Poem of the Day

I don’t particularly care for snakes, but this poem really struck me because of the risk she took.

To the Snake
By Denise Levertov

Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat
as you hissed to me, glinting
arrowy gold scales, and I felt
the weight of you on my shoulders,
and the whispering silver of your dryness
sounded close at my ears—

Green Snake—I swore to my companions that certainly
you were harmless! But truly
I had no certainty, and no hope, only desiring
to hold you, for that joy,
which left
a long wake of pleasure, as the leaves moved
and you faded into the pattern
of grass and shadows, and I returned
smiling and haunted, to a dark morning.

I found Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in my bookcase when I visited my parents earlier this month.

On Another’s Sorrow
By William Blake

Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill’d?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief & care,
Hear the woes that infants bear,

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast;
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant’s tear;

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O! no, never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give his joy to all;
He becomes an infant small;
He becomes a man of woe;
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by;
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy
That our grief he may destroy;
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

I read Words Under the Words last night. It’s such a fantastic collection of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems! I think it’s an essential part of a poetry library. Here’s a sample. I love this poem because it describes how I feel about ESVM’s poetry. I think it’s so cool that another poet captured this feeling. Also, I just finished reading The Well of Lost Plots (the third Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde) and it deals a lot with memories, so I thought this poem related to that, too.

You Know Who You Are
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.

Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn’t work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying “This is what I need to remember”
and then hoping you can.

I’m not sick, but I certainly feel like making an excuse not to go to school today.

Sick
By Shel Silverstein

“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay,
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash, and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is—Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

Happy Easter!

A Poem on Easter
By St. Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus

The seasons blush varied with the flowery, fair weather, and the gate of the pole lies open with greater light. His path in the heaven raises the fire-breathing sun higher, who goes forth on his course, and enters the waters of the ocean. Armed with rays traversing the liquid elements, in this brief night he stretches out the day in a circle. The brilliant firmament puts forth its clear countenance, and the bright stars show their joy. The fruitful earth pours forth its gifts with varied increase, when the year has well returned its vernal riches. Soft beds of violets paint the purple plain; the meadows are green with plants, and the plant shines with its leaves. By degrees gleaming brightness of the flowers comes forth; all the herbs smile with their blossoms. The seed being deposited, the corn springs up far and wide in the fields, promising to be able to overcome the hunger of the husbandman. Having deserted its stem, the vine-shoot bewails its joys; the vine gives water only from the source from which it is wont to give wine. The swelling bud, rising with tender down from the back of its mother, prepares its bosom for bringing forth. Its foliage having been torn off in the wintry season, the verdant grove now renews its leafy shelter. Mingled together, the willow, the fir, the hazel, the osier, the elm, the maple, the walnut, each tree applauds, delightful with its leaves. Hence the bee, about to construct its comb, leaving the hive, humming over the flowers, carries off honey with its leg. The bird which, having closed its song, was dumb, sluggish with the wintry cold, returns to its strains. Hence Philomela attunes her notes with her own instruments, and the air becomes sweeter with the re-echoed melody.

Behold, the favour of the reviving world bears witness that all gifts have returned together with its Lord. For in honour of Christ rising triumphant after His descent to the gloomy Tartarus, the grove on every side with its leaves expresses approval, the plants with their flowers express approval. The light, the heaven, the fields, and the sea duly praise the God ascending above the stars, having crushed the laws of hell. Behold, He who was crucified reigns as God over all things, and all created objects offer prayer to their Creator. Hail, festive day, to be reverenced throughout the world, on which God has conquered hell, and gains the stars! The changes of the year and of the months, the bounteous light of the days, the splendour of the hours, all things with voice applaud. Hence, in honour of you, the wood with its foliage applauds; hence the vine, with its silent shoot, gives thanks. Hence the thickets now resound with the whisper of birds; amidst these the sparrow sings with exuberant love.

