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.

902. That I Not Be A Restless Ghost - Margaret Mead

(to her daughter)

That I not be a restless ghost
Who haunts your footsteps as they pass
Beyond the point where you have left
Me standing in the new spring grass,

You must be free to take a path
Whose end I feel no need to know,
No irking fever to be sure
You went where I would have you go. . . .

So you can go without regret
Away from this familiar land
Leaving your kiss upon my hair
And all the future in your hands.

Those who would fence the future in
Between two walls of well-laid stones
But lay a ghost walk for themselves,
A dreary walk for dusty bones. 

901. So Much Happiness - Naomi Shihab Nye

.
It is difficult to know what to do
with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something
to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you,
you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof
of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived
in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor
which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands,
and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch.
You are not
responsible.
You take no credit,
as the night sky
takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it,
and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

900. Nocturne - Tomas Tranströmer

translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

I drive through a village at night, the houses rise up
in the glare of my headlights—they're awake, want to drink.
Houses, barns, signs, abandoned vehicles—now
they clothe themselves in Life.—The people are sleeping:

some can sleep peacefully, others have drawn features
as if training hard for eternity.
They don't dare let go though their sleep is heavy.
They rest like lowered crossing barriers when the mystery draws past.

Outside the village the road stretches far among the forest trees.
And the trees the trees keeping silence in concord with each other.
They have a theatrical color, like firelight.
How distinct each leaf! They follow me home.

I lie down to sleep I see strange pictures
and signs scribbling themselves behind my eyelids
on the wall of the dark. Into the slit between wakefulness and dream
a large letter tries to push itself in vain.

899. To Be Found - Willow Pearson

.
We are always looking for the mirror

by which we might see

our true Self

Look closely.

There is no place that mirror is not

Yet the vastness that we are

cannot be captured

in a single image

Through that One, see all beings

We are always listening for the voice

by which we might hear

our true Heart

Listen closely.

There is no place that voice does not resound

Yet the vastness that we are

cannot be captured

in a single sound

In that one tone, listen

as the whole universe sings back to you

The need to be seen, heard

through sacred reflections, and earthly echoes

is the guiding impulse of our basic sanity

Surrender.

While looking and listening,

as we must and as we will

Remember

the One

who looks and listens

Become the inward mirror of your searching eye

the inner echo of your true heartsong

Become the very Beloved you seek

There is nothing you are not

Nothing.

899. “Any fool can get into an ocean . . .” - Jack Spicer

.
Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

898. Argos - Michael Collier

.
If you think Odysseus too strong and brave to cry,
that the god-loved, god-protected hero
when he returned to Ithaka disguised,
intent to check up on his wife

and candidly apprize the condition of his kingdom,
steeled himself resolutely against surprise
and came into his land cold-hearted, clear-eyed,
ready for revenge--then you read Homer as I did,

too fast, knowing you'd be tested for plot
and major happenings, skimming forward to the massacre,
the shambles engineered with Telemakhos
by turning beggar and taking up the challenge of the bow.

Reading this way you probably missed the tear
Odysseus shed for his decrepit dog, Argos,
who's nothing but a bag of bones asleep atop
a refuse pile outside the palace gates. The dog is not

a god in earthly clothes, but in its own disguise
of death and destitution is more like Ithaka itself.
And if you returned home after twenty years
you might weep for the hunting dog

you long ago abandoned, rising from the garbage
of its bed, its instinct of recognition still intact,
enough will to wag its tail, lift its head, but little more.
Years ago you had the chance to read that page more closely

but instead you raced ahead, like Odysseus, cocksure
with your plan. Now the past is what you study,
where guile and speed give over to grief so you might stop,
and desiring to weep, weep more deeply.

897. Secure - May Swenson

.
Let us deceive ourselves a little
while   Let us pretend that air
is earth   and falling lie resting
within each other's gaze   Let us

deny that flame consumes   that
fruit ripens   that the wave must
break   Let us forget the circle's
fixed beginning marks to the
instant its ordained end   Let us

lean upon the moment and expect
time to enfold us   space sustain
our weight   Let us be still   and

falling lie face to face and drink
each others breath   Be still
Let us be still   We lie secure

within the careful mind of death

896. Variation on the Door - Margaret Randall

Variation on the Door - Margaret Randall
with Adrienne Rich

There is nothing I would not give
for years or even minutes,
time moving differently in this place we occupy,
memory hoisting itself upright in us.

