Today, a cheating departure from my own work, only because I can't stand not to share something this beautiful. I received this in my inbox this morning. I intend to buy the book it is excerpted from.
Untitled (This is what was bequeathed us) by Gregory Orr
This is what was bequeathed us: This earth the beloved left And, leaving, Left to us.
No other world But this one: Willows and the river And the factory With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here. No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions: Turn me into song; sing me awake.
Found poems are verses culled from an already existing piece of writing. We practiced them several times in my college English classes. For this one, I referred to my Facebook home page, mostly status updates and comments.
What's on your mind?
i don't remember actually sleeping last night. back to writing which is even harder.
up early again. i suppose i shall take it as it comes. why was this so normal ten years ago but so challenging now?
i haven't lost it yet. that helps a bit. in fact, i do believe that i much prefer it.
added, added, and updated. it never matters, going to or coming home from. watching, reading, teaching, i swim for brighter days.
This month I'm going to try to participate in NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month. The website Poets.org is challenging poetry enthusiasts to write one poem a day for the month of April.
Since I know that I won't be able to keep up with writing new material every day, I'm going to at least pledge to post one of my own poems each day, though some of them might be old. I'll try not to repeat anything I've already posted on this blog, though I may slip up.
I'm starting with my most recent poem. Happy National Poetry Month!
Nostos for James
You told us that one of the excesses that can malnourish the mind is blinding emotion. Will you think it inappropriate, then, that I write in this form, considered to be the ultimate outpouring of emotion, to tell you that I miss every word you said because their worth has sparked to pricelessness in the interim? The mind should point forward, a tall ship on the memory sea, but I have capsized. Emotion is slower, but will it not one day also float me home?
I'd like to take a moment to feature an anthology of poetry from one of my favorite authors. Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) was a vibrant woman whose many occupations--actor, author, poet, wife, mother--coalesced to produce some really beautiful works. My favorite books of hers are the ones in the Murray trilogy: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. These books expanded my faith and my world, opening my eyes to new kinds of beauty in the universe.
This anthology of Madeleine's poetry was published in 2005, just shortly before her death. Though she is primarily known as a novelist, her poetry is powerful and skillful, fanciful and experimental. It's a joy to read, and I highly recommend it for fellow lovers of poetry.
An excerpt:
Love Letter Addressed To: by Madeleine L'Engle
Your immanent eminence wholly transcendent permanent, in firmament holy, resplendent other and aweful incomprehensible legal, unlawful wild, indefensible eminent immanence mysterium tremendum mysterium fascinans incarnate, trinitarian being impassible infinite wisdom one indivisible king of the kingdom logos, word-speaker star-namer, narrator man-maker, man-seeker ex nihil creator unbegun, unbeginning complete but unending wind-weaving, sun-spinning ruthless, unbending: Eternal compassion helpless before you I, Lord, in my fashion love and adore you.
Hold me against the dark: I am afraid. Circle me with your arms. I am made So tiny and my atoms so unstable That at any moment I may explode. I am unable To contain myself in unity. My outlines shiver With the shock of living. I endeavor To hold the I as one only for the cloud Of which I am a fragment, yet to which I'm vowed To be responsible. Its light against my face Reveals the witness of the stars, each in its place Singing, each encompassed by the rest, The many joined to one, the mightiest to the least. It is so great a thing to be an infinitesimal part Of this immeasurable orchestra the music bursts the heart, And from this tiny plosion all the fragments join: Joy orders the disunity until the song is one.
From "The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God" by Rainer Maria Rilke
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one else has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say. May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.
He did not wait till the world was ready, till men and nations were at peace. He came when the Heavens were unsteady, and prisoners cried out for release.
He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great. He dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine. He did not wait
till hearts were pure. In joy he came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt. To a world like ours, of anguished shame he came, and his Light would not go out.
He came to a world which did not mesh, to heal its tangles, shield its scorn. In the mystery of the Word made Flesh the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our songs with joyful voice, for to share our grief, to touch our pain, He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
Every October it becomes important, no, necessary to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded by leaves turning; it's not just the symbolism, to confront in the death of the year your death, one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony isn't lost on you that nature is most seductive when it's about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its incipient exit, an ending that at least so far the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain) have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception because of course nature is always renewing itself— the trees don't die, they just pretend, go out in style, and return in style: a new style.
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Is it deliberate how far they make you go especially if you live in the city to get far enough away from home to see not just trees but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves: so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks like rain, or snow, but it's probably just clouds (too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder, given the poverty of your memory, which road had the most color last year, but it doesn't matter since you're probably too late anyway, or too early— whichever road you take will be the wrong one and you've probably come all this way for nothing.
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You'll be driving along depressed when suddenly a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably won't last. But for a moment the whole world comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives— red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion, gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations of burning. You're on fire. Your eyes are on fire. It won't last, you don't want it to last. You can't stand any more. But you don't want it to stop. It's what you've come for. It's what you'll come back for. It won't stay with you, but you'll remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt or something you've felt that also didn't last.
A tree that had lost a very small branch cried to the earth that life was unfair. The earth gave comfort and, in time, the branch scarred over and the tree healed. The earth smiled to herself at the small wisdom of the tree and grasped her great clefts and rifts and tried to close them. And peace there was for a while. But then the tree was made into a gun. And greater rifts were cut to find the heart of the earth. And the earth wept for the days when she had had time to close rifts great and clefts small; when peace, though broken by war, could be restored again. And then, a tree that had lost a very small branch cried to the earth that life was pain...
