Poem of the Day

I decided to check out Sonnet Central because I haven’t posted a sonnet in a while. Craik is the author of one of my favorite poems.

Dante to Beatrice
By Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

I see thee, gliding towards me with slow pace
Across the azure fields of Paradise,
Where thine each footstep makes a star arise.
So from this heart’s once void but infinite space
Each strange sweet touch of thy celestial grace
In the old mortal life, struck out some spark
To light the world, though all my heaven lay dark.
O Beatrice, cypresses enlace
My laurels: none have grown save tear-bedewed—
Salt tears that sank into the earth unviewed,
And sprang up green to form a crown of bays.
Take it! At thy dear feet I lay my all,
What men my honors, virtues, glories, call:
I lived, loved, suffered, sung—for thy sole praise.

Here is another one my poetry buddy sent me.

The Light Wraps You
By Pablo Neruda

The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twilight
that revolves around you.

Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
your newly born, takes nourishment.

Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.

I was going through old comments and came across this one, recommended by a reader.

The Horses
By Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
“They’ll molder away and be like other loam.”
We make our oxen drag our rusty ploughs,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers’ land.

And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.

We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.

We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.

Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our ploughs and borne our loads,
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

This poet is a correspondent of my poetry pals. I was glad to come across his work at American Life in Poetry.

I stand alone at the foot
By William Kloefkorn

I stand alone at the foot
Of my father’s grave,
Trembling to tell:
The door to the granary is open,
Sir,
And someone lost the bucket
To the well.

Today I was reminded of Ted Kooser’s wonderful blog, American Life in Poetry, which I used to read often, but which had fallen off my radar a while ago. It would be a shame if it wasn’t so cool that I have a whole treasure trove of poems to read now. Here’s the source of today’s. I like it for its descriptions, even though green tea is not my favorite. (Shockingly, I’m not even drinking tea right now; I’m drinking hot chocolate.)

Green Tea
By Dale Ritterbusch

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

This one comes from (of course) 180 More. I want to post it tonight because I’ve had a successful night in the kitchen. I had two very ripe bananas so I made banana walnut crumb muffins, which are fabulous. Then I made oven “fried” chicken and mashed potatoes with fresh chives. YUM!

Acceptance Speech
By Lynn Powell

The radio’s replaying last night’s winners
and the gratitude of the glamorous,
everyone thanking everybody for making everything
so possible, until I want to shush
the faucet, dry my hands, join in right here
at the cluttered podium of the sink, and thank

my mother for teaching me the true meaning of okra,
my children for putting back the growl in hunger,
my husband, primo uomo of dinner, for not
begrudging me this starring role—

without all of them, I know this soup
would not be here tonight.

And let me just add that I could not
have made it without the marrow bone, that blood-
brother to the broth, and the tomatoes
who opened up their hearts, and the self-effacing limas,
the blonde sorority of corn, the cayenne
and oregano who dashed in
in the nick of time.

Special thanks, as always, to the salt—
you know who you are—and to the knife,
who revealed the ripe beneath the rind,
the clean truth underneath the dirty peel.

—I hope I’ve not forgotten anyone—
oh, yes, to the celery and the parsnip,
those bit players only there to swell the scene,
let me just say: sometimes I know exactly how you feel.

But not tonight, not when it’s all
coming to something and the heat is on and
I’m basking in another round
of blue applause.

This is another one from 180 More. I’m reminded of Permanently by Kenneth Koch. I like this one because, despite my love of poetry, I’m a very reason-oriented person and like for things to be 1) explainable and 2) ordered. I’m amused by the personification of these “ornaments of speech”.

“Even Ornaments of Speech are Forms of Deceit”
                                        HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
By Ron Koertge

It’s 1667. Reason is everywhere, saving
for the future, ordering a small glass of wine.
Cause, arm in arm with Effect, strolls by
in sturdy shoes.

Of course, there are those who venture
out under cover of darkness to buy a bag
of metaphors or even some personification
from Italy, primo and uncut.

But for the most part, poets like Roderigo
stroll the boulevards in their normal hats.
When he thinks of his beloved, he opens
his notebook with a flourish.

“Your lips,” he writes, “are like
lips.”

I found this one in 180 More, and I’m not surprised that it appealed to me. I’ve really enjoyed reading Koch’s work.

To My Twenties
By Kenneth Koch

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman—
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another—and water!
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X— N—, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

After 10.5 hours in the car yesterday and the excitement of arriving at my destination, I didn’t get around to posting a poem yesterday. This one was sent by my poetry buddy.

Haute Cuisine
By Paul Otremba

The pig couldn’t know it was a pig,
not because it lacked a conspicuous
preference for truffles over the few
rotten turnips set aside for the trash,

but because when I looked, there was
a thin slit of a smile across its throat,
which explained the pig’s patience
with the cooks. One punched holes

his friend filled with garlic, each twist
of the blade loosening the meat
from a word rising in my own throat,
as I scoured dishes in the sink,

an orange slither of oil inscribed
on the surface. But the pig couldn’t
know it was a pig. No hooves
hammered against steel counters,

there was no last leap onto the stove.
The cooks, too, had only a slim
notion: one sang along with the radio,
the other wiped his hands on his shirt.

