Veni Veni

And none too soon.

Veni Veni

Veni, veni, Emmanuel;
captivum solve Israel,
qui gemit in exilio,
privatus Dei Filio.

O come, O come, Emmanuel;
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

Gaude! Gaude!
Emmanuel nascetur pro te, Israel.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Veni, veni, O Oriens;
solare nos adveniens,
noctis depelle nebulas,
dirasque noctis tenebras.

O come, thou Day-star, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.

Veni, Clavis Davidica!
Regna reclude caelica;
fac iter tutum superum,
et claude vias inferum.

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads to thee,
and close the path to misery.

Veni, veni, Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai,
legem dedisti vertice,
in maiestate gloriae.

O come to lead us, Adonai,
who to the tribes on height of Sinai
in ancient times did'st give the Law,
in cloud, and majesty and awe.

Gaude! Gaude!
Emmanuel nascetur pro te, Israel.

Moods

(photo courtesy of flickr user Tomsch)

Moods
by Sara Teasdale

I am the still rain falling,
Too tired for singing mirth --
Oh, be the green fields calling,
Oh, be for me the earth!

I am the brown bird pining
To leave the nest and fly --
Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,
Oh, be for me the sky!

They Say It Can't Be Done

I must admit that I directly and intentionally plagiarized one of the best poets I know in this piece, my dear friend Laura. Her Venn diagram image has stuck with me ever since I first read it in one of her poems.

An additional note on this poem: it is not personal. That is, I am talking about no specific person, although it was inspired by recent events. A good man I have never met died last night, and this poem partially expresses my grief that I will not (until heaven) get to learn from him or thank him for some of the greatest blessings ever to touch my life. 


(courtesy, flickr user *~Uplifting Arts~*)

They Say It Can't Be Done

There is nothing to connect our souls.
Not a rope, not a strand, not one fiber
that by tugging both our hearts may be pulled.
Our circles do not Venn-like overlap.
My friends know nothing of your friends.
and your mother does not know mine.
Our cities were built centuries apart.
The Zodiac sets us directly opposite.
It snowed when you were born;
it rained over me.

We are wholly separate.
And yet my soul cannot help
but fit inside yours, convex to concave.
But there is nothing to meld us
until I remember the grand order of things.
There are two threads.
We can start here, and move from here.
Just two, and in the midst of them
I stake my justified love for you.

Two things:
You see the sun.
I see the sun.
You see the moon.
I see the moon.

(c.l.)

Helpless

helpless

caught in a cube of music
nose pressed to the transparent
wall of a world of dissonance
ears fastened to the porous
surface to hear screams surrounding
fingers touched to tears smeared
over the glass in hopes the drops
will quench the outer dust
hands sliding down condensation
clasping at cracked and empty
palms on the other side
feet kicking the base frantic
to walk beside the soles pulling
chains across the desert

(c.l.)

After Reading the 24th Chapter...

Fear has always been the demon on my shoulder, affecting even the way I view God and his wrath and judgment. I wrote this poem after thinking on these things.

After Reading the 24th Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew

Lord God,
promise us that the end of all days
will be like giving birth to a child.
That after the bloodshed,
labor pain racking, skin tearing,
mother and infant screaming,
the chaos of humans revolving,
we shall indeed not perish.
Promise us that in the end
you will wash us clean,
swath us in righteousness,
and lay us in the bend
of an omnipotent arm that
deals mercy more swiftly than justice;
that you will whisper quietness to us,
peace into our cramped souls,
breath into our new bodies,
and raise us in the light of your coming,
eyes blinking wide into fresh luminescence;
birth pains and groanings forgotten,
the judgment past, love evolving, and
everlasting life in our bones.

(c.l.)

The Dance

I wrote this for a dear friend.

The Dance

I love to dance with you.
That is, to talk with you.
Because every conversation with you
is a dance.

We both know the steps.
Your left to my right.
Your back to my forward.

We both know the missteps.
My foot on yours.
Your hand not in mine.

It is the knowing that is dear to me.
Most people must first learn the dance;
how to turn tongues and minds together 
as well as arms, how to move in unison, 
                          move forward,
move back.

