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Windows is Shutting Down -- Clive James

(Poem #43)Windows is Shutting Down
 Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
 On their last leg. So what am we to do?
 A letter of complaint go just so far,
 Proving the only one in step are you.
 
 Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
 A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
 Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
 The meaning what it must of meant to had.
 
 The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
 But evolution do not stop for that.
 A mutant languages rise from the dead
 And all them rules is suddenly old hat.
 
 Too bad for we, us what has had so long
 The best seat from the only game in town.
 But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
 Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.
-- Clive James

Sleep -- Wesley McNair

(Poem #42)Sleep
 The young dog would like to know
 why we sit so long in one place
 intent on a box that makes the same
 noises and has no smell whatever.
 Get out! Get out! we tell him
 when he asks us by licking the back 
 of our hand, which has small hairs,
 almost like his. Other times he finds us
 motionless with papers in our lap,
 or at a desk looking into a humming
 square of light. Soon the dog understands
 we are not looking, exactly, but sleeping
 with our eyes open, then goes to sleep
 himself. Is it us he cries out to,
 moving his legs somewhere beyond
 the rooms where we spend our lives?
 We don't think to ask, upset
 as we are in the end with the dog,
 who has begun throwing the old,
 shabby coat of himself down on every 
 floor or rug in the apartment, sleep,
 we say, all that damn dog does is sleep.
-- Wesley McNair

For the Man Who Taught Tricks to Owls -- David Wagoner

(Poem #41)For the Man Who Taught Tricks to Owls
 You say they were slow to learn. The brains of owls
    Went down in your opinion through long hours
       Of unresponsive staring
 While you showed them how to act out minor parts
    In the world of Harry Potter. Come with me now
       Into the night, perch motionless, balanced
 On a branch above a thicket, where every choice
    Of a flight path is more narrow
       Than your broad wing-span, more jagged
 And crooked than patterns of interrupted moonlight
    On twigs and fallen leaves, where what you take
       In silence with claws and beak to stay alive
 Knows everything about you except your tricks,
    Except where you're going to be in the next instant
       And how you got there without anyone's help
-- David Wagoner

It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together -- Elizabeth Bishop

(Poem #40)It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together
 It is marvellous to wake up together
 At the same minute; marvellous to hear
 The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
 To feel the air suddenly clear
 As if electricity had passed through it
 From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
 All over the roof the rain hisses,
 And below, the light falling of kisses.
 
 An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
 It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
 If lighting struck the house now, it would run
 From the four blue china balls on top
 Down the roof and down the rods all around us, 
 And we imagine dreamily
 How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
 Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;
 
 And from the same simplified point of view
 Of night and lying flat on one's back
 All things might change equally easily,
 Since always to warn us there must be these black
 Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
 The world might change to something quite different,
 As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
 Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.
-- Elizabeth Bishop

Untitled -- Plato

(Poem #39)Untitled
 Star of my life, to the stars your face is turned;
 Would I were the heavens, looking back at you with ten thousand eyes.
-- Plato

Visitor -- Les Murray

(Poem #38)Visitor
 He knocks at the door
 and listens to his heart approaching.
-- Les Murray

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles -- Billy Collins

(Poem #37)Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles
 It seems these poets have nothing
 up their ample sleeves
 they turn over so many cards so early,
 telling us before the first line
 whether it is wet or dry,
 night or day, the season the man is standing in,
 even how much he has had to drink.

 Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
 Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

 "Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
 on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
 "Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
 is another one, or just
 "On a Boat, Awake at Night."

 And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
 "In a Boat on a Summer Evening
 I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
 It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
 My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

 There is no iron turnstile to push against here
 as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
 "The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
 No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

 Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
 to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
 is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

 And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
 is a servant who shows me into the room
 where a poet with a thin beard
 is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
 whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
 about sickness and the loss of friends.

 How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
 to sit down in a corner,
 cross my legs like his, and listen.
-- Billy Collins