Poem of the Day

We’re going to have a bit of a departure today. I came across this poem here and was highly amused. Since the text of it isn’t online, I’m sharing the mp3 file that is publicly available. Check out Michael Arnzen’s book Rigormarole: Zombie Poems!

So without further ado: Why Zombies Lumber by Michael Arnzen

Happy Halloween!

ESVM was in the crossword puzzle today so I took that as a sign that I should post one of her poems.

Loving you less than life, a little less
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all.
For there is that about you in this light—
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain—
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

My aunt and I were talking about Pablo Neruda today so here’s one from him. I found the text here and the original Spanish is included there if you’re interested. (I don’t speak or read Spanish so it was lost on me.)

If You Forget Me (Si Tu Me Olvidas)
By Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists:
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

I’ve never read any poetry by C.S. Lewis, until I came across this one.

Sonnet
By C.S. Lewis

The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall
About a dreaming garden still and sweet,
I hear the unseen bats above me bleat
Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,
And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.
Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet
For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,
Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall
With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear
With magic sponge can wipe away an hour
Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,
Why could a man not loiter in that bower
Until a thousand painless cycles wore,
And then—what if it held him evermore?

This one is courtesy of a reader.

Slim Cunning Hands
By Walter de la Mare

Slim cunning hands at rest, and cozening eyes—
Under this stone one loved too wildly lies;
How false she was, no granite could declare;
     Nor all earth’s flowers, how fair.

The only poem I’ve posted (or read) by Edwin Arlington Robinson is Richard Cory (thanks to Simon and Garfunkel), but I just came across some of his sonnets, so I thought I’d share one.

Dear Friends
By Edwin Arlington Robinson

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some improfitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores.
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

Fie, fickle woman!

At the Altar-Rail
By Thomas Hardy

“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom,
And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own
It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife—
‘Twas foolish perhaps!—to forsake the ways
Of the flaring town for a farmer’s life.
She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
It’s sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
What I really am you have never gleaned;
I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.”

Back to the sonnets…

Hope and Fear
By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Beneath the shadow of dawn’s aërial cope,
With eyes enkindled as the sun’s own sphere,
Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer
Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope
Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope,
And makes for joy the very darkness dear
That gives her wide wings play; nor dreams that fear
At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope.
Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn,
May truth first purge her eyesight to discern
What, once being known, leaves time no power to appall;
Till yoiuth at last, ere yet youth be not, learn
The kind wise word that falls from years that fall–
“Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.”

I think it’s about time for another one from Adrienne Rich.

Versailles
PETIT TRIANON
By Adrienne Rich

Merely the landscape of a vanished whim,
An artifice that lasts beyond the wish:
The grotto by the pond, the gulping fish
That round and round pretended islands to swim,
The creamery abandoned to its doves,
The empty shrine the guidebooks say is love’s.

What wind can bleaken this, what weather chasten
Those balustrades of stone, that sky stone-pale?
A fountain triton idly soaks his tail
In the last puddle of a drying basin;
A leisure that no human will can hasten
Drips from the hollow of his lifted shell.

When we were younger gardens were for games,
But now across the sungilt lawn of kings
We drift, consulting catalogues for names
Of postured gods: the cry of closing rings
For us and for the couples in the wood
And all good children who are all too good.

O children, next year, children, you will play
With only half your hearts; be wild today.
And lovers, take on long and fast embrace
Before the sun that tarnished queens goes down,
And evening finds you in a restless town
Where each has back his old restricted face.

I felt like something from poor Edgar and imagine my shock when I saw that I’d never posted this one…

The Bells
By Edgar Allan Poe

I

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells—
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now—now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—
Of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells—
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

I love the personification in this poem.

As I Walked Out One Evening
By W.H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ”Love has no ending.

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street.

“I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

“The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.”

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
“O let not Time deceive you
   You cannot conquer Time.

“In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

“In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

“Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

“O plunge your hands in water
   Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.”

“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

“Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
   And Jill goes down on her back.”

“O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.”

“O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
   With your crooked heart.”

It was late, late in the evening
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

I’m digging the sonnets this week!

“They Said”
By Lucy Larcom

They said of her, “She never can have felt
The sorrows that our deeper natures feel”:
They said, “Her placid lips have never spelt
Hard lessons taught by Pain; her eyes reveal
No passionate yearning, no perplexed appeal
To other eyes. Love and her heart have dealt
With her but lightly.”—When the Pilgrims dwelt
First on these shores, lest savage hands should steal
To precious graves with desecrating tread,
The burial-field was with the ploughshare crossed
And there the maize her silken tresses tossed.
With thanks those Pilgrims ate their bitter bread,
While peaceful harvests hid what they had lost.
—What if her smiles concealed from you her dead?

