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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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 also procured this one while visiting my poetry pals. Robinson seems to like writing about unhappy men.

Reuben Bright
By Edwin Arlington Robinson

Because he was a butcher and thereby
Did earn an honest living (and did right),
I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
Was any more a brute than you or I;
For when they told him that his wife must die,
He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
And cried like a great baby half that night,
And made the women cry to see him cry.

And after she was dead, and he had paid
The singers and the sexton and the rest,
He packed a lot of things that she had made
Most mournfully away in an old chest
Or hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter house.

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

I swiped this one from the New Yorker while visiting my poetry pals. Some friends of mine are doing a play about a Hollywood production of Much Ado About Nothing in the 1930s. I’m really looking forward to seeing it!

In Shakespeare
By James Richardson

In Shakespeare a lover turns into an ass
as you would expect. People confuse
their consciences with ghosts and witches.
Old men throw everything away
because they panic and can’t feel their lives.
They pinch themselves, pierce themselves with twigs,
cliffs, lightning, and die—yes, finally—in glad pain.

You marry a woman you’ve never talked to,
a woman you thought was a boy.
Sixteen years go by as a curtain billows
once, twice. Your children are lost,
they come back, you don’t remember how.
A love turns to a statue in a dress, the statue
comes back to life. Oh God, it’s all so realistic
I can’t stand it. Whereat I weep and sing.

Such a relief, to burst from the theatre
into our cool, imaginary streets
where we know who’s who and what’s what,
and command with Metrocards our destinations.
Where no one with a story struggling in him
convulses as it eats its way out,
and no one in an antiseptic corridor,
or in deserts or in downtown darkling plains,
staggers through an Act that just will not end,
eyes burning with the burning of the dead.

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