The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the present—
Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of
pressed tin,
this painting proposes.
Each carries the same water, it says.
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons
in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win
if you know how many you had
before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children
go to heaven — or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head
to your hand to your pencil to your paper
till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right
and everything is nice and you can look
out of the window and see the blue sky — or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over
and try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again
and then double it a few more times, the number
gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher
and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is
when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply —
and you carry the multiplication table in your head and
hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad,
and you eat one and a striped zebra
with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and
she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them,
who is better in arithmetic, you or your mother?
The song begins and the eyes are lifted
but the sickle points toward the ground,
its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,
while over the dark wood, rising or falling,
the sun lifts on cool air,
the small body of a singing lark.
The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens
and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.
Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,
will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened
by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field
branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.
What is called in her rises from the ground
and is found in her body,
what she is given is secret even from her.
This silence is the seed in her
of everything she is
and falling through her body
to the ground from which she comes,
it finds a hidden place to grow
and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,
where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.
Translated by Thomas Merton
Ch’ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
and knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
“For” and “against” are forgotten.
No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
What is the opposite of a Prince?
A frog must be the answer, since,
As all good fairy stories tell,
When some witch says a magic spell,
Causing the prince to be disguised
So that he won’t be recognized,
He always ends up green and sad
And sitting on a lily pad.
Translated from the Greek by Barton Raffel
(nothing changes)
We’ll be four, each with his woman.
Eight’s too many for one keg of wine.
Go tell Aristus the keg I bought
Is only half full, a gallon short, maybe two
Or even more. Hurry!
They’re coming at five.
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
FOUNTAINS AND STATUES AND AMAZED
TOURISTS BETWEEN NOTRE DAME
AND THE ORANGERIE
To have
had the heart of admiration of joy lifted
the way
Apollinaire lifted a poem, the way our gaze lifts
the Eiffel Tower;
the way Paris clearer in sunlight and springtime than
ever before lifts us;
from Pont Neuf you take off, in the Tuileries you see
Marcel Marceau
with a single flower or Monet with a thousand canvases.
Pavlova, how
can you get on your toe that way ? What are you doing
spinning and spinning
and spinning out in the universe and so
close to my heart ?
Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel
I grew on Tyre.
I was born in Syria,
And I came out of Eucrates,
I, Meleager, who taught my muse
To run on barbed feet.
I’m a Syrian, should anyone be surprised?
But stranger, all of us live in one country: the world.
All of us were born in the same Chaos.
And when I grow old
I wrote this epitaph for myself,
Knowing that old age and death live side by side.
Say something to wish this wordsmith well,
And live to be a wordy old man like me.
Heliodora (about 100 B.C.) - Spring
Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel
Winter winds have blown out of the sky,
The purple spring flowers happily.
The dark earth drapes herself in green
And plants burst into leaf, their newborn hair waving.
Fields drink the dawn dew and grow,
Laughing as roses open. Shepherds in the hills
Shrill bright melodies on their pipes,
And goatherds count and re-count their white kids.
Sailors are out on the broad sea,
Zephyr puffing out their sails.
Men wear crowns of ivy and cry “Evoe!”
To honor Bacchus, father of wine.
Bees buzz into being, stir and work their hives,
Constructing artful many-celled combs.
And all the races of birds sing everywhere,
Clear and loud: kingfishers near the water,
Swallows around our houses, swans by the river’s edge,
Nightingales deep in the woods.
And if leaves and plants are happy, the the earth sprouts,
And shepherds pipe, and sheep play and dance in the meadows,
And bees make honey,
How can a poet be silent, seeing beautiful spring?
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested—
this sorrow that great love—
it too will leave on that clean knife.
After Derek Mahon
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are you mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the wight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.
Question to google Bard (Answered in 5 seconds)
What famous poets have written poems about what famous art?
