Dawn Revisited
by Rita Dove
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits —
eggs and sausages in the grill
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.
by Rita Dove
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits —
eggs and sausages in the grill
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.
In Your Absence
by Judith Harris
Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.
It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.
Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.
It is only April.
I can't stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.
by Judith Harris
Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.
It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.
Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.
It is only April.
I can't stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.
Intimacies, Received
by Taneum Bambrick
Having you was like having a baby.
A box of matches carrying bees across a lake.
I keep the reel of your passport photo
in my coat pocket, bent around a coin.
There were many nights when you threatened to run away.
If falling in love is a decision
I listened for the click in your breath.
You aren't old enough to know yet
few people have your best interest
at heart. At heart, I swept the wet glass
of you throwing pills across the street
When you were sick, I wrote your weight
in kilograms so you wouldn't understand
what was happening.
by Taneum Bambrick
Having you was like having a baby.
A box of matches carrying bees across a lake.
I keep the reel of your passport photo
in my coat pocket, bent around a coin.
There were many nights when you threatened to run away.
If falling in love is a decision
I listened for the click in your breath.
You aren't old enough to know yet
few people have your best interest
at heart. At heart, I swept the wet glass
of you throwing pills across the street
When you were sick, I wrote your weight
in kilograms so you wouldn't understand
what was happening.
Over the Weather
by Naomi Shihab Nye
We forget about the spaciousness
above the clouds
but it's up there.The sun's up there too.
When words we hear don't fit the day,
when we worry
what we did or didn't do,
what if we close our eyes,
say any word we love
that makes us feel calm,
slip it into the atmosphere
and rise?
Creamy miles of quiet.
Giant swoop of blue.
by Naomi Shihab Nye
We forget about the spaciousness
above the clouds
but it's up there.The sun's up there too.
When words we hear don't fit the day,
when we worry
what we did or didn't do,
what if we close our eyes,
say any word we love
that makes us feel calm,
slip it into the atmosphere
and rise?
Creamy miles of quiet.
Giant swoop of blue.
Routine
by Donald Hall
In the bliss of routine
- coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems -
we feel we will live
forever, until we know we feel it.
by Donald Hall
In the bliss of routine
- coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems -
we feel we will live
forever, until we know we feel it.
Object Permanence
by Nicole Sealey
(for John)
We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.
How we have managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn
indebted to light. Though we're not so self-
important as to think everything
has led to this, everything has led to this.
There's a name for the animal
love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.
You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there's none left to laugh,
days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gored on milkweed.
O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,
how I'll miss you when we're dead.
by Nicole Sealey
(for John)
We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.
How we have managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn
indebted to light. Though we're not so self-
important as to think everything
has led to this, everything has led to this.
There's a name for the animal
love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.
You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there's none left to laugh,
days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gored on milkweed.
O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,
how I'll miss you when we're dead.
Petition
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
These are the long weeks. The weeks
Of waiting. Let them be
Longer. Let the days smolder
Like the peat slung
In plastic sacks by the greenhouse
And let the seedlings not rush
Into growth but climb the air slowly
As if it were a ladder,
One small foot at a time.
Let the fetid smell of bone meal
Be the body unlocking
As the river does, slowing to a hazy laze
That pulls the boaters in
And makes the fish rise up. And
As the wide-wheeled yellow tractors
Roll along the highway,
Stalling traffic in their wakes,
And the dust from the playing fields
Settles over us like pollen,
Like the balls dropping softly
Into our mitts, let
The willow's love of water—
Its dark and beaded rain—
Be the only storm we long for.
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
These are the long weeks. The weeks
Of waiting. Let them be
Longer. Let the days smolder
Like the peat slung
In plastic sacks by the greenhouse
And let the seedlings not rush
Into growth but climb the air slowly
As if it were a ladder,
One small foot at a time.
