Poem of the Day

Courtesy of The Poetry Foundation. I find this in direct contrast to Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

When ‘Midst the Gay I Meet
By Thomas Moore

When ‘midst the gay I meet
   That gentle smile of thine,
Though still on me it turns most sweet,
   I scarce can call it mine:
But when to me alone
   Your secret tears you show,
Oh, then I feel those tears my own,
   And claim them while they flow.
Then still with bright looks bless
   The gay, the cold, the free;
Give smiles to those who love you less,
   But keep your tears for me.

The snow on Jura’s steep
   Can smile in many a beam,
Yet still in chains of coldness sleep,
   How bright soe’er it seem.
But, when some deep-felt ray,
   Whose touch is fire, appears,
Oh, then the smile is warm’d away,
   And, melting, turns to tears.
Then still with bright looks bless
   The gay, the cold, the free;
Give smiles to those who love you less,
   But keep your tears for me.

Past bedtime. So tired.

A Birthday
By Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
          Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
          Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
          That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
          Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
          Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
          And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
          In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
          Is come, my love is come to me.

A reader suggested Robert Southwell, so here you go. Too bad I didn’t know about this poem in time for V-day. (ha!)

Love’s Servile Lot
By Robert Southwell

Love, mistress is of many minds,
   Yet few know whom they serve;
They reckon least how little Love
   Their service doth deserve.

The will she robbeth from the wit,
   The sense from reason’s lore;
She is delightful in the rind,
   Corrupted in the core.

She shroudeth vice in virtue’s veil,
   Pretending good in ill
She offereth joy, affordeth grief,
   A kiss where she doth kill.

A honey-shower rains from her lips,
   Sweet lights shine in her face;
She hath the blush of virgin mind,
   The mind of viper’s race.

She makes thee seek, yet fear to find
   To find, but not enjoy:
In many frowns some gliding smiles
   She yields to more annoy.

She woos thee to come near her fire,
   Yet doth she draw it from thee;
Far off she makes thy heart to fry,
   And yet to freeze within thee.

She letteth fall some luring baits
   For fools to gather up;
Too sweet, too sour, to every taste
   She tempereth her cup.

Soft souls she binds in tender twist,
   Small flies in spinner’s web;
She sets afloat some luring streams,
   But makes them soon to ebb.

Her watery eyes have burning force;
   Her floods and flames conspire:
Tears kindle sparks, sobs fuel are,
   And sighs do blow her fire.

May never was the month of love,
   For May is full of flowers;
But rather April, wet by kind,
   For love is full of showers.

Like tyrant, cruel wounds she gives,
   Like surgeon, salve she lends;
But salve and sore have equal force,
   For death is both their ends.

With soothing words enthralled souls
   She chains in servile bands;
Her eye in silence hath a speech
   Which eye best understands.

Her little sweet hath many sours,
   Short hap immortal harms;
Her loving looks are murd’ring darts,
   Her song bewitching charms.

Like winter rose and summer ice,
   Her joys are still untimely;
Before her Hope, behind Remorse:
   Fair first, in fine unseemly.

Moods, passions, fancy’s jealous fits
   Attend upon her train:
She yieldeth rest without repose,
   And heaven in hellish pain.

Her house is Sloth, her door Deceit,
   And slippery Hope her stairs;
Unbashful Boldness bids her guests,
   And every vice repairs.

Her diet is of such delights
   As please till they be past;
But then the poison kills the heart
   That did entice the taste.

Her sleep in sin doth end in wrath,
   Remorse rings her awake;
Death calls her up, Shame drives her out,
   Despairs her upshot make.

Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,
   Leave off your idle pain;
Seek other mistress for your minds,
   Love’s service is in vain.

This was rather indignantly suggested by a reader appalled at the dearth of Cohen in the PotD.

The flowers that I left in the ground
By Leonard Cohen

The flowers that I left in the ground,
that I did not gather for you,
today I bring them all back,
to let them grow forever,
not in poems or marble,
but where they fell and rotted.

