(Poem #157)The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home, a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes the way it went once, where nothing holds fast to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to. What the bubble always points to, whether we notice it or not, is home. It may be true that if you move fast everything fades away, that given time and noise enough, every memory goes into the blackness, and if new ones come- small, mole-like memories that come to live in the furry dark- they, too, curl up and die. But Carol goes to high school now. John works at home what days he can to spend some time with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast. Ellen won't eat her breakfast. Your sister was going to come but didn't have the time. Some mornings at one or two or three I want you home a lot, but then it goes. It all goes. Hold on fast to thoughts of home when they come. They're going to less with time. Time goes too fast. Come home. Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast. A myth goes that when the years come then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home. |
The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina -- Miller Williams
In Paris with You -- James Fenton
(Poem #156)In Paris with You Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two. I'm one of your talking wounded. I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded. But I'm in Paris with you. Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled And resentful at the mess that I've been through. I admit I'm on the rebound And I don't care where are we bound. I'm in Paris with you. Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre, If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame, If we skip the Champs Elysées And remain here in this sleazy Old hotel room Doing this and that To what and whom Learning who you are, Learning what I am. Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris, The little bit of Paris in our view. There's that crack across the ceiling And the hotel walls are peeling And I'm in Paris with you. Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris. I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do. I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth, I'm in Paris with ... all points south. Am I embarrassing you? I'm in Paris with you. |
Sonnet XVII: Love -- Pablo Neruda
(Poem #155)Sonnet XVII: Love I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close. |
If I Have To Go -- Tom Waits
(Poem #154)If I Have To Go And if I have to go, will you remember me? Will you find someone else, while I'm away? There's nothing for me, in this world full of strangers It's all someone else's idea I don't belong here, and you can't go with me You'll only slow me down Until I send for you, don't wear your hair that way If you cannot be true, I'll understand Tell all the others, you'll hold in your arms That I said I'd come back for you I'll leave my jacket to keep you warm That's all that I can do And if I have to go, will you remember me? Will you find someone else, while I'm away? |
Undelivered Mail -- Rhina P. Espaillat
(Poem #153)Undelivered Mail Dear Daughter, Your father and I wish to commend you on the wisdom of your choices and the flawless conduct of your life Dear Poet! Where is the full-length manuscript you promised us? Your check is waiting The presses are ready and the bookstores are clamoring for delivery Darling, This convention is tedious beyond belief: the hotel is swarming with disgustingly overexposed women far too young to have dignity or any minds at all Dear Patient: The results of your blood tests reveal that your problem stems from a diet dangerously low in pizza and chocolate Dear Mom, You were right about everything and I was an idiot not to listen |
Unharvested -- Robert Frost
(Poem #152)Unharvested A scent of ripeness from over a wall. And come to leave the routine road And look for what had made me stall, There sure enough was an apple tree That had eased itself of its summer load, And of all but its trivial foliage free, Now breathed as light as a lady's fan. For there had been an apple fall As complete as the apple had given man. The ground was one circle of solid red. May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan, Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft. |
We Should Talk about This Problem -- Hafiz
(Poem #151)We Should Talk about This Problem There is a Beautiful Creature Living in a hole you have dug. So at night I set fruit and grains And little pots of wine and milk Beside your soft earthen mounds, And I often sing. But still, my dear, You do not come out. I have fallen in love with Someone Who hides inside you. We should talk about this problem--- Otherwise, I will never leave you alone. |
The Rites of Manhood -- Alden Nowlan
(Poem #150)The Rites of Manhood It's snowing hard enough that the taxis aren't running. I'm walking home, my night's work finished, long after midnight, with the whole city to myself, when across the street I see a very young American sailor standing over a girl who's kneeling on the sidewalk and refuses to get up although he's yelling at her to tell him where she lives so he can take her there before they both freeze. The pair of them are drunk and my guess is he picked her up in a bar and later they got separated from his buddies and at first it was great fun to play at being an old salt at liberty in a port full of women with hinges on their heels, but by now he wants only to find a solution to the infinitely complex problem of what to do about her before he falls into the hands of the police or the shore patrol -- and what keeps this from being squalid is what's happening to him inside: if there were other sailors here it would be possible for him to abandon her where she is and joke about it later, but he's alone and the guilt can't be divided into small forgettable pieces; he's finding out what it means to be a man and how different it is from the way that only hours ago he imagined it. |
Self-Improvement -- Tony Hoagland
(Poem #149)Self-Improvement Just before she flew off like a swan to her wealthy parents' summer home, Bruce's college girlfriend asked him to improve his expertise at oral sex, and offered him some technical advice: Use nothing but his tonguetip to flick the light switch in his room on and off a hundred times a day until he grew fluent at the nuances of force and latitude. Imagine him at practice every evening, more inspired than he ever was at algebra, beads of sweat sprouting on his brow, thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye, the quadratic equation of her climax yield to the logic of his simple math. Maybe he unscrewed the bulb from his apartment ceiling so that passersby would not believe a giant firefly was pulsing its electric abdomen in 13 B. Maybe, as he stood two inches from the wall, in darkness, fogging the old plaster with his breath, he visualized the future as a mansion standing on the shore that he was rowing to with his tongue's exhausted oar. Of course, the girlfriend dumped him: met someone, après-ski, who, using nothing but his nose could identify the vintage of a Cabernet. Sometimes we are asked to get good at something we have no talent for, or we excel at something we will never have the opportunity to prove. Often we ask ourselves to make absolute sense out of what just happens, and in this way, what we are practicing is suffering, which everybody practices, but strangely few of us grow graceful in. The climaxes of suffering are complex, costly, beautiful, but secret. Bruce never played the light switch again. So the avenues we walk down, full of bodies wearing faces, are full of hidden talent: enough to make pianos moan, sidewalks split, streetlights deliriously flicker. |
