While reading the final edition of the 2014-15 Boston Latin School Argo, I noted that Robert Pinsky had visited the School talk about his Favorite Poem Project. Which obviously needs to be linked here. Quoted in the piece, he offers that he has many favorite poems, but on the day of that interview it was Yeats' Adam's Curse. I thought that deserved a spot here as well.
Adam's Curse
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Mingus at the Showplace
I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen,
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,
and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience and shat
literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct, on West 4th St., and I sat at the bar,
casting beer money from a thin reel of ones,
the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.
And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two
other things, but they were wrong, as it happened.
So I made him look at the poem.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” he said,
and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He laughed
amiably. He didn’t look as if he thought
bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they’d plot
to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children. Of course later
that night he fired his pianist in mid-number
and flurried him from the stand.
“We’ve suffered a diminuendo in personnel,”
he explained, and the band played on.
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,
and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience and shat
literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct, on West 4th St., and I sat at the bar,
casting beer money from a thin reel of ones,
the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.
And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two
other things, but they were wrong, as it happened.
So I made him look at the poem.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” he said,
and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He laughed
amiably. He didn’t look as if he thought
bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they’d plot
to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children. Of course later
that night he fired his pianist in mid-number
and flurried him from the stand.
“We’ve suffered a diminuendo in personnel,”
he explained, and the band played on.
The Storm
Now through the white orchard my little dog
Romps, breaking the new snow
With wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
Hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
Until the white snow is written upon
In large, exuberant letters,
A long sentence, expressing
The pleasures of the body in the world.
Oh, I could not have said it better myself.
Romps, breaking the new snow
With wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
Hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
Until the white snow is written upon
In large, exuberant letters,
A long sentence, expressing
The pleasures of the body in the world.
Oh, I could not have said it better myself.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Rune of the Finland Woman
For Sára Karig
"You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen"
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
She could find the world's words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.
She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf's wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.
She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.
She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.
She could plait a child's hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.
She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen's share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.
She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
--
"You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen"
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
She could find the world's words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.
She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf's wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.
She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.
She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.
She could plait a child's hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.
She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen's share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.
She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
--
The O'Connor's St. Patrick's Day Party
I
All those beautiful dear faces
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magical connection wherever you turn
Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious day
A James Joycean- William Butler Yeatsian
Occasion of hospitality so grand
Where all gathered sing
To high heaven
with a lust for spring
And a tear for dear old Ireland
And in that hour profound and yet so merry
We inherit "The Gift"
And sense the presence of the Leprechaun
and the wee Faire
The splendid declamation of young Liam
of "Emmett at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock
II
And the ancient songs so grand
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the sun
To climax in "The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone"
Which lasted centuries fought hand to hand
The Foeman driven at long last from the land
We lift a glass and gaze 'round
A silence falls as we contemplate
The bravery and luck of those
Who left and sailed to this shore, to Boston
And a toast is given...
"Here's to the years we thought, perhaps, were lost.
Here's to moments of truth and to what they cost.
Here's to our friends, the precious and the few.
Here's to your fondest dreams, dear hearts,
That are destined to come true."
-- Joe Bergin
All those beautiful dear faces
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magical connection wherever you turn
Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious day
A James Joycean- William Butler Yeatsian
Occasion of hospitality so grand
Where all gathered sing
To high heaven
with a lust for spring
And a tear for dear old Ireland
And in that hour profound and yet so merry
We inherit "The Gift"
And sense the presence of the Leprechaun
and the wee Faire
The splendid declamation of young Liam
of "Emmett at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock
II
And the ancient songs so grand
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the sun
To climax in "The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone"
Which lasted centuries fought hand to hand
The Foeman driven at long last from the land
We lift a glass and gaze 'round
A silence falls as we contemplate
The bravery and luck of those
Who left and sailed to this shore, to Boston
And a toast is given...
"Here's to the years we thought, perhaps, were lost.
Here's to moments of truth and to what they cost.
Here's to our friends, the precious and the few.
Here's to your fondest dreams, dear hearts,
That are destined to come true."
-- Joe Bergin
Arbor Edict
In the Arnold Arboretum,
There is never risk of tedium;
Trees and shrubs and plants galore,
Flora species by the score.
You should plan to come and meet 'em,
For Heaven's sake though please don't feed 'em!
That is someone else's chore,
Look-smell-touch but nothing more!
Do not feed 'em, do not weed 'em,
And this is crucial do not eat 'em;
We are not a smorgasbord
Or the Café Herbivore;
We are just an arboretum,
That is all I'll say no more.
--Brian Roake
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Birdwings
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
March 14, 2015: The 15th Annual!
Tip: How to Figure Out The Date Of Poetry And Stout, For Any Year:
Step 1: Find St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, on the calendar.
Step 2: Using your finger, go back from there until you get to the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day.
Step 3: In the calendar square for that Saturday, write “Go To Poetry And Stout.”
This method works for any calendar that uses the 12-month, seven-day-per-week convention.
Step 1: Find St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, on the calendar.
Step 2: Using your finger, go back from there until you get to the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day.
Step 3: In the calendar square for that Saturday, write “Go To Poetry And Stout.”
This method works for any calendar that uses the 12-month, seven-day-per-week convention.
