1138. When The Shoe Fits - Chuang Tzu -

Translated by Thomas Merton

Ch’ui the draftsman

Could draw more perfect circles freehand

Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth

Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind

Was meanwhile free and without concern

With what he was doing.

No application was needed

His mind was perfectly simple

and knew no obstacle.  

So, when the shoe fits

The foot is forgotten,

When the belt fits

The belly is forgotten,

When the heart is right

“For” and “against” are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions,

No needs, no attractions:

Then your affairs

Are under control. 

You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right

And you are easy.

Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy

Is to forget the right way

And forget that the going is easy.

1137. This Only - Czesław Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.

A voyager arrives, a map led him here.

Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,

When the first snow fell, riding this way

He felt joy, strong, without reason,

Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm

Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,

Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.

He returns years later, has no demands.

He wants only one, most precious thing:

To see, purely and simply, without name,

Without expectations, fears, or hopes,

At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

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

What is the opposite of a Prince?

 A frog must be the answer, since,

As all good fairy stories tell,

When some witch says a magic spell,

Causing the prince to be disguised

So that he won’t be recognized,

He always ends up green and sad

And sitting on a lily pad.

1135. Party Preparations - Posidippus (About 273 BC)

     Translated from the Greek by Barton Raffel

  (nothing changes)

We’ll be four, each with his woman.

Eight’s too many for one keg of wine.

Go tell Aristus the keg I bought

Is only half full, a gallon short, maybe two

Or even more. Hurry!

They’re coming at five.

1134. Symphony in Yellow - Oscar Wilde

An omnibus across the bridge

   Crawls like a yellow butterfly,

  And, here and there, a passer-by

Shows like a little restless midge

Big barges full of yellow hay

   Are moored against the shadowy wharf,

  And, like a yellow silken scarf,

The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade

   And flutter from the Temple elms,

   And at my feet the pale green Thames

Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

1133. Meeting At Night - Robert Browning

 The grey sea and the long black land,

And the yellow half-moon large and low, 

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speeed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-sented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp stratch,

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

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

Than the two hearts beating each to each.!

1132. Fountains And Statues - John Tagliabue

FOUNTAINS AND STATUES AND AMAZED 

    TOURISTS BETWEEN NOTRE DAME

                 AND THE ORANGERIE

To have

had the heart of admiration of joy lifted

the way

Apollinaire lifted a poem, the way our gaze lifts

the Eiffel Tower;

the way Paris clearer in sunlight and springtime than

ever before lifts us;

from Pont Neuf you take off, in the Tuileries you see

Marcel Marceau

with a single flower or Monet with a thousand canvases.

Pavlova, how

can you get on your toe that way ? What are you doing

spinning and spinning

and spinning out in the universe and so

close to my heart ?

 

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

Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel

I grew on Tyre.

I was born in Syria,

And I came out of Eucrates,

I, Meleager, who taught my muse

To run on barbed feet.

I’m a Syrian, should anyone be surprised?

But stranger, all of us live in one country: the world.

All of us were born in the same Chaos.

And when I grow old

I wrote this epitaph for myself,

Knowing that old age and death live side by side.

Say something to wish this wordsmith well,

And live to be a wordy old man like me.

Heliodora (about 100 B.C.) - Spring

Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel

Winter winds have blown out of the sky,

The purple spring flowers happily.

The dark earth drapes herself in green

And plants burst into leaf, their newborn hair waving.

Fields drink the dawn dew and grow,

Laughing as roses open. Shepherds in the hills

Shrill bright melodies on their pipes,

And goatherds count and re-count their white kids.

Sailors are out on the broad sea,

Zephyr puffing out their sails.

Men wear crowns of ivy and cry “Evoe!”

To honor Bacchus, father of wine.

Bees buzz into being, stir and work their hives,

Constructing artful many-celled combs.

And all the races of birds sing everywhere,

Clear and loud: kingfishers near the water,

Swallows around our houses, swans by the river’s edge,

Nightingales deep in the woods.