Some More Light Verse -- Wendy Cope
(Poem #148)Some More Light Verse You have to try. You see the shrink. You learn a lot. You read. You think. You struggle to improve your looks. You meet some men. You write some books. You eat good food. You give up junk. You do not smoke. You don't get drunk. You take up yoga, walk and swim. And nothing works. The outlook's grim. You don't know what to do. You cry. You're running out of things to try. You blow your nose. You see the shrink. You walk. You give up food and drink. You fall in love. You make a plan. You struggle to improve your man. And nothing works. The outlook's grim. You go to yoga, cry and swim. You eat and drink. You give up looks. You struggle to improve your books. You cannot see the point. You sigh. You do not smoke. You have to try. |
The Sunlight on the Garden -- Louis MacNeice
(Poem #147)The Sunlight on the Garden The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold; When all is told We cannot beg for pardon. Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances. The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden. |
Auguries of Innocence (Excerpts) -- William Blake
(Poem #146)Auguries of Innocence (Excerpts) To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. Every night and every morn Some to misery are born, Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night. |
Lot's Wife -- Anna Akhmatova
(Poem #145)Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God's messenger His huge, light shape devoured the black hill. But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her: 'It's not too late, you can look back still At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you, The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed, At the empty windows of that upper storey Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.' Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind; Her body turned into transparent salt, And her swift legs were rooted to the ground. Who mourns one woman in a holocaust? Surely her death has no significance? Yet in my heart she will never be lost She who gave up her life to steal one glance. |
The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke -- David Lehman
(Poem #144)The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke Can't swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat intolerable feelings of inadequacy; Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind numerous marital infidelities; Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence, breaks mother's plates in fights; Buys when the market is too high, and panics during the inevitable descent; Still, Pop can always tell the subtle difference between Pepsi and Coke, Has defined the darkness of red at dawn, memorized the splash of poppies along Deserted railway tracks, and opposed the war in Vietnam months before the students, Years before the politicians and press; give him a minute with a road map And he will solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes; transport him to mountaintop And watch him calculate the heaviness and height of the local heavens; Needs no prompting to give money to his kids; speaks French fluently, and tourist German; Sings Schubert in the shower; plays pinball in Paris; knows the new maid steals, and forgives her. |
The Instruction Manual -- John Ashbery
(Poem #143)The Instruction Manual As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal. I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace, And envy them— they are so far away from me! Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule. And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little, Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers! City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico! But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual, Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand! The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers, Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue), And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit. The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood. First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion. His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white. Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion, And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often. But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife. Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth. He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white. But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls. Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years, And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason. But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick. Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand, Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably. She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes. She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek. Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too; His eyes show it. Turning from this couple, I see there is an intermission in the concert. The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws (The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue), And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school. Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets. Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim That are so popular here. Look—I told you! It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny. An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan. She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink. "My son is in Mexico City," she says. "He would welcome you too If he were here. But his job is with a bank there. Look, here is a photograph of him." And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame. We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place. That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter. The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here. His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower. Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us. There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces. There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue. There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige. Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders. There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased, But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand. And there is the home of the little old lady— She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself. How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara! We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son. We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses. What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do. And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my gaze Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara. |