I read about William Cullen Bryant somewhere recently and I can’t remember where. I searched for his poems and this one seemed appropriate, though we don’t experience many autumnal changes here in Texas.

October
By William Cullen Bryant

Aye, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And sons grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, ‘mid bowers and brooks,
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

I have to admit this one made me laugh…

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
By William Shakespeare

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Having just left my dear Jennifer (and missing her terribly already!), I thought I’d post a poem by our favorite poet…

If I should learn, in some quite casual way
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man, who happened to be you,
At noon today had happened to be killed—
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face;
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

My A/C has been “temperamental” for the last month or so. It runs and runs and runs, but the apartment stays at about 85F, which is quite uncomfortable for me, not to mention my obscene electric bill last month. It stopped working last Monday, and I spoke to the management twice before leaving town on Thursday. Imagine my dismay when I got home tonight and it was still hot. This poem immediately came to mind. Here’s to another sleepless night! (RAH!)

It’s Hot
By Shel Silverstein

It’s hot!
I can’t get cool,
I’ve drunk a quart of lemonade.
I think I’ll take my shoes off
And sit around in the shade.

It’s hot!
My back is sticky,
The sweat rolls down my chin.
I think I’ll take my clothes off
And sit around in my skin.

It’s hot!
I’ve tried with ‘lectric fans,
And pools and ice cream cones.
I think I’ll take my skin off
And sit around in my bones.

It’s still hot!

I’m going to a Renaissance Festival today and the theme this year is Henry VIII. I thought I’d see if I could find a poem about him. Little did I know that he actually wrote poetry. I don’t think he was very good, but I’m amused enough that I’m posting a selection.

Green grows the holly
By Henry VIII, King of England

Green grows the holly.
So does the ivy.
Though winter’s blasts blow never so high,
Green grows the holly.

As the holly grows green
And never changes hue,
So I am—ever have been—
unto my lady true.

As the holly grows green
With ivy all alone,
When flowers can not be seen
And greenwood leaves be gone.

Now unto my lady
Promise to her I make:
From all other, only
to her, I me betake.

Adieu, my own lady.
Adieu, my special
Who hath my heart truly,
Be sure, and ever shall.

I’ve started rereading Rebecca and this poem is in the book given by Rebecca to Maxim and is often read.

The Hound of Heaven
By Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
   Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
      Up vistaed hopes I sped;
      And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
      But with unhurrying chase,
      And unperturbéd pace,
   Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
      They beat—and a Voice beat
      More instant than the Feet—
   ”All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

   I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
   Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
      Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
   The gust of His approach would clash it to:
   Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
   And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
   Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
      Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
   With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
      From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
   I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
   Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
   Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
      But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
   The long savannahs of the blue;
      Or whether, Thunder-driven,
   They clanged his chariot ‘thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—
   Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
      Still with unhurrying chase,
      And unperturbéd pace,
   Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
      Came on the following Feet,
      And a Voice above their beat—
   ”Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”

I sought no more that after which I strayed
   In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children’s eyes
   Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
   With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
“Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share
With me” (said I) “your delicate fellowship;
   Let me greet you lip to lip,
   Let me twine you with caresses,
      Wantoning
   With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,
      Banqueting
   With her in her wind-walled palace,
   Underneath her azured dais,
   Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
      From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.”
      So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.
   I knew all the swift importings
   On the wilful face of skies;
   I knew how the clouds arise
   Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;
      All that’s born or dies
   Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
   With them joyed and was bereaven.
   I was heavy with the even,
   When she lit her glimmering tapers
   Round the day’s dead sanctities.
   I laughed in the morning’s eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
   Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
   I laid my own to beat,
   And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
   These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
   Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
   The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
      My thirsting mouth.
      Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
      With unperturbèd pace,
   Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
      And past those noised Feet
      A voice comes yet more fleet—
   ”Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.”

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
      And smitten me to my knee;
   I am defenceless utterly.
   I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
   I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
   Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
   Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
   Ah! must—
   Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou can’st limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
   From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
   Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpséd turrets slowly wash again.
   But not ere him who summoneth
   I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields
   Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
   Be dunged with rotten death?

      Now of that long pursuit
      Comes on at hand the bruit;
   That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
      ”And is thy earth so marred,
      Shattered in shard on shard?
   Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
   Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said),
“And human love needs human meriting:
      How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
      Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
      Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
      Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
      All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
      Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”
   Halts by me that footfall:
   Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
   ”Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
   I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

I’m going out of town today so the PotD may appear over the next few days, or it may not.

