982. It Was A Time - Stephen Dunn

.

Some of us just wanted to drop out, go far away

from integrity’s demands. Others sought strange

consultations with their almost vanished selves.

And the brave, they would meet somewhere

in zero weather to subvert the drift of the land.

It was a time to link arms, or cross the boarder.

And who were you, and who was I?

Such questions seemed like a lifelong job.

We put the world on notice, and world

hardly noticed. When we occupied the offices

of people who just wanted to do their jobs

and go home, we thought we’d done something

historical, bold. We desired to be as compelling

as Belmondo with a cigarette. Monica Vitti

looking just so. But always the familiar banalities

would return—-an existential day followed

by a comfortable night, the rhapsodies

of achievement, then a great smalling down.

No one could be sure what was true. In time

we become people we only occasionally knew

981. Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt - Jorie Graham

.

Although what glitters

         on the trees,

row after perfect row,

        is merely

the injustice

        of the world,

the chips on the bark of each

        beech tree

catching the light, the sum

        of these delays

is the beautiful, the human

        beautiful,

body of flaws.

        The dead

would give anything

        I’m sure,

to step again onto

        the leaf rot,

into the avenue of mottled shadows,

        the speckled

broken skins. The dead

        in their sheer

open parenthesis, what they

        wouldn’t give

for something to lean on

        that won’t

give way. I think I

        would weep

for the moral nature

        of this world,

for right and wrong like pools

        of shadow

and light you can step in

        and out of

crossing this yellow beech forest,

        this buchen-wald,

one autumn afternoon, late

        in the twentieth

century, in hollow light,

        in gaseous light. . . .

To receive the light

        and return it

and stand in rows, anonymous,

        is a sweet secret

even the air wishes

        it could unlock.

See how it pokes at them

        in little hooks,

the blue air, the yellow trees.

        Why be afraid?

They say when Klimt

        died suddenly

a painting, still

        incomplete,

was found in his studio,

        a woman’s body

open at its point of

        entry,

rendered in graphic,

        pornographic,

detail—something like

        a scream

between her legs. Slowly,

        feathery,

he had begun to paint

        a delicate

garment (his trademark)

        over this mouth

of her body. The mouth

        of her face

is genteel, bored, feigning a need

        for sleep. The fabric

defines the surface,

        the story,

so we are drawn to it,

        its blues

and yellows glittering

        like a stand

of beech trees late

        one afternoon

in Germany, in fall.

        It is called

Buchenwald, it is

        1890. In

the finished painting

        the argument

has something to do

        with pleasure.

Jorie Graham, “Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt” from Erosion. Copyright © 1983 by Jorie Graham. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

980. The Little Ways That Encouarge Good Fortune

.

Wisdom is having things right in your life

and knowing why.

If you do not have things right in your life

you will be overwhelmed:

you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.

If you have things right in your life

but do not know why,

you are just lucky, and you will not move

in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives

who are acting to make things right for others:

they act only from the self—

and that self will never be right:

no luck, no help, no wisdom.

979. A Tale Begun - Wislawa Szymborska

.

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

The world is never ready

for the birth of a child.

Our ships are not yet back from Vineland.

We still have to get over the S. Gothard pass.

We've got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,

fight our way through the sewers to Warsaw's center,

gain access to King Harald the Butterpat,

and wait until the downfall of Minister Fouché.

Only in Acapulco

can we begin anew.

We've run out of bandages,

matches, hydraulic presses, arguments, and water.

We haven't got the trucks, we haven't got the Minghs' support.

The skinny horse won't be enough to bribe the sheriff.

No news so far about the Tartars' captives.

We'll need a warmer cave for winter

and someone who can speak Harari.

We don't know whom to trust in Nineveh,

what conditions the Prince-Cardinal will decree,

which names Beria has still got inside his files.

They say Karol the Hammer strikes tomorrow at dawn.

In this situation, let's appease Cheops,

report ourselves of our own free will,

change faiths,

pretend to be friends with the Doge,

and say that we've got nothing to do with the Kwabe tribe.

Time to light the fires.

Let's send a cable to grandma in Zabierzów.

Let's untie the knots in the yurt's leather straps.

May delivery be easy,

may our child grow and be well.

Let him be happy from time to time

and leap over abysses.

Let his heart have strength to endure

and his mind be awake and reach far.

But not so far

that it sees into the future.

Spare him 

that one gift,

O heavenly powers.

978. Most of the Warriors - James Kavanaugh

.