Let the fetid smell of bone meal
Be the body unlocking
As the river does, slowing to a hazy laze
That pulls the boaters in
And makes the fish rise up. And
As the wide-wheeled yellow tractors
Roll along the highway,
Stalling traffic in their wakes,
And the dust from the playing fields
Settles over us like pollen,
Like the balls dropping softly
Into our mitts, let
The willow's love of water—
Its dark and beaded rain—
Be the only storm we long for.
I Still Have Everything You Gave Me
by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is dusty on the edges.
It is slightly rotten.
I guard it without thinking.
I focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.
I do not ache.
I would not trade
by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is dusty on the edges.
It is slightly rotten.
I guard it without thinking.
I focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.
I do not ache.
I would not trade
December
by Michael Miller
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,
down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.
by Michael Miller
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,
down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.
211
by Francesco Petrarch
translation by Nicholas Kilmer
Wish spurs me on. Love looks and nods.
Pleasure drags me. Old habit carries,
Hope flatters and recomforts me, and offers
Its right hand to a heart viciously tired.
And taken in once more
By the easy blindness my guide offers
I have hope again. Desire breeds desire.
The senses rule over a dead mind
Strength, honor, beauty, gentle gestures,
Fair speech — I have woven my heart
Into this net of branches, with comfort and deliberation.
In the year 1327, at the opening of the first hour,
On the sixth of April, I entered the labyrinth.
My wandering since has been without purpose.
by Francesco Petrarch
translation by Nicholas Kilmer
Wish spurs me on. Love looks and nods.
Pleasure drags me. Old habit carries,
Hope flatters and recomforts me, and offers
Its right hand to a heart viciously tired.
And taken in once more
By the easy blindness my guide offers
I have hope again. Desire breeds desire.
The senses rule over a dead mind
Strength, honor, beauty, gentle gestures,
Fair speech — I have woven my heart
Into this net of branches, with comfort and deliberation.
In the year 1327, at the opening of the first hour,
On the sixth of April, I entered the labyrinth.
My wandering since has been without purpose.
Spell
by Carol Ann Duffy
Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds
That keeps things living in a written line,
Whatever's lost or leaving--lock of rhyme--
And so I write and write and write your name.
by Carol Ann Duffy
Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds
That keeps things living in a written line,
Whatever's lost or leaving--lock of rhyme--
And so I write and write and write your name.
Us
by Ana Božičević
whatever happens
I just have to remember
how you feel
when I put my hands
to your chest
your soul a lightbulb
flashing just under your skin
what happens happens
this did
the membranes were thin
enough to let us eat light
by Ana Božičević
whatever happens
I just have to remember
how you feel
when I put my hands
to your chest
your soul a lightbulb
flashing just under your skin
what happens happens
this did
the membranes were thin
enough to let us eat light
Twenty Lines on Paul Klee's Man in Love
by Dean Rader
In each stanza of this poem
There are five lines
One for the first time
I put my finger
On your bottom lip
One for the night
You slept next to me
For eight straight hours
Another for the next like
In which you'll kill me
One more for
Sorrows tiny knot
You may one day
Untie
And one last one
For that slice of sky
The heavy leaf the cupped
Hand the opened lip in
And into which we fall
Without belt or net
by Dean Rader
In each stanza of this poem
There are five lines
One for the first time
I put my finger
On your bottom lip
One for the night
You slept next to me
For eight straight hours
Another for the next like
In which you'll kill me
One more for
Sorrows tiny knot
You may one day
Untie
And one last one
For that slice of sky
The heavy leaf the cupped
Hand the opened lip in
And into which we fall
Without belt or net
by Gregory Orr
Squander it all!
Hold nothing back.
The heart's a deep well.
And when it's empty,
It will fill again.
Squander it all!
Hold nothing back.
The heart's a deep well.
And when it's empty,
It will fill again.
Give Me Your Hand
by Gabriela Mistral
Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.
Keeping time in the dance together,
singing the tune together with me,
grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we'll be.
I'm called Hope and you're called Rose:
but losing our names we'll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we'll be.
by Gabriela Mistral
Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.
