Poem of the Day

I haven’t posted anything by EAP in a while.

Romance
By Edgar Allan Poe

Romance, who loves to nod and sing
With drowsy head and folded wing
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky;
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things—
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

I didn’t know that Victor Hugo wrote poetry, but now I’m going to have to get a book after reading a couple poems online.

More Strong Than Time
By Victor Hugo

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime’s stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.

I don’t have a little brother, though I have two younger sisters. I love this poem because it seems so brutally honest.

The Little Brother Poem
By Naomi Shihab Nye

I keep seeing your car in the streets
but it never turns at our corner. I keep finding
little pieces of junk you saved, a packing box, a white rag,
and stashed in the shed for future uses. Today I am cleaning
the house. I take your old camping jug, poke my finger
through the rusted hole in the bottom, tack it on the trash
wondering if you’d yell at me, if you had other plans for it.

Little brother, when you were born I was glad. Believe this.
There is much you never forgave me for but I tell you now,
I wanted you.

It’s true there are things I would change. Your face bleeding
the day you followed me and I pushed you in front of a bicycle.
For weeks your eyes hard on me under the bandages. For years
you quoted me back to myself, mean things I’d said that I didn’t
remember. Last summer you disappeared into the streets of Dallas
at midnight on foot crying and I realized you’d been serious,
some strange bruise you still carried under the skin.

You’re not little anymore. You passed me up and kept reminding me
I’d stopped growing. We’re different, always have been,
you’re Wall Street and I’m the local fruit market,
you’re Pierre Cardin and I’m a used bandanna.
That’s fine, I’ll take differences over things that match.

If you were here today we wouldn’t say this.
You’d be outside cranking up the lawnmower.
I’d be in here answering mail.
You’d pass through the house and say “You’re a big help”
and I’d say “Don’t mention it” and the door would close.

I think of the rest of our lives. You’re on the edge of yours today.
Long-distance I said “Are you happy?” and your voice wasn’t sure.
It sounded small, younger, it sounded like the little brother
I don’t have anymore, the one who ran miniature trucks up my arms
telling me I was a highway, the one who believed me
when I told him monkeys arrived in the night to kidnap boys
with brown hair. I’m sorry for everything I did that hurt.
It’s a large order I know, dumping out a whole drawer at once,
fingering receipts and stubs, trying to put them back
in some kind of shape so you’ll be able to find everything later,
when you need it, and you don’t have so much time.

This one seemed appropriate today. P.S. Dang, Yeats knew how to write!

When You Are Old
By William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I thought I’d post this since today’s weather was absolutely lovely, after a week of cold and rain.

Another Spring
By Kenneth Rexroth

The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

I really need to beef up my poetry file. It’s pretty slim so I go hunting for poems every day. Here’s another one from Sonnet Central.

Despondency
By Elizabeth Oakes Smith

When thou didst leave me, Hope, why didst thou not,
In place of thy sweet presence leave Despair,
With her grim visage and distorted hair?
The past, the future, then had been forgot—
The soul, concentred on its blasted lot,
Had rested mute and desolate of care—
Had ceased to question where its treasures were,
And roamed no more the melancholy spot.
But now, too much remembering of the past
So huge the weight of gloom around me spread
That I, like one within a charnel cast,
Hear but the dirges ringing for the dead—
Feel all the pangs of life, and thought, and breath,
Yet walk I all the time with hand in hand of Death.

A quick post before I go to bed…

I love the dark hours of my being
By Rainer Maria Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being
in which my senses drop into the deep.
I have found in them, as in old letters,
my private life, that is already lived through,
and become wide and powerful now, like legends.
Then I know that there is room in me
for a second huge and timeless life.

But sometimes I am like the tree that stands
over a grave, a leafy tree, fully grown,
who has lived out that particular dream, that the dead boy
(around whom its warm roots are pressing)
lost through his sad moods and his poems.

This one came from Sonnet Central.

Perplexed Music
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Experience, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand,
Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,
Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds
In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear, and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur ‘Where is any certain tune
Or measured music in such notes as these?’
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences,
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper—SWEET.

I found this in a little book of Kipling’s poetry.

The Storm Cone
By Rudyard Kipling

This is the midnight—let no star
Delude us—dawn is very far.
This is the tempest long foretold—
Slow to make head but sure to hold.

Stand by! The lull ‘twixt blast and blast
Signals the storm is near, not past;
And worse than present jeopardy
May our forlorn to-morrow be.

If we have cleared the expectant reef,
Let no man look for his relief.
Only the darkness hides the shape
Of further peril to escape.

It is decreed that we abide
The weight of gale against the tide
And those huge waves the outer main
Sends in to set us back again.

They fall and whelm. We strain to hear
The pulses of her labouring gear,
Till the deep throb beneath us proves,
After each shudder and check, she moves!

She moves, with all save purpose lost,
To make her offing from the coast;
But, till she fetches open sea,
Let no man deem that he is free!

We haven’t had one from Vassar Miller in a while.

