Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Fountain in Český Krumlov, taken in June 2008

This is a poem that's lovely in English in such a way as to make you wonder how much more beautiful it is in its original language.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping
by Antonio Machado
translated by Robert Bly

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

That Music Always Round Me

(photo by me)

That Music Always Round Me
by Walt Whitman

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning--
yet long untaught I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;
A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health,
with glad notes of day-break I hear,
A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly
over the tops of immense waves,
A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously
under and through the universe,
The triumphant tutti--the funeral wailings,
with sweet flutes and violins--all these I fill myself with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely--
I am moved by the exquisite meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves--
but now I think I begin to know them.

A Windmill Makes A Statement

I signed up for a poem-a-day with the Academy of American Poets site (link to the right) and have been receiving some gems. Here's one I particularly enjoyed.


(photo courtesy of flickr user "im pastor rick")

A Windmill Makes A Statement
by Cate Marvin

You think I like to stand all day, all night,
all any kind of light, to be subject only
to wind? You are right. If seasons undo
me, you are my season. And you are the light
making off with its reflection as my stainless
steel fins spin.

On lawns, on lawns we stand,
we windmills make a statement. We turn air,
churn air, turning always on waiting for your
season. There is no lover more lover than the air.
You care, you care as you twist my arms
round, till my songs become popsicle

and I wing out radiants of light all across
suburban lawns. You are right, the churning
is for you, for you are right, no one but you
I spin for all night, all day, restless for your

sight to pass across the lawn, tease grasses,
because I so like how you lay above me,
how I hovered beneath you, and we learned
some other way to say: There you are.

You strip the cut, splice it to strips, you mill
the wind, you scissor the air into ecstasy until
all lawns shimmer with your bluest energy.

It's National Poetry Month!

I know I should be all ambitious and try to post a new poem every day for the month of April, but I don't have that much energy, and if you want a poem a day, you can go to this convenient link: click.

Passing Afternoon

I love it when song lyrics can be classified as poetry. Here is a video that is NOT MINE, but the background music is the song below. Courtesy of YouTube user 79cd36.



I just realized that I love this song because it has whispers of my mother in it.

Passing Afternoon
by Iron & Wine

There are times that walk from you
Like some passing afternoon
Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
And she chose a yard to burn
But the ground remembers her
Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

There are things that drift away
Like our endless numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
And she's chosen to believe
In the hymns her mother sings
Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

There are sailing ships that pass
All our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children until she lets them go at last
And she's chosen where to be
Though she's lost her wedding ring
Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

There are things we can't recall
Blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
But my hands remember hers
Rolling around the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

There are names across the sea
Only now I do believe
Sometimes, with the window closed, she'll sit and think of me
But she'll mend his tattered clothes
And they'll kiss as if they know
A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone

Two Countries

(Sokolov, Czech Republic, Fall 2007)

Two Countries
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Equally Skilled

This is a song by Jon Foreman, lead singer of Switchfoot, from his Fall-EP.

Equally Skilled
from Micah 7:1-9

How miserable I am.
I feel like a fruit-picker who arrived here
after the harvest.
There's nothing here at all,
nothing at all here that could placate my hunger.
The godly people are all gone;
there's not one honest soul left alive
here on the planet.
We're all murderers and thieves,
setting traps here for even our brothers.

And both of our hands are equally skilled
at doing evil, equally skilled;
at bribing the judges, equally skilled;
at perverting justice;
both of our hands,
both of our hands.

The day of justice comes
and is even now swiftly arriving.
Don't trust anyone at all;
not your best friend or even your wife.
For the son hates the father;
the daughter despises even her mother.
Look, your enemies arrive
right in the room of your very household.

And both of their hands are equally skilled
at doing evil, equally skilled;
at bribing the judges, equally skilled;
at perverting justice;
both of their hands,
both of their hands.

No, don't gloat over me.
Though I fall, though I fall,
I will rise again.
Though I sit here in darkness,
the Lord, the Lord alone--
He will be my light.
I will be patient as the Lord
punishes me for the wrongs I've done against Him.
After that, He'll take my case,
bringing me to light and the justice
for all I have suffered.

And both of His hands
are equally skilled
at ruining evil, equally skilled;
at judging the judges, equally skilled;
administering justice,
both of His hands,
both of His hands
are equally skilled
at showing me mercy, equally skilled;
at loving the loveless, equally skilled;
administering justice;
both of His hands,
both of His hands.

A Tribute to Wendell Berry

I think in the past I had run across a poem or two of Wendell Berry's in some anthology or another, but I had never stopped to drink in his poetry as it deserves. I was reminded of him by a blog I frequent whose writers moved to the country and started a small farm, mostly because of the inspiration of his work. And it is indeed beautiful.


