ministers, who come to pay
Thee homage, and acknowledge thee thir Lord:
What doubt'st thou Son of God? sit down and eat.
To whom thus Jesus temperately reply'd:
Said'st thou not that to all things I had right?
And who withholds my pow'r that right to use?
Shall I receive by gift what of my own,
When and where likes me best, I can command?
I can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou,
Command a Table in this Wilderness,
And call swift flights of Angels ministrant
Array'd in Glory on my cup to attend:
Why shouldst thou then obtrude this diligence,
In vain, where no acceptance it can find,
And with my hunger what has thou to do?
Thy pompous Delicacies I contemn,
And count thy specious gifts no gifts but guiles.
To whom thus answer'd Satan malecontent:
That I have also power to give thou seest,
If of that pow'r I bring thee voluntary
What I might have bestow'd on whom I pleas'd,
And rather opportunely in this place
Chose to impart to thy apparent need,
Why shouldst thou not accept it? but I see
What I can do or offer is suspect;
Of these things others quickly will dispose
Whose pains have earn'd the far fet spoil. With that
Both Table and Provision vanish'd quite
With sound of Harpies wings, and Talons heard;
Only the importune Tempter still remain'd,
And with these words his temptation pursu'd.
By hunger, that each other Creature tames,
Thou art not to be harm'd, therefore not mov'd;
Thy temperance invincible besides,
For no allurement yields to appetite,
And all thy heart is set on high designs,
High actions; but wherewith to be atchiev'd?
Great acts require great means of enterprise,
Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
A Carpenter thy Father known, thy self
Bred up in poverty and streights at home;
Lost in a Desert here and hunger-bit:
Which way or from what hope dost thou aspire
To greatness? whence Authority deriv'st,
What Followers, what Retinue canst thou gain,
Or at thy heels the dizzy Multitude,
Longer then thou canst feed them on thy cost?
Money brings Honour, Friends, Conquest, and Realms;
What rais'd Antipater the Edomite ,
And his Son Herod plac'd on Juda 's Throne;
(Thy throne) but gold that got him puissant friends?
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive,
Get Riches first, get Wealth, and Treasure heap,
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me,
Riches are mine, Fortune is in my hand;
They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain,
While Virtue, Valour, Wisdom sit in want.
To whom thus Jesus patiently reply'd;
Yet Wealth without these three is impotent,
To gain dominion or to keep it gain'd.
Witness those antient Empires of the Earth,
In highth of all thir flowing wealth dissolv'd:
But men endu'd with these have oft attain'd
In lowest poverty to highest deeds;
Gideon and Jephtha , and the Shepherd lad,
Whose off-spring on the Throne of Juda sat
So many Ages, and shall yet regain
That seat, and reign in Israel without end.
Among the Heathen, (for throughout the World
To me is not unknown what hath been done
Worthy of Memorial) canst thou not remember
Quintius , Fabricius , Curius , Regulus ?
For I esteem those names of men so poor
Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
Riches though offer'd from the hand of Kings.
And what in me seems wanting, but that I
May also in this poverty as soon
Accomplish what they did, perhaps and more?
Extol not Riches then, the toyl of Fools,
The wise mans cumbrance if not snare, more apt
To slacken Virtue, and abate her edge,
Then prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
What if with like aversion I reject
Riches and Realms; yet not for that a Crown,
Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns,
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights
To him who wears the Regal Diadem,
When on his shoulders each mans burden lies;
For therein stands the office of a King,
His Honour, Vertue, Merit and chief Praise,
That for the Publick all this weight he bears.
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King;
Which every wise and vertuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men or head-strong Multitudes,
Subject himself to Anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.
But to guide Nations in the way of truth
By saving Doctrine, and from errour lead
To know, and knowing worship God aright,
Is yet more Kingly, this attracts the Soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part,
That other o're the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight.
Besides to give a Kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, then to assume.
Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
And for thy reason why they should be sought,
To gain a Scepter, oftest better miss't.
|
249,299
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151736/mild-dry-lines-an-exchange
|
Christian Wiman
|
Mild Dry Lines: An Exchange
|
-You prick too liberal into alien pains,
and read too readily a grief you need to see
in order for the world to be the world
that ratifies the choices you've made.
You talk of callings, but a calling should
enlarge the life that it refines,
not grind its spice into some same mustard.
-If we could see the grief of any one life
it would be slag enough to crust a world
and any feeling being buried within.
But grief's a craft like any other, it seems,
if only indirectly ours:
our skin's inscripted with what nature knows.
The dead child chiseled in that woman's cheek,
the battle smoldering off that old man's brow,
our very mirrors, friend, these aging faces
with their lines of loneliness like pressured ice:
you would have them silenced?
-I would have them whole.
-As would I. As would anyone
whose life is lit, however dimly, by the light
of survival.
-I fear that by survival what you mean
is resignation, or, worse, a fictioned oblivion,
like the bull elephant that has outgrown
the stake that it was tied to as a calf:
it can't break the rope that it could break
with ease.
-And I fear by wholeness what you mean
is merely the will to leaven fate with will,
that constipated sorrow called good cheer.
I won't relapse from these mild dry lines
whose only consolation is their dryness,
that one might utter calmly utter blood.
|
230,016
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52028/the-sermon-on-the-warpland
|
Gwendolyn Brooks
|
The Sermon on the Warpland
|
And several strengths from drowsiness campaigned
but spoke in Single Sermon on the warpland.
And went about the warpland saying No.
"My people, black and black, revile the River.
Say that the River turns, and turn the River.
Say that our Something in doublepod contains
seeds for the coming hell and health together.
Prepare to meet
(sisters, brothers) the brash and terrible weather;
the pains;
the bruising; the collapse of bestials, idols.
But then oh then!-the stuffing of the hulls!
the seasoning of the perilously sweet!
the health! The heralding of the clear obscure!
Build now your Church, my brothers, sisters. Build
never with brick or Corten nor with granite.