We know the dance.
We are paired well.
I know your hesitations.
You know my abstractions.

                          Move forward,
move back.

Love Is A Flower In Your Hand

(taken today)

There Comes the Strangest Moment

There Comes the Strangest Moment
by Kate Light

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free--
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin's gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.

I want--my want. I love--my love. I'll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what's here to never go away.
I'll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast…

Your heart's in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You'd have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you'd never change?
But here you have. It's beautiful. It's strange.

When one has lived a long time alone

by Galway Kinnell

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away among the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Autumn Day

(Japanese Maple, taken today)

Autumn Day
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenunes, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Half Acre

(photo courtesy of simonk on flickr)

A song this time. It has enchanted me.

Half Acre
by Hem, from Rabbit Songs

I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is the land I grew in

Think of every town you've lived in
Every room you lay your head
And what is it that you remember?

Do you carry every sadness with you?
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you?

A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
And light is only now just breaking

So we carry every sadness with us
Every hour our hearts were broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with us

But I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper

That can crack the darkest sky wide open
Every burden taken from me
Every night my heart unfolding
My home

The Poet

The Poet
by Tom Wayman

Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions

Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs
Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc.
Cannot tell a story from a picture
Cannot recognize visual absurdities

Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects
Has difficulty retaining such things as
addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables
May recognize a word one day and not the next

After Reading Tu Fu...

And then I found my summer poem.


(photo courtesy of evissa on flickr)

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard
by Charles Wright

East of me, west of me, full summer.

How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.

Birds fly back and forth across the lawn

                                     looking for home

As night drifts up like a little boat.



Day after day, I become of less use to myself.

Like this mockingbird,

                   I flit from one thing to the next.

What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?

Tomorrow is dark.

              Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.



The sky dogs are whimpering.

Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening

                                       up from the damp grass.

Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,

Go quietly, quietly.

Coffee & Dolls

A poem I found while searching for the keyword "summer" on The Academy of American Poets website.


(photo courtesy of SeenyaRita on Flickr)

Coffee & Dolls
by April Bernard

It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner,
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely.
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun,
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs,
watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows
washed out the propped-open door like distant rain.

It closed for a few months. The slick sedan disappeared.
One spring day, it reopened, and this time a sign
decorated the window: COFFEE & DOLLS.
Yarn-haired, gingham-dressed floppy dolls
lolled among the coffee cans. A mastiff puppy,
the size and shape of a tipped-over fire hydrant,
guarded as the sedan and the old guys returned.

I don't know about you, but I've been looking
for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgsicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other
things.

Waking Up In The Greenhouse

Waking Up In The Greenhouse

Everyone should know what it is
to be ushered into morning
by warm sun and cool water,
clear sky and the jades and the olives
of this house of green and silver.

The birds wide awake with beating wings.
The farmers shoveling sweet feed to the cows.
The brightest flowers born in the gentle sun.
The softest sky and the fairy breeze.

All of these things ease me into wakefulness,
teaching me to take life at its own rhythm,
as slow-coming and certain-eyed as the dawn.

(c.l.)

Logos

Logos
by Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

Winds

Winds

We do not understand
the high winds on hot days.
They froth the tops of the trees into waves,
letting us drown on the stifling ocean floor,
and we glare up in righteous indignation.
The wind is conversing with the maples
and we cannot hear what they are saying.

We understand the low winds.
They were sent from heaven for our comfort.
They clothe our skin in coolness,
and we sway into them as we do
into fur coats in snowfalls.
How pleasant the weather is today, we say,
how kind of the winds to descend to us.

We understand nothing.
We do not know that the winds pay us no heed.
The high winds laugh with the forest
at the joy of the sky;
they rage at something terrible
that happened across the sea.

And when we stand in the low winds,
assuming they blow to please us,
we have no idea that we are ignorant flies
in the presence of two lovers.
For the low wind bows to greet the earth,
reminding her in the wake
of his mighty jet streams and trade winds
that he knows gentleness.
That as she spins her sphere
of jade and azure through the crystaled heavens,
he knows her dust and pebbles
as well as her seas and sky.