Two sides of this coin, leading to 'myself' and 'the wide world' Taken each by themselves I find flat and unknown respectively But taken together, I am filled with the world And the world has meaning to one small person. Ambiguity and mystery fail time and again to discover this knowing, paradox eternal. I cannot contain the world, and the world cannot be valid except there be those like me to accept its being. It's a lonely fate, being human: Called to live until all else fails. And driven to communicate until veritable intercourse is needed. Curses be for the willfully lonely.
...We gaze into the night as if remembering the bright unbroken planet we once came from, to which we will never be permitted to return. We are amazed how hurt we are. We would give anything for what we have.
I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.
What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my own name. I say goodbye. The words follow each other downwind. I love my wife but send her away.
My parents rise out of their thrones into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing? Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same. I empty myself of my life and my life remains.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 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
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
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.
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 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.
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.
This poem was recently referenced by a friend of mine on her blog, and I immediately fell in love with it. It's a joy to find the rare poem that deals with joy with the same zeal and precision as usually describes pain and sorrow. It takes effort to find happiness, because it usually means looking beyond ourselves, but how sweet the reward when we do.
Happiness by Jane Kenyon
There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night.
It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
I'm on a Lisel Mueller kick. I've recently discovered more of her work, and I really, really like it. She is one of the poets to whose talents I aspire.
Toby
What the Dog Perhaps Hears by Lisel Mueller
If an inaudible whistle blown between our lips can send him home to us, then silence is perhaps the sound of spiders breathing and roots mining the earth; it may be asparagus heaving, headfirst, into the light and the long brown sound of cracked cups, when it happens. We would like to ask the dog if there is a continuous whir because the child in the house keeps growing, if the snake really stretches full length without a click and the sun breaks through clouds without a decibel of effort, whether in autumn, when the trees dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there above the shut-off level of our simple ears? For us there was no birth cry, the newborn bird is suddenly here, the egg broken, the nest alive, and we heard nothing when the world changed.
I keep books of poetry as close to me as I keep my Bible. Always on my nightstand, two Bibles, one anthology. One Bible, two anthologies. Always. I don't think it's wrong or even sacrilegious. I think it was intended.
This poem might do something to explain why.
(photo courtesy of flickr user pretorious_photography)
Moon Fishing by Lisel Mueller
When the moon was full they came to the water, some with pitchforks, some with rakes, some with sieves and ladles, and one with a silver cup.
And they fished till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, to catch the moon you must let your women spread their hair on the water-- even the wily moon will leap to that bobbing net of shimmering threads, gasp and flop till its silver scales lie black and still at your feet."
And they fished with the hair of their women till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, do you think the moon is caught lightly, with glitter and silk threads? You must cut out your hearts and bait your hooks with those dark animals; what matter you lose your hearts to reel in your dream?"
And they fished with their tight, hot hearts till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, what good is the moon to a heartless man? Put back your hearts and get on your knees and drink as you never have, until your throats are coated with silver and your voices ring like bells."
And they fished with their lips and tongues until the water was gone and the moon had slipped away in the soft, bottomless mud.
It hovers in dark corners before the lights are turned on, it shakes sleep from its eyes and drops from mushroom gills, it explodes in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages, it sticks to the wings of green angels that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye of the many-eyed potato, it lives in each earthworm segment surviving cruelty, it is the motion that runs from the eyes to the tail of a dog, it is the mouth that inflates the lungs of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves, the argument that refutes death, the genius that invents the future, all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; it is in this poem, trying to speak. __________________________________________
it glistens on the petals of the pansies in the snow-frosted greenhouse...
Rarely are poems so joyously beautiful as those written about love. Only something we do not understand could bring us so much feeling. Here are two lovely ones I found.
Happy Valentine's Day
When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.
Two poems today by Theodore Roethke. The second one is the poem that I really want to post, because it's giving me life and breath these days. I have, however, posted it previously on this blog, and since I don't like reruns, I'm posting a new Roethke poem to accompany it. Enjoy.
(photo courtesy of flickr user cath9)
The Geranium by Theodore Roethke
When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail, She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, Or a wizened aster in late September, I brought her back in again For a new routine-- Vitamins, water, and whatever Sustenance seemed sensible At the time: she'd lived So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, Her shriveled petals falling On the faded carpet, the stale Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves. (Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!-- The dumb dames shrieking half the night Or the two of us, alone, both seedy, Me breathing booze at her, She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-- And that was scary-- So when that snuffling cretin of a maid Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, I said nothing.
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, I was that lonely.
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.
An excerpt from a poem for someone who I have never met but who I know got married today to her best friend.
Excerpt from: When A Woman Loves A Man by David Lehman
When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.
Ignorant Before the Heavens Of My Life by Rainer Maria Rilke
Ignorant before the heavens of my life, I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still. As if I didn't exist. Do I have any share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with their pure effect? Does my blood's ebb and flow change with their changes? Let me put aside every desire, every relationship except this one, so that my heart grows used to its farthest spaces. Better that it live fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than as if protected, soothed by what is near.
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.
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
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