This is another one suggested by a reader. I’m going out of town for the holiday weekend, but will still try to post a PotD.

And did those feet in ancient time
By William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

It’s a good thing that my poetry buddy keeps me supplied with poems for times like this when I’m lazy and would rather lie on my hammock reading a book all evening than look for a poem.

All I Want To Say
By Linda Pastan

“A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds.” —Edouard Manet

When I pass you this bowl
of Winesaps, do I want to say:
here are some rosy spheres
of love, or lust—emblems
of all the moments after Eden
when a pinch of the forbidden
was like spice on that first apple?
Or do I simply mean: I’m sorry,
I was busy today; fruit is all
there is for dessert.

And when you picked
a single bloom from the fading bush
outside our window,
were you saying that I am somehow
like a flower, or deserving of flowers?
Were you saying
anything flowery at all?
Or simply: here is the last rose
of November, please
put it in water.

As for clouds,
as for those white, voluptuous
abstractions floating overhead,
they are not camels or pillows
or even the snowy peaks
of half-imagined mountains.
They are the pure shapes
of silence, and they are
saying exactly
what I want to say.

This one was recommended by a reader.

Full fathom five
FROM THE TEMPEST, ACT I, SCENE II
By William Shakespeare

Full fathom five thy father lies;
   Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
   Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
      Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.

This was contributed by a poetry buddy. I didn’t have a chance to finish reading 180 More over the weekend or add the bookmarked poems to my file. Alas!

Scars
By William Stafford

They tell how it was, and how time
came along, and how it happened
again and again. They tell
the slant life takes when it turns
and slashes your face as a friend.

Any wound is real. In church
a woman lets the sun find
her cheek, and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book; there are sorrows
a choir can’t reach when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.

I’ve had 180 More, compiled by Billy Collins, for some time now. Blissfully, I’ve had a little leisure this weekend to read it. I’m planning on bolstering my file considerably, but for now I just want to share this short one. I’m (dorkily) amused.

Mrs Darwin
By Carol Ann Duffy

7 April 1852
Went to the Zoo.
I said to Him—
Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

Sir Walter Scott’s works were quite present in the Brontë household. I’ve always wanted to read some of his novels to learn something of the influences Charlotte, Emily and Anne had, but somehow have never bumped them to the top of my reading list. For now, here’s a poem.

Lucy Ashton’s Song
By Sir Walter Scott

Look not thou on beauty’s charming;
Sit thou still when kings are arming;
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens;
Speak not when the people listens;
Stop thine ear against the singer;
From the red gold keep thy finger;
Vacant heart and hand and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.

When she was in her early 20s, Charlotte Brontë sent some of her work (now part of her juvenilia) to Hartley Coleridge. His response was not overly favorable and she was quite displeased.

Friendship
By Hartley Coleridge

When we were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:
Our love was nature; and the peace that floated
On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted,
That, wisely doting, ask’d not why it doted,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find how dear thou wert to me;
That man is more than half of nature’s treasure,
Of that fair beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;
And now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.

The Brontës were influenced by Lord Byron, and various of their male characters are often called Byronic.

Euthanasia
By George Gordon, Lord Byron

When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o’er my dying bed!

No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

But silent let me sink to earth,
With no officious mourners near:
I would not mar one hour of mirth,
Nor startle friendship with a tear.

Yet Love, if Love in such an hour
Could nobly check its useless sighs,
Might then exert its latest power
In her who lives, and him who dies.

‘Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last
Thy features still serene to see:
Forgetful of its struggles past,
E’en Pain itself should smile on thee.

But vain the wish—for Beauty still
Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath;
And women’s tears, produced at will,
Deceive in life, unman in death.

Then lonely be my latest hour,
Without regret, without a groan;
For thousands Death hath ceas’d to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.

‘Ay, but to die, and go,’ alas!
Where all have gone, and all must go!
To be the nothing that I was
Ere born to life and living woe!

Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
‘Tis something better not to be.

Here is Emily Dickinson’s memorial to Charlotte Brontë.

All overgrown by cunning moss
By Emily Dickinson

All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of “Currer Bell”
In quiet “Haworth” laid.

This Bird—observing others
When frosts too sharp became
Retire to other latitudes—
Quietly did the same—

But differed in returning—
Since Yorkshire hills are green—
Yet not in all the nests I meet—
Can Nightingale be seen—

[Alternative second and third stanzas]

Or—
Gathered from many wanderings—
Gethsemane can tell
Thro’ what transporting anguish
She reached the Asphodel!

