Poem of the Day

I revisited my poetry bookmarks and was happy to find another poem by Cavafy.

Candles
By Constantine P. Cavafy

The days of our future stand in front of us
like a row of little lit candles—
golden, warm, and lively little candles.

The days past remain behind us,
a mournful line of extinguished candles;
the ones nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.

I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lit candles.

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.

Another one suggested by a reader. I got the text from poets.org.

Working Late
By Louis Simpson

A light is on in my father’s study.
“Still up?” he says, and we are silent,
looking at the harbor lights,
listening to the surf
and the creak of coconut boughs.

He is working late on cases.
No impassioned speech! He argues from evidence,
actually pacing out and measuring,
while the fans revolving on the ceiling
winnow the true from the false.

Once he passed a brass curtain rod
through a head made out of plaster
and showed the jury the angle of fire—
where the murderer must have stood.
For years, all through my childhood,
if I opened a closet . . . bang!
There would be the dead man’s head
with a black hole in the forehead.

All the arguing in the world
will not stay the moon.
She has come all the way from Russia
to gaze for a while in a mango tree
and light the wall of a veranda,
before resuming her interrupted journey
beyond the harbor and the lighthouse
at Port Royal, turning away
from land to the open sea.

Yet, nothing in nature changes, from that day to this,
she is still the mother of us all.
I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood.

And the light that used to shine
at night in my father’s study
now shines as late in mine.

I have a long day ahead of me, so I thought I’d get the poem up early in case I crash when I get home. It turns out that the rambling nature of the poem fits with my jumbled thoughts right now.

Superbly Situated
By Robert Hershon

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve

Here’s another reader-suggested poem. I snagged the text from The Writer’s Almanac. I love all the suggestions and I really appreciate your participation!

The White Museum
By George Bilgere

My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,
her organs were harvested
for medical science.
I suppose there must be people
who list, under “Occupation,”
“Organ Harvester,” people for whom
it is always harvest season,
each death bringing its bounty.
They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,
whole cornucopias of corneas,
burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs
and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,
and even, from time to time,
the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,
as I sit in this café, watching the snow
and thinking about my aunt,
a young medical student somewhere
is moving through the white museum
of her brain, making his way slowly
from one great room to the next.
Here is the gallery of her girlhood,
with that great canvas depicting her father
holding her on his lap in the backyard
of their bungalow in St. Louis.
And here is a sketch of her
the summer after her mother died,
walking down a street in Berlin
when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here
is a small, vivid oil of the two of us
sitting in a café in London
arguing over the work of Constable
or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there
with your microscope and your slides,
there’s no need to be reverent before these images.
That’s the last thing she would have wanted.
But do be respectful. Speak quietly.
No flash photography. Tell your friends
you saw something beautiful.

This was suggested by a reader and I found it quite apropos because I’ve been having even worse insomnia than usual as of late.

Insomnia
By Billy Collins

Even though the house is deeply silent
and the room, with no moon,
is perfectly dark,
even though the body is a sack of exhaustion
inert on the bed,

someone inside me will not
get off his tricycle,
will not stop tracing the same tight circle
on the same green threadbare carpet.

It makes no difference whether I lie
staring at the ceiling
or pace the living-room floor,
he keeps on making his furious rounds,
little pedaler in his frenzy,
my own worst enemy, my oldest friend.

What is there to do but close my eyes
and watch him circling the night,
schoolboy in an ill-fitting jacket,
leaning forward, his cap on backwards,
wringing the handlebars,
maintaining a certain speed?

Does anything exist at this hour
in this nest of dark rooms
but the spectacle of him
and the hope that before dawn
I can lift out some curious detail
that will carry me off to sleep—
the watch that encircles his pale wrist,
the expandable band,
the tiny hands that keep pointing this way and that.

This one was suggested by a reader. To date I haven’t delved much into the world of prose poetry. This poem looks like a paragraph, but I didn’t have any trouble reading it like a poem. When poems don’t have a defined rhyme scheme or form (and I’m not so knowledgeable about form, so even if there was a form, I might not know) I tend to read them like paragraphs anyway, stopping at periods rather than line breaks. It all depends on the use of line breaks, though. At any rate, what I really liked about this poem was that I could easily conjure up a backstory for one of the ancestor preachers, based only on this little snippet.

The Preacher
By Louis Jenkins

When times were hard, no work on the railroad, no work down on the farm, some of my ancestors took to preaching. It was not so much of what was said as the way in which it was said. “The horn shall sound and the dog will bark and though you be on the highest mountain or down in the deepest valley when the darkness comes then you will lie down, and as the day follows the night you will surely rise again. The Lord our God hath made both heaven and earth. Oh, my dear brothers and sisters we know so well the ways of this world, think then what heaven must be like.” It required a certain presence, a certain authority. The preacher was treated with respect and kept at a bit of a distance, like a rattler. There wasn’t much money in it but it was good for maybe a dozen eggs or a chicken dinner now and then.

This is the poem that inspired me to post something by Edward Gorey the other day. Romanticism by April Bernard is this month’s selection for the poetry discussion group I attend.

