847. Fidelity - Grace Paley

.
After supper I returned to
my reading book I had
reached page one hundred
and forty two hundred and twenty
more to go I had been thinking that
evening as we spoke
early at dinner with a couple of young
people of the time dense improbable
life of that book in which I had become so comfortable
the characters were now my troubled companions
I knew them understood I could
reenter these lives without loss
so firm my habitation I scanned the shelves
some books so dear to me I had missed them
learned forward to take the work into
my hands I took a couple of deep breaths
thought about the acceleration of days
yes I could reenter them but . . .
No how could I desert that other whole life
those others in their city basements
Abandonment How could I have allowed myself
even thought of a half hour's distraction
when life had pages or decades to go
so much was about to happen to people
I already know and nearly loved

846. I Live My Life In Widening Circles - Rainer Maria Rilke

.
I live my life in widening circles
that drift out over the things.
I may not achieve the very last,
but it will be my aim.

I circle around God, around the age-old tower;
I've been circling for millennia
and still I don't know: an I a falcon a storm,
or a sovereign song?

845. King Demetrius - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn
Not like a king, but like an actor, he exchanged his showy robe of state for a dark cloak, and in secret stole away.
Plutarch, Life of Demetrius

When the Macedonians deserted him,
and made it clear that it was Pyrrhus they preferred
King Demetrius (who had a noble
soul) did not—so they said—
behave at all like a king. He went
and cast off his golden clothes,
and flung off his shoes
of richest purple In simple clothes
he dressed himself quickly and left:
doing just as an actor does
who, when the performance is over,
changes his attire and departs.

844. The Caedmon Room - Allen Grossman

.
Upstairs, one floor below the Opera House
(top floor of the building), is the Caedmon
room––a library of sorts. The Caedmon room
was empty of readers most of the time.
When the last reader left and closed the door,
I locked it and moved in for life. Right now,
I am writing this in the Caedmon room.
Caedmon was an illiterate, seventh-century
British peasant to whom one night a lady
appeared in a dream. She said to him, speaking
in her own language, "Caedmon! Sing me something!"
And he did just that. What he sang, in his
own language, was consequential––because
he did not learn the art of poetry
from men, but from God. For that reason,
he could not compose a trivial poem,
but what is right and fitting for a lady
who wants a song. These are the words he sang:
"Now praise the empty sky where no words are."
This was Caedmon's song. Caedmon's voice is sweet.
In the Caedmon room shelves groan under the
weight of his eloquent blank pages, Histories
of a sweet world in which we are not found.
Caedmon turned each page, page after page
until the last page––on which is written:
"To the one who conquers, I give the morning star."

843. Mist In The Morning - Mary Oliver

Mist In The Morning, Nothing Around Me
    But Sand And Roses

Was I lost? No question.
did I know where I was? Not at all.
Had I ever been happier in my Life? Never

842. The Laboratory - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple

Did it all
happen in the laboratory?
Beneath one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Are we a trial generation?
Poured from one beaker to another,
shaken in retorts,
observed by something more than an eye,
each one individually
taken by forceps?

Or maybe otherwise:
no interventions.
The transformations occur on their own
in accordance with a plan.
The needle draws
the expected zigzags.

Maybe until now there was nothing interesting in us.
The control monitors are seldom switched on,
except when there's a war, and a rather big one at that,
several flights over the lump of clay called Earth,
or significant movements from point A to point B.

Or perhaps thus:
they only have a taste for episodes.
Look! a little girl on a big screen
is sewing a button to her sleeve.

The monitors begin to shriek,
personnel come running in.
Oh, what short of tiny creature
with a little heart beating on the inside!
What graceful dignity
in the way she draws the thread!
Someone calls out in rapture:
Tell the Boss,
and let him come see for himself!

841. A Primer of the daily Round - Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
   Who happens just now to remember A
   Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

840. But Wise Men Apprehend What Is Imminent - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn

"The gods perceive what lies in the future, and mortals, what occurs in the present, but wise men apprehend what is imminent."
-Philostratus, Life of Apolloniur of Tyans, VII, 7

Mortal men perceive things as they happen.
What lies in the future the gods perceive,
full and sole possessors of all enlightenment.
Of all the future holds, wise men apprehend
what is imminent. Their hearing,

sometimes, in moments of complete
absorption in their studies, is disturbed. The secret call
of events that are about to happen reaches them.
And they listen to it reverently. While in the street
outside, the people hear nothing at all.

839. Of Simplicity - James Kavanaugh

.
Simplicity calls
After all the schemings done,
Now that I've paid homage
To damn near everyone.
God should be satisfied,
Parents got their due.
My education's justified.
I proved myself to you.