(c.l.)

The Cities Inside Us

The Cities Inside Us
by Alberto Rios

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue.

How do I love thee?

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I don't even care if it's cliched. It is the best there is.



How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

After Years

I love this poem. It has inspired a couple of my own. I still need to buy Kooser's prize-winning book Delights and Shadows. I believe he was the U.S. poet laureate before Billy Collins.

After Years
by Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Viriditas

on our morning commute
the newborn summer air rises
from honeysuckled thickets
and the roots of trees.
it mingles with the more
domesticated scents,
garden irises and dryer steam,
freshly hung laundry
from those who still believe
in the goodness of the outdoors.

driving, i cannot help
but thank God that this
is no passing glance at his creation:
for i am going to work in it,
to put flowers in earth
and sell them to openhanded gardeners.
i go to bury my hands in the soil,
to do nothing but give life a chance,
and by so doing preserve
this morning's holy pilgrimage
for the children, who will
play in creeks and snap twigs,
only later realizing that
they tread a hallowed temple,
one that resounds
with the rhythm of redemption.

(c.l.)

*viriditas: (latin) greenness, freshness, bloom

Running to Stand Still

I want to marry someone who loves this song.

Running to Stand Still
by U2

and so she woke up
woke up from where she was lying still
said i gotta do something
about where we're going

step on a steam train
step out of the driving rain maybe
run from the darkness in the night
singing ah la la la de day
ah la la la de day
ah la la de day

sweet the sin
bitter the taste in my mouth
i see seven towers
but i only see one way out

you've got to cry without weeping
talk without speaking
scream without raising your voice

you know i took the poison
from the poison stream
then i floated out of here
singing ah la la la de day
ah la la la de day
ah la la de day

she runs through the streets
with her eyes painted red
under black belly of cloud in the rain
in through a doorway she brings me
white gold and pearls stolen from the sea
she is raging
she is raging
and the storm blows up in her eyes

she will
suffer the needle chill
she's running to stand

still

One Day a Woman

by Miller Williams

One day a woman picking peaches in Georgia
lost her hold on the earth and began to rise.
She grabbed limbs but leaves stripped off in her hands.
Some children saw her before she disappeared
into the white cloud, her limbs thrashing.
The children were disbelieved. The disappearance
was filed away with those of other women
who fell into bad hands and were soon forgotten.
Six months later a half-naked man in Kansas
working on the roof of the Methodist Church
was seen by half a dozen well-known
and highly respected citizens to move
directly upward, his tarbrush waving,
until he shrank away to a point and vanished.
Nobody who knew about the first event
knew of the second, so no connection was made.
The tarbrush fell to earth somewhere in Missouri
unnoticed among a herd of Guernsey cows.

A Line-Storm Song

It stormed today while I was at work. The gales blew in the plastic walls of the greenhouse and at times we had to yell over the roar of the rain on the thin tin roofs. I heard rumors of five inches of rain in one hour in some regions, and half inches of hail. I glory in those times when it seems as if nature is feeling something, when it is unleashing its anger, or trying to calm the earth down, or radiating ecstasy.

Dedicated to my friends, who I miss, and who I fear do not miss me.

Come over the hills and far with me...

A Line-Storm Song
by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, earily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

The Waking

I have my B.A. in English. I have the whole world in front of me and large pieces of my heart missing, scattered all over the nation and world. I don't know when or if they will come back to me.

I know only this:

The Waking
by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Graduation (Leaving Love)

I know some people won't understand, but I've never voluntarily done something so difficult as this. I have to turn myself into a machine to get through; my flesh and bone are far too tender.