O Christ, Thou Saviour of the world, merciful Creator and Redeemer, the only offspring from the Godhead of the Father, flowing in an indescribable manner from the heart of Thy Parent, Thou self-existing Word, and powerful from the mouth of Thy Father, equal to Him, of one mind with Him, His fellow, coeval with the Father, from whom at first the world derived its origin! Thou dost suspend the firmament, Thou heapest together the soil, Thou dost pour forth the seas, by whose government all things which are fixed in their places flourish. Who seeing that the human race was plunged in the depth of misery, that Thou mightest rescue man, didst Thyself also become man: nor wert Thou willing only to be born with a body, but Thou becamest flesh, which endured to be born and to die. Thou dost undergo funeral obsequies, Thyself the author of life and framer of the world, Thou dost enter the path of death, in giving the aid of salvation. The gloomy chains of the infernal law yielded, and chaos feared to be pressed by the presence of the light. Darkness perishes, put to flight by the brightness of Christ; the think pall of eternal night falls.

But restore the promised pledge, I pray Thee, O power benign! The third day has returned; arise, my buried One; it is not becoming that Thy limbs should lie in the lowly sepulchre, nor that worthless stones should press that which is the ransom of the world. It is unworthy that a stone should shut in with a confining rock, and cover Him in whose fist all things are enclosed. Take away the linen clothes, I pray; leave the napkins in the tomb: Thou art sufficient for us, and without Thee there is nothing. Release the chained shades of the infernal prison, and recall to the upper regions whatever sinks to the lowest depths. Give back Thy face, that the world may see the light; give back the day which flees from us at Thy death.

But returning, O holy conqueror, Thou didst altogether fill the heaven! Tartarus lies depressed, nor retains its rights. The ruler of the lower regions, insatiably opening his hollow jaws, who has always been a spoiler, becomes a prey to Thee. Thou rescuest an innumerable people from the prison of death, and they follow in freedom to the place whither their leader approaches. The fierce monster in alarm vomits forth the multitude whom he had swallowed up, and the Lamb withdraws the sheep from the jaw of the wolf. Hence re-seeking the tomb from the lower regions, having resumed Thy flesh, as a warrior Thou carriest back ample trophies to the heavens. Those whom chaos held in punishment he has now restored; and those whom death might seek, a new life holds, Oh, sacred King, behold a great part of Thy triumph shines forth, when the sacred laver blesses pure souls! A host, clad in white, come forth from the bright waves, and cleanse their old fault in a new stream. The white garment also designates bright souls, and the shepherd has enjoyments from the snow-white flock. The priest Felix is added sharing in this reward, who wishes to give double talents to his Lord. Drawing those who wander in Gentile error to better things, that a beast of prey may not carry them away, He guards the fold of God. Those whom guilty Eve had before infected, He now restores, fed with abundant milk at the bosom of the Church. By cultivating rustic hearts with mild conversations, a crop is produced from a briar by the bounty of Felix. The Saxon, a fierce nation, living as it were after the manner of wild beasts, when you, O sacred One, apply a remedy, the beast of prey resembles the sheep. About to remain with you through an age with the return of a hundred-fold, you fill the barns with the produce of an abundant harvest.

May this people, free from stain, be strengthened in your arms, and may you bear to the stars a pure pledge to God. May one crown be bestowed on you from on high gained from yourself, may another flourish gained from your people.

I guess I’d better post a poem since the day is nearly over! I’ve been busy…

It’s raining tonight, so I can’t see the evening star, but last night it was clear and the full moon was absolutely beautiful!

Evening Star
By Edgar Allan Poe

‘Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro’ the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
‘Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold—too cold for me—
There pass’d, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.

This was posted in another blog, and it made me think, so I swiped it and posted it in my journal.