Keeping time in the dance together,
singing the tune together with me,
grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we'll be.
I'm called Hope and you're called Rose:
but losing our names we'll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we'll be.
What We Want
by Linda Pastan
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
by Linda Pastan
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
How Do I Love You?
by Mary Oliver
How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by
demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and
no more words now
by Mary Oliver
How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by
demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and
no more words now
Name
by Carol Anne Duffy
When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?
Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.
Its consonants
brushing my mouth
like a kiss.
I love your name.
I say it again and again
in this summer rain.
I see it,
discreet in the alphabet,
like a wish.
I pray it
into the night
till its letters are light.
I hear your name
rhyming, rhyming,
rhyming with everything.
O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love
by Anne Carson
I like being with you all night with closed eyes. What luck—here you are coming along the stars! I did a road trip all over my mind and heart and there you were kneeling by the roadside with your little toolkit fixing something. Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.
The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac
by Mary Oliver
by Mary Oliver
1. Why should I have been surprised? Hunters walk the forest without a sound. The hunter, strapped to his rifle, the fox on his feet of silk, the serpent on his empire of muscles— all move in a stillness, hungry, careful, intent. Just as the cancer entered the forest of my body, without a sound. 2. The question is, what will it be like after the last day? Will I float into the sky or will I fray within the earth or a river— remembering nothing? How desperate I would be if I couldn’t remember the sun rising, if I couldn’t remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t even remember, beloved, your beloved name. 3. I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. so why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. 4. Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat, all the fragile blue flowers in bloom in the shrubs in the yard next door had tumbled from the shrubs and lay wrinkled and fading in the grass. But this morning the shrubs were full of the blue flowers again. There wasn’t a single one on the grass. How, I wondered, did they roll back up to the branches, that fiercely wanting, as we all do, just a little more of life?
I Am Too Alone In The World, And Not Alone Enough
translated by Robert Bly
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly
by Rainer Maria Rilke
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action, and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. And I want my grasp of things true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The Letter
by Linda Gregg
I'm not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.
by Linda Gregg
I'm not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.
New York Address
by Linda Gregg
The sun had just gone out
and I was walking three miles to get home.
I wanted to die.
I couldn't think of words and I had no future
and I was coming down hard on everything.
My walk was terrible.
I didn't seem to have a heart at all
and my whole past seemed filled up.
So I started answering all the questions
regardless of consequence:
Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won't speak.
No I will write. Yes I will breed. No I won't love.
Yes I will bless. No I won't close. Yes I won't give.
Love is on the other side of the lake.
It is painful because the dark makes you hear
the water more. I accept all that.
And that we are not allowed romance but only its distance
Having finished with it all, now I am not listening.
I wait for the silence to resume.
by Linda Gregg
The sun had just gone out
and I was walking three miles to get home.
I wanted to die.
I couldn't think of words and I had no future
and I was coming down hard on everything.
My walk was terrible.
I didn't seem to have a heart at all
and my whole past seemed filled up.
So I started answering all the questions
regardless of consequence:
Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won't speak.
No I will write. Yes I will breed. No I won't love.
Yes I will bless. No I won't close. Yes I won't give.
Love is on the other side of the lake.
It is painful because the dark makes you hear
the water more. I accept all that.
And that we are not allowed romance but only its distance
Having finished with it all, now I am not listening.
I wait for the silence to resume.
Twenty One Love Poems [Poem II]
by Adrienne Rich
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the
upbreathing air
by Adrienne Rich
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the
upbreathing air
Twenty One Love Poems [Poem III]
by Adrienne Rich
Since we're not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we're not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
by Adrienne Rich
Since we're not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we're not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
Why Read Poetry if It Won't Make You Rich?
by Joy Sullivan
For starters, your soul will get bigger.
Your love, more terrible and luminous.
