922. Break of Day - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

In the deep night of the universe
scarcely contradicted by the streetlamps
a lost gust of wind
has offended the taciturn streets
like the trembling premonition
of the horrible dawn that prowls
the ruined suburbs of the world.
Curious about the shadows
and daunted by the threat of dawn,
I recalled the dreadful conjecture
of Schopenhauer and Berkeley
which declares that the world
is a mental activity,
a dream of souls,
without foundation, purpose, weight or shape.
And since ideas
are not eternal like marble
but immortal like a forest or a river,
the preceding doctrine
assumed another form as the sun rose,
and in the superstition of that hour
when light like a climbing vine
begins to implicate the shadowed walls,
my reason gave way
and sketched the following fancy:
If things are void of substance
and if this teeming Buenos Aires
is no more than a dream
made up by souls in a common act of magic,
there is an instant
when its existence is gravely endangered
and that is the shuddering instant of daybreak,
when those who are dreaming of the world are few
and only the ones who have been up all night retain,
ashen and barely outlined,
the image of the streets
that later others will define.
The hour when the tenacious dream of life
runs the risk of being smashed to pieces,
the hour when it would be easy for God
to level His whole handiwork!

But again the world has been spared.
Light roams the streets inventing dirty colors
and with a certain remorse
for my complicity in the day’s rebirth
I ask my house to exist,
amazed and icy in the white light
as one bird halts the silence
and the spent night
stays on in the eyes of the blind.

921. Monticello - May Sarton

 .
This legendary house, this dear enchanted tomb,
Once so supremely lived in, and for life designed,
Will none of moldy death nor give it room,
Charged with the presence of a living mind.

Enter, and touch the temper of a lively men.
See, it is spacious, intimate and full of light.
The eye, pleased by detail, is nourished by the plan;
Nothing is here for show, much for delight.

All the joys of invention and of craft and wit,
Are freely granted here, all given rein,
But taut within the classic form and ruled by it,
Elegant, various, magnificent — and plain,

Europe become implacable American!
Yet Mozart could have been as happy here,
As Monroe riding from his farm again,
As well as any silversmith or carpenter —

As well as we, for whom this elegance,
This freedom in a form this peaceful grace,
Is not our heritage, although it happened once:
We read the future, not the past, upon his face.


Another version? (found in common-place.org)

This legendary house, this dear enchanted tomb,
Once so supremely lived in, and for life designed,
Will none of moldy death nor give it room,
Charged with the presence of a living mind.

All the joys of invention and craft and wit,
Are freely granted here, all given rein,
But taut within the classic form and ruled by it,
Elegant, various, magnificent—and plain.

The time must come when, from the people's heart,
Government grows to meet the stature of a man,
And freedom finds its form, that great unruly art,
And the state is a house designed by Jefferson.

920. Palais de Chaillot Inscriptions

Translated by ?

THE PASSERBY MUST DECIDE
IF I AM TOMB OR TREASURE HOUSE
ELOQUENT OR MUTE
THE CHOICE IS YOURS MY FRIEND
DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT DESIRE

EVERY MAN CREATES UNWITTINGLY
AS HE BREATHES
BUT THE ARTIST FEELS HIMSELF CREATE
THE DOING ABSORBS HIS WHOLE BEING
HIS CHOSEN SUFFERING GIVES HIM STRENGTH

WITHIN THESE CONSECRATED WALLS
I WELCOME AND PROTECT THE WORK
OF THE ARTIST'S MIRACULOUS HAND
EQUAL AND RIVAL OF HIS THOUGHT
THE ONE IS NOTHING WITHOUT THE OTHER

RARE THINGS BEAUTIFUL THINGS
HERE SKILLFULLY DISPLAYED
TEACH THE EYE TO BEHOLD
AS IF NEVER SEEN TILL NOW
THE VERY THINGS OF THIS WORLD

919. Along the Way - Lenore Horowitz

 From: (http://www.womencandoit.com/)

Along the way,

a moment shimmers into being,

frames itself

to image where you are.

You see it in an instant, 

set aperture and shutter to best expose

the secret unfolding in your lens

in clearest hues of light and shadow.


Some images are signposts,

a mark of where you’ve been,

and others, guides

to where you’ve yet to go.

Destination never was the point,

for any line is many points,

each an opportunity

to stop

and turn

and look at what you find,

and what finds you,

along the way.

It only matters how

—not when or where,

or even what—

you see.

With each exposure

grows an attitude of seeing

not the surface,

but the light 
which opens,

pulsing from the center.

These images together

make a luminous arrangement,

a constellation to brighten midnight skies

for those you’ve met,

and known,

and loved

along your way.

918. Miracle Fair - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak (1)

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it's backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh (2)

The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place.

The usual miracle:
invisible dogs barking
in the dead of night

One of many miracles:
a small and airy cloud
is able to upstage the massive moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder is reflected in the water
and is reversed from left to right
and grows from crown to root
and never hits the bottom
though the water isn't deep.

A run-of-the-mill miracle:
winds mild to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

A miracle in the first place:
cows will be cows.

Next but not least:
just this cherry orchard
from just this cherry pit.

A miracle minus top hat and tails:
fluttering white doves.

A miracle (what else can you call it):
the sun rose today at three fourteen A.M.
and will set tonight at one past eight.

A miracle that's lost on us:
the hand actually has fewer than six fingers
but still it's got more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought.