There is nothing I would give
you or another,
repetition comforts me today,
a long delicate line of pink light parts the sky
and a coyote crossing the road makes you smile.

Knowing you here—a here
distant as voices or a room apart
(working as I work)
our air becoming a single air—
knowing you here holds my body in space,
fixes my mind.

This knowledge neither linear nor perfect
is again and again the door
opening because we have chosen
to walk through, chosen to risk,
remember our names.

Memory walks tall in this dream, memory
and hope.
Nothing can call me home, love,
but to your eyes and hands.

895. The Door - Jane Hirshfield

.
A note waterfalls steadily
through us,
just below hearing.

Or this early light
streaming through dusty glass:
what enters, enters like that,
unstoppable gift.

And yet there is also the other,
the breath-space held between any call
and its answer—

In the querying
first scuff of footstep,
the wood owls' repeating,
the two-counting heart:

A little sabbath,
minnow whose brightness silvers past time.

The rest-note
unwritten,
hinged between worlds,
that precedes change and allows it.

894. For a Wedding on Mount Tamalpais - Jane Hirshfield

 .
July,
and the rich apples
once again falling.

You put them to your lips,
as you were meant to,
enter a sweetness
the earth wants to give.

Everything loves this way,
in gold honey,
in gold mountain grass
that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,
the shadow of clouds passing by.

And the dry grasses,
the live oaks and bays,
taste the apples' deep sweetness
because you taste it, as you were meant to,
tasting the life that is yours,

while below, the foghorns bend to their work,
bringing home what is coming home,
blessing what goes.

893. The Garden - Louise Glück

.
I couldn't do it again,
I can hardly bear to look at it—

in the garden, in light rain
the young couple planting
a row of peas, as though
no one has ever done this before,
the great difficulties have never as yet
been faced and solved—

They cannot see themselves,
in fresh dirt, starting up
without perspective,
the hills behind them pale green, clouded with flowers—

She wants to stop;
he wants to get to the end,
to stay with the thing—

Look at her, touching his cheek
to make a truce, her fingers
cool with spring rain;
in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus—

even here, even at the beginning of love,
her hand leaving his face makes
an image of departure
and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.

892. Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread

only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

891. Poem White Page White Page Poem - Muriel Rukeyser

.
Poem   white page   white page poem
something is streaming out of a body in waves
something is beginning from the fingertips
they are starting to declare for my whole life
all the despair and the making music
something like wave after wave
that breaks on a beach
something like bringing the entire life
to this moment
the small waves bringing themselves to white paper
something like light stands up and is alive

890 For a Wedding on Mount Tamalpais - Jane Hirshfield

July,
and the rich apples
once again falling.

You put them to your lips,
as you were meant to,
enter a sweetness
the earth wants to give.

Everything loves this way,
in gold honey,
in gold mountain grass
that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,
the shadow of clouds passing by.

And the dry grasses,
the live oaks and bays,
taste the apples' deep sweetness
because you taste it, as you were meant to,
tasting the life that is yours,

while below, the foghorns bend to their work,
bringing home what is coming home,
blessing what goes.

889. Everything - Mary Oliver

No doubt in Holland,
when van Gogh was a boy,
there were swans drifting
over the green sea
of the meadows, and no doubt
on some warm afternoon
he lay down and watched them,
and almost thought: this is everything.
What drove him
to get up and look further
is what saves this world,
even as it breaks
the hearts of men.
In the mines where he preached,
where he studied tenderness,
there were only men, all of them
streaked with dust.
For years he would reach
toward the darkness.
But no doubt, like all of us,
he finally remembered
everything, including the white birds
weightless and unaccountable,
floating around the towns
of grit and hopelessness––
and this is what would finish him:
not the gloom, which was only terrible,
but those last yellow fields, where clearly
nothing in the world mattered, or ever would,
but the insensible light.

888. A Winter Night - Tomas Tranströmer

.
The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to get a tone.
I toss and turn, my closed eyes
reading the storm’s text.