Soon, you'll say tender things at parties
after too much champagne. A sidewalk
quince, wet with midnight, will stop
you in your tracks. In time, you'll
find the perfect metaphor for your
child's face. All at once, you'll see
the world and want it again:
clothes flapping on the line,
lilacs strewn and seedling, the luck
of worms. An artichoke with its heart
torn hot and steaming from the throbbing
crown will suddenly turn you on.
by Joy Sullivan
For starters, your soul will get bigger.
Your love, more terrible and luminous.
Soon, you'll say tender things at parties
after too much champagne. A sidewalk
quince, wet with midnight, will stop
you in your tracks. In time, you'll
find the perfect metaphor for your
child's face. All at once, you'll see
the world and want it again:
clothes flapping on the line,
lilacs strewn and seedling, the luck
of worms. An artichoke with its heart
torn hot and steaming from the throbbing
crown will suddenly turn you on.
So Much Happiness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
An Exit Wound That Feels So Fucking Good
by Megan Lynne
For three years I've had a bullet in my chest.
Joan DIdion wrote Do not whine. Do not complain.
Work harder. Spend more time alone.
Like any good disciple, I listened.
Sometimes the bullet was soft, pink, gooey, barely there.
Sometimes it burned blue with heart
& I laid in bed wondering if the work would fill me.
I did not while when hunger saved my body in half.
I did not complain when I walked for hours,
trying to get the sound of a sentence right.
I bled politely all over West Virginia.
It is April. The work is done.
Look, I have plucked the bullet from my body.
Look, I am not alone. Look, I am alive.
Purple wildflowers blooming everywhere.
by Megan Lynne
For three years I've had a bullet in my chest.
Joan DIdion wrote Do not whine. Do not complain.
Work harder. Spend more time alone.
Like any good disciple, I listened.
Sometimes the bullet was soft, pink, gooey, barely there.
Sometimes it burned blue with heart
& I laid in bed wondering if the work would fill me.
I did not while when hunger saved my body in half.
I did not complain when I walked for hours,
trying to get the sound of a sentence right.
I bled politely all over West Virginia.
It is April. The work is done.
Look, I have plucked the bullet from my body.
Look, I am not alone. Look, I am alive.
Purple wildflowers blooming everywhere.
To The Sea
by Anis Mojgani
Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I'm rambling
though I don't think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don't really care.
And not just because I and everyone really
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific,
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice
tumbling forth—like I said
I don't ever really mind
how much more
you might keep speaking
as it simply means
I get to hear you
speak for longer.
What was a stream
now a river.
by Anis Mojgani
Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I'm rambling
though I don't think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don't really care.
And not just because I and everyone really
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific,
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice
tumbling forth—like I said
I don't ever really mind
how much more
you might keep speaking
as it simply means
I get to hear you
speak for longer.
What was a stream
now a river.
To The Sea
by Anis Mojgani
Sometimes, I wonder if I would know a beautiful thing
if I saw it. So often, I was miserable when I was young,
even in California with the ocean close and fat seals
munching flatfish, tonguing urchins in their molars,
sunning themselves pink by the sandy primrose. I ignored
the whistle of the rock-faced mountain and her chorus
of dry hills, walked past the blazing stars and lemons in
dramatic ripe. I was so sad out west. The truth is I am
most exquisite on the east coast, meaning I am in rhythm.
I do not track the world by beauty but joy. That first bite
into the soft carrot of tagine stew while a storm wailed
over the East River. The misfit raccoon bouncing on
trash bins in Central Park after we saw a Japanese play.
We almost crashed a wedding that night at the Boathouse
but lost our nerve. We were not dressed for the caper,
but even this felt like rogue joy. Yes. It was joy, wasn't it?
Even if it was ugly, it was joy.
by Anis Mojgani
Sometimes, I wonder if I would know a beautiful thing
if I saw it. So often, I was miserable when I was young,
even in California with the ocean close and fat seals
munching flatfish, tonguing urchins in their molars,
sunning themselves pink by the sandy primrose. I ignored
the whistle of the rock-faced mountain and her chorus
of dry hills, walked past the blazing stars and lemons in
dramatic ripe. I was so sad out west. The truth is I am
most exquisite on the east coast, meaning I am in rhythm.