Build with lithe love. With love like lion-eyes.
with love like morningrise.
with love like black, our black-
luminously indiscreet;
complete; continuous."
|
232,132
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53239/the-lost-baby-poem
|
Lucille Clifton
|
the lost baby poem
|
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born into winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers' hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
|
181,518
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24555/v-j-day
|
Louis O. Coxe
|
V-J Day
|
Peace in this anchorage
Assumes a fervent myth
With many values. The edge
Of night fear, the path
Followed by guileless friends
Knows lighter ways to death
Now that this dying ends.
Swung on three shots of chain
My vessel, obsolete,
Describes a slow turn;
The Nazi and the brute
Delivered from their pride
To ours have learned too late
How hardly dead men died.
The northern cities squander
Ticker tape and crowds
As the heroes' legal tender,
The stars have given the boys
Their pinup charts of lust
To follow if allowed-
False bearings for the lost.
Oh the dead shall have their laugh
Who knew it all the time:
Peace is the other half
Of war. The dreams of home,
Gorgeous and built with care,
Swing on three shots of chain
And burn out in the air.
|
237,796
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56517/sway-56d2391684290
|
Karla Huston
|
Sway
|
The cruelest thing I did to my dog
wasn't to ignore his barking for water
when his tongue hung like a deflated balloon
or to disregard his chronic need for a belly rub
but to teach him to shake hands,
a trick that took weeks of treats, his dark eyes
like Greek olives, moist with desire.
I made him sit, another injustice,
and allowed him to want the nuggets enough
to please me. Shake , I said. Shake?
touching the back of his right leg
until he lifted it, his saliva trickling
from soft jowls, my hand wet with his hunger.
Mistress of the biscuit, I ruffled his ears
and said good dog until he got it. Before long,
he raised his paw, shook me until he got
the treat, the rub, the water in a chilled silver bowl,
the wilderness in him gone, his eyes still lit with longing.
|
217,192
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42580/hanging-fire
|
Audre Lorde
|
Hanging Fire
|
I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before morning
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.
I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I die before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.
Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.
|
1,304,694
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162163/the-godfather-returns-to-color-tv
|
Amy Clampitt
|
The Godfather Returns to Color TV
|
The lit night glares like a day-glo strawberry,
the stakeout car beside the hydrant is full of feds,
and the ikon of our secret hero(ine?), atop the
feckless funnypaper mesa we try to live in, is that
poor dumb indestructible super-loser Krazy Kat.
O Innocence, spoiled Guinea Brat!-after whose
fits of smashing and screaming, O Holy Mother,
All-American Girl, I need you, I want
to protect you: after that one sunstruck
glimpse, on a Sicilian mountainside,
of virgin stupidity, its sensual lockbox
so charged with possibilities of being
that we too tremble at the thought of nakedness,
of marriage, we too burn to build a shrine for,
raise armies to protect a property that history
godfathered dumb. I told you: DON'T ASK
QUESTIONS ABOUT MY BUSINESS! While the old
bull in a new world, who's lost respect,
too-big pants bunched underneath the belly, stumbles
expiring past the staked tomato vines,
and the grandchild thinks for a minute he's
only playing, we know he is, admiring
Marlon Brando in a show of weakness. But the blood
isn't all ketchup, or the weekend all football, nor
do all commodities survive in lighted shrines.
O Italy! Imagine Eros reinvented on that hillside
as Giovanni di Paolo did-a passeggiata
where men and women walk into the day ungoaded,
unprotected, unenshrined-while we make do, stranded
on this day-glo mesa, with its epicene cartoon.
|
219,364
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44132/a-valediction-of-weeping
|
John Donne
|
A Valediction: of Weeping
|
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here Whilst I stay here This poem is a valediction, meaning that it is an act of saying goodbye to someone. Donne wrote other poems with "Valediction" in the title, including "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "A Valediction of My Name," and "Valediction to his Book." ,
For thy face coins coins Makes, as a mint foundry stamps/makes coins. Compare this line with "As Kings do coynes, to which their stamps impart" from Donne's poem, "Image of her whom I love, more then she." them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant Pregnant Also meaning: filled with emotion or significance, rich in meaning or implication of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore diverse shore On different lands .
On a round ball round ball That is, the Earth
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric Afric Archaic reference to Africa, used here as two syllables to fit the fixed meter of the line , and an Asia Asia Pronounced 'Ay-zee-ay', rhyming with "lay" ,
And quickly make that, which was nothing nothing Both the "round ball" and later "each tear" are likened to a zero ("0") , all;
So doth each tear
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear forbear When used as a verb, to avoid or refrain from doing something
To teach the sea what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death Compare to the lines "When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, / But sigh'st my soul away" from Donne's poem, " Song: Sweetest love, I do not go " (lines 25-26) .
|
241,574
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58532/football-weather
|
Paul Carroll
|
Football Weather
|
As a kid I tried to coax its coming
By sleeping beneath light sheets
Weeks before
The funeral of the summer locusts in the yard;
Then when Granny peeled down the crucifix of
flypaper that dangled from the ceiling of the
kitchen
Magic wasn't needed any longer
To fill the air with pigskins. The air itself
Acrid, lambent, bright
As the robes of the Chinese gods inside their
house of glass
In the Field Museum by the lake.
Even practice could be fun-
The way, say, even sepia photographs of old-time
All Americans could be pirates' gold
Like my favorite Bill Corbus, Stanford's "Baby-
Face Assassin" crouching at right guard, the
last to play without a helmet on-
And the fun of testing muscles out
Like new shoes; the odor of the locker room
pungent
As the inside of a pumpkin;
And the sting of that wet towel twirled against
bare butt by a genial, roaring Ziggy, Mt.