And if leaves and plants are happy, the the earth sprouts,

And shepherds pipe, and sheep play and dance in the meadows,

And bees make honey,

How can a poet be silent, seeing beautiful spring?

1130. Poem - Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing 

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

1129. Ripeness - Jane Hirshfied

Ripeness is

what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,

the pear,

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body

love this world

that gave itself to your care

in all of its ripeness,

with ease,

and will take itself from you

in equal ripeness and ease,

is also harvest.

And however sharply

you are tested—

this sorrow that great love—

it too will leave on that clean knife.

1128. Everything Is Waiting For You - David Whyte

After Derek Mahon

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you, 

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are you mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the wight of your aloneness and ease into

the conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

1127. The Night, The Porch - Mark Strand

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart

What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself

To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.

Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.

What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort

Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux

Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting

For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—

The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,

Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there

Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind. 

1126. My First Use of Google Bard

Question to google Bard (Answered in 5 seconds)

What famous poets have written poems about what famous art?

"W.H. Auden wrote the poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" about Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting "The Fall of Icarus." The poem explores the indifference of the world to human suffering, as represented by the ploughman who continues to plough his field while Icarus falls to his death.

Anne Sexton wrote the poem "The Starry Night" about Vincent van Gogh's painting of the same name. The poem describes the painting's swirling clouds and stars, and the artist's own mental turmoil.

Sylvia Plath wrote the poem "Lady Lazarus" about the painting "Judith Slaying Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi. The poem explores the themes of violence, revenge, and female empowerment.

T.S. Eliot wrote the poem "The Waste Land" about a variety of famous artworks, including Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" and Michelangelo's "Pietà." The poem explores the themes of loss, despair, and spiritual emptiness.

Pablo Neruda wrote the poem "The Suitcase" about a painting by Frida Kahlo. The poem describes the painting's images of pain and suffering, and the artist's own resilience.

Wallace Stevens wrote the poem "The Old Guitarist" about Pablo Picasso's painting of the same name. The poem explores the themes of aging, isolation, and creativity.

Seamus Heaney wrote the poem "The Cuchulain Cycle" about the paintings of Jack B. Yeats. The poems explore the themes of Irish mythology and history.

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci has been the subject of many poems, including "Sonnet 151" by William Shakespeare and "The Mona Lisa" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso has been the subject of poems by Rafael Alberti, Jorge Luis Borges, and Derek Walcott

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali has been the subject of poems by John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, and Charles Simic.

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt has been the subject of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney.

These are just a few examples of the many poems that have been written about famous art. Ekphrasis, the art of describing a visual work of art in words, is a rich and complex tradition that has been practiced by poets for centuries."

1125. The Battles of the Pen and the Scissors - Shem Tov Ardutiel (pen name Santob De Carrion)

Excerpt From The Battles of the Pen and the Scissors (CE 1345) by Shem Tov Ardutiel (pen name Santob De Carrion)

Writer, you hold a flame in your hand,

or is it the blade of a sword or a spear-- 

the tree of knowledge of good and evil,

or a staff to make wondrous signs appear?

Are there words enough in all of song

to praise the pen? Who else could bear

the burden of bringing back the past

and preserving it then as though with myrrh?

It has no ear with which it might hear,

or mouth with which to offer answers,

and yet the pen, in a single stroke,

at once does both—observes and remembers.

At night he says “Tomorrow I’ll write,”

but there nothing at all to back up his words;

the heaven’s frost caught in his face,

and the cackling of mocking ice is heard.

Don’t pride yourself on tomorrow’s prize,

when you have no notion of what it hides.

1124. Autobiografia Literaria - Frank O'Hara

 

When I was a child

I played by myself in a

corner of the schoolyard

all alone.

I hated dolls and I

hated games, animals were

not friendly and birds

flew away.

If anyone was looking

for me I hid behind a

tree and cried out “I am

an orphan.”