Get Drunk! -- Charles Baudelaire
(Poem #141)Get Drunk! Always be drunk. That's it! The great imperative! In order not to feel Time's horrid burden bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, Get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk. And if you sometimes happen to wake up on the porches of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the dismal loneliness of your own room, your drunkenness gone or disappearing, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees, everything that groans or rolls or sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer you: "Time to get drunk! Don't be martyred slaves of Time, Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!" |
Nothing is Lost -- Noel Coward
(Poem #140)Nothing is Lost Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told Lie all our memories, lie all the notes Of all the music we have ever heard And all the phrases those we loved have spoken, Sorrows and losses time has since consoled, Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes Each sentimental souvenir and token Everything seen, experienced, each word Addressed to us in infancy, before Before we could even know or understand The implications of our wonderland. There they all are, the legendary lies The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears Forgotten debris of forgotten years Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise Before our world dissolves before our eyes Waiting for some small, intimate reminder, A word, a tune, a known familiar scent An echo from the past when, innocent We looked upon the present with delight And doubted not the future would be kinder And never knew the loneliness of night. |
A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life -- Yehuda Amichai
(Poem #139)A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do. A man doesn't have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget. And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional. Only his body remains forever an amateur. It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing, drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains. He will die as figs die in autumn, Shriveled and full of himself and sweet, the leaves growing dry on the ground, the bare branches pointing to the place where there's time for everything. |
The Book of Pilgrimage, II, 22 -- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Poem #138)The Book of Pilgrimage, II, 22 You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time. You are the cock's crow when night is done, You are the dew and the bells of matins, maiden, stranger, mother, death. You create yourself in ever-changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days -- unsung, unmourned, undescribed, like a forest we never knew. You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken. To each of us you reveal yourself differently: to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship. |
Child -- Sylvia Plath
(Poem #137)Child Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new Whose name you meditate-- April snowdrop, Indian pipe, Little Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star. |
Love: Beginnings -- C K Williams
(Poem #136)Love: Beginnings They're at that stage where so much desire streams between them, so much frank need and want, so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring entity and unity they make— her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her laughter at his laughter he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness of being craved so, she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again, cheek, lip, shoulder, brow, every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring back in flame into the sexual— that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that filling of the heart, the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting again, stamping in its stall. |
Crusoe -- George Bilgere
(Poem #135)Crusoe When you've been away from it long enough, You begin to forget the country Of couples, with all its strange customs And mysterious ways. Those two Over there, for instance: late thirties, Attractive and well-dressed, reading At the table, drinking some complicated Coffee drink. They haven't spoken Or even looked at each other in thirty minutes, But the big toe of her right foot, naked In its sandal, sometimes grazes The naked ankle bone of his left foot, The faintest signal, a line thrown Between two vessels as they cruise Through this hour, this vacation, this life, Through the thick novels they're reading, Her toe saying to his ankle, Here's to the whole improbable story Of our meeting, of our life together And the oceanic richness Of our mingled narrative With its complex past, with its hurts And secret jokes, its dark closets And delightful sexual quirks, Its occasional doldrums, its vast Future we have already peopled With children. How safe we are Compared to that man sitting across the room, Marooned with his drink And yellow notebook, trying to write A way off his little island. |
Regime Change -- Andrew Motion
(Poem #134)Regime Change Advancing down the road from Nineveh Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here. You see the names of places roundabout? They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out. Take Eden, further south: At dawn today I ordered up my troops to tear away Its walls and gates so everyone can see That gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree. You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then, And lick your lips, and pick the same again. Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun. Not any more they don't; I've filled them up With countless different kinds of human crap. Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers Which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours - I've found a different way to scent the air: Already it's a by-word for despair. Which leaves Baghdad - the star-tipped minarets, The marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat. These places, and the ancient things you know, You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.' |
What the Japanese Perhaps Heard -- Rachel Rose