(photo courtesy of flickr user "Fort Photo")

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


What We Need Is Here
by Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.


Water
by Wendell Berry

I was born in a drought year. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul.
Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

The Darkling Thrush

(photo courtesy of flickr user "roadsidephotos")

The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

The Mystic's Christmas

The Mystic's Christmas
by John Greenleaf Whittier

"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
"All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.

But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.

"Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried,
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.

"Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born.

"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered, "Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.

"Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time!

"The blindest faith may haply save;
The Lord accepts the things we have;
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays,
May find at last the shining ways.

"They needs must grope who cannot see,
The blade before the ear must be;
As ye are feeling I have felt,
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.

"But now, beyond the things of sense,
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God's exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and space.

"I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.

"The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise!

"Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest seal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!"

The Trumpet Child

(photo courtesy of flickr user "mrittenhouse")

A song I've been listening to recently.

The Trumpet Child
by Over the Rhine

The trumpet child will blow his horn
Will blast the sky till it’s reborn
With Gabriel’s power and Satchmo’s grace
He will surprise the human race

The trumpet he will use to blow
Is being fashioned out of fire
The mouthpiece is a glowing coal
The bell a burst of wild desire

The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He’ll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

The rich forget about their gold
The meek and mild are strangely bold
A lion lies beside a lamb
And licks a murderer’s outstretched hand

The trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed

Song for a Winter's Night

(photo courtesy of flickr user "Vangral")

Song for a Winter's Night
by Sarah McLachlan

the lamp is burning low upon my tabletop
the snow is softly falling
the air is still within the silence of my room
i hear your voice softly calling

if i could only have you near
to breathe a sigh or two
i would be happy just to hold the hands i love
upon this winter's night with you

the smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
my glass is almost empty
i read again between the lines upon the page
the words of love you sent me

if i could know within my heart
that you were lonely too
i would be happy just to hold the hands i love
upon this winter's night with you

the fire is dying now, the lamp is growing dim
the shades of night are lifting
the morning light steals across my windowpane
where webs of snow are drifting

if i could only have you near
to breathe a sigh or two
i would be happy just to hold the hands i love
and to be once again with you

to be once again with you

Always the Peace of the Train

Loket, Czech Republic, October 2007

Always the Peace of the Train

always the peace of the train

before the screech and the rush
of the disbanding, demanding
head counts, rendezvous;
before anticipation of the destination
becomes the fruit of the here and now

when your common ground
is the earth rolling out
from under you and all of them
all breathe the same air
all hear the music of the sway of the rails

always the peace of the train

after tears and the drying of tears
the accomplishment, abandonment,
whatever purpose fulfilled
after satisfaction of the obligation
dissolves in the eyes of the homeward bound

when your common ground
is the earth rolling out
from under you and all of them
all breathe the same air
all hear the music of the sway of the rails

always the peace of the train

11.18.07
c.l.l.

November

(photo courtesy of flickr user Peter Erik Forsberg)

November
by Walter de la Mare

There is wind where the rose was,
Cold rain where sweet grass was,
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought warm where your hand was,
Nought gold where your hair was,
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Cold wind where your voice was,
Tears, tears where my heart was,
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

Moving Forward

(photo courtesy of flickr user "M. Gruber")

Moving Forward
by Rainer Maria Rilke

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

A Better Resurrection

If someone could explain why the first stanza of this poem is being attributed to Sylvia Plath on several credible websites, I'd be happy to know. I think Rossetti is a safer bet.

A Better Resurrection
by Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me

Dancing Around You

photo courtesy of flickr user "tavopp"

Dancing Around You

dancing around you like a child
around a flame
around a bubble
everything you could mean
is too fragile still, dangerous,
and silent.

dancing around you like a child
in the music
in the hope
everything you could mean
is the falsetto note
that turns my heart
into a ringing well.

dancing around you like a child
through the sunrise
through the wet laundry
everything you could mean
runs like fresh water
into a cold glass to have
and to hold.

c.l.l.
9.3.07

Advice to a Girl

by Sara Teasdale

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

Flare

c.l.l., june 2007, potter county, pennsylvania

Canto 12 of "Flare" by Mary Oliver.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.

My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less

by William Bradbury and Edward Mote

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand;
all other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide his face,
I rest on his unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the vale.

His oath, his covenant, his blood
support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
he then is all my hope and stay.

When he shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in him be found,
dressed in his righteousness alone,
faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid rock I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand;
all other ground is sinking sand.