The child’s eyes grow wide in the dark
and the storm howls for him.
Both love the swinging lamps;
both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.
Far away, travellers run for cover.
The house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

887. Olives - Amos Oz

.
Sometimes the taste of these strong olives cured slowly in oil,
with cloves of garlic, bay leaves and chillies and lemon and salt,
conjures a whiff of a bygone age: rocky crannies,
goats, shade and the sound of pipes,
in the tune of the breath of primeval times. The chill of a cave, a hidden cottage
in a vineyard, a lodge in a garden, a slice of barley bread and well water.
You are from there. You have lost your way.
Here is exile. Your death will come, and lay a knowing hand on your shoulder.
Come, it’s time to go home.

886. Portrait Of A Woman - Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska - Portrait Of A Woman (1)
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It's easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray,
dark merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she's first in line or the only one on earth.
She'll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and tough as nails.
Curls up with Jasper or Ladies'Home Journal.
Can't figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where's she running, isn't she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn't matter.
She must love him, or she's just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven's sake.
      
Wislawa Szymborska - Portrait  Of A Woman (2)
Translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert a. Maguire

She must be willing to please.
To change so that nothing should change.
It's easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.
Her eyes are if need be now deep blue, now gray,
dark, playful, filled for no reason with tears.
She sleeps with him like some chance acquaintance, like his one and only.
She will bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive yet giving the best advice.
Weak yet lifting the weightiest burdens.
Has no head on her shoulders but will have.
Reads Jaspers and ladies' magazines.
Doesn't know what this screw is for and will build a bridge.
Young, as usual young, as always still young.
Holds in her hands a sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for a journey long and distant,
a meat-cleaver, poultice, and a shot of vodka.
Where is she running so, isn't she tired?
Not at all, just a bit, very much, doesn't matter.
Either she loves him or has made up her mind to.
For better, for worse, and for heaven's sake.

885. Do Not Expect - Dana Gioia

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things

884. Face To Face - Tomas Tranströmer

 Face To Face translated by Robin Robertson

In February life stood still.
The birds refused to fly and the soul
grated against the landscape as a boat
chafes against the jetty where it’s moored.

The trees were turned away. The snow’s depth
measured by the stubble poking through.
The footprints grew old out on the ice-crust.
Under a tarpaulin, language was being broken down.

Suddenly, something approaches the window.
I stop working and look up.
The colours blaze. Everything turns around.
The earth and I spring at each other.

Face to Face translated by Robin Fulton

In February living stood still.
The birds flew unwillingly and the soul
chafed against the landscape as a boat
chafes against the pier it lies moored to.

The trees stood with their backs turned to me.
The deep snow was measured with dead straws.
The footprints grew old out on the crust.
Under a tarpaulin language pined.

One day something came to the window.
Work was dropped, I looked up.
The colors flared. Everything turned around.
The earth and I sprang toward each other.

883. Letters From Yorkshire - Maura Dooley

.
In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes,
he saw the first lapwings return and came
indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing

as they reddened in the warmth
It’s not romance, simply how things are.
You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons

turning, me with my heartful of headlines
feeding words onto a blank screen.
Is your life more real because you dig and sow?

You wouldn’t say so, breaking ice on a waterbutt,
clearing a path through snow. Still, it’s you
who sends me word of that other world

pouring air and light into an envelope. So that
at night, watching the same news in different houses,
our souls tap out messages across the icy miles.

882. Sometimes - Sheenagh Pugh

.
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost: green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you.

881. Black Snake - Mary Oliver

.
The flat rock in the center of the garden
heats up every morning in the sun. Black
snake coils himself there neatly. He has
cousins who have teeth that spring up and
down and are full of the sap of death,
but what of that, so have we all. As for
his sporting life, there are many things
he can do and I have seen a few of them:
he can climb a tree and dangle like a red-
eyed rope out of its branches; he can swim;
he can catch a mouse and swallow it like
a soft stone. Also he can lie perfectly
still and stare with his lidless eyes in
the greatest hope: that you will not notice
him. If you do, however, he will loft his
chin and extrude the fray of his tongue,
which many find frightening. But tell me,
if you would praise the world, what is it
you would leave out? Besides, he is only
hoping that you will let him live his life.