Embarrassed
By Vassar Miller

Lord! Some assurance, please,
that I who kneel before this altar,
molding these few moments the shape of supplication,
am not gaping upon my own face in a mirror
all, all too clearly,
yet catwise pawing behind the glass for
the cat not there.

Yes! Grant some assurance
that I will not be blown out like
a match that has been struck against Your careless heel
to light Your mysterious purposes a little while;
that I am not
merely one more inexplicable pimple
upon the cosmos.

Why am I here if I
must pose such questions to the darkness
whence no heavenly fire consumes my offering.
No propriety of an Amen ends my prayer.
I stumble from
this wrong room while my apologies
freeze my tongue tight.

I came across this one at americanpoems.com.

Consummation of Grief
By Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines…
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

This is from a delightful book that you can read online or purchase. The preface to the first edition includes the following:

The question of what would happen if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names is one that has been insufficiently studied in the past. This may simply be because most poets and playwrights have not written any works whose titles are anagrams of their names. So, much as musical scholars used Beethoven’s unfinished notes to complete his posthumous tenth symphony, we have created a series of literary reconstructions that represent our best guesses as to what such anagram-based literature would be like. Given that we had no notes whatsoever upon which to base our work, we had to be extra scrupulous.

That said, enjoy this selection!

BRR, FOOTREST
ROBERT FROST
By Francis Heaney

This ottoman is in my way.
I tripped on it again today;
It chills me with a nameless fear
To think it sees me as its prey.

My loving wife must think it queer
That I am always falling here
As I am walking past the chair.
How comical I must appear.

When I remember to beware
The wicked footrest lurking there,
I do not stumble in a sprawl,
And yet such instances are rare.

My house is cozy, warm, and small,
With just one thing that wrecks it all:
The ottoman that makes me fall,
The ottoman that makes me fall.

Sometimes you just need some ESVM!

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you;
Not in a lovers’-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain—
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
“Look what I have!—And these are all for you.”

Somehow I posted two poems last Thursday. Since my OCD can’t handle that, I’m moving one to today. I’m surprised I’ve never posted this (or actually read it until now).

Ode on a Grecian Urn
By John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
   Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
   A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
   Of deities or mortals, or of both,
      In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
   What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
      What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
   Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
   Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
   Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
      Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
   She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
      For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
   Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
   For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
   For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
      For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
   That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
      A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
   To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
   And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
   Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
      Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
   Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
      Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
   Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
   Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
   When old age shall this generation waste,
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
   ”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Yes, I’m still in KC, so one more children’s poem.

The Dinkey-Bird
By Eugene Field

In an ocean, ‘way out yonder,
   (As all sapient people know)
Is the land of Wonder-Wander,
   Whither children love to go;
It’s their playing, romping, swinging,
   That give great joy to me
While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing
   In the amfalula tree!

There the gum-drops grow like cherries,
   And taffy’s thick as peas—
Caramels you pick like berries
   When, and where, and how you please;
Big red sugar-plums are clinging
   To the cliffs beside that sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
   In the amfalula tree!

So when children shout and scamper
   And make merry all the day,
When there’s naught to put a damper
   To the ardor of their play;
When I hear their laughter ringing,
   Then I’m sure as sure can be
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
   In the amfalula tree!

For the Dinkey-Bird’s bravuras
   And staccatos are so sweet—
His roulades, appoggiaturas,
   And robustos so complete,
That the youth of every nation—
   Be they near or far away—
Have especial delectation
   In that gladsome roundelay.

Their eyes grow bright and brighter,
   Their lungs begin to crow,
Their hearts get light and lighter,
   And their cheeks are all aglow;
For an echo cometh bringing
   The news to all and me,
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
   In the amfalula tree.

I’m sure you like to go there
   To see your feathered friend—
And so many goodies grow there
   You would like to comprehend!
Speed, little dreams, your winging
   To that land across the sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
   In the amfalula tree!

This has always been one of my favorite Shel Silverstein poems. What is it about poems about nobody? Of course I dedicate it to my lovely Ellie and Killy!

Nobody
By Shel Silverstein

Nobody loves me,
Nobody cares,
Nobody picks me peaches and pears.
Nobody offers me candy and Cokes,
Nobody listen and laughs at my jokes.
Nobody helps when I get in a fight,
Nobody does all my homework at night.
Nobody misses me,
Nobody cries,
Nobody thinks I’m a wonderful guy.
So if you ask me who’s my best friend, in a whiz,
I’ll stand up and tell you that Nobody is.
But yesterday night I got quite a scare,
I woke up and Nobody just wasn’t there.
I called out and reached out for Nobody’s hand,
In the darkness where Nobody usually stands.
Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook,
But I found somebody each place that I looked.
I searched till I’m tired, and now with the dawn,
There’s no doubt about it—
Nobody’s gone!

Here’s one from A Child’s Garden of Verses in honor of my dear Killian and Ellie.

The Moon
By Robert Louis Stevenson

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

I stumbled across this one and I like it. It’s so true.