Carmel's All State tackle from Immaculate
Conception Parish near the mills;
And then the victory, especially the close shaves,
could feel
Like finally getting beneath a girl's brassiere
She'll let you keep
Unhooked for hours while you neck
Until the windshield of your Granddad's Ford V-8
Becomes filled by a fog
Not even Fu Manchu could penetrate. Jack,
Next football weather my son Luke will be in high
school,
Bigger than I was and well-coordinated-but
Couldn't care a plenary indulgence
If he ever lugs a pigskin down the turf
Or hits a long shot on the court. At times, I wish he
would.
So he might taste the happiness you knew
Snagging Chris Zoukis' low pass to torpedo nine
long yards to touchdown
And sink archrival Lawrence High
45 years ago come this Thanksgiving Day. Still,
He has his own intensities
As wild as sports and writing were for us:
Luke's the seventh Rolling Stone,
His electric guitar elegant and shiny black
As a quiet street at night
Glazed by rain and pumpkin frost.
|
176,564
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22002/the-strolling-girls
|
Thomas W. Duncan
|
The Strolling Girls
|
As surely as spring dusk brings out the stars
Spring dusk brings out the strolling girls
Watching cars.
The bright blond girls, the slim dark girls in sweaters
Walking on proper errands to drug stores
Or mailing letters.
Their purposes in dusk are as mysterious
As the soft wanderings of twilight cats
And quite as serious.
|
178,490
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22993/elements
|
Paul Engle
|
Elements
|
Beneath a burning star,
On a green earth I stand;
Good and evil are
My right and my left hand.
I wear, against my death,
Live flesh and bone in layer;
Every easy breath
Is prodigal of prayer.
Sight runs through my head
And out my hand in act.
My faithful mind is led
Through fantasy of fact.
I know what elements
Of rain and root and wheat
Combine to give me sense
Of nerve and body heat.
Yet when I think of sun
And earth that made me human
I name not these but one
Now old and weary woman
Who calmed a sick child's cry
With autumn-blooming herb
And healed its terror by
The ordinary verb.
|
222,338
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/46727/blue-crested-cry
|
Jennifer Reeser
|
Blue-Crested Cry
|
We're through, we're through, we're through, we're through, we're through
and-flanking, now, the edges of our schism-
it seems your coldness and my idealism
alone for all this time have kept us true.
Credulous I and hedonistic you:
opposed, refracting angles of a prism
who challenged sense with childish skepticism-
and every known the bulk of mankind knew.
|
164,678
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15301/the-return-56d208b5e5759
|
Paul Fort
|
The Return
|
Ivy has covered all the wall. How many hours, how
many tears, since last we loved? How many years?
No roses now. Ivy has crushed the vine. Soul,
whither didst thou go? Climbing across the nests of
nightingales, ivy has stifled the whole chateau.
Wind, the deep wells are chdked with the roses of
yesterday. Is that your hiding-place, O my dead wife?
No one replies? Who would reply? Is it not best to
listen to the wind that sighs through the grasses, "my
sweet love"?
Flush with the roof, the ancient, crimson sun is cut
through the midst so mournfully.
Shall 1 bid the gardener come? The gardener? . No.
It would be better to summon Death to reap the long
grass:
So many memories and so much love, and the setting
sun at the level of the earth.
|
188,930
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28381/composer-to-the-king
|
Samuel French Morse
|
Composer to the King
|
Jean Baptiste Lully
A little ugly man who kept
The king awake while Boileau slept,
He caught the motes of golden spite
The age struck off in music light
And elegant as Virtue's war
With Love and Wit: a passepied for
The flutes and kettledrums, to charm
Madame de Montespan, and arm
Himself against the cruel ray
Of boredom from le Roi Soleil.
He flattered to a fine excess,
For irony would not impress
The lady; and the philosophe,
Too dull to hear, kept dozing off.
Moliére himself could not dispel
The tyranny of time so well;
No classic fountain could amuse
A mistress sated with the views
Mansard arranged: moonlit, sublime,
Like décor for a pantomime:
Zeus and his goddesses at play
Far off along the grande allée.
Who else had set the king to dance
Like an Egyptian? Now all France
Rang with his music. He had fame
And wealth. He would become a name
To teach the avaricious heart
The politics of love and art.
|
231,568
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52923/grief-calls-us-to-the-things-of-this-world
|
Sherman Alexie
|
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
|
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is blessed among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,"
I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he's dead. I'm sorry-
How did I forget?" "It's okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table-
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years-
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
|
234,104
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54386/shaved-head
|
John Hennessy
|
Shaved Head
|
Forget contingencies from weather and wind,
my Helen's head was shaved, the shortest bit
of stubble growing in. With darkened arching
black eye-brows, Betty-Blue mouth penciled red,
jet patent-leather trench and high-heeled boots,
she seemed more mannequin for Fashion Ave.'s
penitent spread than enemy to brass
at Camp LeJeune. Simply and grudgingly put,
her talk was action. Invincible in Bell-
Atlantic block and tack, she converted non-coms
and saved CO's, harped flint and skinned the chair
of military courts through well-pitched cheek,
prompt dispatch from the War Resister's League.
She looked good even on a bicycle, hemming left
through traffic on Fourteenth Street, locking up
on Lafayette or Grand. She doused for me
to celebrate-marched right through human waste
and Bowery puddles, stretched her legs over the last
old-fashioned hobos up to East Second Street.
Those ancient days, our vestibule was manned
by crack-dealing Stan, a concierge of wit
and improv, half his face scored by orange scars
from hydrofluoric burns. He kept the place safe.
But I had gone, cleared out behind a gang
of kids from Bronxville high on catnip wins,
shell-game victims. Left Stan my toaster, shelves,
a wire bird-cage, and, for once, nothing to say.
Except to ask if he could touch her skull.
Even now it makes no sense. Her precedents
I knew lurched out of focus: photos from France
after the Vichy fell, Jeannes and Sylvianes
who'd made Nazi moll; those Belfast girls
last-ditched by soldier boys or peelers; two-
toned Bergen-Belsen, bald sister to Fort Santiago.