And now that you have seen him, he looks
shyly at nothing and streams away into the
grass, his long body swaying like a suddenly
visible song.

880. Writing A Curriculum Vita - Wislawa Szymborska

Writing A Curriculum Vita (1)
Translated from Polish by Graźyna Drabik and Austin Flint

What must you do?
You must submit an application
and enclose a Curriculum Vitae.

Regardless of how long your life is,
the Curriculum Vitae should be short.

Be concise, select facts.
Change landscapes into addresses
and vague memories into fixed dates.

Of all your loves, mention only the marital,
and of the children, only those who were born.

It's more important who knows you
than whom you know.
Travels––only if abroad.
Affiliations––to what, not why.
Awards––but not for what.

Write as if you never talked with yourself,
as if you looked at yourself from afar.

Omit dogs, cats, and birds,
mementos, friends, dreams.

State price rather than value,
title rather than content.
Shoe size, not where one is going,
the one you are supposed to be.

Enclose a photo with one ear showing.
What counts is its shape, not what it hears.

What does it hear?
The clatter of machinery that shreds paper.

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

What needs to be done?
fill out the application
and enclose the résumé.

Regardless of the length of life,
a résumé is best kept short.

concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.
Landscapes are replaced by addresses,
shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;
of all your children, only those who were born.

Who knows you matters more than whom you know.
Trips only if taken abroad.
Memberships in what but without why.
Honors, but not how they were earned.

Write as if you'd never talked to yourself
and always kept yourself at arm's length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,
dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth,
and title, not what's inside.
His shoe size, not where he's off to,
that one you pass off as yourself.
In addition, a photograph with one ear showing.
What matters is its shape, not what it hears.
What is there to hear, anyway?
The clatter of paper shredders.

879. The Country - Billy Collins

.
I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner.

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torch-bearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, one-time inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

878. The Cure At Troy (Excerpt) - Seamus Heaney

.
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme

877. Dear George Orwell - L. E. Sissman

Dear George Orwell,
I never said farewell.
There was too much going on:
Crabgrass in the lawn
and guests to entertain,
Light bantering with pain
(But wait till later on),
Love nightly come and gone.
But always in the chinks
Of my time (or the bank’s),
I read your books again.
In Schraffts’s or on the run
To my demanding clients,
I read you in the silence
Of the spell you spun.
My dearest Englishman,
My stubborn unmet friend,
Who waited for the end
In perfect pain and love
And walked to his own grave
With a warm wink and wave
To all; who would not pull
The trigger on the bull
Elephant, and who
Seeing his foe undo
His pants across the lines,
Did not blow out his brains;
Who served the Hotel X
As low man, slept in spikes
With tramps, in Rowton Houses
With pavement artists, boozers,
Boys, insomniacs;
Who spat on shams and hacks,
Loved in a raddled flat
Passing trains hooted at,
And died for what we are.
Farewell, Eric Blair.

876. I Am Trying To Get At Something Utterly Heart-broken - Anne Dillard

Vincent van Gogh, letters, 1873-1890, edited I. Stone, 
translated Johanna van Gogh

		I

	At the end of the road is a small cottage,
	And over all the blue sky.
I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken.

	The flying birds, the smoking chimneys,
	And that figure loitering below in the yard–
If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we learn?

	The miners go home in the white snow at twilight
These people are quite black. Their houses are small.
The time for making dark studies is short.	

	A patch of brown heath through which a white
	Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged,
	Yet somewhat passionately brushed.
We who try our best to live, why do we not live more? 

		II

	The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire.
It may be true that there is no God here,
But there must be one not far off.	

	A studio with a cradle, a baby’s high chair.
Those colors which have no name
Are the real foundation of everything.

	What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath.
If we are tired, isn’t it then because
We have already walked a long way?

	The cart with the white horse brings
	a wounded man home from the mines.
Bistre and bitumen, well applied,
Make the colouring ripe and mellow and generous.

		III

	A ploughed field with clods of violet earth;
	Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.
So there is every moment something that moves one intensely.

	A bluish-grey line of trees with a few roofs.
I simply could not restrain myself or keep
My hands off it or allow myself to rest.