(Poem #133)What the Japanese Perhaps Heard Perhaps they heard we don't understand them very well. Perhaps this made them Pleased. Perhaps they heard we shoot Japanese students who ring the wrong Bell at Hallowe'en. That we shoot at the slightest provocation: a low mark On an exam, a lovers' spat, an excess of guilt. Perhaps they wondered If it was guilt we felt at the sight of that student bleeding out among our lawn flamingos, Or something recognizable to them, something like grief. Perhaps They heard that our culture has its roots in desperate immigration And lone men. Perhaps they observed our skill at raising serial killers, That we value good teeth above good minds and have no festivals To remember the dead. Perhaps they heard that our grey lakes are deep enough to swallow cities, That our landscape is vast wheat and loneliness. Perhaps they ask themselves if, when grief Wraps its wet arms around Montana, we would not prefer the community of archipelagos Upon which persimmons are harvested and black fingers of rock uncurl their digits In the mist. Perhaps their abacus echoes the shape that grief takes, One island bleeding into the next, And for us grief is an endless cornfield, silken and ripe with poison. |
What We Heard About the Japanese -- Rachel Rose
(Poem #132)What We Heard About the Japanese We heard they would jump from buildings at the slightest provocation: low marks On an exam, a lovers' spat or an excess of shame. We heard they were incited by shame, not guilt. That they Loved all things American. Mistrusted anything foreign. We heard their men liked to buy schoolgirls' underwear And their women did not experience menopause or other Western hysterias. We heard they still preferred to breastfeed, Carry handkerchiefs, ride bicycles and dress their young like Victorian Pupils. We heard that theirs was a feminine culture. We heard That theirs was an example of extreme patriarchy. That rape Didn't exist on these islands. We heard their marriages were arranged, that They didn't believe in love. We heard they were experts in this art above all others. That frequent earthquakes inspired insecurity and lack of faith. That they had no sense of irony. We heard even faith was an American invention. We heard they were just like us under the skin. |
Vergissmeinnicht -- Keith Douglas
(Poem #131)Vergissmeinnicht Three weeks gone and the combatants gone returning over the nightmare ground we found the place again, and found the soldier sprawling in the sun. The frowning barrel of his gun overshadowing. As we came on that day, he hit my tank with one like the entry of a demon. Look. Here in the gunpit spoil the dishonoured picture of his girl who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht. in a copybook gothic script. We see him almost with content, abased, and seeming to have paid and mocked at by his own equipment that's hard and good when he's decayed. But she would weep to see today how on his skin the swart flies move; the dust upon the paper eye and the burst stomach like a cave. For here the lover and killer are mingled who had one body and one heart. And death who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt. |
The Last Laugh -- Wilfred Owen
(Poem #130)The Last Laugh 'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped - 'In vain! vain! vain!'
Machine-guns chuckled, 'Tut-tut! Tut-tut!'
And the Big Gun guffawed.
Another sighed, - 'O Mother, Mother! Dad!'
Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured, - 'Fool!'
And the falling splinters tittered.
'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
And the Gas hissed.
|
Boston -- John Collins Bossidy
(Poem #129)Boston And this is good old Boston The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God |
Kashmir -- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
(Poem #128)Kashmir Whoa, let the sun beat down upon my face And stars to fill my dream I am a traveler of both time and space To be where I have been T’ sit with elders of the gentle race This world has seldom seen Th’ talk of days for which they sit and wait All will be revealed Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace Whose sounds caress my ear But not a word I heard could I relate The story was quite clear Whoa-hoh, whoa-wa-oh Oooh, oh baby, I been flyin’ Lord, yeah, mama, there ain’t no denyin’ Oh, oooh yes, I’ve been flying Mama, mama, ain’t no denyin’, no denyin’ Oh, all I see turns to brown As the sun burns the ground And my eyes fill with sand As I scan this wasted land Tryin’ to find, tryin’ to find where I beeeeeuhoaoh Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace Like thoughts inside a dream Heed the path that led me to that place Yellow desert stream My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon Will return again Sure as the dust that floats b’hind you When movin’ through Kashmir Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails Across the sea of years With no provision but an open face ‘Long the straits of fear Whaoh, whaoh Whaoh-oh, oh Ohhhh Well, when I want, when I’m on my way, yeah When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I’m down, yes Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I’m down, so down Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there Oh, oh, come on, come on Oh, let me take you there Let me take you there Whoo-ooh, yeah-yeah, whoo-ooh, yeah-yeah, let me take you |
Ars Poetica #100: I Believe -- Elizabeth Alexander
(Poem #127)Ars Poetica #100: I Believe Poetry, I tell my students, is idiosyncratic. Poetry is where we are ourselves (though Sterling Brown said "Every 'I' is a dramatic ‘I’"), digging in the clam flats for the shell that snaps, emptying the proverbial pocketbook. Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus, God in the details, the only way to get from here to there. Poetry (and now my voice is rising) is not all love, love, love, and I'm sorry the dog died. Poetry (here I hear myself loudest) is the human voice, and are we not of interest to each other? |
Ticket -- Meg Kearney
(Poem #126)Ticket I have a ticket in my pocket that will take me from Lynchburg to New York in nine hours, from the Blue Ridge to Stuy Town, from blue jays wrangling over sunflower seeds to my alarm clock and startled pigeons. If I had a daughter I'd take her with me. She'd sit by the window wearing the blue dress with the stars and sickle moons, counting houses and cemeteries, watching the knotted rope of fence posts slip by while I sat beside her pretending to read, but unable to stop studying her in disbelief. Her name would tell her that she's beautiful. Belle. Or something strong, biblical. Sarah. She would tolerate the blue jay and weep for the pigeon; she would have all the music she wanted and always the seat by the window. If I had a daughter she would know who her father is and he would be home writing letters or playing the banjo, waiting for us, and I would be her mother. We'd have a dog, a mutt, a stray we took in from the rain one night in November, the only stray we ever had to take in, one night in our cabin in the Catskills. It would be impossibly simple: two train tickets; a man, a dog, waiting; and a girl with her nose pressed to the window. |