If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

I can't see my reflection in the waters
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps
Or remember the sound of my own name

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

There's beauty in that silver singing river
There's beauty in that sunrise in the sky
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

(nickel creek)

I've Been Known

by Denise Duhamel

to spread it on thick to shoot off my mouth to get it off my chest
          to tell him where
          to get off
to stay put to face the music to cut a shine to go under to sell
          myself short to play
          myself down
to paint the town to fork over to shell out to shoot up to pull a
          fast one to go haywire
          to take a shine to
to be stuck on to glam it up to vamp it up to get her one better to
          eat a little higher
          on the hog
to win out to get away with to go to the spot to make a stake to
          make a stand to
          stand for something to stand up for
to snow under to slip up to go for it to take a stab at it to try out
          to go places to play
          up to get back at
to size up to stand off to slop over to be solid with to lose my
          shirt to get myself off
          to get myself off the hook

The Week Before College Graduation

She’s right—
it’s not apathy that flattens my brain
like one of her Frisbees
as it wings through each day,
rebounding from someone else’s hand,
flying on someone else’s throw.
It’s not apathy that has curdled
my craving for sweet knowledge
so that my stomach lurches when I sit down
to parse a Spanish verb,
to examine the starched silt of Victorian England
and write one more paper
to add to the ream I’ve written
in exchange for just one, in calligraphy.
This thing that has stolen sleep from me,
that pins open my eyes to stare at nothing,
that freezes my purpose, my motivation
into a blunt cube of mute apprehension—
no, it’s not apathy.
It’s impossible to not care. No.

Someone has their fingers tangled in my hair,
pulling back my head to stare at the stars.
Something has planted my feet in the mud
and held out my arms to catch all the rain.
Some force of being, some impulse for justice
has interrupted my continuum as it did for Joshua,
has stopped my sun over Gibeon, and is screaming,
“Too many times have your epochs gone unnoticed.
Too many times has your life undergone metamorphosis
in a slow and single moment that you
were traveling too fast to see.
No more will you be carefree,
no more will you skip around your life’s transformation.
Stand, lift up your head,
and watch your being supernova into newness.
Stand, look down at your earth
and watch the quake strip your life of what has been.
Stand. This time, you will watch your butterfly struggle
from faded cocoon to fresh quickening.
The old has gone, the new is coming.

4.27.06
crystal l.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Selecting a Reader

Selecting a Reader
by Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Famous

A friend just brought to my attention the fact that I've been "published" on the Academy of American Poets web site. Well okay, not really. It's just a response to a project they're doing for National Poetry Month, in which people send in lines of poems that are very dear to them and explain why. Click here and look under April 8 to see my entry. This is the poem my lines come from:

Famous
by Naomi Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and is not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

One Art

My life is plummeting into the abyss of the past faster than I can shake a stick at. I thought I had just posted on this thing, and nay, I find out that it has been four whole days.

Right after Easter, I have my final project in English Senior Seminar due, and I'd like to expand on my theory that this is one of, if not the best time to write and appreciate poetry. I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'll certainly have fun trying, which is what counts when I'm finishing up 19 credit hours, a part-time job, and relationships with dear, dear people I won't see again for a long time.

I think we've come to a great place in poetry--we appreciate multiplicity in form and genre, we've brought about the happy marriage of realism and romanticism, and we rely just enough on sound and rhythm to create lovely poetry, but not so much that we lose readability in the attempt to design a perfect metric scheme. Granted, some of this newer, extremely experimental stuff, as well as the voyeuristic, sexual-politics-ridden refuse I could leave behind without qualm, but fortunately, that kind of poetry seems to be in the minority.

I just convinced our school library to purchase a wealth of new poetry anthologies and collections. Anything to make that sad, but cozy little building more relevant.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Thursday Night

Thursday Night

Tell me who I am so I can be that person.
You've handed me the second fiddle--
just tell me what tune we're playing.
My sidekick suit fits;
I'd just rather not have to gasp
to keep up with you.
Tell me I am the ice in your glass
or the birds on your telephone pole.
I don't mind being unnecessary,
but it would be nice to be expected.

3.31.06
crystal l.

April is National Poetry Month!

Spring is like a perhaps hand
by e.e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

A Selection of African-American Poetry

The Negro Speaks of Riversby Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
    flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
    went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Sympathy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
  When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
  When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats its wing
  Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
  And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
  When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
  But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!

The Bean Eaters
by Gwendolyn Brooks

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
         is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
         tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Love Poem with Toast

Sometimes poems come at the perfect time.

