Poem of the Day

Today’s selection was easy, given that this was already in my file (courtesy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry of course).

New Year’s Eve
By Thomas Hardy

‘I have finished another year,’ said God,
     ’In grey, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
     And let the last sun down.’

     ’And what’s the good of it?’ I said.
‘What reasons made you call
From formless void this earth we tread,
When nine-and-ninety can be read
     Why nought should be at all?

‘Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, “who in
     This tabernacle groan”—
If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
     If he had never known!’

Then he: ‘My labours—logicless—
     You may explain; not I:
Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
That I evolved a Consciousness
     To ask for reasons why.

‘Strange that ephemeral creatures who
     By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew,
     Or made provision for!’

He sank to raptness as of yore,
     And opening New Year’s Day
Wove it by rote as theretofore,
And went on working evermore
     In his unweeting way.

Current Tea: lemon chiffon rooibos (rooibos, a South African herbal tisane, with lemongrass, marigold flowers, and creamy lemon flavor)

Whew! I’m back in Austin, and my time with family and friends was not conducive to spending much time online. I had a great time, though, and I hope everyone else’s holidays are blessed, as well. Though it’s neither bleak, nor really midwinter here in Austin, we sang this in church this morning, so I thought I’d post it.

In the Bleak Midwinter
By Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Current Tea: ginger lime rooibos

The rest of my family is arriving momentarily so here’s one I’ll throw up in a hurry, from (of course) The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

What the Chairman Told Tom
By Basil Bunting

Poetry? It’s a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It’s not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.

Art, that’s opera; or repertory—
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week—
married, aren’t you?—
you’ve got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says it’s poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I’m an accountant.

They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it’s unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They’re Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.

Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.

I’ve been busy with family in NJ and when I finally tried to post a poem yesterday (using my mom’s computer), the slowness and myriad malfunctions exceeded my patience level so I gave up and went to bed. Things seem to be going better today, so here’s another from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. This is so true for Texas, because I see rosemary growing all over the place at all times of year. In NJ, however, I don’t see any peeking out from under the snow. P.S. You can read more about Cindy Huyser at Dos Gatos Press.

Rosemary
By Cindy Huyser

She doesn’t seem to mind December.
Last week, despite the cold,
each branch burst
into tens of lavender blows

that brought the bees in droves.
They hover, light and fly
back legs packed saddlebags
of pale pollen, heather gray.

She didn’t seem to mind the searing days
of summer, either. Fragrant blades
made stiff and prickly by the heat,
withered a bit, but stayed.

Then came the autumn rains.
She drank deep, and swelled,
then seduced us
with the glory of her smell.

I’ve never actually read All the King’s Men, though it’s on my list. I came across this poem in (surprise!) The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Bearded Oaks
By Robert Penn Warren

The oaks, how subtle and marine,
Barded, and all the layered light
Above them swims; and thus the scene,
Recessed, awaits the positive night.

So, waiting, we in the grass now lie
Beneath the languorous tread of light:
The grasses, kelp-like, satisfy
The nameless motions of the air.

Upon the floor of light, and time,
Unmurmuring, of polyp made,
We rest; we are, as light withdraws,
Twin atolls on a shelf of shade.

Ages to our construction went,
Dim architecture, hour by hour:
And violence, forgot now, lent
The present stillness all its power.

The storm of noon above us rolled,
Of light and fury, furious gold,
The long drag troubling us, the depth:
Dark is unrocking, unrippling, still.

Passion and slaughter, ruth, decay
Descend, minutely whispering down,
Silted down swaying streams, to lay
Foundation for our voicelessness.

All our debate is voiceless here,
As all our rage, the rage of stone;
If hope is hopeless, then fearless fear,
And history is thus undone.

Our feet once wrought the hollow street
With echo when the lamps were dead
At windows, once our headlight glare
Disturbed the doe that, leaping, fled.

I do not love you less that now
The caged heart makes iron stroke,
Or less that all that light once gave
The graduate dark should now revoke.

We live in time so little time
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour’s term
To practice for eternity.

I love the imagery in this poem.

Medusa
By Louise Bogan

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.

I’m off to NJ for the holidays, so we’ll see if I manage to keep the PotD going. I’m optimistic.

The Return
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Earth does not understand her child,
   Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
   To the still woods, to fling him down.

Earth cannot count the sons she bore:
   The wounded lynx, the wounded man
Come trailing blood unto her door;
   She shelters both as best she can.

But she is early up and out,
   To trim the year or strip its bones;
She has no time to stand about
   Talking of him in undertones

Who has no aim but to forget
   Be left in peace, be lying thus
For days, for years, for centuries yet,
   Unshaven and anonymous;

Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,
   Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:
   Comfort that does not comprehend.

I could wait until it snows here in Austin, but what’s the fun in that? This is another poem from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. I couldn’t find a website for Linda Banks, but she is in the Poetry Society of Texas. My aunt read this aloud yesterday, to the high amusement of all of us (even my uncle!). Texans are hilarious (as are generalizations)!

Eighteen Days on the Ground
By Linda Banks

Can it be more than twenty years and still they speak
of snow that stayed so long upon the ground?
Eighteen days, they say, as if it just occurred.
Any snow at all is rare in northeast Texas.
When it comes, it comes and goes so quickly
that it seems a dream. But not that year, in 1983.
It came and stayed, and froze into a dirty ice
that gripped imagination in a vise from which
they could not free themselves. Only tongues
thawed and said over and over how long
it stayed. Folks tottered on the frozen ground
as they walked around discussing snow
with neighbors just as shocked as they.
My parents had a picture window six feet wide
through which they stared for eighteen days
as if they watched a marathon of old sitcoms.
I suppose it was the wonder of it all, one-time
phenomenon, that made this story last. I smile
at what I tell, and that I tell it once again.

Current Tea: Diva blend (Ceylon black tea with hints of hazelnut and chocolate)

I gave my aunt the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008 for Christmas, and she was very excited. I was just as excited to give it to her. Of course, I read all the poems before I wrapped it… There is lots of good stuff! I highly recommend buying one (or several). This is the first place winner for this year. If you’d like to know a bit more about Blind Lemon Jefferson, check out the Wikipedia entry. I attended a reading and heard some of Judy Jensen’s work and she’s very talented. Regretfully, I couldn’t find a website for her, but if you come across her stuff, it would be worth checking out!

Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Body Is Brought from Chicago to Wortham, Texas, by Pianist and Labelmate Will Ezell
By Judy Jensen

New Year’s Day, 1930

No car, no chauffeur. Two ashen horses
nicker wet and close through the storm’s static,
each hoof strikes a nail in the coffin’s lid.
It’s not the blizzard’s ardor stayed church bells:
it’s the weight of unmoored boys underground.
Stayed, the heart—in fields opening wide between beats—
sinks below the rhythmic counterpoints
of abundant drought and scant harvest.
Stayed, the mind—under the years’ chorded streams—
revisits bright, bright green seedlings strumming
in warming furrows, the feracious Texas soil
turning itself inside out, steaming, to receive.

Naturally, I need to round out the MacSpaunday quartet, so here’s one from that “splendid bugger”¹, W.H. Auden.

Who’s Who
By W.H. Auden

A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day:
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

¹quoting Matthew (John Hannah) in Four Weddings and a Funeral

My NJ sources have told me that it’s been snowing up there. I can laugh for the present (while I’m still in relatively warm Texas), but next week I’ll be in the frigid north. Also, I feel compelled to continue on my MacSpaunday theme, if for no other reason than that I’m wildly amused by the term. Also, I really liked the selections from MacNeice in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Snow
By Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink rose against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Continuing on the MacSpaunday theme (heh), here’s one by Day-Lewis. You might compare it to this one by Marlowe.

Song
By Cecil Day-Lewis

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.

I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.

Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone—
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Current Tea: winter dreams (black tea with chocolate flavoring and peppermint leaves)

I was not familiar with Stephen Spender until I encountered his work in (you guessed it!) The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

The Truly Great
By Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Current Tea: ginseng chai (a zesty blend of American ginseng, ginger, cardamom, pepper, and green tea)

I’m rather surprised I’ve never posted anything by Marianne Moore before. Naturally, I came across her work in the Nor Anthology of Modern Poetry. This poem was a beast to format (I wanted all the indentations to be correct), but I really liked the description of the ant’s behavior, in contrast (or comparison!) to human behavior.

Critics and Connoisseurs
By Marianne Moore

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious
   fastidiousness. Certain Ming
      products, imperial floor coverings of coach—
   wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something
         that I like better—a
            mere childish attempt to make an imperfectly ballasted animal stand up
            similar determination to make a pup
               eat his meat from the plate.

I remember a swan under the willows in Oxford,
   with flamingo-colored, maple—
      leaflike feet. It reconnoitered like a battle
   ship. Disbelief and conscious fastidiousness were
         ingredients in its
            disinclination to move. Finally its hardihood was not proof against its
            proclivity to more fully appraise such bits
               of food as the stream

bore counter to it; made away with what I gave it
   to eat. I have seen this swan and
      I have seen you; I have seen ambition without
   understanding in a variety of forms. Happening to stand
         by an ant-hill, I have
            seen a fastidious ant carrying a stick north, south, east, west, till it turned on
            itself, struck out from the flower bed into the lawn,
               and returned to the point

from which it had started. Then abandoning the stick as
   useless and overtaxing its
      jaws with a particle of whitewash pill-like but
   heavy, it again went through the same course of procedure. What is
         there in being able
            to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of self-defense,
            in proving that one has had the experience
               of carrying a stick?

Current Tea: spicy chai (apparently the spicy components are proprietary)

I had never read anything by (or even heard of) James Weldon Johnson until I started perusing the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. (Are you seeing a theme lately? There are lots of great poems in there!) There were only three poems included, but I was impressed.

O Black and Unknown Bards
By James Weldon Johnson

O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

Heart of what slave poured out such melody
As “Steal Away to Jesus”? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great “Jordan roll”? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot “Swing low”? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
“Nobody Knows de Trouble I See”?

What merely living clod, what captive thing,
Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note of music heard not with the ears?
How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears?

Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than “Go Down, Moses.” Mark its bars,
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.

There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest and servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple children of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
You—you alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.

You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting paean
Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings
You touched in chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,—but more than this to you belongs;
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.

Current Tea: chocolate rum (black tea with chocolate and rum flavoring)

I’m rediscovering H.D. thanks to the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I read and shared some of her work.

Sea Violet
By H.D.

The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank.

The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?

Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light—
frost, a star edges with its fire.

Current Tea: chai rooibos (rooibos, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and lemongrass)

Yeats wrote this shortly before he died.

Man and the Echo
By William Butler Yeats

Man. In a cleft that’s christened Alt
   Under broken stone I halt
   At the bottom of a pit
   That broad noon has never lit,
   And shout a secret to the stone.
   All that I have said and done,
   Now that I am old and ill,
   Turns into a question till
   I lie awake night after night
   And never get the answers right.
   Did that play of mine send out
   Certain men the English shot?
   Did words of mine put too great strain
   On that woman’s reeling brain?
   Could my spoken words have checked
   That whereby a house lay wrecked?
   And all seems evil until I
   Sleepless would lie down and die.

Echo. Lie down and die.

Man.                              That were to shirk
   The spiritual intellect’s great work,
   And shirk it in vain. There is no release
   In a bodkin or disease,
   Nor can there be work so great
   As that which cleans man’s dirty slate.
   While man can still his body keep
   Wine or love drug him to sleep,
   Waking he thanks the Lord that he
   Has body and its stupidity,
   But body gone he sleeps no more,
   And till his intellect grows sure
   That all’s arranged in one clear view,
   pursues the thoughts that I pursue,
   Then stands in judgment on his soul,
   And, all work done, dismisses all
   Out of intellect and sight
   And sinks at last into the night.

Echo. Into the night.

Man.                          O Rocky Voice,
   Shall we in that great night rejoice?
   What do we know but that we face
   One another in this place?
   But hush, for I have lost the theme,
   Its joy or night seem but a dream;
   Up there some hawk or owl has struck,
   Dropping out of sky or rock,
   A stricken rabbit is crying out,
   And its cry distracts my thought.

Current Tea: lemon chiffon rooibos (rooibos, a South African herbal tisane, with lemongrass, marigold flowers, and creamy lemon flavor)

I can’t entirely decide how I feel about this poem. It could be offering hope to the unfortunate, but it seems to have an element of gloating. Maybe I’m just skeptical of any altruistic motives. Anyway, the fact that I’m even thinking about it inspired me to share the poem.

The Rest
By Ezra Pound

O helpless few in my country,
O remnant enslaved!

Artist broken against her,
A-stray, lost in the villages,
Mistrusted, spoken-against.

Lovers of beauty, starved,
Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against the control;

You who can not wear yourselves out
By persisting to successes,
You who can only speak,
Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration;

You of the finer sense,
Broken against false knowledge,
You who can know at first hand,
Hated, shut in, mistrusted:

Take thought:
I have weathered the storm,
I have beaten out my exile.

This one comes from the Norton Anthology, and there is a note by the poet. “The story comes, of course, from the venerable Bede’s History of the English Church and People, but I first read it as a child in John Richard Green’s History of the English People, 1855.” You can read more about Caedmon, if you’re curious. I love her take on him as awkward and solitary, yet the one chosen to speak.

Caedmon
By Denise Levertov

All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I’d wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I’d see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
                 nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
                             into the ring of the dance.

Current Tea: Thai iced tea

This one just makes me laugh. I had a typical sad Lawrence poem all picked out, but then I read this one and it won (for today).

The English Are So Nice!
By D.H. Lawrence

The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.

And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they’re all very well
but they’re not really nice, you know.
They’re not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That’s why one doesn’t have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally—
But it doesn’t really matter what you say to them,
they don’t really understand—
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just be nice
but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn’t understand.
Just be nice, you know! oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage—
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they’re not quite as nice as they might be.

Current Tea: captivating caramel (black tea with caramel flavoring)

I found this one in the North Anthology, too.

With rue my heart is laden
By A.E. Housman

With rue my heart is laden
   For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
   And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
   The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
   In fields where roses fade.

Current Tea: winter dreams (black tea with chocolate flavoring and peppermint leaves)

Wow. This poem is really powerful. I really haven’t read much by Elizabeth Bishop, but I have the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, which is where I found this poem, and I want to read more.

One Art
By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Current Tea: Nutcracker tea (black tea blended with apple bits, orange peels, currants, cinnamon, almond flakes, cloves, and safflowers)

I put my money where my mouth is and got a book of Elinor Wylie’s poetry from the library. This is the second poem I flipped to.

Lucifer Sings in Secret
By Elinor Wylie

I am the broken arrow
From Jehovah’s quiver;
He will not let me sorrow
Forever and ever.
He will give me a new feather
That is white, not red;
He will bind me together
With the hairs of his head.
My shaft will be jointed
Like the young springing corn;
My tip will be pointed
With a painted thorn.
He will be willing
That I lift my voice,
Among all killing
To make my choice;
To harry the wagons
Of the wicked’s retreat;
To murder dragons
Who have licked my feet.
I shall choose the target
His arrow deserves;
I shall trace and mark it
In scarlet curves.
Small and bloody
As a fallen sparrow
My own dead body
SHall receive his arrow.

I’ve really liked what I’ve read of Anne Sexton’s poetry. I’ve never read a biography of Vincent Van Gogh, but I’ve read a couple of his letters, and they’re heartbreaking.

The Starry Night
By Anne Sexton

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I got out at night to paint the stars.
—Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.