Then Squeaky Fromm, the other Manson moms,
at Charlie's trial. Extremes of Joan of Arc,
or even Buddhist nuns. Hated, chastened-
or chaste, at least. Not what you'd run (I ran)
your fingers satisfied across, the stubble
surprising, soft as mink or fox, and arch
your back, as I did once she found me uptown,
say yes I give again when she went down-
and faster now, quick as the television
dropped after dishes to the curb-or slipped
gradually up, the seconds separating
as slowly as but more exquisitely than
ticks off expensive fifty-minute hours-
and some community service-all gone, and just
as easily forgotten the raft of former friends
I'd cursed and floated off the island. Shaved head,
her slender neck, dark shoulders-that was half-
or less-her most convincing argument.
|
241,234
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58350/a-citizen
|
Katie Peterson
|
A Citizen
|
I wanted to be seen. But who would see me? I couldn't
think of the name for anything but a flower. The government
makes coins that size and shape so your hand can feel
safe holding them. The pictures stamped remind
us where we are, or how the landscape
we live in connects itself, through common value,
to a different place. On this one, a spinnaker
sails past a bridge. On that, a diamond shines like a child's
stilled top over a bird, as if the diamond made the natural
world - bird, forest, state flower, sheaf of healthy corn, shining
water - out of proportion in relation to itself. I love this. My own state
has a bear, so small and out of proportion to me that my life-
line can cross behind it. At last I do not fear
that but feel proud the animal can sit in my palm so silently
until I spend it. And if I lose it, then it becomes
even more quiet. Most still just have an eagle,
so it is as if 30 eagles were passed over
from one hand to another when the one
charged with arranging things for his Savior's dinner
arranged his Savior's death. Heavier the yoke
of heat in solitude. A walk uphill does not
feel manageable. Who will see me?
|
218,274
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43205/for-louis-pasteur
|
Edgar Bowers
|
For Louis Pasteur
|
How shall a generation know its story
If it will know no other? When, among
The scoffers at the Institute, Pasteur
Heard one deny the cause of child-birth fever,
Indignantly he drew upon the blackboard,
For all to see, the Streptococcus chain.
His mind was like Odysseus and Plato
Exploring a new cosmos in the old
As if he wrote a poem-his enemy
Suffering, disease, and death, the battleground
His introspection. "Science and peace," he said,
"Will win out over ignorance and war,"
But then, the virus mutant in his vein,
"Death to the Prussian!" and "revenge, revenge!"
How shall my generation tell its story?
Their fathers jobless, boys for the CCC
And NYA , the future like a stairwell
To floors without a window or a door,
And then the army: bayonet drill and foxhole;
Bombing to rubble cities with textbook names
Later to bulldoze streets for; their green bodies
Drowned in the greener surfs of rumored France.
My childhood friend, George Humphreys, whom I still see
Still ten years old, his uncombed hair and grin
Moment by moment in the Hürtgen dark
Until the one step full in the sniper's sight,
His pastor father emptied by the grief.
Clark Harrison, at nineteen a survivor,
Never to walk or have a child or be
A senator or governor. Herr Wegner,
Who led his little troop, their standards high
And sabers drawn, against a panzer corps,
Emerging from among the shades at Dachau
Stacked like firewood for someone else to burn;
And Gerd Radomski, listening to broadcasts
Of names, a yearlong babel of the missing,
To find his wife and children. Then they came home,
Near middle age at twenty-two, to find
A new reunion of the church and state,
Cynical Constantines who need no name,
Domestic tranquility beaten to a sword,
Sons wasted by another lie in Asia,
Or Strangeloves they had feared that August day;
And they like runners, stung, behind a flag,
Running within a circle, bereft of joy.
Hearing of the disaster at Sedan
And the retreat worse than the one from Moscow,
Their son among the missing or the dead,
Pasteur and his wife Mary hired a carriage
And, traveling to the east where he might try
His way to Paris, stopping to ask each youth
And comfort every orphan of the state's
Irascibility, found him at last
And, unsurprised, embraced and took him in.
Two wars later, the Prussian, once again
The son of Mars, in Paris, Joseph Meister-
The first boy cured of rabies, now the keeper
Of Pasteur's mausoleum-when commanded
To open it for them, though over seventy,
Lest he betray the master, took his life.
I like to think of Pasteur in Elysium
Beneath the sunny pine of ripe Provence
Tenderly raising black sheep, butterflies,
Silkworms, and a new culture, for delight,
Teaching his daughter to use a microscope
And musing through a wonder-sacred passion,
Practice and metaphysic all the same.
And, each year, honor three births: Valéry,
Humbling his pride by trying to write well,
Mozart, who lives still, keeping my attention
Repeatedly outside the reach of pride,
And him whose mark I witness as a trust.
Others he saves but could not save himself-
Socrates, Galen, Hippocrates-the spirit
Fastened by love upon the human cross.
|
202,906
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35393/coming-home-at-twilight-in-late-summer
|
Jane Kenyon
|
Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer
|
We turned into the drive,
and gravel flew up from the tires
like sparks from a fire. So much
to be done-the unpacking, the mail
and papers; the grass needed mowing . . .
We climbed stiffly out of the car.
The shut-off engine ticked as it cooled.
And then we noticed the pear tree,
the limbs so heavy with fruit
they nearly touched the ground.
We went out to the meadow; our steps
made black holes in the grass;
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful.
|
166,844
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16508/squalls-of-rain
|
Grace Hazard Conkling
|
Squalls of Rain
|
FROM A SHIP'S LOG
SQUALLS OF RAIN
This is not loneliness when we can share
The very foam that beauty breaks into
If the wave leans too far, when all we do
Brings us the same delight, the same despair.
Though we are lost like music, and the air
Forgets us, we were music once. I knew
Just now your voice again, I saw with you
The storm run down a darkenin glilac stair.