	A mother with her child, in the shadow
	Of a large tree against the dune.
To say how many green-greys there are is impossible.

	I love so much, so very much, the effect
	Of yellow leaves against green trunks.
This is not a thing that I have sought,
But has come across my path and I have seized it.


	

875. To Make A Summer - Josephine Miles

Sandy says his high-school daughter
Keeps exclaiming joy, joy.
The burden of my joy lightens
With her exclamation.

It’s a generality, it takes
from my heart the sting of the singular, it sets moving
In the easy early Berkeley air
What we incommunicably share.

874. First Lines of Poems And No Further

First lines of poems and no further or, ending at the beginning or, augh! or, . . .
“When my propane ran out”

“The drunk mechanic is happy to be in the ditch”

‘Should the vultures eat forget-me-nots?”

“I was living in a bowl of soup”

“Your wooden leg stood beside the bed”

“It was following me so I killed it”

“I despise the guys who are spies in disguise”

“Detachedly eying his severed hand”

“There once was a square, such a little square”

“The leaves from the tired trees blocked the drains”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Diem Sin Foo will mary you Madame LeFarge”

“When like the moon your face arose”

873. After the Treaty Between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians Was Broken - Yannis Ritsos

AFTER THUCYDIDES

Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Athens, Sicyon, and other (how many?)
     smaller cities—
the Greeks have become a thousand fragments; the great treaty has
      been broken;
everyone is enraged with everyone else—new meetings, meetings and
      more meetings, conferences;
yesterday’s friends and neighbors no longer greet each other in the
      street—
old grudges have come between them again; new alliances,
entirely opposite to earlier ones, are being sounded out, prepared.
      Deputations
arrive secretly at midnight; others leave. The statues of our heroes,
standing neglected in the city squares and gardens, are shat on by
      sparrows.
Group after group in the agora discuss our situation seriously,
exaltedly, passionately: Who gave them their orders? Who appointed
      them?
We, anyway didn’t choose them (Besides, how? And when? New
      bosses again? Who needs them?) April has arrived;
the small pepper trees on the sidewalks have turned green— a gentle
      green,
tender, childlike (moving to us) even if
rather dusty—the municipal service seems to be out of it,
no longer showing up in the afternoon to sprinkle the streets. But
      today,
on the portico surrounding the closed Council Chambers, the first
      swallow appeared unexpectedly,
and everybody shouted: “A swallow; look, a swallow; look a 
      swallow”—
everybody in unison, even the most violently opposed: “A swallow.”
      And suddenly
everybody fell silent, feeling alone, detached from the others, as
      though free,
as though united in continuity, within a communal isolation. And
      then
they understood that their only freedom was their solitude, but that
      too
(though imperceptible) unprotected, vulnerable, a thousand times
     entrapped, alone.

872. Spring Azures - Mary Oliver

.
In spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.

Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows―
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking—

don’t seem enough to carry me through this world
and I think: how I would like

to have wings—
blue ones—
ribbons of flame.

How I would like to open them, and rise
from the black rain water.

And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of London—a boy
staring through the window, when God came
fluttering up.

Of course, he screamed,
and seeing the bobbin of God’s blue body
leaning on the sill,
and the thousand-faceted eyes.

Well, who knows.
Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness.

Anyway, Blake the hosier’s son stood up
and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city—
turned away forever
from the factories, the personal strivings,

to a life of the the imagination.

871. Turbulence - Adrienne Rich

.
There’ll be turbulence. You’ll drop
your book to hold your
water bottle steady. Your
mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall
may who ne’er hung there let him
watch the movie. The plane’s
supposed to shudder, shoulder on
like this. It’s built to do that. You’re
designed to tremble too. Else break
Higher you climb, trouble in mind
lungs labor, heights hurl vistas
Oxygen hangs ready
overhead. In the event put on
the child’s mask first. Breathe normally

870. So Much Happiness - Naomi Shihab Nye

For Michael

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

869. Monet Refuses The Operation - Lisel Mueller

.
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken my all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

868. 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.

867. The Great American Poem - Billy Collins

.
If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.

And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse

and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.

Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,

and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.

But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,

leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?