Friday, July 18, 2014
From "A Three Dog Life," a memoir by Abigail Thomas
When Carolina (the newest dog) arrived there was the need to establish a pecking order. For the first week it was mostly a dog version of cussing, then one afternoon Rosie and Carolina had a fight, and when it was over Carolina's ear was bitten through. As I tended to the bleeding, I realized that like it or not, I was right in the middle of a wild and natural process...
It's simpler than what humans go through. "Your voice sounds funny, are you mad at me?" a young woman speaks anxiously, cell phone pressed to ear, and I wonder how people ever manage to hook up. Dogs are never in a bad mood over something you said at breakfast. Dogs never sniff at the husks of old conversations, or conduct autopsies on weekends gone wrong. An unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is hell. We talk too much.
--Abigail Thomas [Louise Outler]
It's simpler than what humans go through. "Your voice sounds funny, are you mad at me?" a young woman speaks anxiously, cell phone pressed to ear, and I wonder how people ever manage to hook up. Dogs are never in a bad mood over something you said at breakfast. Dogs never sniff at the husks of old conversations, or conduct autopsies on weekends gone wrong. An unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is hell. We talk too much.
--Abigail Thomas [Louise Outler]
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
--Billy Collins
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
--Billy Collins
Child Development
As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.
Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.
They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.
The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.
--Billy Collins [Claudia Dunne]
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.
Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.
They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.
The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.
--Billy Collins [Claudia Dunne]
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
The City of Boston is looking for a poet. We should know someone, right?
Monday, May 12, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
The Ides of March, 2014
Wouldn’t it take a certain arrogance or pride to hold a party on the Ides of March?
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? Too unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humility?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:
-there’d be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-the keg would run flat…or worse yet, dry
-Jerry’s falsetto during “O, Danny Boy” would shatter our windshields
-the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses
But, then again, it is the feast of St. Patrick,
And the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And as a wiser poet than I once said, “I’d walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog for a well-pulled pint.”
Who am I, a New England Jew, to argue?
Was it Yates? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe – a Brit – who coined for us “the Ides of March.”
I first read it in the tenth-grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the bathroom stall near the library was correct, “eats pills.”
In Act I, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer – Yes, a Soothsayer; Rome was lousy with them in those days – cries, “Beware the Ides of March!”
He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bud luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves found on the much more common yet luck-less clover.
Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed to the Soothsayer’s warnings.
But, this is high drama, and there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a tumultuous storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act I, Scene 3:
“Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.”
And, as if that’s not enough, here’s Calpurnia (Wife of Caesar) recounting her dream in Act II, Scene 2:
“Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.”
So, let’s recount:
The heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,
And what does Caesar do?
Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick’s Day party for all he cared for such superstitions.
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once,” he smugly answers his spouse.
“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
You can say that again. Sir Julius gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
The moral, as my own Calpurnia would say: Always listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer’s prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What’s a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my Old Man, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Anthony’s soliloquy for Mr. Wills’ English class;
Quoth me Da: “He who drinks beer, Shakespeare.”
--Steve Hodin
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? Too unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humility?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:
-there’d be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-the keg would run flat…or worse yet, dry
-Jerry’s falsetto during “O, Danny Boy” would shatter our windshields
-the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses
But, then again, it is the feast of St. Patrick,
And the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And as a wiser poet than I once said, “I’d walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog for a well-pulled pint.”
Who am I, a New England Jew, to argue?
Was it Yates? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe – a Brit – who coined for us “the Ides of March.”
I first read it in the tenth-grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the bathroom stall near the library was correct, “eats pills.”
In Act I, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer – Yes, a Soothsayer; Rome was lousy with them in those days – cries, “Beware the Ides of March!”
He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bud luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves found on the much more common yet luck-less clover.
Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed to the Soothsayer’s warnings.
But, this is high drama, and there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a tumultuous storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act I, Scene 3:
“Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.”
And, as if that’s not enough, here’s Calpurnia (Wife of Caesar) recounting her dream in Act II, Scene 2:
“Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.”
So, let’s recount:
The heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,
And what does Caesar do?
Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick’s Day party for all he cared for such superstitions.
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once,” he smugly answers his spouse.
“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
You can say that again. Sir Julius gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
The moral, as my own Calpurnia would say: Always listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer’s prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What’s a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my Old Man, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Anthony’s soliloquy for Mr. Wills’ English class;
Quoth me Da: “He who drinks beer, Shakespeare.”
--Steve Hodin
Field of Vision
I remember this woman who sat for years
In a wheelchair, looking staight ahead
Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing
And leafing at the far end of the lane.
Straight out past the TV in the corner,
The stunted, agitated howthorn bush,
The same small calves with their backs to wind and
rain,
The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.
She was steadfast as the big window itself.
Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the chair.
She never lamented once and she never
Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.
Face to face with her was an education
Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate --
One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones
Between two whiewashed pillars, where you could see
Deeper into the country than you expected
And discovered that the field behind the hedge
Grew more distincly strange as you kept standing
Focused and drawwn in by what barred the way.
-- Seamus Heaney
In a wheelchair, looking staight ahead
Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing
And leafing at the far end of the lane.
Straight out past the TV in the corner,
The stunted, agitated howthorn bush,
The same small calves with their backs to wind and
rain,
The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.
She was steadfast as the big window itself.
Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the chair.
She never lamented once and she never
Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.
