Happiness

(photo courtesy of flickr user "lanier67")

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.

Joseph Cornell, With Box

I've read this through only once, but its use of language and meter captivated me. Enjoy. (Found on Poets.org.)

Joseph Cornell, With Box

by Michael Dumanis

World harbors much I'd like to fit inside
that the parameters preclude me from.

I'm the desire to have had a say.
I'm the desire to be left alone

amid brochures for Europe's best hotels
behind a locked door on Utopia Parkway,

where Brother, crippled, rides his chariot,
where Mother's all dressed up and going nowhere.

Together, sotto voce, we count hours,
fuss over newsprint, water down the wine.

When I was shorter, we were all divine.
When I was shorter, I was infinite

and felt less fear of being understood.
I am the fear of being understood.

I am the modest Joe who hems and haws
at blond cashiers ensconced in ticket booths.

Lacking the words to offer her the flowers
I'd spent a fortnight locating the words

to offer her, I threw the flowers at her.
As penance, I entrenched you, Doll, in wood.

Through your shaved bark and twigs, you stared at me.
Being a woman was out of the question.

Being a question caused women to wonder.
How unrestrained you must feel, Wind and Water.

You are the obligation, Box, to harbor
each disarray and ghost. I am the author,

the authored by. I am a plaything of.
Who makes who Spectacle. Who gives whom Order.

My father was a man who lived and died.
He would commute from Nyack to New York.

The woolen business had its ups and downs.
How unrestrained you've become, Cage and Coffin.

There is an order to each spectacle.
You are the obligation, Wind, to sunder

this relic of. Am reliquary for
the off-white light of January morning.

Have seen you, Fairies, in your apricot
and chestnut negligees invade the mirror,

tiptoe on marbles, vanish from the scene.
Am reliquary for what World has seen.

I'm the ballet of wingspan, the cracked mirror.
Canary's coffin. Sunshine breaking through.

What the Dog Perhaps Hears

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.

Moon Fishing

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.

Hope

Hope
by Lisel Mueller

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...

Valentine's Day

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.

The Geranium

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.

When A Woman Loves A Man

(photo courtesy of flickr user "Chosetec")

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

(photo courtesy of flickr user "Fort Photo")

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.

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