I do not track the world by beauty but joy. That first bite
into the soft carrot of tagine stew while a storm wailed
over the East River. The misfit raccoon bouncing on
trash bins in Central Park after we saw a Japanese play.
We almost crashed a wedding that night at the Boathouse
but lost our nerve. We were not dressed for the caper,
but even this felt like rogue joy. Yes. It was joy, wasn't it?
Even if it was ugly, it was joy.
The Unseen
by Linda Hogan
If you think I'm going to write about someone's god
that's a mistake. I am sitting by wild strawberries
not yet blooming. An emerald-green frog believes it can't be seen
under the leaf. The insects it wants sing, also unseen,
and mourning doves in the distance
think I am not here with a silent song,
not even to interrupt morning's eye wide open.
In the very near water, even with open eyes
I missed the leap. Fish, I didn't see you either.
The reeds grow and I am missing that, as well,
and the animal that just broke a fallen twig.
On the large stone is a petroglyph
of a mountain goat. It is covered with lichen
and barely visible like the moth that appears to be stone,
in its refuge.
I see so little and know so little.
Perhaps that is a kind of wisdom,
but, if nothing else, at the very least
I am not alone in the world
of the unseen.
by Linda Hogan
If you think I'm going to write about someone's god
that's a mistake. I am sitting by wild strawberries
not yet blooming. An emerald-green frog believes it can't be seen
under the leaf. The insects it wants sing, also unseen,
and mourning doves in the distance
think I am not here with a silent song,
not even to interrupt morning's eye wide open.
In the very near water, even with open eyes
I missed the leap. Fish, I didn't see you either.
The reeds grow and I am missing that, as well,
and the animal that just broke a fallen twig.
On the large stone is a petroglyph
of a mountain goat. It is covered with lichen
and barely visible like the moth that appears to be stone,
in its refuge.
I see so little and know so little.
Perhaps that is a kind of wisdom,
but, if nothing else, at the very least
I am not alone in the world
of the unseen.
The Pond
by Mary Oliver
August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.
by Mary Oliver
August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.
Here Are My Black Clothes
by Louise Glück
I think now it is better to love no one
than to love you. Here are my black clothes,
the tired nightgowns and robes fraying
in many places. Why should they hand useless
as though I were going naked? You liked me well enough
in black; I make you a gift of these objects.
You will want to touch them with your mouth,
run your fingers through the thin
tender underthings and I
will not need them in my new life.
by Louise Glück
I think now it is better to love no one
than to love you. Here are my black clothes,
the tired nightgowns and robes fraying
in many places. Why should they hand useless
as though I were going naked? You liked me well enough
in black; I make you a gift of these objects.
You will want to touch them with your mouth,
run your fingers through the thin
tender underthings and I
will not need them in my new life.
God's Places
by Linda Gregg
Does the soul care about the mightiness
of this love? The soul is a place
and love must find its way there.
A fisherman on his boat
swung a string of fish
around his head and threw it
across the water where it landed
at my feet. That was a place.
One day I walked into a village
that was all ruins.
It was noon. Nobody was there,
the roofs were gone, the silence
was heavy. A man came out.
Gradually other people,
but no one spoke. Then somebody
gave me a glass a water
with a lump of jam
and a spoon in it.
It was a place, one of God's
places, but love was not with me.
I breathed the way grape vines
live and give in to the whole dream
of being and not being.
The soul must be experienced
to be achieved. If you love me
as much as you say you love me,
stay. Let us make a place
of that ripeness
the soul speaks about.
by Linda Gregg
Does the soul care about the mightiness
of this love? The soul is a place
and love must find its way there.
A fisherman on his boat
swung a string of fish
around his head and threw it
across the water where it landed
at my feet. That was a place.
One day I walked into a village
that was all ruins.
It was noon. Nobody was there,
the roofs were gone, the silence
was heavy. A man came out.