I'm not Lonely -- Nikki Giovanni
(Poem #125)I'm not Lonely i'm not lonely sleeping all alone you think i'm scared but i'm a big girl i don't cry or anything i have a great big bed to roll around in and lots of space and i don't dream bad dreams like i used to have that you were leaving me anymore now that you're gone i don't dream and no matter what you think i'm not lonely sleeping all alone |
Parting -- Emily Dickinson
(Poem #124)Parting My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. |
Telegraph Road -- Mark Knopfler
(Poem #123)Telegraph Road A long time ago came a man on a track Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back And he put down his load where he thought it was the best Made a home in the wilderness Built a cabin and a winter store And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore The other travelers came walking down the track And they never went further and they never went back Then came the churches then came the schools Then came the lawyers then came the rules Then came the trains and the trucks with their load And the dirty old track was the telegraph road Then came the mines - then came the ore Then there was the hard times then there was a war Telegraph sang a song about the world outside Telegraph road got so deep and so wide Like a rolling river And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze People driving home from the factories There's six lanes of traffic Three lanes moving slow I used to like to go to work but they shut it down I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles They can always fly away from this rain and this cold You can hear them singing out their telegraph code All the way down the telegraph road I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights When life was just a bet on a race between the lights You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care But believe in me baby and I'll take you away From out of this darkness and into the day From these rivers of headlights these rivers of rain From the anger that lives on the streets with these names 'cause I've run every red light on memory lane I've seen desperation explode into flames And I don't want to see it again From all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed All the way down the telegraph road |
Numbers -- Mary Cornish
(Poem #122)Numbers I like the generosity of numbers. The way, for example, they are willing to count anything or anyone: two pickles, one door to the room, eight dancers dressed as swans. I like the domesticity of addition-- add two cups of milk and stir-- the sense of plenty: six plums on the ground, three more falling from the tree. And multiplication's school of fish times fish, whose silver bodies breed beneath the shadow of a boat. Even subtraction is never loss, just addition somewhere else: five sparrows take away two, the two in someone else's garden now. There's an amplitude to long division, as it opens Chinese take-out box by paper box, inside every folded cookie a new fortune. And I never fail to be surprised by the gift of an odd remainder, footloose at the end: forty-seven divided by eleven equals four, with three remaining. Three boys beyond their mothers' call, two Italians off to the sea, one sock that isn't anywhere you look. |
Luck -- Langston Hughes
(Poem #121)Luck Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven. |
Beside The Point -- Stephen Cushman
(Poem #120)Beside The Point The sky has never won a prize. The clouds have no careers. The rainbow doesn't say my work, thank goodness. The rock in the creek's not so productive. The mud on the bank's not too pragmatic. There's nothing useful in the noise the wind makes in the leaves. Buck up now, my fellow superfluity, and let's both be of that worthless ilk, self-indulgent as shooting stars, self-absorbed as sunsets. Who cares if we're inconsequential? At least we can revel, two good-for-nothings, in our irrelevance; at least come and make no difference with me. |
It's raining in love -- Richard Brautigan
(Poem #119)It's raining in love I don't know what it is, but I distrust myself when I start to like a girl a lot. It makes me nervous. I don't say the right things or perhaps I start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying. If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?" and she says, "I don't know," I start thinking: Does she really like me? In other words I get a little creepy. A friend of mine once said, "It's twenty times better to be friends with someone than it is to be in love with them." I think he's right and besides, it's raining somewhere, programming flowers and keeping snails happy. That's all taken care of. BUT if a girl likes me a lot and starts getting real nervous and suddenly begins asking me funny questions and looks sad if I give the wrong answers and she says things like, "Do you think it's going to rain?" and I say, "It beats me," and she says, "Oh," and looks a little sad at the clear blue California sky, I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time instead of me. |
Marginalia -- Billy Collins
(Poem #118)Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - "Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like why wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. "Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. "Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird signing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- "Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love." |
The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' -- Agha Shahid Ali
(Poem #117)The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' First, grant me my sense of history: I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and a clear moral: Little girls shouldn't wander off in search of strange flowers, and they mustn't speak to strangers. And then grant me my generous sense of plot: Couldn't I have gobbled her up right there in the jungle? Why did I ask her where her grandma lived? As if I, a forest-dweller, didn't know of the cottage under the three oak trees and the old woman lived there all alone? As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before? And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf, now my only reputation. But I was no child-molester though you'll agree she was pretty. And the huntsman: Was I sleeping while he snipped my thick black fur and filled me with garbage and stones? I ran with that weight and fell down, simply so children could laugh at the noise of the stones cutting through my belly, at the garbage spilling out with a perfect sense of timing, just when the tale should have come to an end. |
Central Park at Dusk -- Sara Teasdale
(Poem #116)Central Park at Dusk Buildings above the leafless trees Loom high as castles in a dream, While one by one the lamps come out To thread the twilight with a gleam. There is no sign of leaf or bud, A hush is over everything-- Silent as women wait for love, The world is waiting for the spring. |