Most of the warriors I knew

Have settled down to gardening, and the morning Times,

Tired of stalking ghosts

and the melody of secret rhythms

above the sound of traffic

and other monotonous voices,

Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew

Have unsaddled stallions and built a fence in the backyard,

Weary of studying the clouds

And the shadows creeping across mountains

beyond the flash of neon

and other pretentious symbols,

Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew

Have died before their time and are forgotten

Save in the memory of their sons

And the dreams they seldom share

beyond the taint of time

and other unimportant measures

Finally content to stare and wonder.

977. The Voice - Thomas Hardy

.

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who all all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness

Traveling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessiness,

Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

From Seamus Heaney

“I can’t honestly say that I break down when I read “The Voice,” but

when I get to the last four lines the dear ducts do congest a bit. The

poem is one of several Thomas Hardy wrote immediately after the

death of his first wife in late November 1912, hence his poignancy

of dating it “December 1912.” Hardy once described this group

of memorial poems as “an expiation,” acknowledging his grief and

remorse at the way he had neglected and hurt the one “who was all to

me…..at first, when our day was fair.” What renders the music of the

poem so moving is the drag in the voice, as if there were sinkers on

many of the lines. But in the final stanza, in that landscape of falling

leaves, wind and thorn, and the woman calling, there is a banshee note

that haunts “long after it is heard no more.”

976. That Day - Denise Levertov

.

Across s lake in Switzerland, fifty years ago,

light was jousting with long lances, fencing with 

   broadswords

back and forth among cloudy peaks and foothills.

We watched from a small pavilion, my mother and I, 

enthralled.

And then, behold, a shaft, a column,

a defined body, not of light but of silver rain,

formed and set out from the distant shore, leaving behind

the silent feints and thrusts, and advanced

unswervingly, at a steady pace,

toward us.

I knew this! I’d seen it! Not the sensation

of déjà vu: it was Blakes’s inkwash vision,

“The Spirit of God Moving Upon the Face of the Waters’!

The column steadily came on

across the lake toward us; on each side of it,

there was no rain. We rose to our feet, breathless—

and then it reached us, took us

into its veil of silver, wrapped us

in finest weave of wet, 

and we laughed for joy, astonished.

975. Presentiment - Rilke

Translated from the German by Edward Snow

I’m like a flag surrounded by distances.

I can sense the coming winds, and have to live them,

while things down below don’t stir yet:

the doors still close softly, and the chimneys hold silence;

the windows don’t tremble yet, the dust lies calm.

Then all at once the squalls arrive and I’m embroiled like the sea.

And I spread myself out and plunge deep inside myself

and cast myself off and am entirely alone

in the great storm.

974. The Pope Recently - James Kavanaugh

.

The Pope recently

  Took the Bible a step further

And said that a man

  should not look with lust

    at his own wife.

Edna Mae O’Brien

  Who would give anything

    to be lusted after again

Wondered if the Pope

  Had discussed this matter

    with his father

973. 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 sort 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!

972. Some Advice from a Mother to Her Married Son - Judith Viorst

.

The answer to do you love me isn't, I married you, didn't I?

Or, Can't we discuss this after the ballgame is through?
It isn't, Well that all depends on what you mean by 'love'.
Or even, Come to bed and I'll prove that I do.
The answer isn't, How can I talk about love when
the bacon is burned and the house is an absolute mess and
the children are screaming their heads off and
I'm going to miss my bus?
The answer is yes.
The answer is yes.
The answer is yes. 

971. I Live My Life In Widening Circles - Rilke

Translated by Edward Snow

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: am I a falcon, a storm,

or a sovereign song?

970. Before We Leave - Stephen Dunn

.

Just so it’s clear—

no whining on the journey.

If you whine, you’ll get stuck

somewhere with people

like yourself. It’s an unwritten law.

Wear hiking boots. Pack food

and a change of clothes.

We go slowly. Endurance won’t

be enough, though without it

you can’t get to the place

where more of you is asked.

Expect there will be times

when you’ll be afraid.

Hold hands and tremble together

if you must but remember

each of you is alone.

Where are we going?

It’s not an issue of here or there.

And if you ever feel you can’t

take another step imagine 

how you might feel to arrive,

if not wiser, a little more aware

how to inhabit the middle ground

between misery and joy.

Trudge on. In the higher regions,

where the footing is unsure,

to trudge is to survive.

Happiness is another journey,

almost over before it starts,

guaranteed to disappoint.

If you’ve come for it, say so,

you’ll get your money back.

I hope you all realize that anytime

is a fine time to laugh. Fake it,

however, and false laughter

will accompany you like a cowbell

for the rest of your days.

You’ll forever lack the seriousness

of a clown. At some point

the rocks will be jagged,

the precipice sheer. That won’t be

the abyss you’ll see looking down.

