Poet Speaks

Humble, born to the earth, They knew where they stood. When they moved, It was because they must. Anger moved them, And the desire to be elsewhere, Or something in them Responding to music. They knew also What waiting can be. Side by side, they mastered it, Like an old married couple. "Epitaph for a Pair of Old Shoes" ~ Donald Justice

"I've been a dweller on the plains, have sighed when summer days were gone; No more I'll sigh; for winter here Hath gladsome gardens of his own." ~ Dorothy Wordsworth

I bless the night that nourished my heart To set the ghosts of longing free Into the flow and figure of dream That went to harvest from the dark Bread for the hunger no one sees. All that is eternal in me Welcome the wonder of this day, The field of brightness it creates Offering time for each thing To arise and illuminate. I place on the altar of dawn: The quiet loyalty of breath, The tent of thought where I shelter, Wave of desire I am shore to And all beauty drawn to the eye. May my mind come alive today To the invisible geography That invites me to new frontiers, To break the dead shell of yesterdays, To risk being disturbed and changed. May I have the courage today To live the life that I would love, To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on fear no more. ~ John O'Donohue --------------------------------------------------------------- HBM & Best wishes

The dragonfly can't quite land on that blade of grass. ~ Matsuo Basho

................................ I cried because life is hopeless and beautiful. And like a child I cried myself to sleep High in the head of the house, feeling the hull Beneath me pitch and roll among the steep Mountains and valleys of the many years That brought me to tears. Down in the cellar, furnace and washing machine, Pump, fuse-box, water heater, work their hearts Out at my life, which narrowly runs between Them and this cemetery of spare parts For discontinued men, whose hats and canes Are my rich remains. And women, their portraits and wedding gowns Stacked in the corners, brooding in wooden trunks; And children’s rattles, books about lions and clowns; And headless, hanging dresses swayed like drunks Whenever a living footstep shakes the floor; I mention no more; But what I thought today, that made me cry, Is this, that we live in two kinds of thing: The powerful trees, thrusting into the sky Their black patience, are one, and that branching Relation teaches how we endure and grow; The other is the snow, Falling in a white chaos from the sky, As many as the sands of all the seas, As all the men who died or who will die, As stars in heaven, as leaves of all the trees; As Abraham was promised of his seed; Generations bleed, Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept. Excerpt: "The view from the attic window" ~ Howard Nemerov

See this house, how dark it is Beneath its vast-boughed trees! Not one trembling leaflet cries To that Watcher in the skies— ‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze, Innocent of heaven’s ways, Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright, On secrets hidden from sight.’ ‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind, ‘Vacancy is all I find; Every keyhole I have made Wails a summons, faint and sad, No voice ever answers me, Only vacancy.’ ‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills, And far and near the quiet fills With its tiny voice, and then Hush falls again. Mute shadows creeping slow Mark how the hours go. Every stone is mouldering slow. And the least winds that blow Some minutest atom shake, Some fretting ruin make In roof and walls. How black it is Beneath these thick boughed trees! "The empty house: ~ Walter De La Mare

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because ah-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand: the bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base- ball fan, the statistician-- nor is it valid to discriminate against "business documents and school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"--above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have it, In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry. "Poetry" ~ Marianne Moore

We're going to the cemetery to visit some dead relatives, mother said, and on the way back we we'll stop over at your aunt's home. It's good practice to mix the living with the dead. Otherwise, we'd end up Either being bored in the cemetery, or if we stayed too long at her house, we'd wish that she was dead. This way by doing two things in one day we can do something fun the next week end, like go to the beach. If your aunt keeps talking too much, like she usually does, we'll tell her that we just got back from the cemetery, and that should shut her up. She never goes there, and it shows, because the more you visit the dead the less you have to say. "Two visits in one day" ~ Hal Sirowitz

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--- and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. "Lost in the Forest" ~ Pablo Neruda

Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya, Maker of the light, illuming all the radiant sky. Thou goest to the host of gods, Thou comest hither to mankind, Hither all light to be beheld. With that same eye thou look'st, O purifying Varuna, upon the busy race of men. Excerpt: "Rig Veda 1 - 50"

The poppies send up their orange flares; swaying in the wind, their congregations are a levitation of bright dust, of thin and lacy leaves. There isn't a place in this world that doesn't sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness, but now, for a while, the roughage shines like a miracle as it floats above everything with its yellow hair. Of course nothing stops the cold, black, curved blade from hooking forward— of course loss is the great lesson. But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive. Inside the bright fields, touched by their rough and spongy gold, I am washed and washed in the river of earthly delight— and what are you going to do— what can you do about it— deep, blue night? ~ Mary Oliver

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: "The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay." So sure of death the marbles rhyme, Yet can't help marking all the time How no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from? It would be easy to be clever And tell the stones: Men hate to die And have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie. "IN A DISUSED GRAVE YARD" ~ Robert Frost

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence. Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new - Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce “Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches will fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation – marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round. ~ Philip Larkin

On summer nights the world Moves within earshot On the interstate with its swish And growl, an occasional siren That sends chills through us. Sometimes, on clear, still nights, Voices float into our bedroom, Lunar and fragmented, As if the sky had left them go Long before our birth. In winter we close the windows And read Chekhov, Nearly weeping for his world. What luxury, to be so happy That we can grieve Over imaginary lives. “Late Hours” ~ Lisel Mueller

.................................................. Now the immense loneliness begins. The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves. Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks. The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old. ~ Sara Teasdale

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That’s done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to learn, You might be in a foreign land of terms Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome, Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth. But best of all are the words that shape the leaves— Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform— And their venation—palmate and parallel— And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate. ........................................ And think also how funny knowledge is: You may succeed in learning many trees And calling off their names as you go by, But their comprehensive silence stays the same. Excerpt: "Learning the Trees" ~ Howard Nemerov

Puffed like an adder. Deflated like a balloon. Tiny or huge, you are never the right size. A little man or woman, you strut, you speak, you want. You have delusions. O little one, look at yourself, posturing and ridiculous. Go now, please go. But no, without You, what would I be? That is the question I cannot answer until I am changed into particle or star, and you, you drift away as if you had never been there at all. "Riddle" ~ Elizabeth Spires