Gradually other people,
but no one spoke. Then somebody
gave me a glass a water
with a lump of jam
and a spoon in it.
It was a place, one of God's
places, but love was not with me.
I breathed the way grape vines
live and give in to the whole dream
of being and not being.
The soul must be experienced
to be achieved. If you love me
as much as you say you love me,
stay. Let us make a place
of that ripeness
the soul speaks about.
Vernal Equinox
by Kyla Jamieson
I promised no poems
about you. I'm sorry:
I managed to leave
you off the page
but couldn't stop writing
about love. Soon the snow
will melt & we'll climb
mountains with nothing
but shoes on our feet.
I'll take myself
places I haven't been
in years. The future feels
wide open. I feel wide
open. If you listened
to my chest it would sound
like a river ice breakup,
like I just learned
how to breathe.
by Kyla Jamieson
I promised no poems
about you. I'm sorry:
I managed to leave
you off the page
but couldn't stop writing
about love. Soon the snow
will melt & we'll climb
mountains with nothing
but shoes on our feet.
I'll take myself
places I haven't been
in years. The future feels
wide open. I feel wide
open. If you listened
to my chest it would sound
like a river ice breakup,
like I just learned
how to breathe.
The Raincoat
by Ada Limón
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She'd say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I've been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
by Ada Limón
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She'd say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I've been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
Two Cures for Love
by Wendy Cope
1. Don't see him. Don't phone or write a letter. 2. The easy way: get to know him better.
My Heart
by Frank O'Hara
by Frank O'Hara
I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart— you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
To The Dust of the Road
by W. S. Merwin
by W. S. Merwin
And in the morning you are up again with the way leading through you for a while longer if the wind is motionless when the cars reach where the asphalt ends a mile or so below the main road and the wave you rise into is different every time and you are one with it until you have made your way up to the top of your climb and brightened in that moment of that day and then you turn as when you rose before in fire or wind from the ends of the earth to pause here and you seem to drift away on into nothing to lie down once more until another breath brings you to birth
Sonnet LXXXIX
(from 100 Love Sonnets)
translated from Spanish by Stephen Tapscott
by Pablo Neruda
(from 100 Love Sonnets)
translated from Spanish by Stephen Tapscott
by Pablo Neruda
When I die, I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more: I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together, to continue to walk on the sand we walk on. I want what I love to continue to live, and you whom I love and sang above everything else to continue to nourish, full-flowered: so that you can reach everything my love directs you to, so that my shadow can travel along in your hair, so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
Half-lovers
by Khalil Gibran
by Khalil Gibran
Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death. If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished Do not silence yourself to say something And do not speak to be silent. If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not Half a life is a life you didn't live, A word you have not said A smile you postponed A love you have not had A friendship you did not know To reach and not arrive Work and not work Attend only to be absent What makes you a stranger to them closest to you and they strangers to you The half is a mere moment of inability but you are able for you are not half a being You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life.
The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass
by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
Don't Hesitate
by Mary Oliver
by Mary Oliver
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
I used to rebel by destroying myself, but realized that's awfully convenient to the world. For some of us our best revolt is self preservation.
- Mitski, 2016 @mitskileaks
Ursula Le Guin's schedule
5:30 a.m. - wake up and lie there and think.
6:15 a.m. - get up and eat breakfast (lots).
7.15 a.m. - get to work writing, writing, writing.
Noon - lunch.
1:00-3:00 p.m. - reading, music.
3:00-5:00 p.m. correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
5:00-8:00 p.m. make dinner and eat it.
After 8:00 p.m. - I tend to be very stupid and we won't talk about this.
5:30 a.m. - wake up and lie there and think.
6:15 a.m. - get up and eat breakfast (lots).
7.15 a.m. - get to work writing, writing, writing.
Noon - lunch.
1:00-3:00 p.m. - reading, music.
3:00-5:00 p.m. correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
5:00-8:00 p.m. make dinner and eat it.