The Oft-Wedded Waif
By April Bernard

     homage to Edward Gorey

As an infant, Clothilde Hornbeam was wrapped in a kerchieft and left in a thicket.

She was adopted by wolves.

Eventually, they banished her.

She was taken in by the nuns at the Convent of the Impenetrable Heart.

She learned to play the organ, and wrote liturgical music in a secret language.

“Burn me in the fire and eat my fingers off / Babies are tasty, so don’t get in the way,” she sang.

An incident in the potting shed made it plain she lacked a vocation.

Clothilde’s first husband lost his nose in a fracas.

Her second husband ran away to join a pirate crew.

He sent home a macaw, who said: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

While married to her third husband, a race-track tout, Clothilde opened a bakery.

Cookies in the shape of babies and wolf cubs were her specialty.

After her fourth and fifth husbands were apprehended by the authorities, Clothilde could be found weeping into the icing.

The tear-dripped cookies secured her fortune.

Here’s another one from The Poetry Foundation. Can you tell I love that site?

Tree Marriage
By William Meredith

In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding.

Even though I didn’t have much exposure to Edward Gorey as a child, yesterday’s poem somehow made me nostalgic. So here’s one from a book that was an integral part of my childhood reading.

The Wind
By Robert Louis Stevenson

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
   O wind, a-blowing all day long,
   O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
   O wind, a-blowing all day long,
   O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
   O wind, a-blowing all day long,
   O wind, that sings so loud a song!

This is utterly fabulous! Why didn’t my mother let me read stuff like this when I was a kid? (ha ha ha) Check out the art.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies
By Edward Gorey

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs
B is for Basil assaulted by bears
C is for Clara who wasted away
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech
G is for George smothered under a rug
H is for Hector done in by a thug
I is for Ida who drowned in a lake
J is for James who took lye by mistake
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea
N is for Neville who died of ennui
O is for Olive run through with an awl
P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quentin who sank in a mire
R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire
S is for Sue who perished of fits
T is for Titus who flew into bits
U is for Una who slipped down a drain
V is for Victor squashed under a train
W is for Winnie embedded in ice
X is for Xerxes devoured by mice
Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in
And Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin

Here is one sent by my poetry buddy.

Certainty
By Wendy Brown-Báez

It is in this moment
when I am alone
that I am most sure
that you love me.

Face to face I am consumed
with the breathless astonishment
of my body breaking away from me
running and melting
like rainbows in a puddle
whose only urge is to reach the sea.

I forget myself:
who I am and why I exist:
except for this moment
awaiting your kiss.

I am so enchanted
by the sight or your bare shoulders,
the ears above your neck,
and the dark pools of your eyes,
I don’t know whether my mouth
has opened itself to speak.

It is only later,
when I am alone,
that I remember
how you leaned closer to
hear my words
how you took me
in an embrace
as brief as a shrug

leaving the mark
of my heated body
scorched all over yours.

Here’s another one from The Poetry Foundation.

Most Like an Arch This Marriage
By John Ciardi

Most like an arch—an entrance which upholds
and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace.
Mass made idea, and idea held in place.
A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.

Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.
Two joined abeyances become a term
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.

Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is,
what’s strong and separate falters. All I do
at piling stone on stone apart from you
is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss

I am no more than upright and unset.
It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another’s sake,
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight.

This one comes from a reader, and was what inspired me to find a Vassar Miller poem to post yesterday. The original text is here. Thanks for letting me post it!

Vassar Miller
By Ron Starbuck

Ah, Vassar, tell me that it
was only yesterday and
not twenty five years
ago nearly.

When we were sitting
in your living room together,
while you listened to me
reading my first poor verse.

I loved our time together then,
drinking Coca Colas in six ounce bottles, you with
a plastic straw because that was easiest. Sucking
up life as much as you could with quiet desperation.

And I loved how your little dog
Cricket, would look at us
with the kindest of eyes,
knowing how good the company

was for us both. He was wise in dog
years and understanding then, as I loved
how he reminded me too of Toto from
the Wizard of Oz. Which was always

more than appropriate, since to the
world you were and are still
a wizard with words, spinning out
verse like golden threads and

weaving together each phrase
carefully and thoughtfully as if
they were made of fire and light
that could both burn and enlighten our minds.

You taught me how to listen, oh so
carefully, haltered as you were
in your speech, grinding out each word
with such loving labor, milling them down

to the finest of flour. I could see how
quick your mind moved, and how slow
the words would come falling out of your mouth
frustrating you beyond measure.

Still, you continued, the work was
that important, wasn’t it? Passing on
whatever you could from one
generation to the next.

If heaven is as bright and wonderful as we
wish, then my wish is for you is to be an
angel of verse, whispering in our ears a word or
two that will continue to heal the world.

Our world needs such healing still, we need
words that will lead us into the deepest
places of our being, where the stillness
waits with compassion and wonder.

Pain was your steady companion
all your life, and you faced loneliness
each single day, like a back pew Christian
no one notices entering into God’s holy house.