Tuvalu
By Albert Goldbarth

O where are the snows of yesteryear?
—Villon, The Ballade of Lost Ladies

Most U.S. high school seniors have a poor grasp of history…57% of seniors could not perform at the basic level.
—USA Today coverage of a Department of Education report

Meteorologists will find interesting Vitruvius’ description of wind currents and, particularly, of the wind tower built at Athens by Andronicus of Cyrrha.
—Marshall Claggett, Greek Science in Antiquity

1.

But my students won’t—no, not if the wind
was the tiniest cry through needle-eye holes in the marble;
and not if it moaned through a hole as outsized as a human mouth
in agony; and not if the figure of bronze on top,
a great free-swiveling vane, was one of the gods
(and it was: Triton)… no, my students won’t be interested,
my self-sequestered bubble-boys and -girls, so stuck
in the gluey streets of immediacy: last week, one sophomore
couldn’t guess even the century of the American Civil War.
I’m the same with my wedding anniversary. Not one of us
is guiltless in this, “history” being synonymous
with “fuel”—and the present requiring constant motion.
Even subatomic condiments or rabbit-tracks or underwears—whatever
names the physics whizzes squeeze out of their brains these days—smash
into one another in enabling ways that newly recombine themselves,
although obliteration of their old selves is the price of this;
the music at the quarky heart of things is elegiac.
Now we can’t walk on the moon without a valley
of mummies dissolving into fine Egyptian powder; can’t
remarry without a fist of coal millennia old
unloosing itself as a one-hour rose of fire. When Pliny
the Younger reported his uncle’s death at Pompeii, he added:
“These details are not important enough for history; you
will hear them without a true intention of saving them.” He knew:
indifference buries us as surely as volcano ash.

2.

Tuvalu is starting to sink, that nation (population
about 10,000) housed for uncountable generations on nine atolls
600 miles north of Fiji—sinking, inches even as I write this.
Even now, the hungry licking of Pacific waves is coveting
the tava crops; and even now, “the places that were playgrounds
when we were children have disappeared”—Koloa Talake,
Tuvalu elder. “So eventually, in 50 years or so, the islands
will disappear. And the people there will also disappear,
along with their land.” Then who will think to sing the praises
of the maidens and their dances of the coral-dragons’ mating,
or record the words of the dying on “the final wings,” those plaques
of scalloped shell? Who will remember the taste, or even
the idea, of tava? Every year, the World Memory Championship
is held in London (America’s version is called the Memoriad);
the reigning heroes strut their mental stuff. Scott Hagwood
of Fayetteville, North Carolina, can exactly recall
“the order of a full deck of cards,” and “a software engineer
from Alpharetta, Georgia” can reel off “a thousand-digit number
to the eighty-eighth place” *—but I have doubts
that we can pile sandbags of retention in a heap enough
to stop, or even slow, the slow erasure of the waters
as they seep across Tuvalu. And “Pompeii”—the word itself now
is a flake of ash. “Charlemagne”…”Caravaggio”…”Sojourner Truth”…
The ocean giveth; it taketh away.
O, where are the shores of yesteryear?

* 7695904900492977462841609669633321586330959054454837496737084410015166758447512670720827

3.

On Sixth in Austin, Texas, there’s a combo bookstore (mystery, sci-fi)
which says (by way of this duality) how, for all of the lollapalooza kaboom
in inventing the future, there’s an equal urge to reconstruct
and solve the past. It’s what detective novels do: they fuss at what
took place; the least case—say, the rub-out of a cheeseball poolhall hustler
and his ho’—is still commemorative. Now tell me who
in 2002 will raise a small memorial to Fanny Burney’s September 30th, 1811
mastectomy: with only “one wine cordial” for her anaesthesia, she endured
“the most torturing pain. I felt the knife rackling against the breast bone
—scraping it! cutting against the grain, attom after attom” until
“the air rushed into those delicate parts, and felt like a mass
of minute but sharp & forked poniards.” This is the same one air
(well, duh: there only is one air, in its omniamoebic capacity) that
stroked the offered ankles of the lovers as they jutted
from a blanket on the sands the first night Coney Island opened;
is the air that bore the seeds of the London conflagration
Pepys reported: “So, with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned
with a shower of Firedrops.” Eventually the fire “was one entire
arch of above a mile long.” Six hundred years ago. Now who
will weep, as Pepys did? For a while along the coast near Pompeii,
“the wind was full in my uncle’s favor”—and Pliny the Elder
docked his ship. Already, the air was scalding char.
Elsewhere, dewy. Elsewhere, enraged. That wind
is our wind, as surely as it was Caesar’s, Mahatma Gandhi’s, Joan of Arc’s.
It won’t stop. Only we stop.