In a Station of the Metro -- Ezra Pound
(Poem #115)In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. |
Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City -- Thomas Lux
(Poem #114)Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City Early germ warfare. The dead hurled this way look like wheels in the sky. Look: there goes Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall, and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies, and the Hatter twins, both at once, soar over the parapet, little Tommy's elbow bent as if in a salute, and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him, arms outstretched, through the air, just as she did on earth. |
Heaven on Earth -- Kristin Berkey-Abbott
(Poem #113)Heaven on Earth I saw Jesus at the bowling alley, slinging nothing but gutter balls. He said, "You've gotta love a hobby that allows ugly shoes." He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer. So I invited him to dinner. I knew the Lord couldn't see my house in its current condition, so I gave it an out of season spring cleaning. What to serve for dinner? Fish—the logical choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary of everyone's favorite seafood dishes. I thought of my Granny's ham with Coca-Cola glaze, but you can't serve that to a Jewish boy. Likewise pizza—all my favorite toppings involve pork. In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet. We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee and listened to Bill Monroe. Jesus has a healthy appetite for sweets, I'm happy to report. He told strange stories which I've puzzled over for days now. We've got an appointment for golf on Wednesday. Ordinarily I don't play, and certainly not in this humidity. But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted. Sounds like Heaven to me. |
The Psychoed -- Hugh Mearns
(Poem #111)The Psychoed As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd stay away. |
The Villain -- W H Davies
(Poem #110)The Villain While joy gave clouds the light of stars, That beamed wher'er they looked; And calves and lambs had tottering knees, Excited, while they sucked; While every bird enjoyed his song, Without one thought of harm or wrong-- I turned my head and saw the wind, Not far from where I stood, Dragging the corn by her golden hair, Into a dark and lonely wood. |
Naming the Stars -- Joyce Sutphen
(Poem #109)Naming the Stars This present tragedy will eventually turn into myth, and in the mist of that later telling the bell tolling now will be a symbol, or, at least, a sign of something long since lost. This will be another one of those loose changes, the rearrangement of hearts, just parts of old lives patched together, gathered into a dim constellation, small consolation. Look, we will say, you can almost see the outline there: her fingertips touching his, the faint fusion of two bodies breaking into light. |
Telephone Repairman -- Joseph Millar
(Poem #108)Telephone Repairman All morning in the February light he has been mending cable, splicing the pairs of wires together according to their colors, white-blue to white-blue violet-slate to violet-slate, in the warehouse attic by the river. When he is finished the messages will flow along the line: thank you for the gift, please come to the baptism, the bill is now past due: voices that flicker and gleam back and forth across the tracer-colored wires. We live so much of our lives without telling anyone, going out before dawn, working all day by ourselves, shaking our heads in silence at the news on the radio. He thinks of the many signals flying in the air around him the syllables fluttering, saying please love me, from continent to continent over the curve of the earth. |
Hysteria -- T. S. Eliot
(Poem #107)Hysteria As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end. |
Easter Morning -- Jim Harrison
(Poem #106)Easter Morning On Easter morning all over America the peasants are frying potatoes in bacon grease. We're not supposed to have "peasants" but there are tens of millions of them frying potatoes on Easter morning, cheap and delicious with catsup. If Jesus were here this morning he might be eating fried potatoes with my friend who has a '51 Dodge and a '72 Pontiac. When his kids ask why they don't have a new car he says, "these cars were new once and now they are experienced." He can fix anything and when rich folks call to get a toilet repaired he pauses extra hours so that they can further learn what we're made of. I told him that in Mexico the poor say that when there's lightning the rich think that God is taking their picture. He laughed. Like peasants everywhere in the history of the world ours can't figure out why they're getting poorer. Their sons join the army to get work being shot at. Your ideals are invisible clouds so try not to suffocate the poor, the peasants, with your sympathies. They know that you're staring at them. |
Flying at Night -- Ted Kooser
(Poem #105)Flying at Night Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his. |
The Ship Song -- Nick Cave
(Poem #104)The Ship Song Come sail your ships around me And burn your bridges down We make a little history, baby Every time you come around Come loose your dogs upon me And let your hair hang down You are a little mystery to me Every time you come around We talk about it all night long We define our moral ground But when I crawl into your arms Everything comes tumbling down Come sail your ships around me And burn your bridges down We make a little history, baby Every time you come around Your face has fallen sad now For you know the time is nigh When I must remove your wings And you, you must try to fly Come sail your ships around me And burn your bridges down We make a little history, baby Every time you come around Come loose your dogs upon me And let your hair hang down You are a little mystery to me Every time you come around |
The Voice -- Robert Desnos
(Poem #103)The Voice A voice, a voice from so far away It no longer makes the ears tingle. A voice like a muffled drum Still reaches us clearly. Though it seems to come from the grave It speaks only of summer and spring. It floods the body with joy. It lights the lips with a smile. I listen. It is simply a human voice Which passes over the noise of life and its battles The crash of thunder and the murmur of gossip. And you? Don't you hear it? It says "The pain will soon be over" It says "The happy season is near." Don't you hear it? |
(Ed Hirsch) I hear in this poem Desnos's characteristic clairvoyance, his affirmative presence, his radiant desire to transfigure pain and prophesy happiness seemingly from beyond the grave. But I also hear the profoundanxiety of that last twice-repeated question, "Don't you hear it?" The writer who wrote this knew that he wasgoing to die. The poem was included in Contrée, the last book that Desnos published before he was arrestedby the Gestapo.