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

1123. Earthing - Billy Collins

 

You have probably come across

those scales in planetariums

that tell you how much you

would weigh on other planets.

You have noticed the fat ones

lingering on the Mars scale

and the emaciated slowing up

the line for Neptune.

As a creature of average weight.

I fail to see the attraction.

Imagine squatting in the wasteland

Of Pluto, all five tons of you,

or wandering around Mercury

wondering what to do next with your ounce.

How much better to step onto

the simple bathroom scale,

a happy earthing feeling

the familiar ropes of gravity,

157 pounds standing soaking wet

a respectful distance from the sun.

1122. No Path - David Whyte

 There is No Path that Goes all the Way

Han Shan

Not that it stops us looking

for the full continuation.

The one line in the poem

we can start and follow

straight to the end. The fixed belief

we can hold, facing a stranger

that saves us the trouble

of a real conversation.  

But one day you are not

just imagining an empty chair

where your loved one sat.

Your are not just telling a story

where the bridge is down

and there’s nowhere to cross.

You are not just trying to pray

to a God you always imagined

would keep you safe.

No, you’ve come to a place

where nothing you’ve done

will impress and nothing you 

can promise will avert

the silent confrontation,

the place where

your body already seems to know

the way, having kept

to the last, its own secret

reconnaissance.

But still, there is no path

that goes all the way,

one conversation leads

to another,

one breath to the next

until

there’s no breath at all,

just

the inevitable

final release

of the burden.

And then,

wouldn’t your life

have to start

all over again 

for you to know

even a little

of who you had been?

1121. “Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning” - Alice Walker

Looking down into my father’s

dead face

for the last time

my mother said without

tears, without smiles

without regrets

but with civility

“Good night, Willie Lee, I’ll see you

in the morning.”

And it was then I knew that the healing

of all out wounds

is forgiveness

that permits a promise

of our return 

at the end.

1120. Closing His Eyes - John Tagliabue

 Did

you

ever

let

a     it 

poem     would

go     return

through             in

the     another 

air     season

like             in

a     another

swift     life ?

beautiful

bird

not

asking

it

to

tell

you 

a

word

knowing

1119. Robert Louis Stevenson - The Land Of Counterpane

 

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day,

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cites all about.

I was the giant of great and still

That sits upon the pillow-hill,

And sits before him, dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

1118. Steps - Robert O'Hara

How funny you are today New York

like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime

and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days

(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still

accepts me foolish and free

all I want is a room up there

and you in it

and even the traffic halt so thick is a way

for people to rub up against each other

and when their surgical appliacnces lock

they stay together

for the rest of the day (what a day)

I go by to check a slide and I say

that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner

she’s out eating

and Garbo’s backstage at the Met

everyone’s taking their coat off

so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers

and the park’s full of dancers and their tights and shoes

in little bags

who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y

why not

the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won

and in a sense we’re all winning

we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple

who moved to the country for fun

they moved a day too soon

even the stabbings are helping the population explosion

though in the wrong country

and all those liars have left the U N

the Seagram Building’s no longer rivaled in interest

not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk

next to the delicatessen

so the old man can sit on it and drink beer

and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day

while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderfull

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and  love you so much

1117. Time - Louise Glück

There was too much, always, then too little

Childhood: sickness.

By the side of the bed I had a little bell—

at the other end of the bell, my mother.

Sickness, gray rain. The dogs slept through it. They slept on the bed,

at the end of it, and it seemed to me they understood

about childhood: best to remain unconscious.

The rain made gray slats on the windows.

I sat with my book, the little bell beside me.

Without hearing a voice, I apprenticed myself to a voice.

Without seeing any sign of the spirit, I determined

to live in the spirit.

The rain faded in and out.

Month after month, in the space of a day

Things became dreams; dreams became things.

Then I was well; the bell went back to the cupboard.

The rain ended. The dogs stood at the door,

panting to go outside.

I was well, then I was an adult.