We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

866. Coda - Jason Shinder

.
And now I know what most deeply connects us

after that summer so many years ago,
and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry,

and it isn’t illness, although we have that in common,

and it isn’t gratitude for every moment,
even the terrifying ones, even the physical pain,

though we are halfway through
it, or even the way you describe the magnificence

of being alive, catching a glimpse,

in the store window, of your blowing hair and chapped lips,
though it is beautiful, it is; but it is

that you’re my friend out here on the far reaches

of what humans can find out about each other.

865. Hineni - Stanley F. Chyet

.
here I am again
without much to offer by way of moral worth
I’ve a rich collection of defeats
maybe that’s to your liking?
I don’t know, do you?
if I’m to be quite frank
your likes and dislikes have never been
all that clear to me
presumably love is something you’re in favor of
and I’ve found it possible to love
but never without a certain anguish
whether that’s the way you intended it
or that’s a problem all my own
I can’t say, can you?
I’ve never wanted to pain others
I’ve never wanted to pain myself
I guess I can plead good intentions
but I needn’t tell you about good intentions
and the road to hell
I’ve often wondered: did you yourself intend
when you got it all going
that to live would be so complicated
to find a way in the world so hazardous?
did you have any idea at all
that living would involve such confusion
and such heartbreak?
I can’t be sure any of this will mean much to you
I can’t even be sure that your exist
as more than a figment of my own mysterious psyche
it’s a risk to open up to you
who knows, I may be branding myself a terrible fool
but whats not a risk? what’s guaranteed to be foolproof?
so here I am again
praying for some modest bravery
so that I can go on saying to you: here
I am again

864. Candles - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles—
golden, warm, and vivid candles.

Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
the nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.

I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.

I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.

863. The Laboratory - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated 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!

862. The City - C. P. Cavafy

Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 

 You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, 

find another city better than this one. 

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong

and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead. 

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? 

Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look, 

I see the black ruins of my life, here, 

where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed then totally.” 

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. 

This city will always pursue you. 

You will walk the same streets, grow old 

in the same neighborhoods, will turn gray in these same houses 

You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere: 

there is no ship for you, there is no road. 

As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner, 

you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

861. Charles the great - Henri Kadusco

.
Charles the great has come at last,
Come at last to stay.
He knows not where he’s going, though
He thinks he knows the way.

He thinks he knows the way to love,
Through flowered fields and highways.
He does not know what love is or
That I will love him always.

A pretty girl there waits for Charles,
To ease the pain and kiss his eyes,
To circle him with chains of love,
To show him love and make him wise.

Charles the great might disappear
while thinking you can see him.
But life is short and art is long,
And she can live without him.

860. Black Maps - Mark Strand

.
Not the attendance of stones,
nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,

not the sea that celebrates
only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.

Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been.

You can walk
believing you cast
a light around you.
But how will you know?

The present is always dark.
Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing,

in their slow ascent
into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,

the bleak, temperate
necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath.

And if they are studied at all
it is only to find,
too late, what you thought
were concerns of yours

do not exist.
Your house is not marked
on any of them,
nor are your friends,

waiting for you to appear,
nor are your enemies,
listing your faults.
Only you are there,

saying hello
to what you will be,
and the black grass
is holding up the black stars.

859. At Great Pond - Mary Oliver

.

 At Great Pond

the sun, rising,

scrapes his orange breast

on the thick pines,

and down tumble

a few orange feathers into

the dark water.

On the far shore

a white bird is standing

like a white candle —

or a man, in the distance,

in the clasp of some meditation —

while all around me the lilies

are breaking open again

from the black cave

of the night.

Later, I will consider

what I have seen —

what it could signify —

what words of adoration I might

make of it, and to do this

I will go indoors to my desk—

I will sit in my chair —

I will look back

into the lost morning

in which I am moving, now,

like a swimmer,

so smoothly,

so peacefully,

I am almost the lily —

almost the bird vanishing over the water

on its sleeves of night.

858. Love at First Sight (1)- Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?

I'd like to ask them
whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door
ever being face to face?
an "excuse me" in a crowd
or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver.
But I know their answer:
no, they don't remember.

They'd be greatly astonished
to learn that for a long time
chance had been playing with them.

