1190. Axe Handles - Gary Snyder

One afternoon the last week in April

showing Kai how to throw a hatchet

One half turn and it sticks in a stump.

He recalls the hatchet head

Without a handle, in the shop

And go gets it, and take it for his own.

A broken-off axe handle behind the door

Is long enough for a hatchet,

We cut it to length and take it

With the hatchet head

And working hatchet, to the wood block.

There I begin to shape the old handle

With the hatchet, and the phrase

First learned from Ezra Pound

Rings in my ears!

“When making an axe handle

the pattern is to far off”

And I say this to Kai

“Look we’ll shape the handle

By checking the handle

Of the axe we cut with—“

The sees. And I hear it again

It’s in Lu Ji’s Wen Fu, fourth century

A.D.  “Essay on Literature”—in the 

Preface ‘In making the handle

Of an axe

By cutting wood and axe

The model is indeed near at hand”

My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

Translated that and taught it years ago

and I see: Pound was an axe,

Chen was an axe, I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture

How we go on.

1189. Everything Is Going To Be Alright - Derik Mahon

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling ?

There will be dying, there will be dying.

but there is no need to go into that. 

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything 

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight 

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be alright.

1188. Poem - Thomas McGrath -

How could I have come so far

(And always on such dark trails)

I must have traveled by the light

shining from the faces of all those I have loved.

1187. The Ticket - Anne Porter

 On the night table

beside my bed

I keep a small

blue ticket

One day I found it

In my pocket book

I don’t know how

It got there

I don’t know 

What it’s for

On one side

there’s a number 

 98833

And

INDIANA TICKET COMPANY

On the other side

The only thing it says

Is KEEP THIS TICKET

I keep it carefully

Because I’m old

Which means

I’ll soon be leaving

For another country

Where possibly

Some blinding-bright

enormous angel

Will stop me

At the border 

And ask 

To see my ticket.

1186. Brown Penny - William Butler Yeats

I whispered, "I am too young."

and then, “I am old enough”.

Wherefore I thew a penny

To find out if I might love.

“Go and love, go and love, young man,

If  the lady be young and fair”

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough 

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.

1185. Nothing Is Lost - Noel Coward

Deep in the sub-conscious we are told

Lie all our memories, lie all the notes

Of all the music we have ever heard 

And all the phrases those we loved have spoken, 

Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,

Family jokes, outmoded anecdotes

Each sentimental souvenir and token

Everything seen, experienced, each word

Addressed to us in infancy before,

Before we we could even know or understand

The implications of our wonderland.

There they all are, the legendary lies

The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears

Forgotten debris of forgotten years

Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise

Before our world dissolves before our eyes

Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,

A word, a tune, a known familiar scent

And echo from the past when, innocent

We looked upon the present with delight

And doubted not the future would be kinder

A never knew the loneliness of night.

1184.Let No Charitable Hope - Elinor Wylie

Now let no charitable hope

Confuse my mind with images

Of eagle and of antelope

I am in nature none of these

I am, being human, born alone,

I am, being woman, hard beset,

I live by squeezing a stone

The little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.

1183. The Silence Now - May Sarton

These days the silence is immense.

It is there deep down, not to be escaped.

The twittering flight of gold finches,

The three crows cawing in the distance

Only brush the surface of this silence

Full of mourning, the long drawn-out

Tug and sigh of waters never still—

The ocean out there and the inner ocean.

Only animals comfort because they live

In the present and cannot drag us down

Into those caverns of memory full of loss.

They pay no attention to the thunder

Of distant waves. My dog’s eager eyes

Watch me as I sit by the window thinking.

At the bottom of the silence what lies in wait?

Is it love? Is it death? Too early or too late?

What is it I can have that I still want?

My swift response is to what cannot stay,

The dying daffodils, peonies on the way,

Iris just opening, lilac turning brown

In the immense silence where I live alone.

It is the transient that touches me, old,

Those light-shot clouds as the sky clears,

A passing glory can still move to tears,

Moments of pure joy like some fairy gold

Too evanescent to be kept or told.

And the cat’s soft footfall on the stair

Keeps me alive, makes Nowhere into Here.

A the bottom of the silence it is she

Who speaks of an eternal Now to me.

1182. Poem For Nelson - Sylvia Miles

September 22, 2004

For Nelson: not a week has passed 

since you left us. That I haven’t

Missed your guileless southern smile

Your pile of shoes on the brick

Wall in the ivy-lined house

On the cobble-stoned square

In the Meat Packing District.

Had I known you wouldn’t stay.

I’d never have chastised you for

Your eye in the video camera,

And not on the world we were

Inhabiting so enjoyably.

You were there before these

Nosy hordes, Nelson—they

Will never know the joy you

Engendered in all of us, and how much

We all loved you!

           Your own Sylvia Miles