And time went on—it was like the rain,

to much, so much, as though it was a weight that couldn’t be moved.

I was a child, half sleeping.

I was sick: I was proected.

And I lived in the world of the spirit,

the world of the gray rain,

the lost, the remembered.

Then suddenly the sun was shining,

And time went on, even when there was almost none left.

And the perceived became the remembered,

the remembered, the perceived.

1116. The Next Time - Mark Strand

Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time

Is becoming the architecture of the next time. And the dazzle

Of light upon the waters is as nothing beside the changes

Wrought therein, just as our waywardness means

Nothing against the steady purr of things over the edge.

Nobody can stop the flow, but nobody can start it either.

Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,

And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,

Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,

and so many people we loved have gone,

And no voice comes from outer space, from the folds

Of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this

Is the way it was meant to happen that if only we knew

How long the ruins would last we would never complain.

1115. Excerpt from: What W. H. Auden Can Do For You - Alexander McCall Smith

 “…. Auden wrote a gravely beautiful poem…. Its title was: “New Year Letter,” and it was addressed to Elizabeth Mayer, a refugee from the depredations of Nazi Germany, a translator, and a close friend. Like many of his works, this poem is conversational in tone but contains within it a complex skein of ideas about humanity and history, about art, civilization, and violence. At the end of the letter, through, there occur lines that are among the most beautiful he wrote. Addressing his friend, he draws attention to what she brings to the world through her therapeutic calling:” 

We fall down in the dance, we make

The old ridiculous mistake,

But always there are such as you

Forgiving, helping what we do.

O every day in sleep and labour

Our life and death are with our neighbor,

And love illuminates again

The city and the lion’s den. 

The world’s great rage, the travail of young men.

1114. - Madly Singing In The Mountains - Po Chu - I

 Selected from: A Book Of Luminous Things, Edited by Czeslaw Milosz

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

There is no one among men that has not a special failing,

I have broken away from the thousand ties of life;

But this infirmity still remains behind.

Each time that I look at a fine landscape,

Each time that I meet a loved friend,

I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry

And marvel as though a God had crossed my path.

Ever since the day I was banished to Hsün-yang

Half my time I have lived among the hills.

And often when I have finished a new poem,

Alone I climb the road to the Eastern Rock.

I lean my body on the banks of white Stone;

I pull down with my hands a green cassia branch.

My mad singing startles the valleys and hills;

The apes and birds all come to peep.

Fearing to become a laughing-stock to the world,

I choose a place that is unfrequented by men.

1113. There Is No Insurmountable Solitude - Pablo Neruda

There is no insurmountable solitude,

All paths lead to the same goal:

to convey to others what we are.

And we must pass through solitude and

difficulty, isolation and silence

to find that enchanted place 

where we can dance our clumsy dance 

and sing our sorrowful song.

But in that dance, and in

that song, the most ancient rites 

of our conscience fulfill themselves

in the awareness of being human.

1112. Working Together - David Whyte

We shape our self

to fit this world

and by the world

are shaped again.

The visible

and the invisible

working together

in common cause,

to produce

the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way

the intangible air

traveled at speed

round a shaped wing

easily

holds our weight.

So may we, in this life

trust

to those elements 

we have yet to see

or imagine,

and look for the true

shape of our own self,

by forming it well

to the great 

intangibles about us.

1111. Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon - Li Po (701-762)

Translated by Irving Y. Lo

A pot of wine among the flowers:

I drink alone, no kith or kin near.

I raise my cup to invite the moon to join me;

It and my shadow make a party of three.

Alas, the moon is unconcerned about drinking,

And my shadow merely follows me around.

Briefly I cavort with the moon and my shadow:

Pleasure must be sought while it is spring.

I sing and the moon goes back and forth,

I dance and my shadow falls at random.

While sober we seek pleasure in fellowship;

When drunk we go each our own way.

Then let us pledge a friendship without human ties

And meet again at the far end of the Milky Way