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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
“…. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I met a Strange Woman
With things in her arms.
‘What have you got, Woman?
‘Charms,’ she said, ‘charms.’
‘I will put one on you
‘Ere I have done.
‘Which shall I put on you?’
’None ‘ I said, ’none!’
Oh, how she smiled at me.
’Nay, then, my dear,
Look, do but look at them.
What do you fear?’
‘I’ve a black charm for night
And a gold one for noon,
A white charm for winter,
A rose charm for June;’
‘I’ve a green charm for woods,
And a blue one for water,
And a silver for moons
When they’re in their first quarter.’
‘I’ve a slow charm for growth,
And a swift one for birds,
And a soft one for sleep,
And a sweet one for words.’
‘I’ve a long charm for love,
And a strong charm for youth,
And one you can’t change
Or destroy, for the truth.’
’Sorry’s the man my dear,
Sorry, she said,
‘Who wanders through life
With no charm on his head.’
O how she smiled at me.
‘Big one or small,
‘Which shall I put on you?’
‘All,’ I said, ‘all!’