Love Poem with Toast
by Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

Poetry

Poetry
by Don Paterson

In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.

Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.

Mad World

If you can find the Gary Jules version of this song, do. I believe it's on the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Mad World

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world

Happy Valentine's Day

Poetry on a postcard.

God Says Yes To Me

A poem that will never cease to throw me off or make me think.

God Says Yes To Me
by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

(from Poetry 180, arranged by Billy Collins)

Post Secret

This week's batch of Post Secret entries are better than most. The concept still intrigues me, even though the site's gone a little down the tubes regarding cleanliness and propriety. When the secrets people post actually make sense, when they point to a common human condition--that's when I think they are most poignant. They are the things everyone thinks and no one says.

Moderation Is Not a Negation...

There are days I wish I could shout this poem at the majority of the world. But most of them wouldn't get it. (Editorial note: Thanks, Jason. I figured there was some html tag for formatting, but I was too lazy to look it up. Thanks for the assistance.)
Moderation Is Not a Negation of Intensity, But Helps Avoid Monotonyby John Tagliabue

Will you stop for a while, stop trying to pull yourself
           together
for some clear "meaning"--some momentary summary?
           no one
can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day;
           the ordinary
blankness of little dramatic consciousness is good for the
           health sometimes,
only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long
           long tumultuous stretches;
look what that intensity did to poor great Van Gogh!;
           linger, lunge,
scrounge and be stupid, that doesn't take much centering
           of one's forces;
as wise Whitman said "lounge and invite the soul."  Get
           enough sleep;
and not only because (as Cocteau said) "poetry is the
           literature of sleep";
be a dumb bell for a few minutes at least; we don't want
           Sunday church bells
           ringing constantly.

Invitation to the Voyage

Johannes Vermeer, Allegory of Painting (The Painter In His Studio), 1666

This afternoon I'm working on a brief analysis of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, one of the most famous French poets, for my World Literature class. The only background I know of him is the two and a half page introduction to just a few of his poems in my anthology, but he and his art are intriguing nonetheless. They say Baudelaire wrote poetry to shock, and so it seems, because even in the 21st century it still does. In his poem "The Carcass," he observes to his female companion that for all her beauty, she will one day end up as the maggot-ridden, half-eaten animal they find on their afternoon stroll, and then she will be hard pressed to "explain to the worms / Who cherish your body so fine, / That I am the keeper for corpses of love / Of the form, and the essence divine!" Encouraging stuff.

I'll post something a bit more palatable of his here. "The Voyage," according to my Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, is a description of "the opposite of inertia, an active search for goals always out of reach." The "Invitation" summons the reader to "an exotic land of peace, beauty, and sensuous harmony. The voyage is imaginary, of course, implying two forms of escape from reality: an escape out of real time into a primeval accord of the senses, and an escape into another artistic vision--the glowing interiors painted by such Dutch masters as Jan Vermeer."

Invitation to the Voyage
by Charles Baudelaire
translated by Richard Wilbur

My child, my sister, dream
How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind land to live together,
And there love slow and long,
There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.
Drowned suns that glimmer there
Through cloud-disheveled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears
Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Furniture that wears
The lustre of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,
Flowers of rarest bloom
Proffering their perfume
Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;
Gold ceilings would there be,
Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in an Eastern splendor hung--
Nothing but should address
The soul's loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

See, sheltered from the swells
There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth;
It is to satisfy
Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth.
The sun at close of day
Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire
In hyacinth and gold:
Slowly the land is rolled
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Some Nights I Am Glad

some nights i am glad to be caught up
in this cosmic squall called life
i rest in thankfulness for my place
in this sickly sway of the heavens
for my heart that beats
with the rhythm of the falling stars

it means i am small
it means i matter

i am the dust speck
in this oyster of a universe
and it means that someday i will dwell
in the heart of the great luminous pearl
of redemption

1.25.06
crystal l.

The Abnormal Is Not Courage

I think it is people like my grandparents who have taught me the truth of this poem. They are not headstrong. They do not rush in when a hero is needed to save the day. They are gently saving it, bit by bit, behind the scenes: digging rocks out of the garden, loving their children, cooking a meal, carving and fitting fresh, clean wood.