Face to face with her was an education
Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate --
One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones
Between two whiewashed pillars, where you could see
Deeper into the country than you expected
And discovered that the field behind the hedge
Grew more distincly strange as you kept standing
Focused and drawwn in by what barred the way.
-- Seamus Heaney
The Season of Too-Many-Pockets
I frisk myself, like a beat cop on a punk thief.
"Where's that wallet, you bugger? That phone, those keys?"
I maintain my innocence but I still can't find my stuff.
I'm tellin' you
It's not me that's the felon, it's this damned winter-
It's stolen my breath
It's robbed me of my now-meager dignity,
As the nose runs and the eyes stream.
It mugs me as I struggle uphill among the office towers
Assaulting me with gales thrown in my face.
It trips me up on black ice and brittle bricks of last week's slush.
It's frigid, it's snizzling, it's offering up that "wintry mix" that sounds
so much like a trendy new cocktail
But that's really only a misery-to-go.
Damn it...
I've filed a complaint you know
But I expect it won't be heard for a few more weeks.
-- Louise Outler
"Where's that wallet, you bugger? That phone, those keys?"
I maintain my innocence but I still can't find my stuff.
I'm tellin' you
It's not me that's the felon, it's this damned winter-
It's stolen my breath
It's robbed me of my now-meager dignity,
As the nose runs and the eyes stream.
It mugs me as I struggle uphill among the office towers
Assaulting me with gales thrown in my face.
It trips me up on black ice and brittle bricks of last week's slush.
It's frigid, it's snizzling, it's offering up that "wintry mix" that sounds
so much like a trendy new cocktail
But that's really only a misery-to-go.
Damn it...
I've filed a complaint you know
But I expect it won't be heard for a few more weeks.
-- Louise Outler
Get Up, Please
The two musicians pour forth their souls abroad
in such an ecstasy as to charm the audience
like none I’ve ever seen before, and when
they finish, they rise and hug each other,
and then the tabla player bends down
and touches the feet of the santoor player in an obvious gesture
of respect, but what does it mean? I don’t find out
until the next day at the Econolodge in Tifton, GA,
where I stop on my way home after the concert
and ask Mrs. Patel, the owner, if she has ever heard
of these two musicians or knows
anything about the tabla and the santoor and especially the latter,
which looks like the love child of a typewriter
and a hammered dulcimer only with a lot of extra wires
and tuning posts, and she doesn’t seem to understand
my questions, though when I ask her about one person touching
the other’s feet and then bend down
to show her, she lights up and says, "It means he thinks the other
is a god. My children do this before they go off
to school in the morning, as though to say, 'Mummy,
you are a god to us,’" and I look at her
for a second and then surprise us both when I say, "Oh, Mrs. Patel!"
and burst into tears, because I think,
first, of my own dead parents and then of little Lakshmi and Padma
Patel going off to their classes in Tift County schools,
the one a second-grader who is studying homophones
(“I see the sea”) and the other of whom is in the fourth
grade, where she must master long division with
its cruel insistence on numbers lined
up under one another with exacting precision and then crawling
toward the page’s bottom as you, the divider, subtract
and divide again and again, all the while recording
on the top line an answer that grows increasingly
lengthy as you fret and chew the tip of your pencil
and persevere, though before they grab
their books and lunch boxes and pile onto the bus, they take time
to touch Mrs. Patel’s feet and Mr. Patel’s as well,
assuming there is such a person. Later my friend
Avni tells me you touch the feet of your elders
to respect the distance they have traveled
and the earth they have touched, and you
say “namaste”not because you take yoga at that little place
on the truck route between the t-shirt store
and the strip club but because it means “I bow
to the light within you,” and often the people being
bowed to will stoop down and collect you as if to say
"You too are made of the same light!"
Reader, if your parents are alive, think of them now, of all the gods
whose feet you never touched or touched enough.
And if not your parents, then someone else.
You know someone like this, right? Someone who belongs
to the "mighty dead," as Keats called them.
Don’t you wish that person were here now
so you could touch their feet and whisper, "You are my god"?
I can’t imagine Keats saying, “You too are made
of the same light,” though I can see him saying,
as he did to Fanny Brawne, “I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have
shudder'd at it—I shudder no more—I could
be martyr'd for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that—
I could die for you.” My own feet have touched
the earth nearly three times as long as Keats’s did,
and I’m hardly the oldest person
I know. So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion—well, I wouldn’t die for it. I’d live for it, though.
-- David Kirby
in such an ecstasy as to charm the audience
like none I’ve ever seen before, and when
they finish, they rise and hug each other,
and then the tabla player bends down
and touches the feet of the santoor player in an obvious gesture
of respect, but what does it mean? I don’t find out
until the next day at the Econolodge in Tifton, GA,
where I stop on my way home after the concert
and ask Mrs. Patel, the owner, if she has ever heard
of these two musicians or knows
anything about the tabla and the santoor and especially the latter,
which looks like the love child of a typewriter
and a hammered dulcimer only with a lot of extra wires
and tuning posts, and she doesn’t seem to understand
my questions, though when I ask her about one person touching
the other’s feet and then bend down
to show her, she lights up and says, "It means he thinks the other
is a god. My children do this before they go off
to school in the morning, as though to say, 'Mummy,
you are a god to us,’" and I look at her
for a second and then surprise us both when I say, "Oh, Mrs. Patel!"