Not yet wholly ready
to transform into fate for them
it approached them, then backed off,
stood in their way
and, suppressing a giggle,
jumped to the side.

There were signs, signals:
but what of it if they were illegible.
Perhaps three years ago,
or last Tuesday
did a certain leaflet fly
from shoulder to shoulder?
There was something lost and picked up.
Who knows but what it was a ball
in the bushes of childhood.

There were doorknobs and bells
on which earlier
touch piled on touch.
Bags beside each other in the luggage room.
Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,
suddenly erased after waking.

Every beginning
is but a continuation,
and the book of events
is never more than half open.

857. A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar - Stephen Crane

A man adrift on a slim spar
A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle
Tented waves rearing lashy dark points
The near whine of froth in circles.
                  God is cold.

The incessant raise and swing of the sea
And growl after growl of crest
The sinkings, green seething, endless
The upheaval half-completed.
                 God is cold.

The seas are in the hollow of The Hand;
Oceans may be turned to a spray
Raining down through the stars
Because of a gesture of pity toward a babe.
Oceans may become grey ashes,
Die with a long moan and a roar
Amid the tumult of the fishes
And the cries of  the ships,
Because The Hand beckons the mice.

A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin’s cap,
Inky, surging tumults
A reeling, drunken sky and no sky
A pale hand sliding from a polished spar.
                  God is cold.

The puff of a coat imprisoning air:
A face kissing the water-death
A weary slow sway of a lost hand
And the sea, the moving sea, the sea.
                  God is cold.

856. Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played - Jack Gilbert

.
We are not one with this world. We are not
the complexity our body is, nor the summer air
idling in the big maple without purpose.
We are a shape the wind makes in these leaves
as it passes through. We are not he wood
any more than the fire, but the heat which is a marriage
between the two. We are certainly not the lake
nor the fish in it, but the something that is
pleased by them. We are the stillness when
a mighty Mediterranean noon subtracts even the voices of
insects by the broken farmhouse. We are evident
when the orchestra plays, and yet are not part
of the strings or brass. Like the song that exists
only in the singing, and is not the singer.
God does not live among the church bells
but is briefly resident there. We are occasional
like that. A lifetime of easy happiness mixed
with pain and loss, trying always to name and hold
on to the enterprise under way in our chest.
Reality is not what we marry as a feeling. It is what
walks up the dirt path, through the excessive heat
and giant sky, the sea stretching away.
He continues past the nunnery to the old villa
where he will sit on the terrace with her, their sides
touching. In the quiet that is the music of that place,
which is the difference between silence and windlessness.

855. Daisies - Mary Oliver

.
It is possible, I suppose, that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what I means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petaled daisies display
the small suns of their center-piece - their, if you don't
mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know.
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun
lights up willingly; for example - I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

854. The Disquieting Muses - Mark Strand

.
Boredom sets in first, and then despair.
One tries to brush it off. It only grows.
Something about the silence of the square.

Something is wrong; something about the air,
Its color; about the light, the way it glows.
Boredom sets in first, and then despair.

The muses in their fluted evening wear,
Their faces blank, might lead one to suppose
Something about the silence of the square,

Something about the buildings standing there.
But no, they have no purpose but to pose.
Boredom sets in first, and then despair.

What happens after that, one doesn’t care.
What brought one here—the desire to compose
Something about the silence of the square,

Or something else, of which one’s not aware,
Life itself, perhaps—who really knows?
Boredom sets in first, and then despair…
Something about the silence of the square.

853. Alexandrian Kings - C. P. Cavafy

C. P. Cavafy - Alexandrian Kings (1)
Translated from the Greek by Theoharis C. Theoharis

The Alexandrians flocked
to view the children of Cleopatra,
Kaisarion and his little brothers,
Alexander and Ptolemy, who for the first time
had been brought out to the Gymnasium,
to be proclaimed kings there,
amidst the gleaming company of soldiers on parade.

Alexander—him they named king
of Armenia, Media, and the Parthians.
Ptolemy—him they named king
of Cilicia, Syria, and Phoenicia.
Kaisarion was standing furthest forward,
dressed in rose-toned silk,
on his belt paired lines of sapphires and amethysts,
his shoes laced by white
ribbons pinned with rose-blush pearls.
Him they named higher than the younger ones,
him they named King of Kings.

