1147. All Night - Zi Ye (Tzu Yeh) (3rd BCE)

Translated by Arthur Waley

All night I could not sleep

because of the moonlight on my bed.

I kept on hearing a voice calling:

Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “Yes.”

1146. Half a Double Sonnet - Mary Jo Salter

For Ben

Their ordeal over, now the only trouble

was conveying somehow to a boy of three

that for a week or two he’d be seeing double.

Surely he wouldn’t recall the surgery

years later, but what about the psychic scars?

And so, when the patch come off, they bought the toy

he’d wanted most. He held it high “Two Cars!”

he cried; and drove himself from joy to joy.

Two baby sisters… One was enough of Clare,

but who could complain—conderring that another

woman had stepped forward to take care

of the girls, which left him all alone with Mother.

Victory! Even when he went to pee,

he was seconded in his virility.

1145. Grenimi AI - Winged Icarus

 

"Wow! I asked the Gemini AI to write a poem about the fall of Icarus

and this is what I got. "

On fragile wings, ambition soared,

Icarus, by Daedalus adored.

Escaped they did, from island's plight,

With feathers stitched and sunlit flight.

The world unfurled, a boundless blue,

But warnings wise, fell from his view.

Intoxicated, by heights unknown,

He chased the sun, upon its throne.

Too close he danced, with fiery might,

The waxen bond, could not withstand the light.

A silent scream, a feathery rain,

Icarus fell, a sun-kissed stain.

The waves embraced, his tragic fate,

A fleeting dream, sealed by his haste.

A lesson writ, in sky and sea,

Of hubris tamed, and mortality.

1144. Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu - Li Po (705-762 A.D.)

  Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Moutain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noonday sun?

How thin, how wretchedly, you have grown!

You must have been suffering from poetry again.

1143. A Game Of Chess - Gwen Harwood

To John Brodie

Nightfall: the town’s chromatic nocturne wakes

dark brilliance on the river; colours drift

and tremble as enormous shadows lift

Orion to his place. The heart remakes

that peace torn in the blaze of day. Inside

your room are music, warmth and wine, the board

with chessmen set for play. The harpsichord

begins a fugue; delight is multiplied.

A game: the heart’s impossible ideal —

to choose among a host of paths, and know

that if the kingdom crumbles one can yield

and have the choice again. Abstract and real

joined in their trance of thought, the two players show

the calm of gods above a troubled field. 

1142. On The Birth Of A Son - Su Shih (Su Tung-Po) (1036-1101 A.D.) -

Translated by Arther Waley

Families when a child is born

Hope it will turn out intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked by whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he’ll be happy all his days

And grow into a cabinet minister.

1141. Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt - Jane Hirshfield

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.

1140. Arithmetic - Carl Sandburg

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?

1139. The Song Of The Lark - David Whyte

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. 

1138. When The Shoe Fits - Chuang Tzu -

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.

1137. This Only - Czesław Milosz

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.

1136. What Is The Opposite Of A Prince? - Richard Wilber

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.

1135. Party Preparations - Posidippus (About 273 BC)

     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.

1134. Symphony in Yellow - Oscar Wilde

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.

1133. Meeting At Night - Robert Browning

 The grey sea and the long black land,

And the yellow half-moon large and low, 

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speeed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-sented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp stratch,

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each.!

1132. Fountains And Statues - John Tagliabue

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 ?

 

1131. On Himself - Heliodora (About 100 B.C.)

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?

1130. Poem - Frank O'Hara

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

1129. Ripeness - Jane Hirshfied

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.

1128. Everything Is Waiting For You - David Whyte

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.