and burst into tears, because I think,
first, of my own dead parents and then of little Lakshmi and Padma
Patel going off to their classes in Tift County schools,
the one a second-grader who is studying homophones
(“I see the sea”) and the other of whom is in the fourth
grade, where she must master long division with
its cruel insistence on numbers lined
up under one another with exacting precision and then crawling
toward the page’s bottom as you, the divider, subtract
and divide again and again, all the while recording
on the top line an answer that grows increasingly
lengthy as you fret and chew the tip of your pencil
and persevere, though before they grab
their books and lunch boxes and pile onto the bus, they take time
to touch Mrs. Patel’s feet and Mr. Patel’s as well,
assuming there is such a person. Later my friend
Avni tells me you touch the feet of your elders
to respect the distance they have traveled
and the earth they have touched, and you
say “namaste”not because you take yoga at that little place
on the truck route between the t-shirt store
and the strip club but because it means “I bow
to the light within you,” and often the people being
bowed to will stoop down and collect you as if to say
"You too are made of the same light!"
Reader, if your parents are alive, think of them now, of all the gods
whose feet you never touched or touched enough.
And if not your parents, then someone else.
You know someone like this, right? Someone who belongs
to the "mighty dead," as Keats called them.
Don’t you wish that person were here now
so you could touch their feet and whisper, "You are my god"?
I can’t imagine Keats saying, “You too are made
of the same light,” though I can see him saying,
as he did to Fanny Brawne, “I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have
shudder'd at it—I shudder no more—I could
be martyr'd for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that—
I could die for you.” My own feet have touched
the earth nearly three times as long as Keats’s did,
and I’m hardly the oldest person
I know. So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion—well, I wouldn’t die for it. I’d live for it, though.
-- David Kirby
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
A(nother) Great Poetry Event! (a little something for the off-season)
Young People’s Open Mic
Students from grades 6 to 12
Saturday, October 19
7– 9pm
Sign-ups begin at 6:30pm
Poems in all languages welcome.
Family Friendly –Please make sure content and language is for all ages
At the Roslindale Branch Library
4246 Washington Street, Roslindale, MA
Light refreshments served
Sponsored by the Friends of Roslindale Branch Library
Street parking available
Questions? Contact roslindalelibraryfriends@gmail.com
Students from grades 6 to 12
Saturday, October 19
7– 9pm
Sign-ups begin at 6:30pm
Poems in all languages welcome.
Family Friendly –Please make sure content and language is for all ages
At the Roslindale Branch Library
4246 Washington Street, Roslindale, MA
Light refreshments served
Sponsored by the Friends of Roslindale Branch Library
Street parking available
Questions? Contact roslindalelibraryfriends@gmail.com
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Untitled/For MF
Untitled/For MF
Each time
you answer
I am grateful
in a way
that make poets
cringe--
trite
over-the-top
metaphors
and hail marys
and whatever
jews and buddhists say
in thanks
when a miracle
has occurred.
Maybe
you really do know
what it is like
to shadow box…
to tiptoe
amongst
land mines
laid down so long ago
that the parties no longer
remember the war
yet each soft step
is one
toward freedom.
And so I tread
first with a quiet prayer
and now,
as you have taught me,
with a breath.
--Nancy Marks
Each time
you answer
I am grateful
in a way
that make poets
cringe--
trite
over-the-top
metaphors
and hail marys
and whatever
jews and buddhists say
in thanks
when a miracle
has occurred.
Maybe
you really do know
what it is like
to shadow box…
to tiptoe
amongst
land mines
laid down so long ago
that the parties no longer
remember the war
yet each soft step
is one
toward freedom.
And so I tread
first with a quiet prayer
and now,
as you have taught me,
with a breath.
--Nancy Marks
Monday, April 08, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
Time for Poetry & Stout
When the winter sheds its scaly skin
And slinks up to the hilltop once again
We gather sticks and horns with it to clout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
And as the warming sun the snow does slice
And the slithering season recedes with melting ice
And manic love begins to stretch and sprout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
And when the children with their drums and packs
Parade along yale terrace to and back
As a rite of spring, establishing the serpentine route
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
So look not for invitations to partake
But gather up your poems to kill the snake
And herald glorious spring with whisper, song or shout
For now it is the time for poetry and stout
-- Michael O'Connor
And slinks up to the hilltop once again
We gather sticks and horns with it to clout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
And as the warming sun the snow does slice
And the slithering season recedes with melting ice
And manic love begins to stretch and sprout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
And when the children with their drums and packs
Parade along yale terrace to and back
As a rite of spring, establishing the serpentine route
Then it is the time for poetry and stout
So look not for invitations to partake
But gather up your poems to kill the snake
And herald glorious spring with whisper, song or shout
For now it is the time for poetry and stout
-- Michael O'Connor
Friday, March 22, 2013
My Heart's In The Highlands
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
-- Robert Burns
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
-- Robert Burns
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
On the Beach at Night
N the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
-- Walt Whitman
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
-- Walt Whitman
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
-- Robert Hayden
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
-- Robert Hayden
Friday, April 27, 2012
The O'Connors' St. Patricks
All those beautiful dear faces
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magic connection everywhere you turn
Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious night
A James Joycean William Butler Yeatsian
Movie of hospitality so grand
That in this fine house
Instills in us, and by their leave
A lust for spring and all good things
Profound and indeed, so merry
The presence of the Leprechaun and
The wee Faire
The splendid declamation of Young Liam
Of "Emmet at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock
II
The songs so grand heard nowhere else
In all the land
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the Sun
The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone
And a tribute to what the bloody battles cost
For Freedom a century ago
That our Ancestors fought and won.