The Breaking Point
By Stephen Vincent Benét

It was not when temptation came,
Swiftly and blastingly as flame,
And seared me white with burning scars;
When I stood up for age-long wars
And held the very Fiend at grips;
When all my mutinous body rose
To range itself beside my foes,
And, like a greyhound in the slips,
The beast that dwells within me roared,
Lunging and straining at his cord…
For all the blusterings of Hell,
It was not then I slipped and fell;
For all the storm, for all the hate,
I kept my soul inviolate.

But when the fight was fought and won,
And there was Peace as still as Death
On everything beneath the sun.
Just as I started to draw breath,
And yawn, and stretch, and pat myself,
—The grass began to whisper things—
And every tree became an elf,
That grinned and chuckled counselings:
Birds, beasts, one thing alone they said,
Beating and dinning at my head.
I could not fly. I could not shun it.
Slimily twisting, slow and blind,
It crept and crept into my mind.
Whispered and shouted, sneered and laughed,
Screamed out until my brain was daft,
One snaky word, “What if you’d done it?”
And I began to think…

Ah, well,
What matter how I slipped and fell?
Or you, you gutter-searcher, say!
Tell where you found me yesterday!

This is one of Tennyson’s earlier poems, from 1832.

To—
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, “All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where;”
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true—
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each—
That, tho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either’s heart and speech.

Here’s another one I just stumbled across…

Ships that Pass in the Night
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear the solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek
is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul’s deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?

I came across this one at americanpoems.com.

Do not be ashamed
By Wendell Berry

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

This poem just about knocked me over when I read it. It starts off so innocently and ends so powerfully.

The Arrowhead
By Mary Oliver

The arrowhead,
which I found beside the river,
was glittering and pointed.
I picked it up, and said,
“Now, it’s mine.”
I thought of showing it to friends.
I thought of putting it—such an imposing trinket—
in a little box, on my desk.
Halfway home, past the cut fields,
the old ghost
stood under the hickories.
“I would rather drink the wind,” he said,
“I would rather eat mud and die
than steal as you steal,
than lie as you lie.”

It’s been a while since I posted something by Shelley…

Art thou pale for weariness
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

   Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
   Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

One of these days I will actually read The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell instead of leafing through it to find a poem to post…

Stalactite
By Amy Lowell

I am a dead thing,
A brittle mummy swathed in canvas,
Gazing with cracked, painted eyes
At a high dome above a still hall.
There is thunder,
And I hear it;
There is lightning,
And I see the tongues of it;
There are many bodies beside mine,
And I see them too.
I died a thousand years ago,
And yet I remember long since,
Drifts of ages since,
Watching,
With other eyes than these,
Diana gathering white poppies upon a seaside hill.

I can’t say this enough. Naomi Shihab Nye just blows me away. She’s amazing!

Remembered
By Naomi Shihab Nye

He wanted to be remembered so he gave people things
they would remember him by. A large trunk, handmade of
ash and cedar. A tool box with initials shaped of scraps.
A tea kettle that would sing every morning,
antique glass jars to fill with crackers, noodles, beans.
A whole family of jams he made himself from the figs and berries
that purpled his land.

He gave these things unexpectedly. You went to see him
and came home loaded. You said “Thank you” till your lips
grew heavy with gratitude and swelled shut.
Walking with him across the acres of piney forest,
you noticed the way he talked to everything, a puddle, a stump,
the same way he talked to you.
“I declare you do look purty sittin’ there in that field
reflectin’ the light like some kind of mirror, you know what?”
As if objects could listen.
As if earth had a memory too.

At night we propped our feet by the fireplace
and laughed and showed photographs and the fire remembered
all the crackling music it knew. The night remembered
how to be dark and the forest remembered how to be mysterious
and in bed, the quilts remembered how to tuck up under our chins.
Sleeping in that house was like falling down a deep well,
rocking in a bucket all night long.

In the mornings we’d stagger away from an unforgettable breakfast
of biscuits—he’d lead us into the next room
ready to show us something or curl another story into our ear.
He scrawled the episodes out in elaborate longhand
and gave them to a farmer’s wife to type.
Stories about a little boy and a grandfather,
chickens and prayer tents, butter beans and lightning.
He was the little boy.
Some days his brain could travel backwards easier than it could
sit in a chair, right there.

When we left he’d say “Don’t forget me! You won’t forget me now,
will you?” as if our remembering could lengthen his life.
I wanted to assure him, there will always be a cabin in our blood
only you live in. But the need of remembrance silenced me,
a ringing rising up out of the soil’s centuries, the ones
who plowed this land, whose names we do not know.

I’m currently reading Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and this is the frontispiece. I’m not sure if it’s the entire poem as I couldn’t find it online.

The Sun Has Set in Flanders
By E. Marquina

Was once a captain,
the story goes,
who led men into battle,
though in death’s throes.
Oh, señores! What an apt man
was that brave captain!

I was flipping through my book of Rilke’s poetry and came across this one.

The Panther
IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES, PARIS
By Rainer Maria Rilke

From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted
that it no longer holds anything anymore.
To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride
which circles down to the tiniest hub
is like a dance of energy around a point
in which a great will stands stunned and numb.

Only at times the curtains of the pupil rise
without a sound—then a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,—
reaches the heart, and dies.