Simplicity calls
Now that everyone's been paid,
But even so I hesitate
Because I'm still afraid.
One of these days,
I'll jump the last few walls:
Give no explanation
Save "Simplicity calls"!

838. Insomnia - Linda Pastan

.
I remember when my body
was a friend.

when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.

The door to the future
had not started to shut,

and lying on my back
between cold sheets

did not feel
like a rehearsal.

Now what light is left
comes up—a stain in the east,

and sleep, reluctant
as a busy doctor,

gives me a little
of its time.

837. To The Required Unknown - William Wehrmeister

.
This world, with its flashing lights, and images, and blazing with speed

gives us little time, and less to reflect, and worse does our lives impede

so much so, that even to glance at a book, or any printed matter to read

it drops from our hands, with nervous tics and birdlike jumps that bleed

and betray only too well how this very second steals even that small seed

of graciousness, of time well spent quietly and well, to soothe others need.

But at times, must we whether work, travel, or move to events accurst,

yet must we stop, in force, for there is no other choice, no, this calls first,

only breathing that never stops, and the human voice, and baking thirst

wins precedence, for stopping brings only disaster, the horrid worst

but, with that duress, there comes a surety, a certainty that knows erst

a chance to be still and reflect, think deep thoughts, and write this verse.

836. Oatmeal - Galway Kinnell

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if
  somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
  breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
  companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal with
  John Keats.
Keats said I was right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture,
  gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to
  disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is OK to eat it with an
  imaginary companion, and that he himself had enjoyed
  memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if such porridges are not as wholesome as Keats claims,
  still, you can learn something from them.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
  "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it––those were his words––
  "Oi ad a 'eck of a toime, "he said more or less, speaking
  through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck
  in his pocket, but when he got home he couldn't figure out the
  order of the stanzas, and he and a friend spread the papers on
  a table, and they made some sense of them, but he isn't sure
  to this day if they got if right
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between
  stanzas and the way here and there a line will go into the
  configuration  of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
  and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
  causing the poem to  move forward with God's reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard
  about the scraps of paper on the table and tried shuffling
  some stanzas of his own but only made matters worse.
When breakfast was over John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the
  works lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn." I doubt if there
  is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him
  started on it and two the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed
  their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by
  hours," came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him––drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into
  the glimmering furrows, muttering––and it occurs to me:
  maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion's
tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over
  from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and
  simultaneously gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to
  invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

835. Theodotus - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn

If you are among the truly elect,
watch how you achieve your predominance.
However much you're glorified, however much
your accomplishments in Italy and Thessaly
are blazoned far and wide by governments,
however many honorary decrees
are bestowed on you in Rome by your admirers,
neither your elation nor your triumph will endure,
nor will you feel superior—superior how?—
when, in Alexandria, Theodotus brings you,
upon a charger that's been stained with blood,
poor wretched Pompey's head.

And do not take it for granted that in your life,
restricted, regimented, and mundane,
such spectacular and terrifying things don't exist.
Maybe at this very moment, into some neighbor's
nicely tidied house there comes—
invisible, immaterial—Theodotus,
bringing one such terrifying head.

834. I Am Too Close. - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

I am too close for him to dream of me.
I don't flutter over him, don't flee him
beneath the roots of trees. I am too close.
The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice.
The ring doesn't roll from my finger.
I am too close. The great house is on fire
without me calling for help. Too close
for one of my hairs to turn into the rope
of the alarm bell. Too close to enter
as the guest before whom walls retreat.
I'll never die again so lightly,
so far beyond my body, so unknowingly
as I did once in his dream. I am too close,
too close, I hear the word hiss
and see its glistening scales as I lie motionless
in his embrace. He's sleeping,
more accessible at this moment to an usherette
he saw once in a traveling circus with one lion,
than to me, who lies at his side.
A valley now grows within him for her,
rusty-leaved, with a snowcapped mountain at one end
rising in the azure air. I am too close
to fall from that sky like a gift from heaven.
My cry could only waken him. And what
a poor gift: I, confined to my own form,
when I used to be a birch, a lizard
shedding times and satin skins
in many shimmering hues. And I possessed
the gift of vanishing before astonished eyes,
which is the riches of all. I am too close,
too close for him to dream of me.
I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head -
it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins.
A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,
waiting to be counted.

833. Pursery Rhyme - Gen. Isaac R. Sherwood

(1835-1925)
(From: An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry, 1929)

Sing a song of Europe,
   Highly civilized.
Four and twenty nations
   Wholly hypnotized.

