1224. When I First Saw Snow - Gregory Djanikian

Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas”

on the radio, we were staying at my aunt’s house

waiting for papers, my father was looking for a job.

We had trimmed the tree the night before,

sap had run on my fingers and for the first time

I was smelling pine wherever I went.

Anais, my cousin, was upstairs in her room

listening to Danny and the Juniors.

Haigo was playing Monopoly with Lucy, his sister,

Buzzy, the boy next door, had eyes for her

and there was a rattle of dice, a shuffling

of Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens.

There were red bows on the Christmas tree.

It had snowed all night.

My boot buckles were clinking like small bells

as I thumped to the door and out

onto the grey planks of the porch dusted with snow.

The world was immaculate, new,

even the trees had changed color,

and when I touched the snow on the railing

I didn’t know what I had touched, ice or fire.

I heard. “I’m dreaming. . . .”

I heard, “At the hop, hop, hop . . .oh, baby.”

I heard “B & O” and the train in my imagination

was whistling through the great plains.

And I was stepping off,

I was falling deep into America.

1223. Elevation - Charles Baudelaire

Translated from the French by Timothy Donnelly

Over gutters and over parking lots,

    over rooftops, fountains, cloud banks and the bay,

beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills

    unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known

universe, ghost, you slip out of me

    with the ease of a swimmer

at one with the waves, furrowing the deep

    with a pleasure we can’t articulate

as we fly from the contagion

    of the world, bathing in vibrations

shed in silence from the stars, drinking up

    the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.

Only when you ferry us

    here, beyond the tedium and despair

that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when

    animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift

up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds

    trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky

and hover over life, understanding without effort

    the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die.

Elevation - Charles Baudelaire

    Translated from the French by ???

Above the ponds, above the valleys,

The mountains, the woods, the clouds, the seas;

Beyond the sun, beyond the ether,

Beyond the borders of the starry spheres,

My spirit, you move so deftly,

And, like a good swimmer reveling in the sea,

You surge joyfully through deep immensity

With virile, inexpressible pleasure.

Fly far away from this unhealthy air

And bathe yourself in a higher atmosphere;

Drink like a potion, pure and divine,

The lucid fire that fills cosmic emptiness.

After the troubles and vast sadness

Which thicken the fog that darkens existence,

Happy the one who has strong enough wings

To soar toward lands, bright and serene!

The one whose thoughts are like larks,

Freely rising into morning skies,

Glides above life and understands effortlessly

The language of flowers and all voiceless things

https://fleursdumal.org/poem/102

1222. Lines To Myself - Seamus Heaney

In poetry I wish you would

Avoid the lilting platitude.

Give us poems humped and strong,

Laced tight with thongs of song,

Poems that explode in silence

Without forcing, without violence,

Whose music is sharp and clear and good

Like a saw zooming in seasoned wood.

You should attempt concrete expression,

Half guessing, half expression.

1221. e. e. cummings - who are you,little i

 who are you little i

(five or six years old)

peermg from some high

windows; at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day

has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

1220. Lilacs - Katherine Garrison Chapin

When I met my lover
  Lilacs were new,
He said, “I brought some lilacs,
  Lilacs for you.”

I took them eagerly
  Laughing in surprise.
He said “ They are pretty
  Just like your eyes.”

I pressed the pointed blossoms
  chose to my check,
And the smooth green leaves…
  But I couldn’t speak.

How was I to tell him,
  Spring being new,
How say: ‘Its is the lilacs
  I love, not you”

1219. And Then There Is That Incredible Moment - Kate Light

 when you realize what you’re reading,
what’s being revealed to you, how it is not
what you expected, what you thought
you were reading, where you thought you were heading.
Then there in that incredible knowing
that surges up in you, speeding
your heart; and you swear you will keep on reading,
keep on writing until you find another not going
where you thought—and until you have taken
someone on that ride, so that they let out their
sigh, so that they will swear
they will not rest until they too
have taken someone the way they were taken by you.

1218. Transformations - Thomas Hardy

 Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering the rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
and they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
 
(bosomed - Yew Trees as they age grow bulging boles round their main trunk.)

1217. Sometimes - Evelyn Waugh

 

Sometimes I feel

the past and the 

future pressing

so hard on either side

that there’s no room

for the present at all.

1216. Quotes from “Thoreau and the Art of Life” Roderick MacIver

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there

is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, 

and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, 

are not only not indispensable, 

but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful

than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful, 

it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used. 

All change is a miracle to contemplate, 

but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

One’s friendship with oneself, based largely on solitude,

determines what we do with our life and is the basis

of real success. Ultimately, we live in our own reality,

and our inner life determines that reality.

There no remedy for love but to love more.

1215. Foreigner - Imtiaz Dharker

I was born a foreigner.

I carried on from there

to become a foreigner everywhere

I went, even in the place

planted with my relatives, 

six-foot tubers sprouting roots, 

their fingers and faces pushing up

new shoots of maize and sugar cane.

All kinds of places and groups

of people who have admirable

history would, almost certainly

distance them selves from me.

I don’t fit,

like a clumsy-translated poem;

like food cooked in milk of coconut

where you expected ghee or cream,

the unexpected aftertaste

of cardamom or neem.

There’s always that point where

the language flips

into an unfamiliar taste;

where words tumble over

a cunning tripwire on the tongue;

where the frame slips,

the reception of an image

not quite turned, ghost-outlined,

that signals, in their midst,

an alien.

And so I scratch, scratch

through the night, at this

growing scab on black on white.

Everyone has the right

to infiltrate a piece of paper.

A page doesn’t fight back.

And, who knows, these lines

may scratch their way

into your head

through all the chatter of community, 

family, clattering spoons,

children being fed-

immigrate into your bed,

squat in your home,

and in a corner, eat your bread,

until, one day, you meet

the stranger sidling down your street,

realize you know the face

simplified to bone,

look into its outcast eyes

and recognize it as your own. 

1214. Ripeness - Jane Hirshfield

 Ripeness is

what fails away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,

the pear, 

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body 

love this world

that gave itself to your care

in all its ripeness,,

with ease,

and will take itself from you

in equal ripeness and ease,

is also harvest.

And however sharply

you are tested—

this sorrow, that great love—

it too will leave on that clean knife.

1213. Poetry - Pablo Neruda

 Translated by Alistair Reid

And it was at that age…Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no they were not voices, they were not

words nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say  my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened and open,

planets,

palpitation, plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.