Poem of the Day

This month’s selection for my poetry discussion group is Turning Over the Earth by Ralph Black. Sadly, I will not be attending the meeting today, though happily the reason is that I’ll be at my sister’s wedding. I thought I’d read the book anyway, and I’m not finished yet, but I liked this poem so I thought I’d share it.

A City Letter to the Country
By Ralph Black

The fire trucks came again last night,
the stones of the city are burning.
And again the black wheels blow and crash,
weighted with the miles laid out
behind them, the litany of street names
naming themselves as they pass.

I want to try Alaska, the country’s other
edge, where stars come down to rest
on the tundra, and people leave
gigantic piles of rocks on the snow
to be certain of wherever they’ve been.
I want to breathe myself back
into the quiet, to stare and ease my way
glacially through the days, and make
my living under so many hours of darkness.

In the firelight of another building
finally collapsed beneath this wrought iron sky,
I watch the cellists scavenging
for their songs, the poets dying of language
to say one thing exactly right.
On a distant rooftop, a woman folding
immaculate sheets stops to consider
all the constellations she knows are hers
and will never be able to name.

I want to ask directions for places
called for what they are: Snow-Light,
Weather-Home, Denali. I want to stand
at the center of the swirling globe, miles
from the city, and know for once the unwinding
of a place, the patiences and passions:
how a river willow is cut and bent to a snare,
how a marmot pads toward it—
the whole morning blue with precision.

I’m lucky that I don’t have these memories of my father.

My Papa’s Waltz
By Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I just realized that it’s been over a month since the last ESVM. I have a boatload of sonnets marked for future posting, and here’s one of them. P.S. I also realized that I have posted at least one poem by ESVM starting with every letter of the alphabet except Q, X, Y, and Z. Impressive!

The heart once broken is a heart no more
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

The heart once broken is a heart no more,
And is absolved from all a heart must be;
All that is signed or chartered heretofore
Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;
So much of duty as you may require
Or shards and dust, this and no more of pain,
This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,
The heart once broken need support again.
How simple ’tis, and what a little sound
It makes in breaking, let the world attest:
It struggled, and it fails; the world goes round,
And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,
‘Tis half a year now since you broke in two;
The world’s forgotten well, if the world knew.

T minus 2 days until the wedding and things are a little hectic. Also, I have a cold. Inspiration is hard to come by, so I’m falling back on the reader-suggested war poems again. I took the text from Bartleby.

To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God
By T.M. Kettle

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother’s prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You’ll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And oh! they’ll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,—
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

Here’s another war poem.

Mad
By Wilfred Gibson

Neck-deep in mud,
He mowed and raved—
He who had braved
The field of blood—
And as a lad
Just out of school
Yelled—April Fool!
And laughed like mad.

Here is another one graciously sent by my poetry buddy.

Questions
By Stephen Dunn

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do with a world
suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun
shining solely on her? And if that afternoon
turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening
the already wet sea, does the man run—
he normally would—for cover, or does he dive
deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness
in all underworld utterly hers? And when
he comes up for air, as he must,
when he dries off and dresses up, as he must,
how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly
will he hold her so that everyone can see she
doesn’t belong to him, and he won’t let go?

I’m currently reading The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. This poem by Arthur Chapman was quoted. I snagged the text from here, and there’s a little bit of background about the poem, too.

Out Where the West Begins
By Arthur Chapman

Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
   That’s where the West begins;
Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
   That’s where the West begins.

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where friendship’s a little truer,
   That’s where the West begins;
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing,
   That’s where the West begins;

Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
   That’s where the West begins;
Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying—
   That’s where the West begins.

We had a glimpse of sun today, but mostly it’s been cloudy. So instead of seeing a sunset, I’ll have to envision one. This description is very violent, and I’m not sure I’ve heard a sunset described in such a way before. After reading it, I wonder that I haven’t because the colors can certainly support such verbiage.

Sunsets
By Richard Aldington

The white body of the evening
Is torn into scarlet,
Slashed and gouged and seared
Into crimson,
And hung ironically
With garlands of mist.

And the wind
Blowing over London from Flanders
Has a bitter taste.

Here’s another one I received when my poetry buddy came to the rescue!

How to Create an Agnostic
By Sherman Alexie

Singing with my son, I clapped my hands
Just as lightning struck.