When the battles open
   The bullets start to sing;
Isn't that a silly way
   To act for any King?

The Kings are in the background
   Issuing commands;
The Queens are in the parlor,
   Per etiquette's demands.

The bankers in the counting house
   Are busy multiplying;
The common people at the front
   Are doing all the dying.

832. A World To Do - Theodore Weiss

“I busy too,” the little boy
said, lost in his book
about a little boy, lost
in his book, with nothing

but a purple crayon
and his wits to get him out.
“Nobody can sit with me,
I have no room.
                     I busy
too. So don’t do any noise.
We don’t want any noise
right now.”
               He leafs
through once, leafs twice;
the pictures, mixed with windy
sighs, grow dizzy,
                         world
as difficult, high-drifting
as the two-day snow that can
not stop.
            How will the bushes,
sinking deeper and deeper,
trees and birds, wrapt
up, ever creep
                   out again?
Any minute now the blizzard,
scared and wild, the animals
lost in it—O the fur,

the red-eyed claws, crying
for their home—may burst
into the room. Try words
he’s almost learned
                           on them?
He sighs, “I need a man here;
I can’t do all this work
alone.”
         And still, as though
intent on reading its own
argument, winter continues
thumbing through itself.

831. The Sun - Mary Oliver

.
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

830. Impressions - E. E. Cummings

From: An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry, 1929

the hours rise up putting off stars and it is
dawn
into the street of the sky light walks scattering poems

on earth a candle is
extinguished          the city
wakes
with a song upon her
mouth having death in her eyes

and it is dawn
the world
goes forth to murder dreams . . . .

i see in the street where strong
men are digging bread
and i see the brutal faces of
people contented hideous hopeless cruel happy

and it is day,

in the mirror
i see a frail
man
dreaming
dreams
dreams in the mirror

and it
is dusk            on earth

a candle is lighted
and it is dark.
the people are in their houses
the frail man is in his bed
the city
sleeps with death upon her mouth having a song in her eyes
the hours descend
putting on stars . . . .

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems.

829. Some Like Poetry (Four translations) - Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska - Some Like Poetry
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Maria Trzeciak

Some––
not all, that is.
Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting school, where one must,
or the poets themselves,
there'd be maybe two such people in a thousand.

Like––
but one also likes chicken-noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry––
but what sort of thing is poetry?
Many a shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and hold on to it,
as to a saving bannister.

Wislawa Szymborska - Some People Like Poetry (2)
Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple

Some people--
that is not everybody
Not even the majority but the minority.
Not counting the schools where one must,
and the poets themselves,
there will be perhaps two in a thousand.

Like--
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
we like compliments and the color blue,
we like our old scarves,
we like to have our own way,
we like to pet dogs.

Poetry--
but what is poetry.
More than one flimsy answer
has been given to that question.
And I don't know, and don't know, and I
cling to it as to a life line.

Wislawa Szymborska - Some People Like Poetry (3)
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Some people––
that means not everyone.
Not even most of them, only a few.
Not counting school, where you have to,
and poets themselves,
you might end up with something like two per thousand.

Like––
but then, you can like chicken noodle soup,
or compliments, or the color blue,
your old scarf,
your own way,
petting the dog.

Poetry––
but what is poetry anyway?
More than one rickety answer
has tumbled since that question first was raised.
But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that
like a redemptive handrail.

Wislawa Szymborska - Some Like Poetry (4)
Translated from the Polish by Regina Grol

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.

828. Brueghel's Snow (Six poems about the same picture)

Rutger Kopland - Brueghel's Winter Translated from the Dutch by James Brockway 

 Winter by Brueghel, the hill with hunters and dogs, at their feet the valley with the village. Almost home, but their dead-tired attitudes, their steps in the snow––a return, but almost as slow as arrest. At their feet the depths grow and grow, become wider and further, until the landscape vanishes into a landscape that must be there, is there but only as a longing is there. Ahead of them a jet-black bird dives down. Is it mockery of this labored attempt to return to the life down there: the children skating on the pond, the farms with women waiting and cattle? An arrow underway, and it laughs at its target.

  Anne Stevenson - Brueghel's Snow 

 Here in the snow: three hunters with dogs and pikes trekking over a hill, into and out of those famous footprints - famous and still. What did they catch? They have little to show on their bowed backs. Unlike the delicate skaters below, these are grim, they look ill. In the village, it's zero. Bent shapes in black clouts, raw faces aglow in the firelight, burning the wind for warmth, or their hunger's kill. What happens next? In the unpainted picture? The hunters arrive, pull off their caked boots, curse the weather slump down over stoups. . . Who's painting them now? What has survived to unbandage my eyes as I trudge through this snow, with my dog and stick, four hundred winters ago? 