Soft fell the sounds of Eden
Opon her puzzled ear—
Oh what an afternoon for Heaven,
When “Bronte” entered there!

I really liked Lucasta Miller’s book The Brontë Myth. I’ll be posting poems referenced therein for at least a couple days. Charlotte died March 31, 1855. Branwell, Emily, and Anne all died within an 8-month period from 1848-1849. I think it really speaks to the effect that the Brontës had on the literary world that such a personage as Arnold would write this tribute, despite his less-than-favorable review of Villette. (I forgive Arnold for getting the facts wrong, since the Brontës are buried inside the church, rather than in the churchyard.)

Haworth Churchyard
By Matthew Arnold

APRIL, 1855

Where, under Loughrigg, the stream
Of Rotha sparkles through fields
Vested for ever with green,
Four years since, in the house
Of a gentle spirit, now dead—
Wordsworth’s son-in-law, friend—
I saw the meeting of two
Gifted women. The one,
Brilliant with recent renown,
Young, unpractised, had told
With a master’s accent her feign’d
Story of passionate life;
The other, maturer in fame,
Earning, she too, her praise
First in fiction, had since
Widen’d her sweep, and survey’d
History, politics, mind.

The two held converse; they wrote
In a book which of world-famous souls
Kept the memorial;—bard,
Warrior, statesman, had sign’d
Their names; chief glory of all,
Scott had bestow’d there his last
Breathings of song, with a pen
Tottering, a death-stricken hand.

Hope at that meeting smiled fair.
Years in number, it seem’d,
Lay before both, and a fame
Heighten’d, and multiplied power.—
Behold! The elder, to-day,
Lies expecting from death,
In mortal weakness, a last
Summons! the younger is dead!

First to the living we pay
Mournful homage;—the Muse
Gains not an earth-deafen’d ear.

Hail to the steadfast soul,
Which, unflinching and keen,
Wrought to erase from its depth
Mist and illusion and fear!
Hail to the spirit which dared
Trust its own thoughts, before yet
Echoed her back by the crowd!
Hail to the courage which gave
Voice to its creed, ere the creed
Won consecration from time!

Turn we next to the dead.
—How shall we honour the young,
The ardent, the gifted? how mourn?
Console we cannot, her ear
Is deaf. Far northward from here,
In a churchyard high ‘mid the moors
Of Yorkshire, a little earth
Stops it for ever to praise.

Where, behind Keighley, the road
Up to the heart of the moors
Between heath-clad showery hills
Runs, and colliers’ carts
Poach the deep ways coming down,
And a rough, grimed race have their homes—
There on its slope is built
The moorland town. But the church
Stands on the crest of the hill,
Lonely and bleak;—at its side
The parsonage-house and the graves.

Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early-dying! Alas,
Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon!—yet green
Laurels she had, and a course
Short, but redoubled by fame.

And not friendless, and not
Only with strangers to meet,
Faces ungreeting and cold,
Thou, O mourn’d one, to-day
Enterest the house of the grave!
Those of thy blood, whom thou lov’dst,
Have preceded thee—young,
Loving, a sisterly band;
Some in art, some in gift
Inferior—all in fame.
They, like friends, shall receive
This comer, greet her with joy;
Welcome the sister, the friend;
Hear with delight of thy fame!

Round thee they lie—the grass
Blows from their graves to thy own!
She, whose genius, though not
Puissant like thine, was yet
Sweet and graceful;—and she
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,
That world-famed son of fire—she, who sank
Baffled, unknown, self-consumed;
Whose too bold dying song
Stirr’d, like a clarion-blast, my soul.

Of one, too, I have heard,
A brother—sleeps he here?
Of all that gifted race
Not the least gifted; young,
Unhappy, eloquent—the child
Of many hopes, of many tears.
O boy, if here thou sleep’st, sleep well!
On thee too did the Muse
Bright in thy cradle smile;
But some dark shadow came
(I know not what) and interposed.

Sleep, O cluster of friends,
Sleep!—or only when May,
Brought by the west-wind, returns
Back to your native heaths,
And the plover is heard on the moors,
Yearly awake to behold
The opening summer, the sky,
The shining moorland—to hear
The drowsy bee, as of old,
Hum o’er the thyme, the grouse
Call from the heather in bloom!
Sleep, or only for this
Break your united repose!

My sincerest apologies for not starting up the PotD sooner. I had a wonderful trip to England, but it took me some time to get over the jet lag and I’ve been trying to get caught up at home. No more excuses, though! Anyway, my pilgrimage to Yorkshire has rekindled my Brontë-mania. Here’s a poem by Emily, the one of the three sisters most surrounded in mystery, but the one with the most poetic talent, in my opinion. I doubt anyone will ever truly understand her motivations and inspirations since many of her personal writings have not survived, but that can’t stop us from benefiting from her poems!

No coward soul is mine
By Emily Brontë

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me has rest,
As I—Undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.