And the ships in their great stalls,
huge and transitory as heroes,
ships I could not captain,
today I bring them back
to let them sail forever,
not in model or ballad,
but where they were wrecked and scuttled.

And the child on whose shoulders I stand,
whose longing I purged
with public, kingly discipline,
today I bring him back
to languish forever,
not in confession or biography,
but where he flourished,
growing sly and hairy.

It is not malice that draws me away,
draws me to renunciation, betrayal:
it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee,
Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon—
I have become the expert of the catalogue.

My body once so familiar with glory,
My body has become a museum:
this part remembered because of someone’s mouth,
this because of a hand,
this of wetness, this of heat.

Who owns anything he has not made?
With your beauty I am as uninvolved
as with horses’ manes and waterfalls.
This is my last catalogue.
I breathe the breathless
I love you, I love you—
and let you move forever.

This one was suggested by a reader. I need to get another book or two of Atwood’s, since my file has been depleted. So many poems, so little time!

Owl Song
By Margaret Atwood

I am the heart of a murdered woman
who took the wrong way home
who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried
who was shot with care beneath a tree
who was mutilated by a crisp knife.
There are many of us.

I grew feathers and tore my way out of her;
I am shaped like a feathered heart.
My mouth is a chisel, my hands
the crimes done by hands.

I sit in the forest talking of death
which is monotonous:
though there are many ways of dying
there is only one death song,
the colour of mist:
it says   Why   Why

I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation,
I only want to ask someone
how I was lost,
how I was lost

I am the lost heart of a murderer
who has not yet killed,
who does not yet know he wishes
to kill; who is still the same
as the others

I am looking for him,
he will have answers for me,
he will watch his step, he will be
cautious and violent, my claws
will grow through his hands
and become claws, he will not be caught.

This one is courtesy of The Poetry Foundation. I was, of course, immediately drawn to the title. I had no idea what a shofar was so I had to look it up.

Zucchini Shofar
By Sarah Lindsay

No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise:
A thick, twisted stem from the garden
is the wedding couple’s ceremonial ram’s horn.
Its substance will not survive one thousand years,
nor will the garden, which is today their temple,
nor will their names, nor their union now announced
with ritual blasts upon the zucchini shofar.
Shall we measure blessings by their duration?
Through the narrow organic channel fuzzily come
the prescribed sustained notes, short notes, rests.
All that rhythm requires. Among their talents,
the newlyweds excel at making
and serving mustard-green soup and molasses cookies,
and taking nieces and nephews for walks in the woods.
The gardener dyes eggs with onion skins,
wraps presents, tells stories, finds the best seashells;
his friends adore his paper-cuttings—
“Nothing I do will last,” he says.
What is this future approval we think we need;
who made passing time our judge?
Do we want butter that endures for ages,
or butter that melts into homemade cornbread now?
—the note that rings in my deaf ear without ceasing,
or two voices abashed by the vows they undertake?
This moment’s chord of earthly commotion
will never be struck exactly so again—
though love does love to repeat its favorite lines.
So let the shofar splutter its slow notes and quick notes,
let the nieces and nephews practice their flutes and trombones,
let living room pianos invite unwashed hands,
let glasses of different fullness be tapped for their different notes,
let everyone learn how to whistle,
let the girl dawdling home from her trumpet lesson
pause at the half-built house on the corner,
where the newly installed maze of plumbing comes down
to one little pipe whose open end she can reach,
so she takes a deep breath
and makes the whole house sound.

I don’t really have anything to say about this poem, but perhaps John Donne needs no introduction.

The Canonization
By John Donne

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
   Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
   My five grey hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
      Take you a course, get you a place,
      Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the King’s real, or his stamped face
   Contemplate, what you will, approve,
   So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who’s injur’d by my love?
   What merchant’s ships have my sighs drown’d?
   Who says my tears have overflow’d his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
      When did the heats which my veins fill
      Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
   Litigious men, which quarrels move,
   Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
   Call her one, me another fly,
   We’are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the’eagle and the dove.
      The phœnix riddle hath more wit
      By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
   We die and rise the same, and prove
   Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
   And if unfit for tombs and hearse
   Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
      We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
      As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
   And by these hymns all shall approve
   Us canoniz’d for love;

And thus invoke us: “You, whom reverend love
   Made one another’s hermitage;
   You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
      Into the glasses of your eyes
       (So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
   A pattern of your love!”

