1025. The Old Poets of China - Mary Oliver

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness. It does not believe

that I do not want it. Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

1024. A Small Eternity - Robert Penn Warren

.

The time comes when you count the names—whether

dim or flaming in the head’s dark, or whether

In stone cut, time-crumbling or moss-glutted.

You count the names to reconstruct yourself.

But a face remembered may blur, even as you stare

At a headstone. Or sometimes a face, as though from air,

Will stare at you with a boyish smile—but, not

Stone-moored, blows away like dandelion fuzz.

It is very disturbing. It is as though you were

The idiot boy who ventures out on pond-ice

Too thin and hears here—hears there—the creak

And crackling spread. That is the sound Reality

Makes as it gives beneath your metaphysical

Poundage. Memory dies. Or lies. Time

Is a wind that never shifts air. Pray only

That, in the midst of selfishness, some

Small act of careless kindness, half-unconscious, some

Unwitting smile or brush of lips, may glow

In some other mind’s dark that’s lost your name, but stumbles

Upon that momentary Eternity.

1023. A Cup Of Coffee - Gene Fowler

From: A Solo In Tom-Toms - Gene Fowler

Such a small and homely and peasant-like thing

seems a cup of coffee.

Still, some of us know that nothing really is small

and nothing actually large, but of an entity,

and of no dimensions whatsoever except as our

imaginations make it seem large or small.

For everything is one thing and of one thing.

And the thing is not a thing at all, but an idea.

Perhaps this idea is both the creator and the created, 

Timeless, endless, and inscrutable.

1022. Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

my ancestors surround me

like walls of a canyon

quiet

stone hard

their ideas drift over me

like breezes at sunset

we gather sticks

and make settlements

what we do is only partly

our own

and partly continuation

down through the chromosomes

my son

my baby sleeps behind me

stirring in the night

for the touch

that lets him continue

he is arranging 

in his small form the furniture

and windows of his home

it will be a lot like mine

it will be a lot like theirs

1021. To The Son - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

It was not I who begot you. It was the dead—

my father, and his father, and their forebears,

all those who through a labyrinth of loves

descend from Adam and the desert wastes

of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient

it has become mythology by now,

to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day

in the future, in which I now beget you.

I feed their multitudes. They are who we are,

and you among us, you and the the sons to come

that you will beget. The latest in the line

and in red Adam’s line. I too am those others.

Eternity is present in the things

of time and its impatient happenings

1020. The Bed by the Window - Robinson Jeffers

.

I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed

When we built the house, it is ready waiting.

Unused unless by some guest in a a twelvemonth, who hardly  suspects

Its later purpose. I often regard it,

With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equaled

That they kill each other and a crystalline interest

Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish,

And then it will sound rather like music

When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky

Thrumps with his staff, and calls thrice: “Come,  Jeffers

1019. Figment at the Beginning of Something. . . - David Watts

My son brings me a stone and asks

which star it fell from,

he is serious

and so I must be careful, even though

I know he will place it

among those things that will leave him

someday, and he

will go on gathering. For this

is one of those moments

that turns suddenly towards you, opening

as it turns, as if for a moment

we paused on the edge

of a heart beat, conscious

of the fear that runs beside us

and how lovely it is to be with each other

in the long resilient mornings.

1018. Poema - Maria Teresa Horta

Poema by Maria Teresa Horta

Translated from the Portuguese by Lesley Saunders

I let him come.

He sneaks on tiptoe

right up to my ear;

under its ribs my heart

quivers, quickens

as the excitement mounts:

first the forest appears,

then the woodland-sequel,

more mist than snow to the touch –

from the new poem’s

very first line the paper sucks up

every waif-word

and an ugliness steals in,

a cunning hungry thing

crouching there incognito,

pretending to be tame and yet so wolfish

that he’s the kernel of light

and then the noise of its cracking;

he’s lithe on the path,

doubling back on himself,

running with the pack, loping alone;

pussy-footing through the night

he trails moonlight behind him

like a mink coat.

I feel him when the hairs on my skin

lift, and in the delicious dizziness

of my private pulse –

in the midst of my writing, in my dream-life,

I slip all his clothes slowly off

and slide him down beside me.

1017. Marks - Linda Pastan

.

My husband gives me an A

for lasts nights’s supper

an incomplete for my ironing,

a B plus in bed.

My son says I am average,

an average mother, but if

I put my mind to it

I could improve.

My daughter believes

in Pass/Fail and tells me

I pass. Wait ‘till they learn

I’m dropping out.

1016. Epitaph For "Poet's Tomb" - Shuntaro Tankawa

“I, infinite silence, will grant you words”

[God Contemplates Man]　　—Jules Supervielle

When I was born

I was nameless

like a water molecule

But right away I was fed vowels mouth-to-mouth

consonants tickled my ears

I was called and

pulled away from the cosmos

Oscillating the atmosphere

carved onto clay tablets

inscribed on bamboo

recorded on sand

words are onion skins

If I keep on peeling

I will not find the cosmos

I would have loved to lose words

to be a tree singing in the wind

I would have loved to be a cloud from a hundred thousand years ago

I would have loved to be a whale’s song

Now I go back to being nameless

with dirt over my eyes, my ears and my mouth

with stars leading me by the fingers

1015. To John Keats (1795 - 1821) -Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

From the beginning to your early death

a terrible beauty lay in wait for you

as good or bad luck lay in wait for others.