It was dumb luck,
But my son, in awe, thought

That I’d created the electricity.
He asked, “Dad, how’d you do that?”

Before I could answer, thunder shook the house
And set off neighborhood car alarms.

I thought that my son, always in love with me,
Might fall to his knees with adoration.

“Dad,” he said. “Can you burn
down that tree outside my window?

The one that looks like a giant owl?”
O, my little disciple, my one-boy choir,

I can’t do that because your father,
Your half-assed messiah, is afraid of fire.

This one was suggested by a reader, and comes from the war poetry anthology Up the Line to Death. I confess that the title prompted me to look up that poem first (from the list). Sometimes I’m concerned about my own morbidity.

Dead Cow Farm
By Robert Graves

An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But Elemental Cow on earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a miracle to believe:
And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is chaos once again,
Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red,
And the Cow’s dead, the old Cow’s dead.

After being directed by a reader to another online collection of best-loved poems, I was delighted to find this one by Amy Clampitt. I’ve never read any of her books of poetry, but I’ve always been impressed when I’ve read her work in anthologies.

Archaic Figure
By Amy Clampitt

Headless in East Berlin, no goddess
but a named mere girl (Ornithe, “Little Bird”)
out of the rubble, six centuries underneath
   the plinth of what we quaintly call

Our Time, informs the foaming underside
of linden boulevards in bloom, sweet hide
laid open onto—sterile as an operating table,
   past the closed incision of the Wall—

the treeless reach of Alexanderplatz,
paved counterpart of the interior flatland,
halfway across the globe, we’d left behind:
   projection, factor, yield, the quantifiable

latitude; malls, runways, blacktop; tressed
cornsilk and alfalfa, drawn milk of the humdrum
nurture there were those of us who ran away from
   toward another, earlier, bonier

one, another middle of the earth, yearned-for stepmotherland of
Holderlin and Goethe:
sunlight and grief, the cypress and the
   crucifix, the vivid poverty

of terraced slopes, of bread, wine, olives,
fig and pomegranate shade we stumbled into,
strolling the sad northern drizzle, in
   the uprooted Turks’ quasi-bazaar,

as here, among uprooted artifacts, we’ve come
upon this shape’s just-lifted pleats, her
chitoned stillness the cold chrism of a time
   that saw—or so to us it seems—

with unexpected clarity to the black core
of what we are, of everything we were to be,
have since become. Who stands there headless.
   Barbar, she would have called us all.

You know, if I actually made statements in my blog about how low my poetry file was in order to elicit suggestions from readers, my behavior might be considered shameless. (HA!) Thank you again to my poetry buddy for never failing to come to my rescue, especially when he sends something by Kim Addonizio!

For You
By Kim Addonizio

For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves.
I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand,
I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair.
I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine.
I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air.
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.

Here’s another one from The Poetry Foundation. My file is now perilously low. Too bad things are about to get very hectic around here. I’m hoping to avoid a hiatus, but you never know.

Lovers’ Infiniteness
By John Donne

If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all;
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can intreat one other tear to fall;
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee—
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters—I have spent.
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant;
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
     Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For this love was not vow’d by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine; whatever shall
     Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more;
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it;
Love’s riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it;
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them; so we shall
     Be one, and one another’s all.

Today I continued helping my mother inventory all her books. She had a copy of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, which I promptly commandeered. She doesn’t read much poetry anyway!

Happiness
By Carl Sandburg

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

It’s high time for another poem from Atwood.

The animals in that country
By Margaret Atwood

In that country the animals
have the faces of people:

the ceremonial
cats possessing the streets

the fox run
politely to earth, the huntsmen
standing around him, fixed
in their tapestry of manners

the bull, embroidered
with blood and given
an elegant death, trumpets, his name
stamped on him, heraldic brand
because

(when he rolled
on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth
in his blue mouth were human)

he is really a man

even the wolves, holding resonant
conversations in their
forests thickened with legend.

         In this country the animals
         have the faces of
         animals.

         Their eyes
         flash once in car headlights
         and are gone.

         Their deaths are not elegant.

         They have the faces of
         no-one.

A few days ago, I watched the most recent adaptation of Sense & Sensibility. I was pleased that it exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations. However, as nothing could ever top the 1995 version, I decided that I simply must watch it again. Since I’ve already posted the most prominent sonnet from that film, I found another one for today.

When in the chronicle of wasted time
By William Shakespeare

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express’d
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Apparently, this is the winning wedding poem.

