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The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina -- Miller Williams

(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.
-- 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.
-- James Fenton

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.
-- Pablo Neruda

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? 
-- Tom Waits

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
-- Rhina P. Espaillat

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.
-- Robert Frost

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.
-- Hafiz

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.
-- Alden Nowlan

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.
-- Tony Hoagland

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.
-- Wendy Cope

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.
-- Louis MacNeice

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.
-- William Blake

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.
-- Anna Akhmatova

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.
-- David Lehman

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.
-- John Ashbery

Question and Answer in the Mountains -- Li Po

(Poem #142)Question and Answer in the Mountains
 They ask me why I live in the green mountains.
 I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.
 Peach blossoms flow downstream, leaving no trace --
 And there are other earths and skies than these.
-- Li Po

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!"
-- Charles Baudelaire

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.
-- Noel Coward

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.
-- Yehuda Amichai

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.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

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.
-- Sylvia Plath

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.
-- C K Williams

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.
-- George Bilgere

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.'
-- Andrew Motion

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.
-- Rachel Rose

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.
-- Rachel Rose

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.
-- Keith Douglas

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.
-- Wilfred Owen

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
-- John Collins Bossidy

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
-- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant

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?
-- Elizabeth Alexander

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.
-- Meg Kearney

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
-- Nikki Giovanni

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.
-- Emily Dickinson

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
-- Mark Knopfler

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.
-- Mary Cornish

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.
-- Langston Hughes

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.
-- Stephen Cushman

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.
-- Richard Brautigan

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."
-- Billy Collins

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.
-- Agha Shahid Ali

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.
-- Sara Teasdale

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.
-- Ezra Pound

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.
-- Thomas Lux

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.
-- Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Advice from the Experts -- Bill Knot

(Poem #112)Advice from the Experts
 I lay down in the empty street and parked
 My feet against the gutter's curb while from
 The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
 Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.
-- Bill Knot

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.
-- Hugh Mearns

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.
-- W H Davies

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.
-- Joyce Sutphen

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.
-- Joseph Millar

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.

-- T. S. Eliot

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.
-- Jim Harrison

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.
-- Ted Kooser

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
-- Nick Cave

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?
-- Robert Desnos

(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 profound
anxiety of that last twice-repeated question, "Don't you hear it?" The writer who wrote this knew that he was
going to die. The poem was included in Contrée, the last book that Desnos published before he was arrested
by 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.
-- Robert Desnos

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.
-- Randy Blasing

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.
-- Bertolt Brecht

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
-- Nikki Giovanni

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
-- Edwin Morgan

The Lover Writes a One-Word Poem -- Gavin Ewart

(Poem #97)The Lover Writes a One-Word Poem
You!
-- Gavin Ewart

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.
-- Gore Vidal

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
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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.
-- Billy Collins

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.
-- Robert Bly

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.
-- John Updike

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.
-- Adrian Mitchell

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.
-- Robert Frost

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.
-- R S Thomas

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.
-- Thomas Lux

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.
-- William Butler Yeats

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
-- Archibald MacLeish

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.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow