Poem of the Day

Here’s another from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. This one by Birkelbach (Texas State Poet Laureate for 2005) won the third place prize. I think it’s really interesting and I’d recommend reading it aloud.

Early in the Morning, on the Road, near Franklin, Texas
By Alan Birkelbach

Her skirt clings to her the way fog clings to a flower.
Her legs are curled up, her sleeping face soft like a saint.
Driving for hours a man thinks about how things are measured,
about how coffee always tastes better in small towns.

Her legs are curled up, her sleeping face soft like a saint.
St. Augustine said the eye is attracted to beautiful objects.
Coffee always tastes better in small towns;
the treasures of the destination make us take the trip.

St. Augustine said the eye is attracted to beautiful objects.
The full moon makes her skin glow like a statue.
The treasures en route make us take the trip.
I start out thinking in terms of miles and hours

but the full moon makes her skin translucent like a statue.
Her breathing is as fragrant and sure as moonflowers
and I stop thinking in terms of miles and hours.
She’ll wake up in a little while and touch me with her bare toe.

But for now, her breathing is as fragrant as moonflowers.
Driving for hours a man thinks about what makes things holy.
She’ll wake up in a little while and bless me with her bare toe,
her skirt clinging to her the way fog caresses a flower.

Current Tea: Thai chai (green tea blended with coconut, ginger and lemongrass)

I think it’s high time we heard from Amy Lowell again. I doubt I could run out of poems of hers to post.

Venus Transiens
By Amy Lowell

Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady,
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?
For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

On Sunday we read a couple poems by Reed Whittemore, not including this one, but I wanted to post it because I’m still thinking a lot about war.

Thinking of Tents
By Reed Whittemore

I am thinking of tents and tentage, tents through the ages.
I had half a tent in the army and rolled it religiously,
But Supply stole it back at war’s end, leaving me tentless.
And tentless I thankfully still am, a house man at heart,
Thinking of tents as one who has passed quite beyond tents,
Passed the stakes and the flaps, mosquitoes and mildew,
And come to the ultimate tent, archetypal, platonic,
With one cot in it, and one man curled on the cot
Drinking, cooling small angers, smelling death in the distance—
War’s end—
World’s end—
Sullen Achilles.

Current Tea: Honey Bee tea (black tea with sweet honey flavor from honey bee pollen)

I got to see my poetry pals yesterday afternoon. It was short notice and I don’t have a printer so I couldn’t select some recently posted poems. Instead I brought 180 more extraordinary poems for every day, selected by Billy Collins, which Ryan gave me for Christmas. I was randomly flipping through it, looking for names I recognized and I landed on this one. We talked about it for a good 30 minutes, and it was a pleasant surprise that it had so many layers. It was translated by Clare Cavanagh.

Long Afternoons
By Adam Zagajewski

Those were the long afternoons when poetry left me.
The river flowed patiently, nudging lazy boats to sea.
Long afternoons, the coast of ivory.
Shadows lounged in the streets, haughty manikins in shopfronts
stared at me with bold and hostile eyes.

Professors left their schools with vacant faces,
as if the Iliad had finally done them in.
Evening papers brought disturbing news,
but nothing happened, no one hurried.
There was no one in the windows, you weren’t there;
even nuns seemed ashamed of their lives.

Those were the long afternoons when poetry vanished
and I was left with the city’s opaque demon,
like a poor traveler stranded outside the Gare du Nord
with his bulging suitcase wrapped in twine
and September’s black rain falling.

Oh, tell me how to cure myself of irony, the gaze
that sees but doesn’t penetrate; tell me how to cure myself
of silence.

I just finished watching Gettysburg, and I’m still a bit weepy. I chose this poem because I think it’s how Longstreet may have felt on that awful last day of battle.

Day of Foreboding
By Stanley Kunitz

Great events are about to happen.
I have seen migratory birds
in unprecedented numbers
descend on the coastal plain,
picking the margins clean.
My bones are a family in their tent
huddled over a small fire
waiting for the uncertain signal
to resume the long march.

I finished reading The Killer Angels (and I highly recommend it) and now I’m watching Gettysburg, which is also fantastic (and an excellent adaptation). So here’s a depressing little poem to go with my war theme. Trust Sandburg to take something simple and create a powerful image.

Grass
By Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work—
               I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
               What place is this?
               Where are we now?

               I am the grass.
               Let me work.

This is such a powerful poem. I’m currently reading The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (and loving it!), and many of the Southern soldiers keep expressing surprise that people think the Civil War was about slavery. It certainly wasn’t the only issue, but it’s folly to deny its importance.

Outcast
By Claude McKay

For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
I would go back to darkness and to peace,
But the great western world holds me in fee,
And I may never hope for full release
While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart.

For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man’s menace, out of time.

A reader suggested this one, inspired by yesterday’s poem.

I Remember, I Remember
By Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses red and white,
The violets and the lily cups—
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
The summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

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

We haven’t heard from Frost in a while.

Birches
By Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Current Tea: Clarksville cordial (Indian Korakundah Estate black tea with ginger, orange, & peach)

Ah, Miss Emily…

The Soul selects her own Society—
By Emily Dickinson

The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority—
Present no more—

Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—

I’ve known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like stone—

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

This is another from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. I love the imagery. I really feel as if I could see the tree. Here’s a short bio of Appelbee.

Turning of the Blackgum
By Evelyn Corry Appelbee

Over sun-wallowed pavement
and along a verge of forest
where the Big Lake
riffles its prowess
and frets like a summer’s child,
the blackgum tree
holds autumn at bay
with taut arms,
and blood drips
from its fingertips.

A leaf falls, and somewhere
wild poppies bloom again
on scarred hills
and along barbed banks
and on white-crossed meadows
of familiar names.

I shudder
at the transparency
of a red leaf, falling.

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

A friend shared this one after reading Laura Riding’s poem from the other day. Since we’ve already established that I’m a total book nerd, it should be no surprise that I think this poem is great, too!

An Afternoon in the Stacks
By William Stafford

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

Heather oh-so-graciously sent me this link, and I promptly melted into a puddle on the floor after I visited it. Since I’ve already posted that poem, I thought I’d share another one of Will’s today.

When I do count the clock that tells the time
By William Shakespeare

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Current Tea: ginger lime rooibos

I just read Rhett Butler’s People, so I thought I’d post a “war” poem, though it was written in the WWI era rather than the U.S. Civil War. All wars are awful, though.

Dreamers
By Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land,
   Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
   Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
   Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
   They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
   And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
   And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
   And going to the office in the train.

I just realized we’re way overdue for another one from NSN! I’ve read this poem before, but revisiting it just reminds me how much I absolutely love NSN. This is short, simple, and perfectly descriptive of how I’ve felt sometimes when my high hopes didn’t come to fruition.

High Hopes
By Naomi Shihab Nye

It wasn’t that they were so
high, exactly,
they were more
low-down,
close-to-the-ground,
I could rub them
the way you touch a cat
that rubs against your ankles
even if he isn’t yours.

So yes I feel lonely without them.
Now that I know the truth,
that I only dreamed someone liked me,
the cat has curled up in a bead of leaves
against the house and I still have to do
everything I had to do before
without a secret hum
inside.

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

I love Willie Nelson. I grew up listening to his music. I’ve seen him perform twice at the Backyard, and I think he puts on a great show. I was delighted to read this in the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008 and I think Cimarolli definitely captured his essence.

Sonnet for a Songbird
By Mary Cimarolli

When Willie picks and frets, his music calls
to those who harbor no pretense or airs
and all for whom his whiskey voice enthralls.
When Nelson culls a chord, his soul he bares.

On stage he warms his way to fans’ embrace.
A lazy creek on summer day, he charms
with grizzly grin, guitar, and whiskered face.
With “Crazy” and “Blue Eyes” our dude disarms.

Though face is witness to his rugged life,
and weathered voice bespeaks his country ways,
our Willie sings of love, of loss, and strife;
his pigtails: signature of why he plays.

What other scofflaw gins up such pathos?
Whatever will we do when Willie Goes?

Being a total bookworm, I love this poem, especially the last bit!

The Troubles of a Book
By Laura Riding

The trouble of a book is first to be
No thoughts to nobody,
Then to lie as long unwritten
As it will lie unread,
Then to build word for word an author
And occupy his head
Until the head declares vacancy
To make full publication
Of running empty.

The trouble of a book is secondly
To keep awake and ready
And listening like an innkeeper,
Wishing, not wishing for a guest,
Torn between hope of no rest
And hope of rest.
Uncertainly the pages doze
And blink open to passing fingers
With landlord smile, then close.

The trouble of a book is thirdly
to speak its sermon, then look the other way,
Arouse commotion in the margin,
Where tongue meets the eye,
But claim no experience of panic,
No complicity in the outcry.
The ordeal of a book is to give no hint
Of ordeal, to be flat and witless
Of the upright sense of print.

The trouble of a book is chiefly
To be nothing but book outwardly;
To wear binding like binding,
Bury itself in book-death,
Yet to feel all but book;
To breathe live words, yet with the breath
Of letters; to address liveliness
In reading eyes, he answered with
Letters and bookishness.

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

Here’s another from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008, which won an honorable mention, and which I heard read by the author at BookPeople.

El Árbol Milagroso
By Katherine Durham Oldmixon

On the way to el árbol milagroso
the young girls told stories del otro lado

like a brush with the spirits through
a window over the washer and dryer.

Turo’s sister laughed as she drove
over vanishing pools on hot asphalt,

when unexpected a bristle of javelinas
appeared grazing the dry kiñena ditch.

Pale plastic Jesus fixed to the dash,
cardboard signs and suspicion led

past the weeping Virgin’s water tank,
past the dead snakes hung on a rail,

to a fence laced with sun-faded garlands,
to a cross studded with glinting exvotos,

guarding the Jerusalem olive tree,
bound in burlap and colored ribbons

protecting the saint from pilgrims
with pocketknives and prayers.

Mira—she led us to the shrouded trunk,
planted her ear against its skin, sighed—

oye—eyes closed. Next, inside I
listened as the waterfall laddered sky

to ground, through the live green core
so far from what we thought we knew.

Current Tea: Clarksville cordial (Indian Korakundah Estate black tea with ginger, orange, & peach)

I have a few more of Stevens’s poems in my file, from the store I collected over Thanksgiving, and I think it’s time for another one.

The Death of a Soldier
By Wallace Stevens

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days’ personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops.

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.

Current Tea: Valentine’s blend (black tea with chocolate and rosebuds)

I really detest grackles (they seem to be all over campus squalling all the time), but I like this poem. I got to hear Peggy Hill read it at the reading for the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008 and it was delightful!

The Grackle in His Black Silk Suit
By Margaret Ellis Hill

It was the song, its consistent repeat
that drew me outside to discover the source—

a fancy flourish in a tux, a tiptoeing tenor,
a tease with dips and bows, a high wire act.

His apparent audience: the small lady in a front seat,
glimpsing the show while smoothing brown pleats

and me who stared silently, wiping hands on an apron
before sitting on porch steps to watch the show.

Mid-routine, the lady flew up an aisle, wing beats
brushing feather dust in my face as she raced by

as if to tell me that I could have him:
all he did was sing and dance, nothing more.

His intended gone, the tone changed to squawks
scolding me as if it was my fault she left.

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

I’m kind of surprised I haven’t posted anything by Owen before. I could have sworn I’d come across his work somewhere. Better late than never! P.S. The last lines translate to: “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”.

Dulce et Decorum Est
By Wilfrid Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Here’s another from Moon-Whales and Other Poems. I think that Heather will especially appreciate it.

Music on the Moon
By Ted Hughes

The pianos on the moon are so long
The pianist’s hand must be fifteen fingers strong.

The violins on the moon are so violent
They have to be sunk in deep wells, and then they only seem to be silent.

The bassoons on the moon blow no notes
But huge blue loons that flap slowly away with undulating throats.

Now harmonicas on the moon are humorous,
The tunes produce German Measles, but the speckles more numerous.

Of a trumpet on the moon you can never hear enough
Because it puffs the trumpeter up like a balloon and he floats off.

Double basses on the moon are a risk all right,
At the first note enormous black hands appear and carry away everything in sight.

Even a triangle on the moon is risky,
One ping—and there’s your head a half bottle of Irish whisky.

In the same way, be careful with the flute—
Because wherever he is, your father will find himself converted into a disgusting old boot.

On the whole it’s best to stick to the moon’s drums.
Whatever damage they do is so far off in space the news never comes.

Current Tea: Honey Bee tea (black tea with sweet honey flavor from honey bee pollen)

I’ve been impressed with Roethke’s The Waking since my poetry pals introduced me to it. I found this one in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry and I’m sharing it today because it is, quite literally, a dark time, since the sun has yet to rise.

In a Dark Time
By Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened. summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

This one won an honorable mention in the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. I love it because I used to add “in bed” to all the fortunes I received in fortune cookies (and still do sometimes). Check out Robert Wynne here.

In Bed
By Robert Wynne

     “You will climb a tall mountain (in bed)”
        —Fortune Cookie

My wife is an Appalachia of afghans, a range
scalable only by the most seasoned professional, and only
in the event of fire or anniversary. She is in charge
of the alarm. She quiets groggy children and rowdy dogs.
She is the only reason I get any sleep at all, and one day
I’m going to surprise her with my swift, sudden ascent
to her raised knee. I will untangle her body
from the bow of sleep and proclaim my love.
And even though sometimes she doubts me
at floor level, she will have no choice
but to believe me then: anything is possible
at such heights.

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

How very exciting! I joined a poetry community through GoodReads and posted about ESVM (surprise, surprise). In a response I (re)discovered this poem, which hadn’t really been on my radar, but which I think is wonderful!

On Thought in Harness
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

My falcon to my wrist
Returns
From no high air.
I sent her toward the sun that burns
Above this mist;
But she has not been there.

Her talons are not cold; her beak
Is closed upon no wonder;
Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek
Of me, that quake at the thunder.

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;
Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.

Here’s the second installment of our Epiphany-themed posts.

The Magi
By William Butler Yeats

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

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

It’s nearly Epiphany, so this is going to be a theme weekend for the PotD.

Journey of the Magi
By T.S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

   Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

   All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Here’s another one from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008 (which you should buy!). This time the author has a website. Yay!

When Texas No Longer Fits in the Glove Box
By Karla K. Morton

Once you unfold a road map of Texas, your world is changed.
Towns like Falfurrias, Carthage, and Madill suddenly become
part of your life and once you see them, you can’t go back to
not knowing them. You have to go there, even it it’s just
with your eyes—or your finger—tracing those
crow’s feet county roads into unexplored territory.
That’s how knowledge works. That’s how knowing works.
Life is expanded; there’s no going back.
There’s no refolding the map.

It’s like meeting an alarmingly charming man—
discovering his dangerous detours and thrilling new paths,
finding unforeseen forks and magnificent natural beauty.
You’ll look up at him and know that the crinkly arch between his eyes
goes from Childress up to Amarillo, then back down to Muleshoe;
that the whites of his nails reach from Huntsville to Jasper;
that his green eyes encompass the metroplex—
From Ft. Worth to Denton to Dallas.

And you can’t help but imagine that the crooked hairline
beneath his navel would run all the way down Highway 281,
and across the border, into dark, exotic Mexico;
or that his lips could take you on incredible road-trips
stretching clear across the state—from El Paso to Nacogdoches
with just a smile;
or that the best kiss of your life
would whisk you through the wild-flowered Hill Country,
and leave you weak-kneed and breathless
along the Riverwalk in old San Antone.

I just finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for Austin Book Nerds (and loved it!) and now I’m feeling morbid and creeped out (which is why I’m about to start reading Dracula by Bram Stoker, of course). So here’s a somewhat morbid poem.

Epitaphs
By Charles Reznikoff

                  I

Drowning
I felt for a moment reaching towards me
finger tips against mine.

                  II

You mice,
that ate the crumbs of my freedom,
lo!

                  III

The clock strikes:
these are the steps of our departure.

                  IV

A brown oak leaf
scraping the sidewalk
frightened me.

                  V

Proserpine
swallowed only six seeds
of the pomegranate
and had to stay six months among the dead—
I was a glutton.

Somehow I can’t help but think of Yul Brynner saying et cetera in The King and I.

my sweet old etcetera
By e e cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera,my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
  cetera,of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

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

Ha ha ha. I’ve been saving this one for months and months, so I could post it today. Happy new year!

New Year Morning
By Adrienne Rich

The bells have quit their clanging; here beneath
The coldly furious streaks of morning stars
We hear the scraping of the last few cars,
And on the doorstep by the frozen wreath
Return goodnights to night. Dear friends, once more
We’ve held our strength against a straining door,

Again the siege is past, another year
Has lost the battle. You can leave us now.
The hours are done that must be clamored through
Lest darkness think us sleeping, lest we hear
Secret police engendered out of night
Advancing on our little zone of light.

Now each of us can dare to be alone,
His room no longer populous with spies
Bending above the pillow where he lies
To sow his dreams with fear that all is done,
That there’s no more reprieve, no leaf to tear
And find another January there.

So we are safe again. Goodnight, brave friends.
So may beginnings always follow ends.
Though time is treasonable, may we stand
Gathered each year, a stubborn-hearted band
Whose gaiety rises like a litany
Under the dying ornamental tree.