The Voice Of Robert Desnos -- Robert Desnos
(Poem #102)The Voice Of Robert Desnos So like a flower and a current of air
the flow of water fleeting shadows
the smile glimpsed at midnight this excellent evening
so like every joy and every sadness
it is the midnight past lifting its naked body above belfries and poplars
I call to me those lost in the fields
old skeletons young oaks cut down
scraps of cloth rotting on the ground and linen drying in farm country
I call tornadoes and hurricanes
storms typhoons cyclones
tidal waves
earthquakes
I call the smoke of volcanoes and the smoke of cigarettes
the rings of smoke from expensive cigars
I call lovers and loved ones
I call the living and the dead
I call gravediggers I call assassins
I call hangmen pilots bricklayers architects
assassins
I call the flesh
I call the one I love
I call the one I love
I call the one I love
the jubilant midnight unfolds its satin wings and perches on my bed
the belfries and the poplars bend to my wish
the former collapse the latter bow down
those lost in the fields are found in finding me
the old skeletons are revived by my voice
the young oaks cut down are covered with foliage
the scraps of cloth rotting on the ground and in the earth
snap to at the sound of my voice like a flag of rebellion
the linen drying in farm country clothes adorable women
whom I do not adore
who come to me
obeying my voice, adoring
tornadoes revolve in my mouth
hurricanes if it is possible redden my lips
storms roar at my feet
typhoons if it is possible ruffle me
I get drunken kisses from the cyclones
the tidal waves come to die at my feet
the earthquakes do not shake me but fade completely
at my command
the smoke of volcanoes clothes me with its vapors
and the smoke of cigarettes perfumes me
and the rings of cigar smoke crown me
loves and love so long hunted find refuge in me
lovers listen to my voice
the living and the dead yield to me and salute me
the former coldly the latter warmly
the gravediggers abandon the hardly-dug graves
and declare that I alone may command their nightly work
the assassins greet me
the hangmen invoke the revolution
invoke my voice
invoke my name
the pilots are guided by my eyes
the bricklayers are dizzied listening to me
the architects leave for the desert
the assassins bless me
flesh trembles when I call
the one I love is not listening
the one I love does not hear
the one I love does not answer.
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Second Language -- Randy Blasing
(Poem #101)Second Language The smallest green chameleon gone like a flick of its tongue returns me to our beginnings & brings back the first time twenty-five years ago you ran across the English word for it & asked me what it meant. When I explained it stood for change, you wondered what would become of us, & I heard myself say for my part I would go on loving you, language I'd never used in all my days. |
I'm not saying anything against Alexander -- Bertolt Brecht
(Poem #100)I'm not saying anything against Alexander Timur, I hear, took the trouble to conquer the earth. I don't understand him. With a bit of hard liquor you can forget the earth. I'm not saying anything against Alexander, Only I have seen people who were remarkable, Highly deserving of your admiration For the fact that they were alive at all. Great men generate too much sweat. In all of this I see just a proof that They couldn't stand being on their own And smoking and drinking and the like. And they must be too mean-spirited to get Contentment from sitting by a woman. |
I Wrote A Good Omelet -- Nikki Giovanni
(Poem #99)I Wrote A Good Omelet I wrote a good omelet...and ate a hot poem...
after loving you
Buttoned my car...and drove my coat home...in the
rain...
after loving you
I goed on red...and stopped on green....floating
somewhere in between...
being here and being there...
after loving you
I rolled my bed...turned down my hair...slightly
confused but...I don't care...
