I’ve always loved poetry and since Covid hit, on my Facebook page, I’ve posted #APoemADay. I’ve shared poems from across the centuries, written by men and women from many nations, on topics as varied as death to washing the dishes. It’s been great fun.
My favorite new to me poem is this.
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name aloud
she made her way to the stage
straightened the papers in her hands —
pages and envelopes, the backs of grocery bills,
she closed her eyes for a minute,
took a breath,
and began.
From her mouth perfect words exploded,
intact formulas of light and darkness.
She dared to rhyme with words like cochineal
and described the skies like diadem.
Obscurely worded incantations filled the room
with an alchemy that made the very molecules quake.
The solitary words she handled
in her upstairs room with keen precision
came rumbling out to make the electric lights flicker.
40 members of the audience
were treated for hypertension.
20 year old dark haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.
Her second poem erased the memory of every cellphone
in the nightclub,
and by the fourth line of the sixth verse
the grandmother in the upstairs apartment
had been cured of her rheumatism.
The papers reported the power outages.
The area hospitals taxed their emergency generators
and sirens were heard to wail through the night.
Quietly she made her way to the exit,
walked to the terminal and rode back to Amherst.
She never left her room again
and never read such syllables aloud.
By Dan Vera (2008)
What’s your favorite poem? (And please post the poem itself if you can.)
My favorite poem is Wallace Stevens’s “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” which perfectly sums up for me the feeling you get when you’re reading and it’s quiet. (Stevens is one of my favorite poets and his “13 Ways of Looking at A Bkackbird” is also one of my favorites. Still, you asked for one so I’m giving you only one.)
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
Couldn’t resist:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
BY WALLACE STEVENS
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
I love Stevens’ work. He is such a contradiction to me. (from Wikipedia)
Stevens was financially independent as an insurance executive earning by the mid-1930s “$20,000 a year, equivalent to about $350,000 today (2016). And this at a time (during The Great Depression) when many Americans were out of work, searching through trash cans for food.”[16]
By 1934, he had been named vice-president of the company.[17] After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford
Also, when he died, he had the largest private collection of recorded classical music in America. Quite a few of his poems make reference to music, such as another favorite of mine, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”
I didn’t know that. Thanks!
Oranges by Gary Soto
The first time I walked With a girl,
I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking Beneath my steps,
my breath Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward Her house,
the one whose Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me,
until She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright With rouge.
I smiled, Touched her shoulder,
and led Her down the street,
across A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted –
Light in her eyes, a smile Starting at the corners Of her mouth.
I fingered A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickel from My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly
on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand in mine
for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
I have always loved this poem because it says so much in such a seemingly simple manner.
That’s fabulous.
Interesting topic for this week’s Ask. I used to approach poetry with the same disrespect I treated romance- maybe because I had seen so many rotten examples of the former. But over time, I’ve softened my stance somewhat. While poetry isn’t my go-to reading choice, I’ve allowed myself to enjoy the art form for its lyrical beauty and appeal to emotion.
I am reminded of H.L. Mencken’s quote about poetry, “Poetry is two quite distinct things and may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single words cellar-door and sarcoma are musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of escape from the harsh realities of everyday. In brief, poetry is a comforting piece set to more or less lascivious music.” For all the man’s faults by 21st century standards, I will say that reading his passages- which often have that musical quality to them- is a joy.
As for an actual poem, I found this lovely gay romance poem some time ago that resonated with me. This is “Beautiful Signor” by Cyrus Cassells:(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52206/beautiful-signor).
Beautiful Signor
BY CYRUS CASSELLS
All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man’s or woman’s body.
—Yeats, “The Phases of the Moon”
Whenever we wake,
still joined, enraptured—
at the window,
each clear night’s finish
the black pulse of dominoes
dropping to land;
whenever we embrace,
haunted, upwelling,
I know
a reunion is taking place—
Hear me when I say
our love’s not meant to be
an opiate;
helpmate,
you are the reachable mirror
that dares me to risk
the caravan back
to the apogee, the longed-for
arms of the Beloved—
Dusks of paperwhites,
dusks of jasmine,
intimate beyond belief
beautiful Signor
no dread of nakedness
beautiful Signor
my long ship,
my opulence,
my garland
beautiful Signor
extinguishing the beggar’s tin,
the wind of longing
beautiful Signor
laving the ruined country,
the heart wedded to war
beautiful Signor
the kiln-blaze
in my body,
the turning heaven
beautiful Signor
you cover me with pollen
beautiful Signor
into your sweet mouth—
This is the taproot:
against all strictures,
desecrations,
I’ll never renounce,
never relinquish
the first radiance, the first
moment you took my hand—
This is the endless wanderlust:
dervish,
yours is the April-upon-April love
that kept me spinning even beyond
your eventful arms
toward the unsurpassed:
the one vast claiming heart,
the glimmering,
the beautiful and revealed Signor.