917. A Dream of Trees - Mary Oliver

 .
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees,
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

916. Shadows - D. H. Lawrence

.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace

in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,

and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower

then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon

my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom

pervades my movements and my thoughts and words

then I shall know that I am walking still

with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens

I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms

and trouble and dissolution and distress

and then the softness of deep shadows folding,

folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips

so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song

singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice

and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,

then I shall know that my life is moving still

with the dark earth, and drenched

with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life

I fall in sickness and in misery

my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead

and strength is gone, and my life

is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal

odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers

such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still

I am in the hands of the unknown God,

he is breaking me down to his own oblivion

to send me forth on a new morning, a new man.

915. Year's End - Jorge Luis Borge

Translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin

Neither the symbolic detail
of a three instead of a two,
nor that rough metaphor
that hails one term dying and another emerging,
nor the fulfillment of an astronomical process
muddle and undermine
the high plateau of this night
making us wait
for the twelve irreparable strokes of the bell.
The real cause
is our murky pervasive suspicion
of the enigma of Time,
it is our awe at the miracle
that, though the chances are infinite
and through we are
drops in Heraclitus’ river,
allows something in us to endure,
never moving.

914. Toy Camera - Lenore Horowitz

.
If only life could be like that

sometimes,
just blurred at the edges,

slightly out of focus,

a tiny bit fogged,

and those people in your frame

caught looking,

harmless, like cartoon characters,

and the surprises
you couldn’t see

when you snapped the shutter,

guessing at focus, exposure—

how the sun glows softly,

and shadows spread like coffee,

and all life’s multitude of grays

shimmer like silk scarves

and dance in summer’s breeze.

913. Now I Become Myself - May Sarton

.
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before–”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

912. From March 1979 - Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer - From March 1979
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Robertson

Sick of those who come with words, words but no language,
I make my way to the snow-covered island.

Wilderness has no words. The unwritten pages
stretch out in all directions.

I come across this line of deer-slots in the snow: a language,
language without words.


Tomas Tranströmer - From March 1979
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

Weary of all who come with words, words but no language
I make my way to the snow-covered island.
The untamed has no words.
The unwritten pages spread out on every side!
I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow.
Language but no words.

911. The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

910. A Maze Me - Naomi Shihab

 .
Life is a tangle of
twisting paths.
Some short.
Some long.
There are dead ends.
And there are choices.
And wrong turns,
and detours,
and yield signs,
and instruction booklets,
and star maps,
and happiness,
and loneliness.
And friends.
And sisters.
And love.
And poetry.

Life is a maze.
You are a maze.
Amazed.
And amazing.

909. into the strenuous briefness - e.e. cummings

 .
into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness, friends

i charge laughing.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight

i smilingly glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim, sayingly;

(Do you think?) the
i do, world
is probably made
of roses & hello:

(of solongs and, ashes)

908. Look To This Day - Kalidasa

(Sanskrit poet)

Look to this day
For it is the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The verities and realities of your existence:
The glory of action,
The bliss of growth,
The splendour of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today well lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day

907. Under One Small Star - Wislawa Szymborska

Under One Small Star (1)
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me distant wars for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offence that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labour heavily so that they may seem light.

Under A Certain Little Star (2)
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
since I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

       

906. Parallax - Lenore Horowitz

 From: (http://www.womencandoit.com/)

You never know

What will change the world-

a word lightly spoken,

a touch from a stranger,

a glance from a woman

in a red dress,

or a flower opening in your garden.

What you do know

down deep in your bones

is that the cells have

lined up in a new arrangement,

muscles grown

where before was weak and hollow,

and when you woke up this morning,

something else was on your mind

because the old furniture had moved

around to make room.

A momentary alignment of planets

has opened a door somewhere.

You never know how or when,

only that it means

Everything.

905. Credo - Maxine Kumin

.
I believe in magic. I believe in the rights
of animals to leap out of our skins
as recorded in the Kiowa legend:
Directly there was a bear where the boy had been

as I believe in the resurrected wake-robin,
first wet knob of trillium to knock
in April at the underside of earth's door
in central New Hampshire where bears are

though still denned up at that early greening.
I believe in living on grateful terms
with the earth, with the black crumbles
of ancient manure that sift through my fingers

when I topdress the garden for winter. I believe
in the wet strings of earthworms aroused out of season
and in the bear, asleep now in the rock cave
where my outermost pasture abuts the forest.

I cede him a swale of chokecherries in August.
I give the sow and her cub as much yardage
as they desire when our paths intersect
as does my horse shifting under me

respectful but not cowed by our encounter.
I believe in the gift of the horse, which is magic,
their deep fear-snorts in play when the wind comes up,
the ballet of nip and jostle, plunge and crow hop.

I trust them to run from me, necks arched in a full
swan's S, tails cocked up over their backs
like plumes on a Cavalier's hat. I trust them
to gallop back, skid to a stop, their nostrils

level with my mouth, asking for my human breath
that they may test its intent, taste the smell of it.
I believe in myself as their sanctuary
and the earth with its summer plumes of carrots,

its clamber peas, beans, masses of tendrils
as mine. I believe in the acrobatics of boy
into bear, the grace of animals
in my keeping, the thrust to go on.

904. The Swan - Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -

A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

903. The Healing Time - Pesha Gertler

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say   holy
        holy.