It is all ours . . . this broken ocean is ours,
The squalls of rain on my side, trailing squalls;
The tawny-ankled Cornish cliffs on yours,
Your thin mauve cloud, your cloudy-pale sand-flowers
Below Tintagel's epic of old walls.
We are not lonely while a dream endures.
|
161,134
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13275/pomegranate
|
Richard Butler Glaenzer
|
Pomegranate
|
Pomegranate, how prodigal
Is the hour of your giving!
The apple-nymph basks, content
To apportion her tribute-
Blossoms and incense to Spring,
Substance to Fall;
But you-you lift up
In one riotous offering
The fruit with the flower,
Moons interclustered with stars.
Dryad, impulsive or vain,
Is it fervor-or weakness?
Who can dazzle Apollo!
|
191,322
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29592/the-gardener-to-his-god
|
Mona Van Duyn
|
The Gardener to His God
|
MONA VAN DUYN
THE GARDENER TO HIS GOD
"Amazing research proves simple prayer makes
flowers grow many times faster, stronger, larger."
Advertisement in The Flower Grower
I pray that the great world's flowering stay as it is,
that larkspur and snapdragon keep to their ordinary size,
and bleedingheart hang in its old way, and Judas tree
stand well below oak, and old oaks color the fall sky.
For the myrtle to keep underfoot, and no rose
to send up a swollen face, I pray simply.
There is no disorder but the heart's. But if love goes leaking
outward, if shrubs take up its monstrous stalking,
all greenery is spurred, the snapping lips are overgrown,
and over oaks red hearts hang like the sun.
Deliver us from its giant gardening, from walking
all over the earth with no rest from its disproportion.
Let all flowers turn to stone before ever they begin to share
love's spaciousness, and faster, stronger, larger
grow from a sweet thought, before any daisy
turns, under love's gibberellic wish, to the day's eye.
Let all blooms take shape from cold laws, down from a
cold air
let come their small grace or measurable majesty.
For in all places but love the imagination lies
in its limits. Even poems draw back from images
of that one country, on top of whose lunatic stemming
whoever finds himself there must sway and cling
until the high cold God takes pity, and it all dies
down, down into the great world's flowering.
|
248,581
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/149943/euphorbia
|
Eric Baus
|
Euphorbia
|
The exhausted wing of a sounded out page reversed the void in the grass into a bee, a tiny kite the rain keeps learning. This is the story of recording the wars in a storm for a whole human hymn.
|
171,896
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/19318/through-autumn-arbors
|
Marion Strobel
|
Through Autumn Arbors
|
Through autumn arbors where the grape
Is purple-belled upon the vine,
Love will assume another shape
And still be mine.
Where there is silence, or the sound
Of leaves-wherever on the mute
Of other leaves, or on the ground
The sound of fruit;
Wherever clouds are cool above
And grapes below are bruised and warm,
There is another form of love:
Corroded form
Not opening with the bud in spring,
Not where the summer rose is blown,
Not rounded-but a ravaged thing,
And still-my own.
|
192,198
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/30030/psalm-of-twelve-fridays
|
Ben Maddow
|
Psalm of Twelve Fridays
|
BEN MADDOW
PSALM OF TWELVE FRIDAYS
A door used as a desk. Sticky and decayed
Stamens of billbergia; a kind of pineapple
Without fruit. Cats roam in the fennel, moaning
Each other's amorous name. Wet steps. Twitterings.
The hills, in view of the sea, slope toward a blue divinity:
That word as twisted as a worm in leather books
Which as a child would have me
Kneel on stones.-I can no more.
Which God, whose axiom, or what cosmogony is not
Cracked? As the mirror of the morning sand
Invents pure sky; until a dirty, green, and spawning wave
Swells over infinitesimal bones, to cancel me
Name by name, while the sun leaps without sound:
Infinity returning in itself to drown.
Leptons and nebulae do no more; still I,
Mad swimmer, look for a way to endure.
Damp synagogues like the inside of a rock,
Sabbath kabbala, smelling of hats and beards,
Died with my father; softly my kitchen tears
Fallen upon the ritual final scarlet funeral wine,
Were magnified into a camera of such cold and
Furious insight, of my blind enemy
The universe, that I sought gods
Paternal, who might longer endure.
Dear Dr. Freud, the time behind me boils with a rage
Of family martyrs, all the brilliant cousins of my race,
Bankrupted lawyers of utopia, who survived
Trials, travels, blunderings, blood as thick as clay,
To now appoint me from their stoves like thrones, to
Kill, curse, and judge;
Indict the Judge, and judge!
-I can no more.
No, Einstein: if your Deity is but a fine
Manifold of chance or ineluctable choice; or if His pointed
Jovean finger draw from adoring space
Adam waking in starlight, lonely and innocent;
Or if He wear flesh, bear son, weep blood, break tomb, and rise
To whip me from my gentle garden,
Go! Mount the dark pyramid again, and judge!
-Ï can no more.
Nor Marx, the third of my lay Trinity,
Whose silken black talmudic contrapuntal scheme
Conceals the discord of a prophet's groan,
As if he hoped sometime to burst from an English grave,
To chastise history for its disobedience. Then how shall I
Poor Shylock, sever right from wrong,
Divide my own pound of brain,
And judge?-I can no more.
I and my grave companions played in one century
Four poisonous wars. Some lived, some not. Jehovah,
Such are your games. The gate is burning. Playful
Fission and fusion blast the Sunday bleachers.-Peace!
While I, long astronaut, grow old inside the orbit's mouth;
The moon, that dusty stone,
Like a .300 hitter, I hoped to foot and
Spurn, -and can no more.
Moses, Maimonides, Elijah, and the Great Maggid
Lifted two scrolls to wing to paradise. No,
That man is less than mortal I deny!
Therefore, if any, let me have motherly grace,
Lilith and Eve to bring me tangible fruit,
Real rain, real muck,
Whence I may by a spurt of life aspire
To match eternity.