I read this in Women’s Work, after first discovering Louise Bogan at americanpoems.com. I like her.

Evening in the Sanitarium
By Louise Bogan

The free evening fades, outside the windows fastened with decorative iron grilles.
The lamps are lighted; the shades drawn; the nurses are watching a little.
It is the hour of the complicated knitting on the safe bone needles; of the games of anagrams and bridge;
The deadly game of chess; the book held up like a mask.

The period of the wildest weeping, the fiercest delusion, is over.
The women rest their tired half-healed hearts; they are almost well.
Some of them will stay almost well always: the blunt-faced woman whose thinking dissolved
Under academic discipline; the manic-depressive girl
Now leveling off; one paranoiac afflicted with jealousy.
Another with persecution. Some alleviation has been possible.

O fortunate bride, who never again will become elated after childbirth!
O lucky older wife, who has been cured of feeling unwanted!
To the suburban railway station you will return, return,
To meet forever Jim home on the 5:35.
You will be again as normal and selfish and heartless as anybody else.

There is life left: the piano says it with its octave smile.
The soft carpets pad the thump and splinter of the suicide to be.
Everything will be splendid: the grandmother will not drink habitually.
The fruit salad will bloom on the plate like a bouquet
And the garden produce the blue-ribbon aquilegia.

Time for a horribly depressing ESVM! Yay.

Ashes of Life
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
   Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
   Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;
   This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through,—
   There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbors knock and borrow,
   And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
   There’s this little street and this little house.

I finished The Eyre Affair last night (I started it Sunday afternoon) and it was fantastic!!! I can’t recommend it highly enough. I have three words: Edward Fairfax Rochester. *swoon* As soon as Heather is done with Lost in a Good Book (finish it SOON! *whine whine*) I’m going to start that. Anyway, this poem was referenced in The Eyre Affair so I thought I’d post it…

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

I was going to start reading Dickens, but my book hasn’t arrived at the library yet, and Heather lent me The Eyre Affair last night (I’m a little over 1/4 through it), so Dickens may be put on hold for a bit. I thought I’d post LMA’s poem about a character from The Old Curiosity Shop, though.

Little Nell
By Louisa May Alcott

“For she was dead—dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead,
and there upon her little bed she lay. The solemn silence was no
marvel now; never was sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from
trace of pain, so fair to look upon, she seemed a creature fresh from
the hand of God waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived
and suffered death.”—The Old Curiosity Shop

Gleaming through the silent church-yard,
Winter sunlight seemed to shed
Golden shadows like soft blessings
O’er a quiet little bed,

Where a pale face lay unheeding
Tender tears that o’er it fell;
No sorrow now could touch the heart
Of gentle little Nell.

Ah, with what silent patient strength
The frail form lying there
Had borne its heavy load of grief,
Of loneliness and care.

Now, earthly burdens were laid down,
And on the meek young face
There shone a holier loveliness
Than childhood’s simple grace.

Beset with sorrow, pain and fear,
Tempted by want and sin,
With none to guide or counsel her
But the brave child-heart within.

Strong in her fearless, faithful love,
Devoted to the last,
Unfaltering through gloom and gleam
The little wanderer passed.

Hand in hand they journeyed on
Through pathways strange and wild,
The gray-haired, feeble, sin-bowed man
Led by the noble child.