And yet, I suspect now, with your many tongues untied,
that you are shouting out verses across all
the heavens. Stitching together lines like sutras
and weaving together a tapestry of brightness

and light, that causes all of creation to take note
of you, and your voice. You have come home you know.
You have come home to the cradle of Christ, holding
the Incarnate Word like an infant close to your heart.

You who loved words and poetry so well, and spoke
with eloquence I am still grasping for now. I wish
your words would enter my mouth, spinning out again
and again a peace to repair the world.

I posted quite a few poems by Vassar Miller back in the early days of the PotD. In fact, reading her work with my aunt was one of my inspirations for starting the PotD. Sadly, it’s been quite a few years since I picked up If I Had Wheels or Love, and now it’s packed away with most of my books. I know that I’ll get more out of it when I revisit it, but for now, here’s a Vassar Miller poem I found online.

Subterfuge
By Vassar Miller

I remember my father, slight,
staggering in with his Underwood,
bearing it in his arms like an awkward bouquet

for his spastic child who sits down
on the floor, one knee on the frame
of the typewriter, and holding her left wrist

with her right hand, in that precision known
to the crippled, pecks at the keys
with a sparrow’s preoccupation.

Falling by chance on rhyme, novel and curious bubble
blown with a magic pipe, she tries them over and over,
spellbound by life’s clashing in accord or against itself,

pretending pretense and playing at playing,
she does her childhood backward as children do
her fun a delaying action against what she knows.

My father must lose her, his runaway on a treadmill,
will lose the terrible favor that life has done him
as she toils at tomorrow, tensed at her makeshift toy.

This one came from The Poetry Foundation. It’s sonnet 22 from The House of Life.

Heart’s Haven
By Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
   Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,—
   With still tears showering and averted face,
Inexplicably fill’d with faint alarms:
And oft from mine own spirit’s hurtling harms
   I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
   Against all ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
   Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
   All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
Like the moon’s growth, his face gleams through his tune;
And as soft waters warble to the moon,
   Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.

I filed my taxes and received my refund months ago, but I couldn’t resist saving this poem for today, solely based on the title.

Internal Revenue
By J. Allyn Rosser

I have distracted rodents from their cheese,
Lured seasoned sirens with my melodies,
And brought some handsome statues to their knees,
   I could not beguile you.

Having faced your shoulder, back and heel,
Borne the tradmarks of your fortune’s wheel,
Felt your indifference to what I feel,
   My heart would not revile you.

I’ve shelved all my abiding passion, stashed
My childish cares and organized my past:
Real property, junk bonds, trusts amassed,
   —I don’t know where to file you.

I love finding new (to me) poems by my favorite poets. This one came from Poetry 180.

White-Eyes
By Mary Oliver

In winter
   all the singing is in
      the tops of the trees
         where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes
      among the branches.
         Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
   but he’s restless—
      he has an idea,
         and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
   as long as he stays awake
      But his big, round music, after all,
         is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
   In the pine-crown
      he makes his nest,
         he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
   I only imagine his glittering beak
         while the clouds—

which he has summoned
   from the north—
      which he has taught
         to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
   into the world below
      like stars, or the feathers
         of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
   that is asleep now, and silent—
      that has turned itself
         into snow.

A short one today, but I heard the poet read it on Poetry on Record and hearing it aloud really upped the ante.

See it was like this when
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place.
A couple of papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let’s cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
you and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry

The hiatus has been due to a friend visiting from out of town and I’m having trouble getting back into the swing of things. I will turn, for inspiration, to my dearest Edna.

Only until this cigarette is ended
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smile not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun as set.

A reader commented on a Milosz poem, so I went and found another one. I think that it must be read in conjunction by this one of a similar title by Archibald MacLeish. I might argue that what he has written here is not poetry, though probably not with him! This text is taken from The Poetry Foundation, translated by the author and Lillian Vallee.

Ars Poetica?
By Czeslaw Milosz

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read,
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

I thought I’d post a sonnet today, and had the added bonus of coming across this set of sonnets by Elinor Wylie.

Wild Peaches
By Elinor Wylie

I

When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.

II

The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;
The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter’s over.
By February you may find the skins
Of garter snakes and water moccasins
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.

III

When April pours the colors of a shell
Upon the hills, when every little creek
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak,
We shall live well — we shall live very well.

The months between the cherries and the peaches
Are brimming cornucopias which spill
Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

IV

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

It’s amazing how time flies. Here it’s been over 2 months since I posted anything by Louise Glück, and I only just realized it! We’re enjoying unseasonably warm weather at the moment, and the birds and spring peepers are working overtime to “perform their curfew of music”!

Matins
By Louise Glück

You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I’m looking for courage, for some evidence
my life will change, though
it takes forever, checking
each clump for symbolic
leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already
the leaves turning, always the sick trees
going first, the dying turning
brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform
their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?
As empty now as at the first note.
Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?

Once again, it’s past my bedtime and I still haven’t posted the PotD. So tonight I’m going with short and sweet.

Demeter
By Carol Ann Duffy

Where I lived—winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart—
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.