Great Venus, joy! the sugary marble of your arms,
Hollows and rondures full of rose delights,
Who with the pallid, narrow, eskimo eyes of lust
Ever finds man erect, the index of the soul,
Tell me your myth of seaweed and desire;
Mermaid perverse and free,
Lure me to be,
Lie down, embrace, and so endure.
Firm in your post of time, forbidden Tree,
Whose leaves like lips are open to the sun,
Blank, blinding wafer of no sacrament;
Who measure heaven by the circuit of a jay,
Blue upon blue, and hell by the rootlets of the falling hail,
O branching, mortal church,
Teach me to be, in my offense
Stubborn, and so to endure.
While all this rolling, sweating, amniotic Earth,
Womb of iron liquid with running love,
With currents various as the crowded blood
Swells the architectonic of a seed,
Into a brave and disenchanted man,
O mortal, cloud-borne world,
Force me to be,
Secrete my smoky music, and endure.
High to this window leans the hymning sycamore.
All nerves are local; every house Jerusalem;
A human pulse the only meter of my love.
Committee of the dead, judge me no more;
My stride goes past your dry catacombs and toward
The diverse sea,
Where fog, and feather, and the blue-green anemone
Rockbound, show me to be.
|
187,708
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27752/of-the-festivity
|
William H. Dickey
|
Of the Festivity
|
WILLIAM DICKEY
OF THE FESTIVITY
Outside a verandah gives upon a court
Full of tin cans and whistles. Over hill
The noise of nubile screaming shreds the night.
Not any thing about this place is still;
The presentation of the virgins sounds
Harsh as a sacrifice, heavy with blood
In the stone stables of boys where they gleefully fall.
Can we come out of that sober at all?
That ape distortion with its talking wounds,
That putting off the human for the dog?
Out in the street the frightened sirens call,
Crowds gather. The high diver dives for good,
Bloody in his incendiary fall.
Here there are only the two of us, and we-
Do we know any better than they why we have met?
And your hand lifting the glass, leaving a wet
Stain on the broken table, is it there
In anything beside a minute's heat,
Some sight that in the mirror edge will change?
I walk through silver, knowing it is strange,
Hoping you are on my side of the glass
And I can touch you and you not be less.
WILLIAM DICKEY
Afraid of words, the tenderness of words
That come to the lips out of their own accord-
Here peace must marry with the violent sword,
Its violence collected to repose,
And all the words my mouth has ever said
Will fail to tell us whether we live or die,
But that mouth close on your throat is comforted
And in that softness finds no perjury.
In time of war, the men of virtue go
Apart to fight the war of their good will,
And in the Saturnalia there is still
The center moment, full of silences,
The eye, the constancy, the generous part,
The gift moving equally within the heart.
Mere touch is truth, when it can echo so,
In lightning bridge the compass of our sky;
Your hand light on my shoulder is the flow
Of everything you have done, and learned thereby,
Your mouth the echo of your childhood mouth.
Kissing with all the years that are between
We taste the intricate pattern of our growth,
The cruel or devious persons we have been,
And are accepted in our shamefastness,
Not being more than human, and not less.
POBTRY
Naked between the angel and the beast
Explore the limits of our continent-
Under the arching of the bodiless air
Here is the undivided element
Earlier than day and night can cleave apart,
Older than we, but given to us now
For us in the slight body to make new
With sound and touch, with the arrest that came
In the recognition of our single name.
Put out the light. Somewhere the morning stirs.
Outside the world is dead or gone to sleep.
Still on their branches stand the sleeping birds;
On the verandah the still air lies steep.
And in the room, the murmur is of sleep.
Lie close, lie quiet, weary and undistressed,
Kissing the hand that hollows to your breast.
|
230,418
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/52259/waumandee
|
Mark Wunderlich
|
Waumandee
|
A man with binoculars
fixed a shape in the field
and we stopped and saw
the albino buck browsing
in the oats-white dash
on a page of green,
flick of a blade
cutting paint to canvas.
It dipped its head
and green effaced the white,
bled onto the absence that
the buck was-animal erasure.
Head up again, its sugar legs
pricked the turf, pink
antler prongs brushed at flies.
Here in a field was the imagined world
made visible-a mythical beast
filling its rumen with clover
until all at once it startled,
flagged its bright tail-
auf Wiedersehen , surrender-
and leapt away-
a white tooth
in the closing mouth of the woods.
|
199,816
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33844/readings-from-john-muirs-journal
|
Stephen Ratcliffe
|
Readings from John Muir's Journal
|
With eyes of the owl
& the jay's cry
I wake in the open air
to the slow of new day-
light in the oak & yellow pine,
the stream running into my ears.
*
Maple leaves from a winter
or two, or six,
dry cracked
my voice, my foot
the measure of my climb.
*
Noon. The mid March
sun begins
to penetrate my
skin, my bones, begins
to warm the lake
side where
waterlichen
has gripped down
for so long.
*
The metaphysics of Indian
red madrone to drift
wood, riverwood, run
& weathered, the slow
decay, the sigh
of a time not mine.
*
April 4: the silver fir,
the light, the Merced
dropping over the falls,
the embroidered spray,
the sight, thunder
rolling from the height.
*
This cowslip, violet
deep at the stem, to sky
blue, to the jade
behind startips pointed
in a ring,
to no sound at all.
*
At the saddle ridgecrest,
where shade will come long
& cold, two deer,
California mule, graze
in the half light,
ears cocked, listening.
*
Late afternoon on the Sawyer
Camp Road, the wind
down on the lake,
the water deeply green,
the mating of ducks shrill
in the splash, there.
*
Mosaic was the weight
of the sun,
these
eyes in the blue
light of the sea,
le ciel,
the wild
of twilight-iris
blue in the curl
& lash.
*
The full moon falling
all around me drips
from honeysuckle
leaftips to petals
where it pools in drops
casting a moonlit spell.