So through the world’s dark ways she passed,
Till o’er the church-yard sod,
To the quiet spot where they found rest,
Those little feet had trod.

To that last resting-place on earth
Kind voices bid her come,
There her long wanderings found an end,
And weary Nell a home.

A home whose light and joy she was,
Though on her spirit lay
A solemn sense of coming change,
That deepened day by day.

There in the church-yard, tenderly,
Through quiet summer hours,
Above the poor neglected graves
She planted fragrant flowers.

The dim aisles of the ruined church
Echoed the child’s light tread,
And flickering sunbeams thro’ the leaves
Shone on her as she read.

And here where a holy silence dwelt,
And golden shadows fell,
When Death’s mild face had looked on her,
They laid dear happy Nell.

Long had she wandered o’er the earth,
One hand to the old man given,
By the other angels led her on
Up a sunlit path to Heaven.

Oh! “patient, loving, noble Nell,”
Like light from sunset skies,
The beauty of thy sinless life
Upon the dark world lies.

On thy sad story, gentle child,
Dim eyes will often dwell,
And loving hearts will cherish long
The memory of Nell.

This is such a wonderful maternal poem. It makes me think of my fabulous mother and my dear friend Jennifer, whose child (and eventually other children) are so blessed to have a mother like her.

In Reference to Her Children, 23 June, 1659
By Anne Bradstreet

I had eight birds hatched in one nest,
Four cocks there were, and hens the rest.
I nursed them up with pain and care,
Nor cost, nor labour did I spare,
Till at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the trees, and learned to sing;
Chief of the brood then took his flight
To regions far and left me quite.
My mournful chirps I after send,
Till he return, or I do end:
Leave not thy nest, thy dam and sire,
Fly back and sing amidst this choir.
My second bird did take her flight,
And with her mate flew out of sight;
Southward they both their course did bend,
And seasons twain they there did spend,
Till after blown by southern gales,
They norward steered with filled sails.
A prettier bird was no where seen,
Along the beach among the treen.
I have a third of colour white,
On whom I placed no small delight;
Coupled with mate loving and true,
Hath also bid her dam adieu;
And where Aurora first appears,
She now hath perched to spend her years.
One to the academy flew
To chat among that learned crew;
Ambition moves still in his breast
That he might chant above the rest
Striving for more than to do well,
That nightingales he might excel.
My fifth, whose down is yet scarce gone,
Is ‘mongst the shrubs and bushes flown,
And as his wings increase in strength,
On higher boughs he’ll perch at length.
My other three still with me nest,
Until they’re grown, then as the rest,
Or here or there they’ll take their flight,
As is ordained, so shall they light.
If birds could weep, then would my tears
Let others know what are my fears
Lest this my brood some harm should catch,
And be surprised for want of watch,
Whilst pecking corn and void of care,
They fall un’wares in fowler’s snare,
Or whilst on trees they sit and sing,
Some untoward boy at them do fling,
Or whilst allured with bell and glass,
The net be spread, and caught, alas.
Or lest by lime-twigs they be foiled,
Or by some greedy hawks be spoiled.
O would my young, ye saw my breast,
And knew what thoughts there sadly rest,
Great was my pain when I you fed,
Long did I keep you soft and warm,
And with my wings kept off all harm,
My cares are more and fears than ever,
My throbs such now as ‘fore were never.
Alas, my birds, you wisdom want,
Of perils you are ignorant;
Oft times in grass, on trees, in flight,
Sore accidents on you may light.
O to your safety have an eye,
So happy may you live and die.
Meanwhile my days in tunes I’ll spend,
Till my weak lays with me shall end.
In shady woods I’ll sit and sing,
And things that past to mind I’ll bring.
Once young and pleasant, as are you,
But former toys (no joys) adieu.
My age I will not once lament,
But sing, my time so near is spent.
And from the top bough take my flight
Into a country beyond sight,
Where old ones instantly grow young,
And there with seraphims set song;
No seasons cold, nor storms they see;
But spring lasts to eternity.
When each of you shall in your nest
Among your young ones take your rest,
In chirping language, oft them tell,
You had a dam that loved you well,
That did what could be done for young,
And nursed you up till you were strong,
And ‘fore she once would let you fly,
She showed you joy and misery;
Taught what was good, and what was ill,
What would save life, and what would kill.
Thus gone, amongst you I may live,
And dead, yet speak, and counsel give:
Farewell, my birds, farewell adieu,
I happy am, if well with you.