Another month, another ESVM poem. YAY!

I do but ask that you be always fair
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I do but ask that you be always fair,
That I for ever may continue kind;
Knowing me what I am, you should not dare
To lapse from beauty ever, nor seek to bind
My alterable mood with lesser cords:
Weeping and such soft matters but invite
To further vagrancy, and bitter words
Chafe soon to irremediable flight,
Wherefore I pray you if you love me dearly
Less dear to hold me than your own bright charms,
Whence it may fall that until death or nearly
I shall not move to struggle from your arms;
Fade if you must; I would but bid you be
Like the sweet year, doing all things graciously.

On an unrelated note, a friend alerted me to the awesomeness of Christopher Lee reading Jabberwocky. Of course, I posted Jabberwocky ages ago.

I’ve read a great deal of Naomi Shihab Nye’s work, and I love that I can still discover new gems.

Truth Serum
By Naomi Shihab Nye

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.
Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
popped it right in.
That frog song wanting nothing but echo?
We used that.
Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.
Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes
of summer. Dropped in their names.
Added a mint leaf now and then
to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.
Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?
Perfect. And once we had it,
had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,
placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,
the sorrow lifted in small ways.
We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.
We washed that pan.

This one is courtesy of The Poetry Foundation’s wedding collection.

The Blue Robe
By Wendell Berry

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

This poem was sent to me by a dear friend. When I was in college I had to read some of Chuang Tzu’s work (though I can’t for the life of me remember what edition/translation), as well as Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Anyway, that was an ice age ago, so I don’t even remember if I read this poem. The version provided is the Thomas Merton interpretation. I like the idea that worldly cares (gain, success, praise, criticism) may prevent one from producing true art.

Poem of the Woodcarver
By Chuang Tzu

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:
“What is your secret?”

Khing replied: “I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell stand.

“Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
and begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

“What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

I joined a poetry discussion group (yay!). This month’s book was Draft of a Letter by James Longenbach. This poem made me think of Not marble, nor the gilded monuments by Shakespeare. Both refer to man-made structures that do not endure. Shakespeare (perhaps egotistically?) claimed that his words would outlast monuments, while Longenbach implied that natural life (such as trees) will grow again, though they are cut down to build cities.

Buried Life
By James Longenbach

Imagine cities you’ve
Inhabited, streets
Paved in lava stone.
You never intended to pray

In the temples, had
Nothing to sell.
Now imagine yourself

Returning to those same cities.
Hunt for people you knew,
Knock on their doors.
Ask yourself

Where are the vases, animals
Etched in gold?
Where are the wines

From distant places,
Banquets ferreted
From the bowels of the earth?
While you were missing

Other people wore
Your garments,
Slept in your bed.

How frightening
The man who said
In his affliction

Wood has hope.
Cut down
It will flourish.

If the root grows old
And the trunk withers
In dust, at the scent of water
It will germinate.

I’ve been sitting around like a lump all evening, and was rewarded by getting a couple e-mails from my poetry buddy. (ha ha ha!)

Don’t Come Home
By Todd Boss

ranks first among
the worst things
someone you love
can say. Not even
the common I
hate you does
the damage Don’t
come home will
do. You can live
with I hate you,
same as you live
with the past.
You abide it. I
hate you in fact
can be worth
coming home to,
like anything built
to last. I hate you
may be the mythical
two in the bush
the bird in the hand
is worth, while
Don’t come home,
by contrast, is
that first bird,
caught bird, scared
to sing its song,
percussive wings
held fist-fast just
so long.

I found this one through the Poetry Foundation, too.