*
Across the way, rising
from a crest of pinetops,
a crystal sky full
of first magnitude stars
drifts, in flight, above
the sleeping, shadowed night.
|
178,802
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23150/midnight-eden
|
Josephine Jacobsen
|
Midnight Eden
|
TWO POEMS
MIDNIGHT EDEN
The crusted Tree of stars soars quite
Across the sky,
Mammoth, unstirred, stiff with a bright
Rigidity.
The branches glitter, forked and still
In the great air,
Distant, enormous; by midnight visible
And very fair.
The Tree, the Tree, lovely and not for us;
With light for wood
It grows, as ever desired, dangerous,
Not understood.
RESPITE-1942
Indeed, where shall you hide from claws
Cat-swift and aiming at your throat?
Where shelter from the evil paws
Soft-footing and the bright rank coat?
Never cry truth, for he will turn
A cruel light on your hiding place;
Never cry beauty-she will burn
Upon your mind the whiskered face.
|
237,218
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56207/eight-presidents
|
Allan Peterson
|
Eight Presidents
|
October five. Seven years older in dog years and then your November
the day record snowfalls hit Randolph New Hampshire in forty-three
and I am thinking of something intimate and impossible to waste:
Brazil's undiscovered caverns of amethyst endless smooth oval stones
along Washington's moody Pacific chewing a continent. But I am wrong.
We pass St. Michael's the cemetery that asks the public to mow and weed it
and perhaps draw larger conclusions about the already wasted and tidy up names
frayed at the edges by the ions that bind by age the chemical salt of time
that jostles stones over at their bases to remind us or alter their sentiments.
We read and read and each time nothing new has come up on their markers.
At home we hear the fishermen bring up their nets smack water to scare them.
By now the flounder's secret pocket where its heart and everything separate
from meat and bone is cleaned and empty as a silk purse not a nickel left
down in the freezer. Nothing really shines but this: I have loved you
eight presidents. Forty years. Five point seven in dog.
|
217,060
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/42502/middle-age-
|
Bob Hicok
|
Middle Age
|
Next door they have a woman windmill and man windmill,
their arms spin for the breeze and to squeak out
their mutual love of a world in which rust is music.
Wherever they're trying to fly, they'll never arrive,
and I think of mailing a letter to my neighbors
on government stationary demanding the removal
of all metaphors from lawns. Because I like to crack
the spines of books, I can open a loose signature
of a Norton anthology that's spread around my life
to find I'd penned-in the year in which Robert Graves
died, 1985 in my then constipated handwriting.
I read I , Claudius first on TV and then stared
at the hardcover version in which someone had written,
do these people fuck everything that walks ? Among
the slogans I'd like to see on t-shirts, Do these people
fuck everything that walks? strikes me as overly
rhetorical, of course we do and when did walking
become a requirement and we're just trying
to meet the life force. I think it's black
like the universe in Johnny Cash's closet
and smells like the forehead of a newborn child.
I exist today on a teeter-totter, young to the old
and dead to the young, Janus faced but basically
hungry, wanting to know why the top of the brain
is folded like clothes in a suitcase,
as if we're going somewhere. Those folds
are where language was born, where it's possible
to think the sun would sound
like all the hummingbirds that ever lived taking off
at once if I could put my ear to it and I have.
I am tired. Do you know the song that begins,
hush little baby? The trees wrote that for the wind.
|
217,784
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42899/a-bridge-engineer-mr-crumpett-
|
Anonymous
|
“A bridge engineer, Mr. Crumpett ...”
|
A bridge engineer, Mr. Crumpett,
Built a bridge for the good River Bumpett.
A mistake in the plan
Left a gap in the span,
But he said, "Well, they'll just have to jump it."
|
186,704
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27236/the-lamp-and-heliodora
|
Eve Triem
|
The Lamp, and Heliodora
|
Tell fables, Lamp, oh honey
around Heliodora, lion
asleep on a mountain of bees,
girl I've sung of, sung
to; her sweets of speech a garland
Aphrodite wears in bed.
Her flowerful body (lute's garden).
Primavera's rosiest music
runs there rivulets of wine.
No one but Meleager
shall swan it cosy under her
cloak; a sated god oh withered
happy my night's roses scorching
in girl-lightning. For another,
drown your suns oh Lamp; poppy
him sleepy helpless En-
dymion ... Does my lion
pounce from her honey-mountain,
mother of the Lamp, friendly night,
trap her glance. Does my lion claw
me to tears, keep them secret.
|
174,978
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/21109/these-are-the-hills
|
John Robert Quinn
|
These Are the Hills
|
These are the hills I knew, immune from flight,
These are the mental monuments that rise
Beyond the lonely hours; these are the skies,
The clouds, the fleecy thoughts, blown like a kite -
Blown to a world where towns are only a speck,
Flung to a freedom which no wall can bluff,
For which no mouth can measure mind enough.
These are the hills left over from the wreck.
Here in this place that transients call a home,
Here in this cubicle of beaverboard,
I have a past that is a kind of sword
For lashing pain into a quiet foam.
These are the same Ohio hills I knew;
These are the thoughts I live on-this my food,
Rose of my East, the morning of my mood.
These are the hills wherein a small boy grew.
|
215,094
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41508/piecework
|
F. D. Reeve
|
Piecework
|
JULY 2002
F. D. REEVE
PIECEWORK
This work was mine
it came by chance
like a bead of red glass
rolled high on a beach
by an angry sea
like a bird nest passed
from hand to hand-
homemade things
I would if I could have
come signing life
like a warm wind
like unfurling waves
where a long-legged ruff
dancing on spindrift
clocks the sand-
O arbiter
Our labor our hands
ourselves lost
in heavy noise
in the assembly line
of the ocean rolling
across the dark
misplacing facts-
|
208,054
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37976/stations
|
Stephen Dunn
|
Stations
|
"That's not what love feels like,"
the radio psychologist said
to the battered woman
who insisted her husband loved her.