I’ve really liked the few Elinor Wylie poems I’ve read. She’ll have to be next on my list of poets of whom I need to read more!

Let No Charitable Hope
By Elinor Wylie

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope;
I am in nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

I recently came across this in a selection of Dickinson’s poems, and I’d never read it before. I think it’s my favorite one of hers.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

I love this poem! I read it to my mother when I was visiting and she really enjoyed it, too.

For Mohammed on the Mountain
By Naomi Shihab Nye

1.

Uncle Mohammed, you mystery, you distant secretive face,
lately you travel across the ocean and tap me on my shoulder
and say “See?” And I think I know what you are talking about,
though we have never talked, though you have never traveled anywhere
in twenty-five years, or anywhere anyone knows about.
Since my childhood, you were the one I cared for,
you of all the uncles, the elder brother of the family.
I’d pump my father, “But why did he go to the mountain?
What happened to him?” and my father, in his usual quiet way,
would shrug and say, “Who knows?”
All I knew was you packed up, you moved to the mountain,
you would not come down.
This fascinated me: How does he get food? Who does he talk to?
What does he do all day?
In grade school my friends had uncles who rode motorcycles,
who cooked steaks outdoors or paid for movies
I preferred you, in all your silence.
In my mind you were like a god, living close to clouds,
fearless and strong, with no one to sing you to sleep.
And I wanted to know you, to touch hands, to have you look at me
and recognize your blood, a small offspring
who did not find you in the least bit nuts.

2.

I wonder how much news you know. That Naomi, your sister
for whom I was partially named, Is dead.
That one brother shot himself “by mistake”—
that your brothers Izzat and Mufli have twenty-two
children already marrying each other.
That my father edits one of the largest newspapers in America
but keeps an Arabic inscription above his door, Ahlan Wa Sahlan,
a door you will never enter.

We came to your country, Uncle, we lived there a year
among sheep and stones, camels and fragrant oils,
and you would not come down to see us.
I think that hurt my father, though he never said so.
It hurt me, scanning the mountains for sight of your hut,
quizzing the relative and learning nothing.
Are you angry with us? Do you think my father forgot you
when he packed his satchel and boarded the ship?
Believe me, Uncle, my father is closer to you
thank you know. When he tends plants,
he walks slowly. His steps sing of the hills.
And when he stirs the thick coffee and grinds the cardamom seed
you think he feels like an American?
You think he forgets to call to prayer?

Oh Uncle, forgive me, how long is your beard?

3.

Maybe you had other reasons.
Maybe you didn’t go up the mountain
because you were angry.
This is what I ma learning, the voice I hear
when I wake at 3 a.m.
It says, Teach me how little I need to live
and I can’t tell if it is me talking, or you,
or the walls of the room. How little, how little,
and the world jokes and says, how much.
Money, events, ambitions, plans, oh Uncle,
I have made myself a quiet place in the swirl.
I think you would like it.
Yesterday I learned how many shavings of wood the knife discards
to leave one smoothly whittled spoon.
Today I read angles of light through the window,
first they touch the floor, then the bed,
till everything is luminous, curtains flung wide.
As for friends, they are fewer and dearer,
and the ones who remain seem also to be climbing mountains
in various ways, though we dreams we will meet at the top.
Will you be there?
Gazing out over valleys and olive orchards,
telling us sit, sit
you expected us all along.