How beautiful!
Thanks. I thought so too. I can see why it won a prize.
Besides its lyrical beauty, I thought “Beautiful Signor,” which was written by a gay man, helps smash the misconception of gay men being interested only in raw sex with no regard for romance and/or the softer aspects of love making. Actually, quite of the few of the old poems written by men- regardless of sexual orientation- were quite flowery. There needs to be more cultural permission for a resurgence of this style of emotional expression through poetry.
So, so many good ones. In the English language, because she (and this particular poem) made me start reading English poetry when I was in my mid-teens, I have to select:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
It’s from “The Sonnets From the Portuguese” (the Portuguese here meaning Luís de Camões).
However, perhaps my favourite poem is from Sappho. I first read it in a Portuguese translation (still my prefered translation), but below I’m including the 2014’s English translation by Diane J. Raynor:
Sappho, Fragment 31
There are countless poems about love. But I love cats and there are two poems that I adore, one 20th and the second 18th century. The first is Fog by Carl Sandburg which is short and straight to the point:
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
And from Thomas Gray (he of Elegy Written in an Country Churchyard) and based on a true event:
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.
The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
The Sappho is lovely.
I enjoy teaching Kizer’s poem below in a segment on feminist poetry in an American lit seminar. I have too many poems to narrow to one favorite, but this poem seems fitting in light of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes’s historic speech yesterday in Congress yesterday.
Bitch
By Carolyn Kizer
Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,
I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.
He isn’t a trespasser anymore,
Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.
My voice says, “Nice to see you,”
As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.
He isn’t an enemy now,
Where are your manners, I say, as I say,
“How are the children? They must be growing up.”
At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,
The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper.
She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.
Down, girl! Keep your distance
Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.
“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.
She slobbers and grovels.
After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.
It’s just that she remembers how she came running
Each evening, when she heard his step;
How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly
Though he was absorbed in his paper;
Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen
Until he was ready to play.
But the small careless kindnesses
When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,
Come back to her now, seem more important
Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.
“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say.
He couldn’t have taken you with him;
You were too demonstrative, too clumsy,
Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.
“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag
As I drag you off by the scruff,
Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”
Carolyn Kizer, “Bitch” from Mermaids in the Basement. Copyright © 1984 by Carolyn Kizer. http://www.coppercanyonpress.org.
How timely!
DER RAUCH
Das kleine Haus unter Bäumen am See
Vom Dach steigt Rauch
Fehlte er
Wie trostlos dann wären
Haus, Bäume und See.
This very short poem by Bert Brecht is one of my favourites. So much said with so few words.
I could not find a translation, so here is mine:
THE SMOKE
The little house under trees at the lake
Smoke rises from the roof
Were it missing
How bleak then would be
House, trees and lake
Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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.
Also, Stephen Crane, A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
(WendyW=former Wendy :D )
I love this poem and just about anything Hughes wrote.
Not necessarily my favorite but the only one I memorized in school that I can still recite-
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A.E. Housman
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
In 8th grade we had to memorize Evangeline. Not the whole thing–everyone in the class had to memorize a clump. I found it so difficult to do! And now, I can’t recall a thing about it.
Me too! Here is what I still have -The stag at eve had drunk his fill deep within (a place name I never remember)….But it was over 50 years ago. My grandmother, who died in her 80’s could recite the entirety of The Song of Hiawatha. I recall it as a very long poem.
Wow, I’m worse off than I thought. I gave you the first lines I remembered of The Lady of the Lake. We did read and memorize Evangeline as well. All I retained is the ability to anwer a question such as Which famous poem starts with the words ‘This is the forest primeval.’
Dover Beach
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I love the last verse.
One of the most relatable for me is Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich:
Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
“Advice to Myself” by Louise Erdrich from Original Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.
I didn’t know she wrote poems. This is a good one!
Hey, poetry lovers. I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend http://www.rattle.com. Not only do they have an interesting selection of modern poems to read, they hold weekly and monthly poetry contests that pay selected poets quite generously. Their “Poets Respond” section invites poets to write about current events that occurred within the past week, and their monthly “Ekphrastic Challenge” invites poets to create work based upon a particular image. Competition is stiff, but it might be fun. Just a head’s up.
BTW, great selection of poems posted here in the comments so far.
love love love Dover Beach. But since that one is already taken, I also love this one by Sylvia Plath
Mad Girl’s Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;I lift my lids and all is born again.(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,And arbitrary blackness gallops in:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bedAnd sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name.(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
and the lines didn’t break right. Sorry!