"W.H. Auden wrote the poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" about Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting "The Fall of Icarus." The poem explores the indifference of the world to human suffering, as represented by the ploughman who continues to plough his field while Icarus falls to his death.
Anne Sexton wrote the poem "The Starry Night" about Vincent van Gogh's painting of the same name. The poem describes the painting's swirling clouds and stars, and the artist's own mental turmoil.
Sylvia Plath wrote the poem "Lady Lazarus" about the painting "Judith Slaying Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi. The poem explores the themes of violence, revenge, and female empowerment.
T.S. Eliot wrote the poem "The Waste Land" about a variety of famous artworks, including Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" and Michelangelo's "Pietà." The poem explores the themes of loss, despair, and spiritual emptiness.
Pablo Neruda wrote the poem "The Suitcase" about a painting by Frida Kahlo. The poem describes the painting's images of pain and suffering, and the artist's own resilience.
Wallace Stevens wrote the poem "The Old Guitarist" about Pablo Picasso's painting of the same name. The poem explores the themes of aging, isolation, and creativity.
Seamus Heaney wrote the poem "The Cuchulain Cycle" about the paintings of Jack B. Yeats. The poems explore the themes of Irish mythology and history.
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci has been the subject of many poems, including "Sonnet 151" by William Shakespeare and "The Mona Lisa" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Guernica by Pablo Picasso has been the subject of poems by Rafael Alberti, Jorge Luis Borges, and Derek Walcott
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali has been the subject of poems by John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, and Charles Simic.
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt has been the subject of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney.
These are just a few examples of the many poems that have been written about famous art. Ekphrasis, the art of describing a visual work of art in words, is a rich and complex tradition that has been practiced by poets for centuries."
Excerpt From The Battles of the Pen and the Scissors (CE 1345) by Shem Tov Ardutiel (pen name Santob De Carrion)
Writer, you hold a flame in your hand,
or is it the blade of a sword or a spear--
the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
or a staff to make wondrous signs appear?
Are there words enough in all of song
to praise the pen? Who else could bear
the burden of bringing back the past
and preserving it then as though with myrrh?
It has no ear with which it might hear,
or mouth with which to offer answers,
and yet the pen, in a single stroke,
at once does both—observes and remembers.
At night he says “Tomorrow I’ll write,”
but there nothing at all to back up his words;
the heaven’s frost caught in his face,
and the cackling of mocking ice is heard.
Don’t pride yourself on tomorrow’s prize,
when you have no notion of what it hides.
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out “I am
an orphan.”
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
You have probably come across
those scales in planetariums
that tell you how much you
would weigh on other planets.
You have noticed the fat ones
lingering on the Mars scale
and the emaciated slowing up
the line for Neptune.
As a creature of average weight.
I fail to see the attraction.
Imagine squatting in the wasteland
Of Pluto, all five tons of you,
or wandering around Mercury
wondering what to do next with your ounce.
How much better to step onto
the simple bathroom scale,
a happy earthing feeling
the familiar ropes of gravity,
157 pounds standing soaking wet
a respectful distance from the sun.
There is No Path that Goes all the Way
Han Shan
Not that it stops us looking
for the full continuation.
The one line in the poem
we can start and follow
straight to the end. The fixed belief
we can hold, facing a stranger
that saves us the trouble
of a real conversation.
But one day you are not
just imagining an empty chair
where your loved one sat.
Your are not just telling a story
where the bridge is down
and there’s nowhere to cross.
You are not just trying to pray
to a God you always imagined
would keep you safe.
No, you’ve come to a place
where nothing you’ve done
will impress and nothing you
can promise will avert
the silent confrontation,
the place where
your body already seems to know
the way, having kept
to the last, its own secret
reconnaissance.
But still, there is no path
that goes all the way,
one conversation leads
to another,
one breath to the next
until
there’s no breath at all,
just
the inevitable
final release
of the burden.
And then,
wouldn’t your life
have to start
all over again
for you to know
even a little
of who you had been?