Altruism
By Molly Peacock

What if we got outside ourselves and there
really was an outside out there, not just
our insides turned inside out? What if there
really were a you beyond me, not just
the waves off my own fire, like those waves off
the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,
though not well—just enough to know that off
to the right belongs to someone else, not you.
What if, when we said I love you, there were
a you to love as there is a yard beyond
to walk past the grill and get to? To endure
the endless walk through the self, knowing through a bond
that has no basis (for ourselves are all we know)
is altruism: not giving, but coming to know
someone is there through the wavy vision
of the self’s heat, love become a decision.

This is a darn good wedding poem! Not too sappy, and full of lovely images. I might have to call it a front-runner.

A Blessing for a Wedding
By Jane Hirshfield

Today when persimmons ripen
Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
   or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
   or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days

I just finished listening to Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. I hadn’t expected to get such a Scottish history lesson, not knowing anything about it beforehand. The reader had a lovely Scottish accent, and I really didn’t have any trouble understanding the meaning of the dialect (though I’m sure I couldn’t have spelled everything). I think after reading Kidnapped, I may have less trouble understanding Burns. (ha!)

Lament for Culloden
By Robert Burns

The lovely lass o’ Inverness,
   Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e’en and morn she cries, ‘Alas!’
   And aye the saut tear blin’s her e’e:

‘Drumossie moor—Drumossie day—
   A waefu’ day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
   My father dear and brethren three.

‘Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
   Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
   That ever blest a woman’s e’e!

Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,
   A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair,
   That ne’er did wrang to thine or thee.’

I haven’t posted one from Marge Piercy in a while. I’m still evaluating wedding poems and found this one through the Poetry Foundation.

Colors passing through us
By Marge Piercy

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

This one is also from Poetry on Record. I think it’s worth posting for the title alone.

Skunk Hour
By Robert Lowell

        (For Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island’s hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she’s in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria’s century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season’s ill—
we’ve lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he’d rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind’s not right.

A car radio bleats,
“Love, O careless Love. . . .” I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air—
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

I discovered this one through Poetry on Record. I like that it’s short, but thought-provoking.

Passing Remark
By William Stafford

In scenery I like flat country.
In life I don’t like much to happen.

In personalities I like mild colorless people.
And in colors I prefer gray and brown.

My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
says, “Then why did you choose me?”

Mildly I lower my brown eyes—
there are so many things admirable people do not understand.

I came across this one while looking for Miller Williams poems based on Michael Perry’s mention of him (though I can’t remember if it was in Population: 485, Truck: A Love Story, or Coop).

Love Poem With Toast
By Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

We’ve had nearly a solid week of “warm” weather (ie: over freezing) and a ton of snow has melted (as evidenced by the raging rivers in the drainage ditches and monstrous lakes in front yards). I’m not naive enough to think we won’t get another snowstorm, but I can pretend it’s spring when it actually feels like spring. A friend suggested this poem a while ago and it seems appropriate this week.

Spring is like a perhaps hand
By e e cummings

           III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

I randomly came across this poem while searching for something else. Bonus!

Fever 103°
By Sylvia Plath

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse bred baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise—
The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean!
Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—
To Paradise.

Having just finished 1776 by David McCullough, I’ve heard about a fair number of crossings. A recording of the poet reading this poem is included on Poetry on Record, so I thought I’d share it today. To my shame, I’ve never actually read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (though I do know the plot outline thanks to The King and I… again, shame!).

Crossing Over
By William Meredith

It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent: great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid waters. Owing to a peculiar form of the shore, on the Kentucky side, the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great undulating raft… Eliza stood, for a moment, contemplating this unfavorable aspect of things.
—Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

That’s what love is like. The whole river
is melting. We skim along in great peril,

having to move faster than ice goes under
and still find foothold in the soft floe.

We are one another’s floe. Each displaces the weight
of his own need. I am fat as a bloodhound,

hold me up. I won’t hurt you. Though I bay,
I would swim with you on my back until the cold

seeped into my heart. We are committed, we
are going across this river willy-nilly.

No one, black or white, is free in Kentucky,
old gravity owns everybody. We’re weighty.

I contemplate this unfavorable aspect of things.
Where is something solid? Only you and me.

Has anyone ever been to Ohio?
Do the people there stand firmly on icebergs?