I’m a Yeats girl. We are living in The Second Coming right now. Here’s one of his not so downbeat.
When You Are Old by William Butler 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.
I’m another Yeats girl, and I agree about The Second Coming. I don’t know if it’s my favorite poem, but I can’t get it out of my head lately:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This is, perhaps, for me, the greatest English language poem ever written.
I don’t know if anyone one else was a fan of the Buffy spin off series Angel but one of the episode titles was “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” referencing this poem and Joan Didion’s work and I always appreciated it and the writing.
Angel. “sighs” Wesley and Fred. “sighs some more”
but…
“remembers the horror of Angel and Cordelia” JUST WRONG!
So, yes, I was a fan of Angel!
How I love Wesley and Fred! Wesley reading “A Little Princess” to a dying Fred is a guaranteed way to get me weeping. Please tell me you have seen their take on Beatrice and Benedict! Its almost like Fred and Wesley getting their happy ever after. Kinda.
Alas poor Cordelia suffered the wrath of Joss Whedon for getting pregnant in real life. I used to adore Whedon but his feet of clay have emerged over the years. I do still love his work on Buffy, Angel and Firefly though I look on it all with more discerning eyes now.
Well, we all have feet of clay. My life would be so much less without BtVS that I just can’t throw stones.
I hated hated hated the Cordelia/Angel love story. It was a betrayal of both of their characters. Angel was a very good show and was brave in its remarkably depressing ending.
I was very disappointed the show was cancelled so abruptly. I did follow along with what the comics were doing with Angel for a while because the base of that was what the next season would have been (only less fantastic with no dragons). I am really sad we never got to see Illyria start morphing back into Fred at times. I think Amy Acker is an underrated actress, as a lot of Whedon’s crew are.
I have a problem with Whedon’s entitlement at times over his feminist bona fides when he’s actually done some pretty crummy stuff, but I will never give up on his work. He also promoted some of the most interesting writers and show runners like Jane Espenson, Tim Minear and Marti Noxon.
It’s funny how you can trace favorite actors to the writers through series over the years. Jane Espenson and James Marsters show up on the same stuff over and over again but he never was cast in subsequent Whedon projects. Alex Denisof, Amy Acker and of course Nathan Fillion are Whedon staples.
“Ulysses” by Tennyson. One of the most poignant poems in the English language with so many themes: for example, the yearning of a man of great deeds and adventures when they are over, the depredations of getting old etc.–and yet it ends on such an uplifting note: Nothing more beautiful than the imagery of the last verse.
t little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Have you read Circe? If you like Odysseus’ story, Circe is a must read.
I love that ending.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W.H. Auden
It is now, for me, forever associated with Four Weddings and A Funeral. So movingly done here.
The Auden was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this post. I have loved reading Maya Angelou and Anais Nin since college and I also remember reading Tennyson’s The May Queen and Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 as a school girl and those handwritten poems are tucked in my fire box that I keep under the bed.
What a lovely post!
I love, love, love 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 everyday. 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 looking at 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.
Thanks for the reminding me of this poem that always makes me shiver
When I was in school, we still memorized poetry, and I sort of got into the habit. It’s one of those things for which I’m grateful, because I now have all those lovely bits and pieces floating around in my memory to pull out and fondle whenever I like.
So hard to choose! Macbeth’s utter despair really resonated with me though in the following poem:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I would also strongly recommend Mary Jean Chan’s brilliant poem collection, ‘Fléche’. I am in awe at the sheer beauty of her words, which manage to perfectly encapsulate the immigrant experience and her burgeoning sexuality.
For the time being by Carmen Bugan
We are fine, they say, for the time being.
Enough food in the pantry, the prescriptions filled,
No need to go out of the house,
Except to let the dog run in the yard.
Our road has fallen silent, we can hear the trees
Near the river, it feels like a long Sunday
But without the church. There is plenty of time
To watch the trees bloom. When was the last time?
The elderly are used to sitting the days.
But we are also fine, the younger ones, for the time
Being. We have time to play with our children,
Bake, wash the curtains, and make love again, finally!
Now that the shelves at the shops are empty
And the parking lots are drive-through
Testing labs, we have time to pray
For those who are dying in the hospitals.
We pray the nurses will stay healthy through
Extended working shifts. We pray the doctors
Get a good night sleep before they fight to grip life
Slipping through their hands, for the time being.
In other countries many sing from their balconies
To cheer each other up through so much dying,
We call, check in, reassure, and smile
From a distance, hoping: for the time being.
(2020) #APoemADay