The Alexandrians certainly understood
that these were words and histrionics.

But the day was warm and poetic,
the sky a clear, wide blue,
the Alexandrian Gymnasium a
triumphant artistic feat,
the courtiers luxury at its crest,
Kairsarion all grace and beauty
(the son of Cleopatra, blood of the Lagids);
and the Alexandrians raced to the festive name-day,
and worked themselves into raptures, and called out
cheers in Greek, in Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,
enchanted by the lovely spectacle—
even though they very clearly knew the value of these things,
what inane words make up these titled kings.

C. P. Cavafy - Alexandrian Kings (2)
Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

The Alexandrians turned out in force
to see Cleopatra’s children,
Kairsarion and his little brothers,
Alexander and Ptolemy, who for the first time
has been taken out to the Gymnasium,
to be proclaimed kings there
before a brilliant array of soldiers.

Alexander: they declared him
king of Cilicia, Syria, and Phoenicia.
Kairsarion was standing in front of the others,
dressed in pink silk,
on his chest a bunch of hyacinths,
his belt a double row of amethysts and sapphires,
his shoes tied with white ribbons
prinked with rose-colored pearls.
They declared him greater than his little brothers,
they declared him King of Kings

The Alexandrians know of course
that this was all mere words, all theatre.

But the day was warm and poetic,
the sky a pale blue,
the Alexandrian Gymnasium
a complete artistic triumph,
the courtiers wonderfully sumptous,
Kaisarion all grace and beauty
(Cleopatra’s son, blood of the Lagids);
and the the Alexandrians thronged to the festival
full of enthusiasm and shouted acclamations
in Greek, and Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,
charmed by the lovely spectacle—
though they knew of course what all this was worth,
what empty words they really were, these kingships.

852. Insomnia - Linda Pastan

.
I remember when by 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.

851. Sunrise - Mary Oliver

.
You can
die for it -
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. but

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of china,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

850. A Meditation On John Constable - Charles Tomlinson

"Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?"

––John Constable: The History of Landscape Painting

He replied to his own question, and with the unmannered
 Exactness of art; enriched his premises
By confirming his practice: the labour of observation
 In face of meteorological fact. Clouds
Followed by others, temper the sun in passing
 Over and off it. Massed darks
Blotting it back, scattered and mellowed shafts
 Break damply out of them, until the source
Unmasks, floods its retreating bank
 With raw fire. One perceives (though scarcely)
The remnant clouds trailing across it
 In rags, and thinned to a gauze.
But the next will dam it. They loom past
 And narrow its blaze. It shrinks to a crescent
Crushed out, a still lengthening ooze
 As the mass thickens, though cannot exclude
Its silvered-yellow. The eclipse is sudden,
 Seen first on the darkening grass, then complete
In a covered sky.
             Facts. And what are they?
He admired accidents, because governed by laws,
 Representing them (since the illusion was not his end)
As governed by feeling. The end is our approval
 Freely accorded, the illusion persuading us
That it exists as a human image. Caught
 By a wavering sun, or under a wind
Which moistening among the outlines of banked foliage
 Prepares to dissolve them, it must grow constant;
Though there, ruffling and parted, the disturbed
 Trees let through the distance, like white fog
Into their broken ranks, It must persuade
 And with a constancy, not to be swept back
To reveal what it half-conceals. Art is itself
 Once we accept it. The day veers. He would have judged
Exactly in such a light, that strides down
 Over the quick stains of cloud-shadows
Expunged now, by its conflagration of colour.
 A descriptive painter? If delight
Describes, which wrings from the brush
 The errors of a mind, so tempered
It can forgo all pathos; for what he saw
 Discovered what he was, and the hand––unswayed
By the dictation of a single sense––
 Bodied the accurate and total knowledge
In a calligraphy of present pleasure. Art
 Is complete when it is human. It is human
Once the looped pigments, the pin-heads of light
 Securing space under their deft restrictions
Convince, as the index of a possible passion,
 As the adequate gauge, both of the passion
And its object. The artist lies
 For the improvement of truth. Believe him.

849. 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.

848. 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"!

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?