After 8:00 p.m. - I tend to be very stupid and we won't talk about this.
it is okay to pause. there's no need to run without knowing the reason. it is okay not to have a dream, as long as there are moments of brief happiness. every breath you exhale is already in paradise.
We're asleep until we love. We're children of the dust... But fall in love - and you're a god, you're pure as on the first day of creation.
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
(...) perhaps we should then bear our sadness with greater assurance than our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters us, something unknown to us; our feelings, shy and inhibited, fall silent, everything in us withdraws, a stillness settles on us, and at the centre of it is the new presence that nobody yet knows, making no sound.
(...) Because we are alone with the strange thing that has entered into us; because everything familiar and accustomed in taken away from us for a moment; because we are in the middle of a transition where we cannot stand still. And that is why sadness passes: what is new in us, the thing that had supervened, has entered into our heart, penetrated to its innermost chamber and not lingered even there - it is already in our blood. And we never quite know what is was.
(...) And that is why is it so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: (...) The quieter, the more patient and open we are in our sadness, the deeper and more unerringly the new will penetrate into us, the better we shall acquire it, the more it will be our fate, and when one day in the future it 'takes place' (that is, steps out of us towards others) we shall feel related and close to it in our innermost hearts.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth.
- Mary Shelley
I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
- Haruki Murakami
Love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, for it is a construction. The riddle of the idea of love is the mystery of how it comes into being. The most interesting point, at its core, is not the question of the ecstasy of beginnings, but love is above all about construction. Let us say that love is an adventure of persistence. The adventurous side is necessary, but it cannot be without persistence. To fall at the first obstacle, the first serious divergence, the first troubles, is only a disfigurement of love. True love is the one that triumphs durably, and yet sometimes with difficulty, the obstacles that space, the world, and time offer it.
- Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love
Every time you write about your obsessions, whether you are describing death, madness, the need to immerse yourself in deep waters, or a coming collapse, you are making an effort to clarify them...
- Cioran, on why one writes, from Solitude and Destiny
I could love you violently, if I let myself.
- Sylvia Plath
Of course, you are you, and no one else. We are defined not by the soul we are born with, but the path we walk.
- Seto, Shadowbringers
To strive for a dream you will never see--to sow seeds that others might one day taste the fruits of your garden--that is the beauty of your kind.
- Feo Ul, Shadowbringers
The glory of the heavens was ever beyond the grasp of those who never thought to reach for it. But if I've gained anything from all of this, it is the courage to stretch out my hand.
- Crystal Exarch, Shadowbringers
Something in us awakens and breathes more deeply when it feels the world supple in its transformations and meanings. This is the leavening in the words of the French poet Paul Eluard: "There is another world, but it is in this one." It is also the leavening in any piece of literature worth reading. Only words that enlarge the realm of the possible merit borrowing our attention from the world of the actual and the living: they will return us to it restored to the knowledge of a malleability and amplitube we may have forgotten.
- Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World
I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life -- to be rooted in life -- to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.
- Katherine Mansfield
I think it's a valuable thing to write your own poetry, and to speak for yourself, and do it well because you recognize certain things about yourself. You are a very rare creature, you are the one of you, you are unique, and that your experience is perfectly valid, totally valid. That everything you've lived is important enough to make poetry of. I meet people who say, "How can I write, nothing has happened to me?" I say, "What do you mean, nothing has happened? You got born." Look how much Roethke made of that! It's not a question of vanity. It's that I'm a worthy human being and what happened to me ought to be told, ought to be sung. The people who nourished me and fostered me were valuable and I want to immortalize that, memorialize that. In that way, I think poetry writing is good.
- Phil Levine
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
- Ezra Pound
23. From the true opponent, a limitless courage flows into you.
103. You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world--that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature--but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.
5. From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
20. Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.
- Franz Kafka, Aphorisms
- Yi Yi (2000), dir. Edward Yang
- The Death of an Artist, William Deresiewicz
- Walter Benjamin