1116. The Next Time - Mark Strand

Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time

Is becoming the architecture of the next time. And the dazzle

Of light upon the waters is as nothing beside the changes

Wrought therein, just as our waywardness means

Nothing against the steady purr of things over the edge.

Nobody can stop the flow, but nobody can start it either.

Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,

And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,

Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,

and so many people we loved have gone,

And no voice comes from outer space, from the folds

Of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this

Is the way it was meant to happen that if only we knew

How long the ruins would last we would never complain.

1115. Excerpt from: What W. H. Auden Can Do For You - Alexander McCall Smith

 “…. Auden wrote a gravely beautiful poem…. Its title was: “New Year Letter,” and it was addressed to Elizabeth Mayer, a refugee from the depredations of Nazi Germany, a translator, and a close friend. Like many of his works, this poem is conversational in tone but contains within it a complex skein of ideas about humanity and history, about art, civilization, and violence. At the end of the letter, through, there occur lines that are among the most beautiful he wrote. Addressing his friend, he draws attention to what she brings to the world through her therapeutic calling:” 

We fall down in the dance, we make

The old ridiculous mistake,

But always there are such as you

Forgiving, helping what we do.

O every day in sleep and labour

Our life and death are with our neighbor,

And love illuminates again

The city and the lion’s den. 

The world’s great rage, the travail of young men.

1114. - Madly Singing In The Mountains - Po Chu - I

 Selected from: A Book Of Luminous Things, Edited by Czeslaw Milosz

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

There is no one among men that has not a special failing,

I have broken away from the thousand ties of life;

But this infirmity still remains behind.

Each time that I look at a fine landscape,

Each time that I meet a loved friend,

I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry

And marvel as though a God had crossed my path.

Ever since the day I was banished to Hsün-yang

Half my time I have lived among the hills.

And often when I have finished a new poem,

Alone I climb the road to the Eastern Rock.

I lean my body on the banks of white Stone;

I pull down with my hands a green cassia branch.

My mad singing startles the valleys and hills;

The apes and birds all come to peep.

Fearing to become a laughing-stock to the world,

I choose a place that is unfrequented by men.