I still haven’t gotten around to reading my book of Amy Lowell’s poems, but I had come across this one a while ago. I think she’s amazing!

Patterns
By Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon—
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

This was also quoted in LMA’s Hospital Sketches. I need to be a little busy bee at work!

Against Idleness and Mischief
SONG XX IN DIVINE SONGS FOR CHILDREN
By Isaac Watts

How doth the little busy Bee
Improve each shining Hour,
And gather Honey all the day
From every opening Flower!

How skilfully she builds her Cell!
How neat she spreads the Wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet Food she makes.

In Works of Labour or of Skill
I would be busy too:
For Satan finds some Mischief still
For idle Hands to do.

In Books, or Work, or healthful Play
Let my first Years be past,
That I may give for every Day
Some good Account at last.

On the plane yesterday I read Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches. She quoted a line from this poem, so I thought I’d post the whole thing. Here’s what I thought about Hospital Sketches.

The Good-Morrow
By John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T’was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir’d, and got, t’was but a dreame of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

Marriage Morning
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Light, so low upon earth,
   You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
   All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
   Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay’d to be kind,
   Meadows in which we met!

Light, so low in the vale
   You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
   And you are his morning star.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
   By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart,
   Into my heart and my blood!

Heart, are you great enough
   For a love that never tires?
O’ heart, are you great enough for love?
   I have heard of thorns and briers,
Over the meadow and stiles,
   Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.

My sister got married today, so I thought I’d post an appropriate poem.

How Do I Love Thee?
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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

I just finished reading A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott, and this poem kind of relates. I don’t think the narrator is the “bad guy” like Tempest, but I think some of the sentiments could be the same, despite past actions.

A Dream Within a Dream
By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Definitely time for another ESVM!

Thursday
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, yes, but what
Is that to me?

Since the weather is still crappy and cold and there’s snow everywhere, I’m going to remain in denial and post a lovely spring-like children’s poem.

Introduction
FROM SONGS OF INNOCENCE
By William Blake

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

“Pipe a song about a lamb!”
So I piped with merry cheer.
“Piper, pipe that song again.”
So I piped: he wept to hear.

“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer.”
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

“Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.”
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

I read this poem, though I sometimes don’t like the rambling style, I was intrigued by the extensive vocabulary. It’s rare I actually have to look up a word, but insouciance got me. I put in links to some of the less commonly used words, but if you already know what they mean, more power to you!

The Field Pansy
By Amy Clampitt

Yesterday, just before the first frost of the season,
I discovered a violet in bloom on the lawn—a white one,
with a mesh of faint purple pencil marks above the hollow
at the throat, where the petals join: an irregular, a waif,
out of sync with the ubiquity of the asters of New England,

or indeed with the johnny-jump-ups I stopped to look at,
last week, in a plot by the sidewalk: weedily prolific
common garden perennial whose lineage goes back to
the bi- or tri-colored native field pansy of Europe:
ancestor of the cloned ocher and aubergine, the cream-white,

the masked motley, the immaculate lilac-blue of the pansies
that thrive in the tended winter plots of tidewater Virginia,
where in spring the cutover fields at the timber’s edge,
away from the boxwood and magnolia alleys, are populous
with an indigenous, white, just faintly suffused-with-violet

first cousin: a link with what, among the hollows of the
great dunes of Holland, out of reach of the slide and hurl
of the North Sea breakers, I found growing a summer ago—a
field pansy tinged not violet but pink, sometimes approaching
the hue of the bell of a foxglove: a gathering, a proliferation

on a scale that, for all its unobtrusiveness, seems to be
worldwide, of what I don’t know how to read except as an
urge to give pleasure: a scale that may, for all our fazed
dubiety, indeed be universal. I know I’m leaving something out
when I write of this omnipresence of something like eagerness,