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magic connection everywhere you turn
Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious night
A James Joycean William Butler Yeatsian
Movie of hospitality so grand
That in this fine house
Instills in us, and by their leave
A lust for spring and all good things
Profound and indeed, so merry
The presence of the Leprechaun and
The wee Faire
The splendid declamation of Young Liam
Of "Emmet at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock
II
The songs so grand heard nowhere else
In all the land
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the Sun
The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone
And a tribute to what the bloody battles cost
For Freedom a century ago
That our Ancestors fought and won.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Untitled
And God encapsulates us with His spirit before we were even born or thought of
sitting spirits
waiting to be sent down to the world
we were bathed with blessings and hope
and sent down into the sacks of our fathers
to be buried in the warm wombs of our mothers
and as we cycle through the stages
we prepare ourselves for release
but this weary globe is not what we expected
and our newly beating hearts are taken aback by the scene
the warmth we had in our soft cozy wombs
has been replaced by a chill
we become afraid and worried
"God, what is this?" we ask
"Just continue and you will see"
as our hearts continue to beat
and our form grows in size
we reach out again
for those of us that remember now
"Do not let yourself be eaten up by the illusions of this world, do you not remember your mission?"
and by this point we have forgotten
and our first instructions have become lost to us
and so our new journey is to find our mission again
and in desperation we go to places that are suppose to be of dedication to God
although our true education of him is better found alone
because the so called peace seekers may really be heat seekers
trying to suck up light from our souls
or maybe they are just as lost and confused as we are or more so
but still insist on advising us
and in our ignorance we continue to let them advise
when God has all the instructions we need
God is screaming our names
but we can not hear through all the chaos
all the voices of the people that claim to know
I dont believe in evil
but I do believe in lost
and they rather be lost in company than alone
if we quiet our waters
we will hear It speak
and will slowly be re-introduced to our forgotten mission
slowly as not to overwhelm us
because our trust and belief is not the same as it was in the womb
neither is our confidence
but instead of seeking him out we run away in disbelief
we stab and pound and murder ourselves
with foolishness, lust, greed, and shame
we take God's materials and create costumes of fake beauty
and inventions of fake power
and bombard ourselves with destruction
we hurt the people next to us and far away
we attack the ones we claim to love
but our sad confused minds have lost complete meaning of the word
always defined as a feeling when in reality it is action
we run further and further from God into the haze
the smoke
and are blinded and deafened
with false ideas of knowledge
Get quiet
like we were in the womb
when God was loud in our ears
the only voice we knew
we fear silence because of its truth
we dont really want to know how far we have strayed
but if we dont realize our distance, we can never go back
He is screaming our names
let the lusty smell of chaos go
some of us hear Him and it ignore it
to chase desire
then scream "whoa is me!" when they are gashed in the head with strife
and they then give up on a God that they never truly believed in
or make fake promises to listen next time
if we only shut our busy mouths and open our ears to Allah
listen for the silence in his voice
no need for long winded apologies or stories
He knows us and the distance of our hearts better than we will ever know ourselves
close your busy mouth and listen
no need for loud emotional rapture
or huge congregations that mix in folly with their truth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need to search the corners of the earth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need for the rituals of our fore fathers
or the lectures of men that are just like us
you were born with what you are looking for!
and have only forgotten
be quiet and still
pour a cool pitcher of hope into your souls cup
and hold on to those few glimmers of faith that you remember
that were given to us while sitting on heaven's ledge
hold them quietly close to you to grow
so that they become stars within you
endless as the ones you see in the nights sky
and you will be bathed again in It's Spirit
your faith unyeilding
your courage plentiful
deflecting the boulders of those that attack you
your unusual strength will amaze them
and urge them too...
to be silent
and ahh now
Our mission has been fulfilled
--Alicia Mooltrey
sitting spirits
waiting to be sent down to the world
we were bathed with blessings and hope
and sent down into the sacks of our fathers
to be buried in the warm wombs of our mothers
and as we cycle through the stages
we prepare ourselves for release
but this weary globe is not what we expected
and our newly beating hearts are taken aback by the scene
the warmth we had in our soft cozy wombs
has been replaced by a chill
we become afraid and worried
"God, what is this?" we ask
"Just continue and you will see"
as our hearts continue to beat
and our form grows in size
we reach out again
for those of us that remember now
"Do not let yourself be eaten up by the illusions of this world, do you not remember your mission?"