That beauty waited for you in the dawns

of London, or by chance in the pages of

a dictionary of mythology,

in the ordinary gifts of a normal day,

or in a face, a voice, the mortal lips

of Fanny Brawne. O posthumous Keats

snatched away from earth, blinded by time,

the nightingale on high and the Greek urn

are your eternity, o fleeting one.

You were the fire. In panic memory

you are not ashes now. You are glory.

1014. Low Tide At St Andrews - Emily Pauline Johnson

(New Brunswick)

The long red flats stretch open to the sky,

Breathing their moisture on the August air.

The seaweeds cling with flesh-like fingers where

The rocks give shelter that the sands deny;

And wrapped in all her summer harmonies 

St Andrews sleeps beside her sleeping seas.

The far-off shores swim blue and indistinct,

Like half-lost memories of some old dream.

The listless waves that catch each sunny gleam

Are idling up the waterways land-linked,

And, yellowing along the harbour’s breast,

The light is leaping shoreward from the west.

And naked-footed children, tripping down,

Light with young laughter, daily come at eve

To gather dulse and sea clams and then heave

Their loads, returning laden to the town,

Leaving a strange grey silence when they go, 

The silence of the sands when tides are low.

1013. Emily Dickinson - Linda Pastan

.

We think of her hidden in a white dress

among the folded linens and sachets

of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight

sending jellies and notes with no address

to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.

Eccentric as New England weather

the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,

blew two half-imagined lovers off.

Yet legend won’t explain the sheer sanity

of vision, the serious mischief

of language, the economy of pain.

1012. Nikos Kazantzakis - The Mind Of Man

From: The Saviors of God. translated by Kimon Friar

The mind of man can perceive appearances only

 and never the essence of things

And not all appearances but only the appearance of matter.

And not even these appearances of matter

 but only relationships between them.

And these relationships are not real and independent

 of man for even these are his creations.

And they are not the only ones humanly possible but simply

 the most convenient for his practical and perceptive needs.

1011. Sunset Oien - Shuntaro Tanikawa

Sometimes I reread poems I wrote long ago

I don't ask textbook questions like "what was the author feeling when he wrote this?"

When you write a poem, there is nothing but the feeling of wanting to write a poem

Even if I wrote that I am sad

I know it doesn't mean that I was sad at the time

It's difficult to read my own poems critically

I had nearly forgotten them, and while they don't belong to someone else,

they can't possibly be mine

How best to take responsibility is utterly lost on me

Sometimes, unawares, I find myself moved by my own poems

Poetry ignites the lyricism that lies hidden within people

You might say it does so brazenly and without shame

I've heard that Saul Bellow said one of the most essential purposes of literature

Is to pose ethical questions

But the truth which poetry strives for is different from that of novels

Rather than the progression of time, poems concern themselves with moments

But while rereading my poems I think to myself

I can't write like this

A day is made up of more than the sunset

I can't live merely standing there before it

No matter how beautiful it may be 

1010. Good Bones - Maggie Smith

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious ill-advised ways
in a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways,
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

1009. And - Shuntarō Tanikawa

Translated from the Japanese by William I Elliott and Kazuo Kawamure

When summer comes
the cicadas
sing again.
Fireworks
freeze
in my memory.
Distant countries are dim
but the universe
is right in front of your nose.
What a blessing 
that people
can die
leaving behind
only the conjunction
"and".

1008. What Is Lost - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

I wonder whee my life is, the one that could
have been and never was, the daring one
or the one of gloomy dread, that other thing
which could as well have been the sword or shield
but never was? I wonder where is my lost
Persian or Norwegian ancestor,
where is the chance of my not being blind,
where is the anchor, the ocean, where the forgetting
to be who I am? I wonder where the pure
night is that the unlettered working day
entrusts to the rough laborer so that he
can also feel the love of literature
I also think about a certain mate
who waited for me once, perhaps still waits.

1007. First Sight - Philip Larkin

.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow.

1006. And Now You - Kate Miller

From The Observances, Kate Miller’s debut collection Carcanet, 2015.

And now you

exist

outside the royal room of blood you occupied

and – without being shown –

can close a fist or yawn.

Practised, you look

already. Hopskip and bowing,

treading measure in a dance.

You only took to unfamiliar air

with your first taste of dust

yesterday as evening fell. All the falling,

all the flow around you,

hair and water, will become familiar:

mother, father: skin-to-skin.

You’ve swum the sea of welcome,

been lifted on the swell,

slipped waxy through the crowd of hands.

Your own breath sounded

the all-clear,

all’s well,

when you sang out a first

exclamatory note

about the cord that tied you

being cut,

the tying-off, your separate knot.