Here all we have is love, a great undulating
raft, melting steadily. We go out on it

anyhow. I love you, I love this fool’s walk.
The thing we have to learn is how to walk light.

Dylan Thomas is included in Poetry on Record and he certainly read with a dramatic flair.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion
By Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

I can’t say I think it’s sage advice to look a lion in the eye, but I do think the poem is kind of cute. I look my own little “lion” in the eye all the time, and pet her quite a bit, too. Plus, I don’t have to feed her raw meat. Ah, the joys of domestication… (heh)

Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo
By John Ciardi

The morning that the world began
The Lion growled a growl at Man.

And I suspect the Lion might
(If he’d been closer) have tried a bite.

I think that’s as it ought to be
And not as it was taught to me.

I think the Lion has a right
To growl a growl and bite a bite.

And if the Lion bothered Adam,
He should have growled right back at ‘im.

The way to treat a Lion right
Is growl for growl and bite for bite.

True, the Lion is better fit
For biting than for being bit.

But if you look him in the eye
You’ll find the Lion’s rather shy.

He really wants someone to pet him.
The trouble is: his teeth won’t let him.

He has a heart of gold beneath
But the Lion just can’t trust his teeth.

I listened to more of Poetry on Record today and was highly entertained by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In his reading of this poem, there were a few additional lines compared to the text I found at The Poetry Foundation, but I think the poem can also be enjoyed as posted. If you can find an audio recording, it’s well worth listening to Ferlinghetti perform.

Underwear
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads
for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
and three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can or can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And that spot she was always rubbing—
Was it really in her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense—
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy
Don’t shout

There are a lot of “puzzlers” in my family, and when I was a child, I really enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles. I like challenges (at least those that aren’t impossible) and I hate leaving things unfinished. I don’t really enjoy jigsaw puzzles any more, preferring crossword puzzles instead. At any rate, I like how Laux juxtaposes the jumble on the table with the inner turmoil of coming of age.

Break
By Dorianne Laux

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

I don’t particularly care for eating alone in restaurants. I find this poem very sad and lonely, and I can really imagine myself in the speaker’s position, inside the luncheonette, yet feeling isolated from everyone including the kitchen staff.

The Partial Explanation
By Charles Simic

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.

Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.

I found this one over at American Life in Poetry.

The Paleontologist’s Blind Date
By Philip Memmer

You have such lovely bones, he says,
holding my face in his hands,

and although I can almost feel
the stone and the sand

sifting away, his fingers
like the softest of brushes,

I realize after this touch
he would know me

years from now, even
in the dark, even

without my skin.
Thank you, I smile—

then I close the door
and never call him again.

I’m listening to the audio recording of David McCullough’s 1776, and this poem by Phillis Wheatley was quoted, as was Washington’s reply. I took the text from here.

To His Excellency
George Washington

Sir,

I have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed poem, and entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be Generalissimo of the armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues, excite sensations not easy to suppress. Your generosity, therefore, I presume, will pardon the attempt. Wishing your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in. I am,

Your Excellency’s most obedient humble servant,
Phillis Wheatley
1776

Cambridge, February 28, 1776.

Mrs. Phillis,

Your favour of the 26th of October did not reach my hands ’till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect.

I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents. In honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the Poem, had I not been apprehensive, that, while I only meant to give the World this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of Vanity. This and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public Prints.

If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near Head Quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favoured by the Muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.

I am, with great Respect, etc.

To His Excellency, General Washington
By Phillis Wheatley

Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring’s fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven’s revolving light
Involved in sorrows and veil of night!

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel bind her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven’s fair face deforms,
Enwrapp’d in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish’d ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know’st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honours,—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam’d for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform’d its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia’s fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!
Fix’d are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia’s state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.

I thought the scenes of sadness in Nodar Kumaritashvili’s village in Georgia were heartbreaking. During NBC’s small tribute to the athlete last night, this poem was quoted, and I realized I hadn’t posted it before.

To an Athlete Dying Young
By A.E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.