and by this point we have forgotten
and our first instructions have become lost to us
and so our new journey is to find our mission again
and in desperation we go to places that are suppose to be of dedication to God
although our true education of him is better found alone
because the so called peace seekers may really be heat seekers
trying to suck up light from our souls
or maybe they are just as lost and confused as we are or more so
but still insist on advising us
and in our ignorance we continue to let them advise
when God has all the instructions we need
God is screaming our names
but we can not hear through all the chaos
all the voices of the people that claim to know
I dont believe in evil
but I do believe in lost
and they rather be lost in company than alone
if we quiet our waters
we will hear It speak
and will slowly be re-introduced to our forgotten mission
slowly as not to overwhelm us
because our trust and belief is not the same as it was in the womb
neither is our confidence
but instead of seeking him out we run away in disbelief
we stab and pound and murder ourselves
with foolishness, lust, greed, and shame
we take God's materials and create costumes of fake beauty
and inventions of fake power
and bombard ourselves with destruction
we hurt the people next to us and far away
we attack the ones we claim to love
but our sad confused minds have lost complete meaning of the word
always defined as a feeling when in reality it is action
we run further and further from God into the haze
the smoke
and are blinded and deafened
with false ideas of knowledge
Get quiet
like we were in the womb
when God was loud in our ears
the only voice we knew
we fear silence because of its truth
we dont really want to know how far we have strayed
but if we dont realize our distance, we can never go back
He is screaming our names
let the lusty smell of chaos go
some of us hear Him and it ignore it
to chase desire
then scream "whoa is me!" when they are gashed in the head with strife
and they then give up on a God that they never truly believed in
or make fake promises to listen next time
if we only shut our busy mouths and open our ears to Allah
listen for the silence in his voice
no need for long winded apologies or stories
He knows us and the distance of our hearts better than we will ever know ourselves
close your busy mouth and listen
no need for loud emotional rapture
or huge congregations that mix in folly with their truth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need to search the corners of the earth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need for the rituals of our fore fathers
or the lectures of men that are just like us
you were born with what you are looking for!
and have only forgotten
be quiet and still
pour a cool pitcher of hope into your souls cup
and hold on to those few glimmers of faith that you remember
that were given to us while sitting on heaven's ledge
hold them quietly close to you to grow
so that they become stars within you
endless as the ones you see in the nights sky
and you will be bathed again in It's Spirit
your faith unyeilding
your courage plentiful
deflecting the boulders of those that attack you
your unusual strength will amaze them
and urge them too...
to be silent
and ahh now
Our mission has been fulfilled
--Alicia Mooltrey
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Buddha -- The Return
I am exchanging my life,
I say to Buddha.
We have bumped into each other
as we wait on the
return line.
Buddha opens his crinkled bag
to show a red robe.
Wrong shade
and the threads are unraveling,
he says to me.
I understand this,
as it is how I would
describe my life:
peppered and ashen,
with missing pieces.
I remember my birth:
half of a whole
and whole of a half.
my mother’s jagged scar
tearing the seams of a
not-so-hidden war.
I should have returned
when I was born.
I feel awkward in this explanation--
not wanting Buddha to think
I am a snob and only like
shiny new things.
As the line moves up,
we stare
at the large woman
returning a flowered scarf.
I want to say something to him.
To ask him
if I return my suffering
will I know something more.
But it’s too late—
Buddha’s number has been called
and he slowly approaches
counter number three.
-- Nancy Marks
I say to Buddha.
We have bumped into each other
as we wait on the
return line.
Buddha opens his crinkled bag
to show a red robe.
Wrong shade
and the threads are unraveling,
he says to me.
I understand this,
as it is how I would
describe my life:
peppered and ashen,
with missing pieces.
I remember my birth:
half of a whole
and whole of a half.
my mother’s jagged scar
tearing the seams of a
not-so-hidden war.
I should have returned
when I was born.
I feel awkward in this explanation--
not wanting Buddha to think
I am a snob and only like
shiny new things.
As the line moves up,
we stare
at the large woman
returning a flowered scarf.
I want to say something to him.
To ask him
if I return my suffering
will I know something more.
But it’s too late—
Buddha’s number has been called
and he slowly approaches
counter number three.
-- Nancy Marks
Lost
This is no fairy tale.
The crusted crumbs
cast on sodden umber moss
are now gone
and I feel my way
through blanketing darkness
and weighted slumber.
Against grooved lichened bark
my hands scrape
leaving trace
as I pass under
then over
felled elm and maple.
Earlier, I placed seeds
of yellow maize in rows
and waited.
The storm came
as fast as it left.
A tempest,
first welcomed
then feared
for its
hard rain.
-- Nancy Marks
The crusted crumbs
cast on sodden umber moss
are now gone
and I feel my way
through blanketing darkness
and weighted slumber.
Against grooved lichened bark
my hands scrape
leaving trace
as I pass under
then over
felled elm and maple.
Earlier, I placed seeds
of yellow maize in rows
and waited.
The storm came
as fast as it left.
A tempest,
first welcomed
then feared
for its
hard rain.
-- Nancy Marks
Monday, February 27, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
So Much Happiness
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
The Willies
"Public restrooms give me the willies."
-Ad for a disinfectant
There is no known cure for them,
unlike the heebie-jeebies
or the shakes
which Russian vodka and a hot bath
will smooth out.
The drifties can be licked,
though the vapors often spell trouble.
The whips-and-jangles
go away in time. So do the fantods.
And good company will put the blues
to flight
and do much to relieve the flips,
the quivers and the screamies.
But the willies are another matter.
Anything can give them to you:
electric chairs, raw meat, manta rays,
public restrooms, a footprint,
and every case of the willies
is a bad one.
Some days flow with them, ride them out,
but this is useless advice
once you are in their grip.
There is no way to get on top
of the willies. Valium
is ineffective. Hospitals
are not the answer.
Keeping still
and emitting thin, evenly spaced
waves of irony
may help
but don't expect miracles:
the willies are the willies.