Roads go ever ever on
THE HOBBIT, CHAPTER 19
By J.R.R. Tolkien

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

I heard this one read by the author in the Poetry on Record collection.

Serving with Gideon
By William Stafford

Now I remember: in our town the druggist
prescribed Coca-Cola mostly, in tapered
glasses to us, and to the elevator
man in a paper cup, so he could
drink it elsewhere because he was black.

And now I remember The Legion—gambling
in the back room, and no women, but girls, old boys
who ran the town. They were generous,
to their sons or the sons of friends.
And of course I was almost one.

I remember winter light closing
its great blue fist slowly eastward
along the street, and the dark then, deep
as war, arched over a radio show
called the thirties in the great old U.S.A.

Look down, stars—I was almost
one of the boys. My mother was folding
her handkerchief; the library seethed and sparked;
right and wrong arced; and carefully
I walked with my cup toward the elevator man.

A reader suggested A.E. Stallings as a source of Penelope-inspired poetry. This is what my Googling came up with.

The Wife of the Man of Many Wiles
By A.E. Stallings

Believe what you want to. Believe that I wove,
If you wish, twenty years, and waited, while you
Were knee-deep in blood, hip-deep in goddesses.

I’ve not much to show for twenty years’ weaving—
I have but one half-finished cloth at the loom.
Perhaps it’s the lengthy, meticulous grieving.

Explain how you want to. Believe I unraveled
At night what I stitched in the slow siesta,
How I kept them all waiting for me to finish,

The suitors, you call them. Believe what you want to.
Believe that they waited for me to finish,
Believe I beguiled them with nightly un-doings.

Believe what you want to. That they never touched me.
Believe your own stories, as you would have me do,
How you only survived by the wise infidelities.

Believe that each day you wrote me a letter
That never arrived. Kill all the damn suitors
If you think it will make you feel better.

It’s been about a month since we heard from The World’s Wife. I love all the color and sewing imagery in this poem, but most of all I love Penelope’s independence. Though she keeps up a charade while Odysseus is away, she was really content to be alone, discovering herself.

Penelope
By Carol Ann Duffy

At first, I looked along the road
hoping to see him saunter home
among the olive trees,
a whistle for the dog
who mourned him with his warm head on my knees.
Six months of this
and then i noticed that whole days had passed
without my noticing.
I sorted cloth and scissors, needle, thread,

thinking to amuse myself,
but found a lifetime’s industry instead.
I sewed a girl
under a single star—cross-stitch, silver silk—
running after childhood’s bouncing ball.
I chose between three greens for the grass;
a smoky pink, a shadow’s grey
to show a snapdragon gargling a bee
I threaded walnut brown for a tree,

my thimble like an acorn
pushing up through umber soil.
Beneath the shade
I wrapped a maiden in a deep embrace
with heroism’s boy
and lost myself completely
in a wild embroidery of love, lust, lessons learnt;
then watched him sail away
into the loose gold stitching of the sun.

And when the others came to take his place,
disturb my peace,
I played for time.
I wore a widow’s face, kept my head down,
did my work by day, at night unpicked it.
I knew which hour of the dark the moon
would start to fray,
I stitched it.
Grey threads and brown

pursued my needle’s leaping fish
to form a river that would never reach the sea.
I tried it. I was picking out
the smile of a woman at the centre
of this world, self-contained, absorbed, content,
most certainly not waiting,
when I heard a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door.
I licked my scarlet thread
and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more.

This one was sent by my poetry buddy a while ago.

To a Wild Rose
By Todd Boss

“with simple tenderness,” for Beth

It’s true, what all our
heroes say. There is a way
in this world for beauty,
for good. It may
be a crooked path
in a tanglewood, but
stay the course and,
when the way grows rocky,
walk your horse,

and who knows, you may yet
come upon the wild rose,
as I have done, and,
paying close attention,
keep from crushing her into
the grime, and then,
with any luck, in time
remember how you found her
and how to find her again
when the way gets wilder.

My laziness knows no bounds. It’s late, I’m tired, and I did nothing about finding a poem for today. Thus, I will again rely upon the kindness of commenters.

What We Need
By David Budbill

The Emperor,
his bullies
and henchmen
terrorize the world
every day,

which is why
every day

we need

a little poem
of kindness,

a small song
of peace

a brief moment
of joy.