Laid out my teeth...and gargled my gown...then I stood
...and laid me down...
to sleep...
after loving you
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Strawberries -- Edwin Morgan
(Poem #98)Strawberries There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window facing each other your knees held in mine the blue plates in our laps the strawberries glistening in the hot sunlight we dipped them in sugar looking at each other not hurrying the feast for one to come the empty plates laid on the stone together with the two forks crossed and I bent towards you sweet in that air in my arms abandoned like a child from your eager mouth the taste of strawberries in my memory lean back again let me love you let the sun beat on our forgetfulness one hour of all the heat intense and summer lightning on the Kilpatrick hills let the storm wash the plates |
Who Can Tell? -- Gore Vidal
(Poem #96)Who Can Tell? Who can tell that I'm in hell and not so well and not so swell for the wonder of you and me, the blunder of you and me, the wonder of you you you. |
Sandinista Avioncitos -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Poem #95)Sandinista Avioncitos The little airplanes of the heart with their brave little propellers What can they do against the winds of darkness even as butterflies are beaten back by hurricanes yet do not die They lie in wait wherever they can hide and hang their fine wings folded and when the killer-wind dies they flutter forth again into the new-blown light live as leaves |
Forgetfulness -- Billy Collins
(Poem #94)Forgetfulness The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. |
People Like Us -- Robert Bly
(Poem #93)People Like Us There are more like us. All over the world There are confused people, who can't remember The name of their dog when they wake up, and people Who love God but can't remember where He was when they went to sleep. It's All right. The world cleanses itself this way. A wrong number occurs to you in the middle Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time To save the house. And the second-story man Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives, And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief Goes back to college. Even in graduate school, You can wander into the wrong classroom, And hear great poems lovingly spoken By the wrong professor. And you find your soul, And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe. |
Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children -- John Updike
(Poem #92)Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children They will not be the same next time. The sayings so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected. Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in the more securely to the worldly buzz of television, alphabet, and street talk, culture polluting their gazes' pure blue. It makes you see at last the value of those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves) who knew you from the start, when you were zero, cooing their nothings before you could be bored or knew a name, not even your own, or how this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye. |
Beatrix is Three -- Adrian Mitchell
(Poem #91)Beatrix is Three At the top of the stairs I ask for her hand. O.K. She gives it to me. How her fist fits my palm, A bunch of consolation. We take our time Down the steep carpetway As I wish silently That the stairs were endless. |
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening -- Robert Frost
(Poem #90)Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know, His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here, To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer, To stop without a farmhouse near, Between the woods and frozen lake, The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake, To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep, Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. |
Good -- R S Thomas
(Poem #89)Good The old man comes out on the hill and looks down to recall earlier days in the valley. He sees the stream shine, the church stand, hears the litter of children's voices. A chill in the flesh tells him that death is not far off now: it is the shadow under the great boughs of life. His garden has herbs growing. The kestrel goes by with fresh prey in its claws. The wind scatters the scent of wild beans. The tractor operates on the earth's body. His grandson is there ploughing; his young wife fetches him cakes and tea and a dark smile. It is well. |
The Hungry Gap-Time -- Thomas Lux
(Poem #88)The Hungry Gap-Time late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down by the plow, the hoe, rake, and worry over rain. Chicken Coop confiscated by the rats and the raptors with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard, and the larder's down to dried apples and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs and stare at the blue; our work is done, our bellies flat. The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf. The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set to forage on their own-they'll be back when they whiff the first shucked ears of corn. Albert's counting bushels in his head to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father for her hand. Harriet's father is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread pudding. The boys and girls splash in the creek, which is low but cold. Soon, soon there will be food again, and from what our hands have done we shall live another year here by the river in the valley above the fault line beneath the mountain. |
Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites -- William Butler Yeats
(Poem #87)Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites Come gather round me, Parnellites, And praise our chosen man, Stand upright on your legs awhile, Stand upright while you can, For soon we lie where he is laid And he is underground; Come fill up all those glasses And pass the bottle round. And here's a cogent reason And I have many more, He fought the might of Ireland And saved the Irish poor, Whatever good a farmer's got He brought it all to pass; And here's another reason, That Parnell loved a lass. And here's a final reason, He was of such a kind Every man that sings a song Keeps Parnell in his mind For Parnell was a proud man, No prouder trod the ground, And a proud man's a lovely man So pass the bottle round. The Bishops and the Party That tragic story made, A husband that had sold his wife And after that betrayed; But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass. |
Ars Poetica -- Archibald MacLeish
(Poem #86)Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit Dumb As old medallions to the thumb Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown - A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind - A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs A poem should be equal to: Not true For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea - A poem should not mean But be |
A Psalm of Life -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Poem #85)A Psalm of Life WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
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