--Billy Collins
-Ad for a disinfectant
There is no known cure for them,
unlike the heebie-jeebies
or the shakes
which Russian vodka and a hot bath
will smooth out.
The drifties can be licked,
though the vapors often spell trouble.
The whips-and-jangles
go away in time. So do the fantods.
And good company will put the blues
to flight
and do much to relieve the flips,
the quivers and the screamies.
But the willies are another matter.
Anything can give them to you:
electric chairs, raw meat, manta rays,
public restrooms, a footprint,
and every case of the willies
is a bad one.
Some days flow with them, ride them out,
but this is useless advice
once you are in their grip.
There is no way to get on top
of the willies. Valium
is ineffective. Hospitals
are not the answer.
Keeping still
and emitting thin, evenly spaced
waves of irony
may help
but don't expect miracles:
the willies are the willies.
--Billy Collins
Monday, December 05, 2011
Where the view is unobstructed
the sun setting looks just like
the sun rising
split in two on the curved horizon
balanced on the edge
of the same half-lit, hopeful worlds
the yin and yang once were tears
the dots in each, the pairs of eyes that cried them
now light and dark are twirling cheek to cheek
the sun setting is the sun rising
far away, just out of sight
--Sandra Storey
the sun rising
split in two on the curved horizon
balanced on the edge
of the same half-lit, hopeful worlds
the yin and yang once were tears
the dots in each, the pairs of eyes that cried them
now light and dark are twirling cheek to cheek
the sun setting is the sun rising
far away, just out of sight
--Sandra Storey
Cozy Apologia
I could pick anything and think of you—
This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue
My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.
I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow—
There you'll be, with furrowed brow
And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.
This post-postmodern age is all business: compact disks
And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks
Event. Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast,
Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host
Of daydreams: awkward reminiscences
Of teenage crushes on worthless boys
Whose only talent was to kiss you senseless.
They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey;
Were thin as licorice and as chewy,
Sweet with a dark and hollow center. Floyd's
Cussing up a storm. You're bunkered in your
Aerie, I'm perched in mine
(Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
We're content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it's embarrassing, this happiness—
Who's satisfied simply with what's good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?
And yet, because nothing else will do
To keep me from melancholy (call it blues),
I fill this stolen time with you.
--Rita Dove
This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue
My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.
I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow—
There you'll be, with furrowed brow
And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.
This post-postmodern age is all business: compact disks
And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks
Event. Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast,
Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host
Of daydreams: awkward reminiscences
Of teenage crushes on worthless boys
Whose only talent was to kiss you senseless.
They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey;
Were thin as licorice and as chewy,
Sweet with a dark and hollow center. Floyd's
Cussing up a storm. You're bunkered in your
Aerie, I'm perched in mine
(Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
We're content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it's embarrassing, this happiness—
Who's satisfied simply with what's good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?
And yet, because nothing else will do
To keep me from melancholy (call it blues),
I fill this stolen time with you.
--Rita Dove
Ten Commandments
Thou art enjoined to enjoyment,
Exhorted to exultation.
Thy responsibility is to be responsive,
and impishness be thy imperative.
So cherish thy good cheer,
and be not judicious in jubilation –
Rather exude exuberance,
For to revel is a revelation, and
it is on pain of death that
Thou art obliged to Live!
--Josh Mitteldorf
Exhorted to exultation.
Thy responsibility is to be responsive,
and impishness be thy imperative.
So cherish thy good cheer,
and be not judicious in jubilation –
Rather exude exuberance,
For to revel is a revelation, and
it is on pain of death that
Thou art obliged to Live!
--Josh Mitteldorf
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
--Wallace Stevens
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
--Wallace Stevens
My Philosophy of Life
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will. Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?
That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude. I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between. He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on. Not a single idea emerges from it. It's enough
to disgust you with thought. But then you remember something
William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the
fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet
still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and
his alone.
It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler. Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again. Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it. Something I'm
not big enough to see over. Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of. In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time. That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for! Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out! There's a big one...
--John Ashbery
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will. Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?
That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude. I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between. He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on. Not a single idea emerges from it. It's enough
to disgust you with thought. But then you remember something
William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the
fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet
still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and
his alone.
It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler. Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again. Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it. Something I'm
not big enough to see over. Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of. In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time. That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for! Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out! There's a big one...
--John Ashbery
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Daily Life
A parrot of irritation sits
on my shoulder, pecks
at my head, ruffling his feathers
in my ear. He repeats
everything I say, like a child
trying to irritate the parent.
Too much to do today: the dracena
that's outgrown its pot, a mountain
of bills to pay and nothing in the house
to eat. Too many clothes need washing
and the dog needs his shots.
It just goes on and on, I say
to myself, no one around, and catch
myself saying it, a ball hit so straight
to your glove you'd have to be
blind not to catch it. And of course
I hope it does go on and on
forever, the little pain,
the little pleasure, the sun
a blood orange in the sky, the sky
parrot blue and the day
unfolding like a bird slowly
spreading its wings, though I know,
saying it, that it won't.
-- Susan Wood
on my shoulder, pecks
at my head, ruffling his feathers
in my ear. He repeats
everything I say, like a child
trying to irritate the parent.
Too much to do today: the dracena
that's outgrown its pot, a mountain
of bills to pay and nothing in the house
to eat. Too many clothes need washing
and the dog needs his shots.