  Joseph Langland - Hunters In The Snow: Brueghel 

 Quail and rabbit hunters with tawny hounds, Shadowless, out of late afternoon Trudge toward the neutral evening of indeterminate form. Done with their blood-annunciated day Public dogs and all the passionless mongrels Through deep snow Trail their deliberate masters Descending from the upper village home in hovering light. Sooty lamps Glow in the stone-carved kitchens. This is the fabulous hour of shape and form When Flemish children are grey-black-olive And green-dark-brown Scattered and skating informal figures On the mill ice pond. Moving in stillness A hunched dame struggles with her bundled sticks, Letting her evening's comfort cudgel her While she, like jug or wheel, like a wagon cart Walked by lazy oxen along the old snowlanes, Creeps and crunches down the dusky street. High in the fire-red dooryard Half unhitched the sign of the Inn Hangs in the wind Tipped to the pitch of the roof. Near it anonymous parents and peasant girl, Living like proverbs carved in the alehouse walls, Gather the country evening into their arms And lean to the glowing flames. Now in the dimming distance fades The other village; across the valley Imperturbable Flemish cliffs and crags Vaguely advance, close in, loom, Lost in nearness. Now The night-black raven perched in branching boughs Opens its early wing and slipping out Above the grey-green valley Weaves a net of slumber over the snow-capped homes. And now the church, and then the walls and roofs Of all the little houses are become Close kin to shadow with small lantern eyes. And now the bird of evening With shadows streaming down from its gliding wings Circles the neighboring hills Of Hertogenbosch, Brabant. Darkness stalks the hunters, Slowly sliding down. Falling in beating rings and soft diagonals. Lodged in the vague vast valley the village sleeps. 

  William Carlos Williams - The Hunters In The Snow 

The over-all picture 

is winter icy mountains 

in the background the return

 

from the hunt it is toward evening 

from the left 

sturdy hinters lead in 

their pack the inn-sign 

hanging from a 

broken hingeis a stag a crucifix 

between his antlers the cold 

inn yard is 

deserted but for a huge bonfire 

that flares wind-driven tended by 

women who cluster 

about it to the right beyond 

the hill is a pattern of skaters 

Brueghel the painter 

concerned with it all has chosen 

a winter-stuck bush for his 

foreground to

complete the picture 

  Anne Stevenson - Brueghel's Snow 

 Here in the snow: three hunters with dogs and pikes trekking over a hill, into and out of those famous footprints - famous and still. What did they catch? They have little to show on their bowed backs. Unlike the delicate skaters below, these are grim, they look ill. In the village, it's zero. Bent shapes in black clouts, raw faces aglow in the firelight, burning the wind for warmth, or their hunger's kill. What happens next? In the unpainted picture? The hunters arrive, pull off their caked boots, curse the weather slump down over stoups. . . Who's painting them now? What has survived to unbandage my eyes as I trudge through this snow, with my dog and stick, four hundred winters ago? 

  Walter de la Mare - Brueghel's Winter 

 Jagg'd mountain peaks and skies ice-green 

Wall in the wild, cold scene below. 

Churches, farms, bare copse, the sea 

In freezing quiet of winter show; 

Where ink-black shapes on fields in flood 

Curling, skating, and sliding go. 

To left, a gabled tavern; a blaze; 

Peasants; a watching child; and lo, 

Muffled, mute--beneath naked trees 

In sharp perspective set a-row-- 

Trudge huntsmen, sinister spears aslant, 

Dogs snuffling behind them in the snow; 

And arrowlike, lean, athwart the air 

Swoops into space a crow. 

But flame, nor ice, nor piercing rock, 

Nor silence, as of a frozen sea, 

Nor that slant inward infinite line 

Of signboard, bird, and hill, and tree, 

Give more than subtle hint of him 

 Who squandered here life's mystery.

 John /berryman - Winter Landscape

The three men coming down the winter hill

In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds

At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,

Past the five figures at the burning straw

Returning cold and silent to their town,

Returning in the drifted snow, the rink

Lively with children, to the older men

The long companions they can never reaach,

The blue light, men with ladders, by the church

The sledge and shadow in the twilit street

Are not aware that in the sandy time

To come, the revil waste of history

Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow

Of that same hill, when all their company

Will have been irrevocably lost,

These men, this particular three in brown

Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say

By their configuration with the trees,

The small bridge, the red housed and the fire,

What place, what time, what morning occasion

Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds

At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,

Thence to return as now we see them and

Ankle deep in snow down the winter hill

Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.