Aftermath
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
   And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
   And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
   Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
   In the silence and the gloom.

This was quoted in A Prayer for Owen Meany.

The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

I was just discussing my dear Shelley with a friend so I thought I’d post one of his poems.

One Word Is Too Often Profaned
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

One word is too often profaned
   For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
   For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
   For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
   Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
   But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
   And the heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
   Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
   From the sphere of our sorrow?

I’m currently reading A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It’s about a boy whose best friend (Owen Meany) accidentally kills his mother by hitting a foul ball in Little League. (Of course there’s more to it than that, being an Irving novel, but let’s keep it simple for now.) Anyway, I thought I’d post this poem, not because it has anything to do with the book, but because the mother/son relationship made me think of it.

To My Mother
By Wendell Berry

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

My poetry file is getting dangerously low again. I poached this one from Poetry Daily.

Autumn Passage
By Elizabeth Alexander

On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.

On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”

“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,

September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,

glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates

even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns

florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.

You never know where you’ll come across a poetry reference. This one was quoted in the NY Times Thursday crossword puzzle.

The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
By William Butler Yeats

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There’s not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

Here’s another one mentioned in Wives and Daughters.

The Prisoner of Chillon
By George Gordon, Lord Byron

My hair is grey, but not with years,
   Nor grew it white
   In a single night,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow’d, though not with toil,
   But rusted with a vile repose,
   For they have been a dungeon’s spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann’d, and barr’d—forbidden fare;
But this was for my father’s faith
I suffer’d chains and courted death;
That father perish’d at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling place;
We were seven—who now are one,
   Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish’d as they had begun,
   Proud of Persecution’s rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal’d,
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;—
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.

   There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprison’d ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o’er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh’s meteor lamp:
And in each pillar there is a ring,
   And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,
   For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years—I cannot count them o’er,
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother droop’d and died,
And I lay living by his side.

   They chain’d us each to a column stone,
And we were three—yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other’s face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together—yet apart,
Fetter’d in hand, but join’d in heart,
‘Twas still some solace in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other’s speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,
   A grating sound, not full and free,
   As they of yore were wont to be:
   It might be fancy—but to me
They never sounded like our own.

   I was the eldest of the three
   And to uphold and cheer the rest
   I ought to do—and did my best—
And each did well in his degree.
   The youngest, whom my father loved,
Because our mother’s brow was given
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven—
   For him my soul was sorely moved:
And truly might it be distress’d
To see such bird in such a nest;
For he was beautiful as day—
   (When day was beautiful to me
   As to young eagles, being free)—
   A polar day, which will not see
A sunset till its summer’s gone,
   Its sleepless summer of long light,
The snow-clad offspring of the sun:
   And thus he was as pure and bright,
And in his natural spirit gay,
With tears for nought but others’ ills,
And then they flow’d like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe
Which he abhorr’d to view below.

   The other was as pure of mind,
But form’d to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which ‘gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish’d in the foremost rank
   With joy:—but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither’d with their clank,
   I saw it silently decline—
   And so perchance in sooth did mine:
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
   Had followed there the deer and wolf;
   To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter’d feet the worst of ills.

   Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement,
   Which round about the wave inthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay:
We heard it ripple night and day;
   Sounding o’er our heads it knock’d;
And I have felt the winter’s spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;
   And then the very rock hath rock’d,
   And I have felt it shake, unshock’d,
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.

   I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that ’twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter’s fare,
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captives’ tears
Have moisten’d many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother’s soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain’s side;
But why delay the truth?—he died.
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand—nor dead,—
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
He died—and they unlock’d his chain,
And scoop’d for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg’d them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine—it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer—
They coldly laugh’d—and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,
Such Murder’s fitting monument!

   But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherish’d since his natal hour,
His mother’s image in fair face
The infant love of all his race
His martyr’d father’s dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired—
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither’d on the stalk away.
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:
I’ve seen it rushing forth in blood,
I’ve seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I’ve seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors—this was woe
Unmix’d with such—but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender—kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow’s ray;
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright;
And not a word of murmur—not
A groan o’er his untimely lot,—
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence—lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting Nature’s feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listen’d, but I could not hear;
I call’d, for I was wild with fear;
I knew ’twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonishèd;
I call’d, and thought I heard a sound—
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rushed to him:—I found him not,
I only stirred in this black spot,
I only lived, I only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last, the sole, the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath—
My brothers—both had ceased to breathe:
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive—
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne’er be so.
   I know not why
   I could not die,
I had no earthly hope—but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.

