1193. New Mexican Mountain - Robinson Jeffers, 1932

 I watch the Indians dancing to help the young corn at Taos Pueblo.

The old men squat in a ring

And make the song, the young women with fat bare arms, and a

few shame-faces young men shuffle the dance.

The lean-muscled young men are naked to the narrow loins, their

breasts and backs daubed with white clay,

Two eagle-feathers plume the black heads. They dance with

reluctance, they are growing civilized; the old men persuade them.

Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world has not changed, the

beating heart, the simplest of rhythms,

It thinks the world has not changed at all; it is only a dreamer, a

branchless heart, the drum has no eyes.

These tourists have eyes, the hundred watching the dance, white

Americans, hungrily too, with reverence, not laughter;

Pilgrims from civilization, anxiously seeking beauty, religion, poetry;

pilgrims from the vacuum.

People from cities, anxious to be human again. Poor show how they

suck you empty! The Indians are emptied,

And certainly there was never religion enough, nor beauty nor

poetry here… to fill Americans.

Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world has not changed.

Apparently only myself and the strong

Tribal drum, and the rockhead of Taos mountain, remember that

civilization is a transient sickness.

1192. Poem For Dan's Departure - Kate Farrell

So much do we love

Talking to people we love

About ideas we love

That thinking becomes a conversation

With people we love about ideas we love.

Being your mother

Became a conversation

Where your quiet ideas furthered

The attachment  first fastened

In the far configurations

Of destiny.

I am honored that the universe

Loaned your childhood to me,

Adding such a bright star

To the constellation of conversations

That I am becoming,

For, however far apart we are,

Your considerate voice stays with me,

Enlightening my thinking.

I wish I could give you

A small package of whatever I know

That is worth knowing

To take with you wherever you go.

I wish you would call me from time to time

And tell the part of me that is you

Where your part of the conversation

Is going.

1191. In The Sierras - Al Young

Way up here, where sky comes close

to calling all the shots, where

photographers, geographers and gopher-

loathing golfers and creature-comfort joggers,

where bikers, hikers, wrecking crews and

hoarse writers alike mount slow invasions;

here, where whole fields, whole hills heal

and mountains make big money mean,

peace speaks its native tongue.

Way up here, where sky comes close,

where stakes grow vast, where the last

and first run neck and neck, where loveliness

lays herself on every line at once;

up here, where far and close dissolve.

where the Sierras do not err and terror

cheapens. Sleeplessness like formlessness

must nest at midnight-lighted height.

Peace gets and takes its chances.

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.