The abyss, you’ll discover

(if you’ve made it this far),

is usually nearer than that—

at the bottom of something

you’ve yet to resolve,

or posing as your confidante.

Follow me. Don’t follow me. I will

say such things, and mean both.

969. A Story That Could Be True - William Stafford

.

If you were exchanged in the cradle and

your real mother died

without ever telling the story

then no one knows your name,

and somewhere in the world

your father is lost and needs you

but you are far away.

He can never find

how true you are, how ready.

When the great wind comes

and the robberies of the rain

you stand on the corner shivering.

The people who go by—

you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,

“Who are you really, wanderer?”—

and the answer you have to give

no matter how dark and cold

the world around you is:

“Maybe I’m a king.”

968. Memory - Rilke

Translated by Edward Snow

And you wait, you wait for that one thing
that will infinitely enlarge your life;
that gigantic, the stupendous,
the awakening of stones,
depths turned round toward you.

The volumes bound in rust and gold
flicker dimly on the shelves;
and you think of lands traveled across,
of paintings, of the clothes of
women found and lost.

And then suddenly you know: it was then.
You rise, and before you
stands the fear and prayer and shape
of a vanished year.

967. "I Love You" - Billy Collins

.
Early on, I noticed that you always say it
to each of your children
as you are getting off the phone with them
just as you never fail to say it
to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call.

It’s all new to this only child
I never heard my parents say it,
at least not on such a regular basis,
nor did it ever occur to me to miss it.
To say I love you pretty much every day

would have seemed strangely obvious,
like saying I’m looking at you
when you are standing there looking at someone.
If my parents had started saying it
a lot, I would have started to worry about them.

O course, I always like hearing it from you.
That is never a cause for concern,
The problem is I now find myself saying it back
if only because just saying good-bye
then hanging up would make me seem discourteous.

But like Bartleby, I would prefer not to
say it so often, would prefer instead to save it
for special occasions, like shouting it out as I leaped
into the red mouth of the volcano
with you standing helplessly on the smoking rim,

or while we are desperately clasping hands
before our plane plunges in the Gulf of Mexico,
which are only two of the examples I had in mind,
But enough, as it turns out, to make me
want to say it to you right now.

and what better place than in the final couplet
of a poem where, as every student know, it really counts.

966. Sharks' Teeth - Kay Ryan

.
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

965. Request - Lawrence Raab

.
For a long time I was sure
it should be "Jumping Jack Flash," then
the adagio from Schubert's C major Quintet,
but right now I want Oscar Peterson's

"You Look Good to Me." That's my request.
Play it at the end of the service,
after my friends have spoken.
I don't believe I'll be listening in,

but sitting here I'm imaging
you could be feeling what I'd like to feel––
defiance from the Stones, grief
and resignation with Schubert, but now

Peterson and Ray Brown are making
the moment sound like some kind
of release. Sad enough
at first, but doesn't it slide into

tapping you feet, then clapping
your hands, maybe standing up
in that shadowy hall in Paris
in the late sixties when this was recorded,

getting up and dancing
as I would not have done,
and being dead, cannot, but might
wish for you, who would then

understand what a poem––or perhaps only
the making of a poem, just that moment
when it starts, when so much
is still possible––

has allowed me to feel.
Happy to be there. Carried away.

964. You can rely on him - Yehuda Amichi

.
Happiness has no father. No happiness ever
Learns from the one before, and it dies, without heirs.
But sadness has a long tradition,
Passes from eye to eye, from heart to heart.

And what did I learn from my father: to weep full and to laugh loud
And to pray three times a day.
And what did I learn from my mother: to close my lips, collar,
Cupboard, dream and suitcase, and to put everything back
In its place and to pray three times a day.

Now I have recovered from the lesson. The hair of my head
Is cropped like a solder from the Second World War,
Round and round, and my ears not only hold up by skull but the whole sky

Now they say about me: "You can rely on him."
I've come to this! I've sunk this low!
Only those who really love me
Know you cannot.

963. When I Wrote A Little - Hayden Carruth

When I Wrote A Little

poem in the ancient mode for you

that was musical and had old words



in it such as would never do in

the academies you loved it and you



said you did not know how to thank

me and in truth this is a problem



for who can ever be grateful enough 

for poetry but i said you thank me



every day and every night wordlessly

which you really do although again



in truth it is a problem for how can

life ever be consonant with spirit



yet we are human and are naturally

hungry for gratitude yes we need it



and never have enough oh my dear i

think these problems are always with



us and in reality have no solutions

except when we wash them away on



salty tides of loving as we rock in

the dark sure sea of our existence