this gushing insouciance that appears at the same time capable
of an all but infinite particularity: sedulous, patient, though
in the end (so far as anyone can see) without consequence.
What is consequence? What difference to the minutiae
of that seeming inconsequence that’s called beauty

add up to? Life was hard in the hinterland, where spring arrived
with a gush of violets, sky-blue out of the ground of the woodlot,
but where a woman was praised by others of her sex for being
Practical, and by men not at all, other than in a slow reddening
about the neck, a callowly surreptitious wolf-whistle: where the mode

was stoic, and embarrassment stood in the way of affect:
a mother having been alarmingly seen in tears, once only
we brought her a fistful of johnny-jump-ups from the garden,
“because you were crying”—and saw we’d done the wrong thing.

I just read this poem in Women’s Work yesterday and I think it’s awesome!

In Mind
By Denise Levertov

There’s in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured, and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation—
                     but she has
no imagination.
                       And there’s a girl
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs—

but she is not kind.

This afternoon I loafed around the house with the fam. My mom had to iron my dad’s shirts, so I entertained her by reading poetry. I was certainly not mad at her today, but this poem reminded me of when I was a child and decided everyone hated me so I “ran away.” I hid in the woods for about half an hour and came back after no one came looking for me. (ha!) The truth is that my mother is amazing and she really “knows me so well.”

Mad
By Naomi Shihab Nye

I got mad at my mother
so I flew to the moon.
I could still see our house
so little in the distance
with its pointed roof.
My mother stood in the front yard
like a pin dot
searching for me.
She looked left and right for me.
She looked deep and far.
Then I whistled and she tipped her head.
It gets cold at night on the moon.
My mother sent up a silver thread
for me to slide down on.
She knows me so well.
She knows I like silver.

Here’s a silly little poem before I head off to the airport!

Batty
By Shel Silverstein

The baby bat
Screamed out in fright,
“Turn on the dark,
I’m afraid of the light.”

I haven’t posted any Emily Dickinson in quite a while.

I measure every grief I meet
By Emily Dickinson

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once
And only nails the eyes.

There’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call ‘despair,’
There’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross
Of those that stand alone
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.

I just came across this poem online.

The Old Maid
By Sara Teasdale

I saw her in a Broadway car,
The woman I might grow to be;
I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me.
Her hair was dull and drew no light,
And yet its color was as mine;
Her eyes were strangely like my eyes,
Tho’ love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin,
Hungry for love that never came;
Her soul was frozen in the dark,
Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.

I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me—
His eyes were magic to defy
The woman I shall never be.

Here is a happy love poem in honor of my wonderful parents and awesome aunt and uncle, who share the same wedding anniversary—today, of course!

My Life is a Bowl
By May Riley Smith

My life is a bowl which is mine to brim
          With loveliness old and new.
So I fill its clay from stem to rim
          With you, dear heart,
                     With you.

My life is a pool which can only hold
          One star and a glimpse of blue.
But the blue and the little lamp of gold
          Are you, dear heart,
                     Are you.

My life is a homing bird that flies
          Through the starry dusk and dew
Home to the heaven of your true eyes,
          Home, dear heart,
                     To you.

I think it’s time for another Naomi Shihab Nye poem.

Stain
By Naomi Shihab Nye

She scrubbed as hard as she could with a stone.
Dipping the cloth, twisting the cloth.
She knew the cloth much better than most,
having stitched its vines of delicate birds.

The red, the blue, the purple beaks.
A tiny bird with head held high.
A second bird with fanning wings.
Her fingers felt the folded hem.

The water in her pan was cool.
She stood outside by the lemon tree.
Children chattered around her there.
She told the children, “Take care! Take care!”

What would she think of the world today?
She died when she was one hundred and six.
So many stains would never come out.
She stared at the sky, the darkening rim.

She called out to the children, “Come in! Come in!”
She stood on the roof, tears on her face.
What was the thing she never gave up?
The simple love of her difficult place.