And I, voyeur in stalled traffic,
unable to stop
listening, stop anything,
heard the woman begin to weep,
a clean knife
of truth in her now.
It had begun to rain
as it often does in movies
when the hero discovers
his private heart
can't accommodate one more thing,
but my heart was enormous
in its greed, and the heavy rain
had nothing to do with me.
Though when she said,
"He's good to me, mostly,"
even I'd had enough,
so easy to imagine the rest,
how he'd confuse her with tenderness,
stick an apology in her face.
I switched stations
and in the suddenly synchronous morning
Tina Turner was singing
how Proud Mary "popped a lot of pain
down in New Orleans,"
bad husband Ike's deep
authenticating voice
in the background.
I was on the Parkway now, my wipers
metronomic, annoyingly good.
"What's Love Got To Do With It,"
was the next song
and Turner was so confident,
so raspily bold,
she left the question mark off.
|
190,902
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29378/a-message-from-mother-goddam
|
Turner Cassity
|
A Message from Mother Goddam
|
Scattered our smoke, uprooted now the poppy;
What dream, Taipan, did your delusion copy,
That as in a dream the yellow millions
Should on these mud-flats raise you stone pavilions?
Until that city, still not real, seem wholly
Their pleasure dome to ease your melancholy,
And on the Bund, in solace of your boredom,
The jerking rickshas pull their weight of whoredom.
What vision seeks here to preserve forever
Each gleam, each mist of this imagined river?
Mirage or water, there, at humid dawnings,
The idle gunboats let out canvas awnings;
Marshalled at evening in the White cantonments,
Your putteed garrisons ward old alignments.
It is yourself they guard. When, dream unshaken,
You sleep on, and the dreamless sleepers waken;
When, riven with a dream's withdrawing thunder,
The treaties crumble and the ports go under,
Where then is your identity; whose vesture,
Substance, essence, all vanish in a gesture;
Whose future, retrospective and uncertain,
Is this illusion through a beaded curtain.
|
162,390
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13995/his-majesty-the-letter-carrier
|
Emanuel Carnevali
|
His Majesty the Letter-Carrier
|
Half past seven in the morning
And the sun winks at me,
Half hidden by the last house of the street.
His long fingers
Scare away these trotting little men
Who rush westward from the east to their jobs.
Laughing, the sun pursues them . . .
Ah, there he is!
Who? . . . The letter-carrier, of course!
(What do you think I got up so early for?)
You never see him run-
He is so proud
Because he's got my happiness in that dirty bag:
He's got a kiss from my sweetheart,
Some money for me to buy some food,
And a white, nice collar.
That's why he's so conceited,
That's why he wants to show
That he doesn't know the sun is behind him,
That the laughing sun is behind him
Pushing him along to make him bring me my happiness:
A kiss from my sweetheart,
Some money to buy some food and a clean collar,
And a letter from an editor that says:
"You're a great poet, young man!"
Damn it! I guess he heard me raving about him:
He passed by my door and didn't even turn around.
What shall I do, what shall I do?
Oh, never mind-tomorrow, tomorrow!
|
223,548
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california
|
Allen Ginsberg
|
A Supermarket in California
|
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!-and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Berkeley, 1955
|
160,986
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13199/inconsistency
|
Wanda Petrunkevitch
|
Inconsistency
|
Proud man, compact of fire and clod,
Doth logic lack, indeed ;
Creates strong, swift and free, his god-
Then binds him with a creed.
|
253,989
|
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/160501/moving-k-to-glendalough
|
Wong May
|
Moving K. to Glendalough
|
I set out to buy him a bed.
In a dale.
I set out to buy a dale.
In April,
After daffodils
A dale of bluebells.
Any pink you see is the purple dead nettle.
"Dead" we say, for they do not sting.
The streaks of mauve are that of lungwort
From our bed at home in Castleknock,
The tricolored flowerhead has an aurora glow-
Gold.
A wand. You want to wave it in the wild.
The leaves of pulmonaria -you can guess
Were used by folks to treat lung infections.
I want this plant in particular to flourish near K.'s bed,
That its mottled leaves will be visited by hairy-footed bees.
Bluebells, by the way, have a scent.
You can't take it out of the woodland, that's all.
I shopped for a bed,
Found it in a 1920s catalog,
A French wrought-iron bedframe, with bedsprings.
I used chalk-paint to outline the frame,
I took care to cover all the detailed work with
"Plasterer's webbing,"
A scrim-tape which looks like bandage.
I want to suspend the sleeper's dream above the bed
In a net
Gossamer-seeming,
That it will be a keeper of dreams.
A glimmer.
For others.
I would lighten it one day,
Darken it the next.
I moved the bed to the dale.
Half of which is buried in the flowering meadow.
Horsehair & straw & ferns coiled in the bedspring,
The trees around are white & misty, weeping.
The bed looks like a wrecked bridge in a dry creek.
I painted some debris, a blown tire, litter,
I took them all out, conscientiously.
I want the sky to be reflective-
A bit of sunshine found in a rockpool
Or mill-water
Blue with candyfloss
But untroubled.
Flat.
Above the bed the branches parted
Like a chancel arch, a casement of
Stained light,
On that little leaded square I wrote in chalk
"Gregor Samsa wakes
To find he has 6 sepals
& 3 stamens,
He breathes again."
Bluebell time
This is not writing -
Not writing, this is waking , I said
Yes
"Anything to give a man peace."
K. who lived with tuberculosis till he died.
The following spring
Michael Kelleher flew in a photographer from Boston
To inspect my workplace.
Fractious February. The garden still vacant.
We stood before the painting
Halfway up the stairs
On the second landing taking a breath
In a daze
Of near vacant possession
I said-but
For peace's sake
Getting my breath back there like a furniture-mover-
"Yes, I paint."
|
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