   What next befell me then and there
   I know not well—I never knew—
First came the loss of light, and air,
   And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling—none—
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night—it was not day;
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness—without a place;
There were no stars, no earth, no time,
No check, no change, no good, no crime
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!
A light broke in upon my brain,—
   It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
   The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perch’d, as fond and tame,
   And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
   And seemed to say them all for me!
I never saw its like before,
I ne’er shall see its likeness more:
It seem’d like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon’s brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
   Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,
   Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in wingèd guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For—Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile—
I sometimes deem’d that it might be
My brother’s soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then ’twas mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown—
And left me twice so doubly lone,—
Lone as the corse within its shroud,
Lone as a solitary cloud,
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

   A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:—my broken chain
With links unfasten’d did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,
My brothers’ graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush’d heart felt blind and sick.
I made a footing in the wall,
   It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all,
   Who loved me in a human shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me:
No child, no sire, no kin had I,
No partner in my misery;
I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend
To my barr’d windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.

   I saw them—and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high—their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O’er channell’d rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall’d distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
   The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seem’d no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o’er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
   Of gentle breath and hue.
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem’d joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem’d to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled—and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o’er one we sought to save,—
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

   It might be months, or years, or days—
   I kept no count, I took no note—
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
   And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
   I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter’d or fetterless to be,
   I learn’d to love despair.
And thus when they appear’d at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made
And watch’d them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn’d to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.

This is another one I snaked from American Life in Poetry. I thought it appropriate since it’s still dark here.

Early in the Morning
By Li-Young Lee

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

I liked how this poem went in a direction I totally wasn’t expecting.

Sunflowers in a Field
By Daniel Anderson

Sunflowers in a field.
Goldfinches everywhere.
They gorge on seed. They rise
To rest along the power line, then fall
Like drizzled lemon drops, like lozenges
Of candied yellow light.
Two weeks a year, goldfinches
Gather on sunflowers here.
These evenings after supper,
You see them in the honey-soft glow
As if they’d trapped and somehow stored
The rapture of September’s sun.
You see goldfinches flicker
Among sunflower lanes,
Through mortal tides of light,
Through streams of apricot and chardonnay,
And you resolve to live
Your life with greater sympathy.
Sunflowers bowing their char black dials,
Their petals twist and writhe
Like fires, like silk coronas blazing west.
How inconceivable, then,
The pewter cold-front clouds,
The shabby settlement of crow and wren.
Though no one hears the oath,
You shall, you tell yourself,
Forgo deceit, increase the tithe.
Atone. Forgive. Embrace. You watch
Goldfinches and sunflowers both
Begin to fade. By subtle green degrees
They shed that bullion luster of the sun
Until the finches ricochet
Like flints among the drowsing flower heads.
Perhaps, as I have done,
You’ll pace the darkling half mile home,
Intent on picking up the telephone
To reconcile with long-lost friends.
You will apologize, concede.
You’ll vow to never, ever, ever let
Such distance grow again.
But then you reach your door and find
The day diminished to a thin blue rind
Of light above the township silhouette.
How nice a hot bath sounds.
Dessert. An herbal tea.
Perhaps you’ll read the Arts
And Leisure pages of The Daily News.
With every stair you climb
Sleep settles just a little more behind
The knees, beneath the shoulder blades.
The calls, you tell yourself,
Perhaps some other time.

Here’s another one by Adrienne Jones, from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place. Also, the new Mad Agnes CD, Revenants, is amazing!

Expedition
By Adrienne Jones

I am the undiscovered moon
that shows up as a shadow
against something bigger
and brigher.

My nonspecificness incites
your compassion, my
nonlinear orbit your
curiosity.

There is a vast liquid sea
of unknown composition
on my lighted side,
a crater on the dark
reflective side of some
colossal,
ancient impact.

No one lives here now.

It will take you a long time
standing by this alien harbour
to piece together my past,
to assign meaning
to my components.

You will lovingly send out probes with names
on suicide missions
to send back data
that will take years
to process.

You will have to call in
an emergency crew for repairs
when things break down.

You may or may not
find water.

What you will eventually find,
if you are faithful,
is that I am not only the moon
but also the planet,
habitable
warm
and dizzyingly ringed.
My oceans teem
with finny swimmers
and birds perform
the seldom seen dance
of the red dawn.

You’ll step round the sacred labyrinth
that turns back on itself.
Leave your token at the center
and I will walk back with you
on the path in between.