Danger calls for urgency. Extraordinary circumstances need actions that are un-pondered; they call upon sheer survival instinct. It is courageous to block a speeding bullet for someone, or to march out in war, or to save a person from drowning, but I hold that courage is also steady and perpetual. It sometimes requires great thought and detail. The single mother who cooks dinner every night after work; the boy who musters the nerve to ask his teacher for help; the misunderstood artist who continues to create... these too demonstrate courage.

It is the kind of courage I want. This description fascinates me: Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality. My courage does not consist of those things which I am not, but of the "crescendo" of those things I already am. My courage will not manifest itself in a marvelous act that is completely out of my character; it will be the fruition, "the culmination," of what good I am currently cultivating in my character: love, patience, wisdom, joy. If courage were the abnormal, we would think of it as a miracle visited on the lucky, on the brave, only occasionally. If courage can indeed be cultivated, it must grow out of something that is already in us.

I don't know about you, but that inspires me.

The Abnormal Is Not Courage
by Jack Gilbert

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers.
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight.
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

(taken from "The Contemporary American Poets: American Poetry since 1940," edited by Mark Strand, Signet Classic, copyright 1969)

Wunderkind

This song plays during the credits of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and appears on the soundtrack. Specially written for the film, it functions both as Lucy's theme song and the anthem of someone new to the numinous, entranced with the beyond, with the place where fantasy meets supernatural reality.

I do love this song, but saying much more than that would cheapen it. Suffice it to say that I have my own wardrobe and my own Narnia, places I see shadows of in my head that I believe will one day be fully revealed. Now we see through a glass darkly... It is no shallowness, no frivolous child's fantasy to seek this "deeper wonderment." Perhaps it is for the poets and artists and composers to see more clearly, but I think everyone carries a bit of it in them. That is, if they haven't completely trampled the child, the wunderkind, that lives inside them. May our theological profundity always be tempered with a healthy wonder, a divine curiosity and vision. May Narnia's virgin snow always lie on the other side of the common wardrobe.

Wunderkind
by Alanis Morissette

Oh, perilous place walk backwards toward you
Blink disbelieving eyes chilled to the bone
Most visibly brave, no apprehended bloom
First to take this foot to virgin snow

I am magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind, ohh oh oh
And I live the envelope pushed far enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to serve, destined to roam

Oh, ominous place spellbound and un-child-proofed
My least favorite shelter bear alone
Compatriots in face, they’d cringe if I told you
Our best back pocket secret, our bond full blown

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind, ohh oh oh
And I am pioneer naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to seek, destined to know

Most beautiful place reborn and blown off roof
My view about-face whether great will be done

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind, ohh oh oh
I am a groundbreaker naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind, ohh oh oh
I am a Joan of Arc and smart enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to reign, destined to roam
Destined to reign, destined to roam

To be of use

Another selection from Good Poems. These speak for themselves.

To be of use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Alley Violinist

I must recommend this book to you. Good Poems, arranged by Garrison Keillor of NPR fame is a fantastic selection of poems that he read on the daily five-minute show The Writer's Almanac. The poetry is simple and beautiful; in Keillor's words, "The goodness of a poem is severely tested by reading it on the radio. The radio audience is not the devout sisterhood you find at poetry readings, leaning forward, lips pursed, hanky in hand; it's more like a high school cafeteria. People listen to poems while they're frying eggs and sausage and reading the paper and reasoning with their offspring, so I find it wise to stay away from stuff that is too airy or that refers off-handedly to the poet Li-Po or relies on your familiarity with butterflies or Spanish or Monet."

Thanks to my roommate for giving me this book after I coveted it for many months. Here is a selection I found and fell in love with this morning.

Alley Violinist
by Robert Lax

if you were an alley violinist

and they threw you money
from three windows

and the first note contained
a nickel and said:
when you play, we dance and
sing, signed
a very poor family

and the second one contained
a dime and said:
i like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady

and the last one contained
a dollar and said:
beat it,

would you:
stand there and play?

beat it?

walk away playing your fiddle?