Poem of the Day

After reading The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, I went and looked up this poem, though the former reminded me of O Captain! My Captain!.

In Flanders Fields
By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Here’s another one from Good Poems.

Young and Old
By Charles Kingsley

When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take you place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.

I haven’t actually read that much of Emerson’s poetry, but this one makes me want to read more.

Terminus
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Come to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: “No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs; no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There’s not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And—fault of novel germs—
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath
The needful sinew stark as once.
The baresark marrow to thy bones,
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,—
Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.”

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
“Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.”

I’ve liked what I’ve read of Wendell Berry’s since I discovered him over at American Life in Poetry.

The Vacation
By Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

This was in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. I’d not read it before, but it reminded me of O Captain! My Captain!.

The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna
By Charles Wolfe

   Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
      As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
      O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

   We buried him darkly at dead of night,
      The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
      And the lanthorn dimly burning.

   No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
      Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
      With his martial cloak around him.

   Few and short were the prayers we said,
      And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
      And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

   We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
      And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
      And we far away on the billow!

   Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone
      And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,—
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
      In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

   But half of our heavy task was done
      When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
      That the foe was sullenly firing.

   Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
      From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
      But left him alone with his glory.

We haven’t heard from Vassar Miller in a while…

Invitation
By Vassar Miller

Here is the land where children
Feel snows that never freeze,
Where a star’s the reflection
Of a baby’s eyes,

Where both wise men and shepherds
Measure all Heaven no smaller
Nor larger than He is
And judge a lamb is taller,

Where old and cold for proof
Would take a stone apart,
Who find a wisp of hay
Less heavy on the heart

Come near the cradle where
The Light on hay reposes,
Where hands may touch the Word
This winter warm with roses.

This was in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. I woke up when it was still dark this morning, but there’s no rain…

Rain Travel
By W.S. Merwin

I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness

What a fantastic poem this is! The lines Your courage was a small coal/that you kept swallowing especially blows me away!

Courage
By Anne Sexton

It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

This was perhaps not the best poem to read before flying to NJ, but all my flights were uneventful, so I guess it didn’t matter.

Passengers
By Billy Collins

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair…
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engine,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below…

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.

This is good to read when I feel like my life is out of control…

My life is not this steeply sloping hour
By Rainer Maria Rilke

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
                    And the song goes on, beautiful.

Here’s another one by Adrienne Jones, from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place.

The Affair
By Adrienne Jones

I love my pain so much
I’ve proposed!

Stay with me forever,
I say.
We know each other better
than any lovers.
You’ve been faithful
even when I was cheerful
over some other fancy,
always there waiting for me
when the air cleared
and I was ready to come home.

I know what you wear
and how you eat.
We speak a language no one else
understands.
You make me feel
so alive
and so real.
It’s hard to
imagine going anywhere without you.

Let’s have children
and name them:
Tears, Tremor, and the twins, Grief and Ire.
We’ll live a long life together
and leave everything to them, in the end.

But, wait.

There is something I must say
before we wed for good.

I have had an invitation to sit,
to look within,
and see the emptiness in all things.
It has come from the highest source
and I feel I must accept.
I’m sorry if the timing is awkward,
but don’t worry;
the Source has assured me
that Nothing
will come between us.

I’ve missed ESVM, haven’t you?

Feast
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I drank at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root.
I ate of every plant.
I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and bean
To the vintner and monger:
I will lie down lean
With my thirst and my hunger.

I borrowed Carl Sandburg’s Honey and Salt from my mother’s bookcase. Here’s a selection.

Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians
By Carl Sandburg

The grizzled Athenian ordered to hemlock,
Ordered to a drink and lights out,
Had a friend he never refused anything.

“Let me drink too,” the friend said.
And the grizzled Athenian answered,
“I never yet refused you anything.”

“I am short of hemlock enough for two,”
The head executioner interjected,
“There must be more silver for more hemlock.”

“Somebody pay this man for the drinks of death,”
The grizzled Athenian told his friends,
Who fished out the ready cash wanted.

“Since one cannot die on free cost at Athens,
Give this man his money,” were the words
OF the man named Phocion, the grizzled Athenian.

Yes, there are men who know how to die in a grand way.
There are men who make their finish worth mentioning.

I’m snaking another one from American Life in Poetry.

August Morning
By Albert Garcia

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect—
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

After spending time with my family and reading some children’s books, I thought I’d resume the PotD with a children’s poem. I’ve never heard of Carryl, but I’m amused that this poem reminds me of Lewis Carroll, a homophone of Carryl.

The Walloping Window-Blind
By Charles Edward Carryl

A capital ship for an ocean trip
   Was The Walloping Window-blind—
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
   Or troubled the captain’s mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
   Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
   That he’d been in his bunk below.

The boatswain’s mate was very sedate,
   Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
   While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
   For he sat on the after-rail,
And fired salutes with the captain’s boots,
   In the teeth of the booming gale.

The captain sat in a commodore’s hat
   And dined, in a royal way,
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
   And gummery bread, each day.
But the cook was Dutch, and behaved as such;
   For the food that he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns,
   Chopped up with sugar and glue.

And we all felt ill as mariners will,
   On a diet that’s cheap and rude;
And we shivered and shook as we dipped the cook
   In a tub of his gluesome food.
Then nautical pride we laid aside,
   And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
   And the Anagazanders roar.

Composed of sand was that favored land,
   And trimmed with cinnamon straws;
And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
   Of the Tickletoeteaser’s claws.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
   And shot at the whistling bee;
And the Binnacle-bats wore water-proof hats
   As they danced in the sounding sea.

On rubagub bark, from dawn to dark,
   We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk,—when a Chinese junk
   Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn’t much care,
   And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
   The bark of the rubagub tree.

As suggested by a reader, here’s one from e e cummings.

P.S. I’m going out of town so the PotD may or may not appear for the next week, depending on circumstances.

if i love You
By e e cummings

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing

After reading The Poe Shadow, I thought I’d post a poem by EAP.

The Valley of Unrest
By Edgar Allan Poe

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell:
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

I’m sure you’re all in Mary Oliver withdrawal, so here’s one of hers. She excels at making the ordinary seem truly important.

Mindful
By Mary Oliver

Every day
   I see or hear
      something
         that more or less

kills me
   with delight,
      that leaves me
         like a needle

in the haystack
   of light.
      It was what I was born for—
         to look, to listen,

to lose myself
   inside this soft world—
      to instruct myself
         over and over

in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
         about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
   the very extravagant—
      but of the ordinary,
         the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
      I say to myself,
         how can you help

but grow wise
   with such teachings
      as these—
         the untrimmable light

of the world,
   the ocean’s shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?