It just goes on and on, I say
to myself, no one around, and catch
myself saying it, a ball hit so straight
to your glove you'd have to be
blind not to catch it. And of course
I hope it does go on and on
forever, the little pain,
the little pleasure, the sun
a blood orange in the sky, the sky
parrot blue and the day
unfolding like a bird slowly
spreading its wings, though I know,
saying it, that it won't.
-- Susan Wood
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Dawn Revisited
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.
When You Leave
This sadness could only be a color
if we call it momoiro, Japanese
for peach-color, as in the first story
Mother told us: It is the color of the hero’s skin
when the barren woman discovered him
inside a peach floating down the river.
And of the banner and gloves she sewed
when he left her to battle the horsemen, then found himself
torn, like the fruit off a tree. Even when he met a monkey
dog and bird he could not release
the color he saw when he closed his eyes.
In his boat
the lap of the waves against the hold
was too intimate as he leaned back to sleep.
He wanted
to leave all thoughts of peach behind him –
the fruit that brought him to her
and she, the one who opened the color forever.
if we call it momoiro, Japanese
for peach-color, as in the first story
Mother told us: It is the color of the hero’s skin
when the barren woman discovered him
inside a peach floating down the river.
And of the banner and gloves she sewed
when he left her to battle the horsemen, then found himself
torn, like the fruit off a tree. Even when he met a monkey
dog and bird he could not release
the color he saw when he closed his eyes.
In his boat
the lap of the waves against the hold
was too intimate as he leaned back to sleep.
He wanted
to leave all thoughts of peach behind him –
the fruit that brought him to her
and she, the one who opened the color forever.
Who Said It?
"We can forgive Major Colvin, who out of his frustration and despair, found himself condoning something which can't possibly be condoned. We can do that much. But, gentlemen, what we can't forgive, what I can't forgive, ever, is how we, you, me, this administration, all of us, how we turned away from those streets in West Baltimore. The poor, the sick, the swollen underclass of our city, trapped in the wreckage of neighborhoods which were once so prized, communities which we failed to defend, which we surrendered to the horrors of the drug trade. And if this disaster demands anything of us as a city, it demands that we say enough; enough to the despair which makes policemen even think about surrender; enough to that fact that these neighborhoods are not saved or are beyond saving; enough to this administration’s indecisiveness and lethargy, to the garbage which goes uncollected, the lots and rowhouses which stay vacant; the addicts that go untreated. The working men and women who every day are denied a chance at economic freedom. Enough to the crime which everyday chokes more and more of the life from our city. And, the thing of it is if we don’t take responsibility and step up , not just for the mistakes and the miscues, but for whether or not we are going to win this battle for our streets. If that doesn’t happen we are going to lose these neighborhoods and ultimately this city, forever. If we don’t have the courage and the conviction to fight this war the way it should be fought; the way it needs to be fought, using every weapon we can possibly muster; if that doesn’t happen, then we are staring at defeat. And that defeat should not and cannot and will not be forgiven.
Councilor Thomas J. Carcetti, City of Baltimore
AKA Aidan Gillen. “The Wire” Season 3, Episode 12 “Mission Accomplished”
Councilor Thomas J. Carcetti, City of Baltimore
AKA Aidan Gillen. “The Wire” Season 3, Episode 12 “Mission Accomplished”
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
What Do Women Want
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
-- Kim Addonizio [Claudia Dunne]
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
-- Kim Addonizio [Claudia Dunne]
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Two Tramps In Mud Time
A Further Range Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
--Robert Frost
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
--Robert Frost
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Post-Punk Homecoming
After the manager embezzled
the proceeds and bought himself
a shiny foreign car, we uncovered
bills from every collection agency
in town and panicked one night
when the lights went out
in our shady, rented house.
We took off in different
directions. I couldn't account
for most of my clothes. I sat
in the yard, at home with my dad,
shucking corn as an act of contrition,
and I conceded again and again
that yes, we’d been lucky, and no,
I couldn't say precisely how
we got so dumb,
because everything we did
was big and bright and very loud,
and everyone applauded.
--Mariette Landry
the proceeds and bought himself
a shiny foreign car, we uncovered
bills from every collection agency
in town and panicked one night
when the lights went out
in our shady, rented house.
We took off in different
directions. I couldn't account
for most of my clothes. I sat
in the yard, at home with my dad,
shucking corn as an act of contrition,
and I conceded again and again
that yes, we’d been lucky, and no,
I couldn't say precisely how
we got so dumb,
because everything we did
was big and bright and very loud,
and everyone applauded.
--Mariette Landry
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Lord Alfred Tennyson
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Lord Alfred Tennyson
Monday, April 27, 2009
Band-Aids
I have a Band-Aid on my finger,
One on my knee, and one on my nose,
One on my heel, and two on my shoulder,
Three on my elbow, and nine on my toes.
Two on my wrist, and one on my ankle,
One on my chin, and one on my thigh,
Four on my belly, and five on my bottom,
One on my forehead, and one on my eye.
One on my neck, and in case I might need ‘em
I have a box full of thirty-five more.
But oh! I do think it’s sort of a pity
I don’t have a cut or a sore!
One on my knee, and one on my nose,
One on my heel, and two on my shoulder,
Three on my elbow, and nine on my toes.
Two on my wrist, and one on my ankle,
One on my chin, and one on my thigh,
Four on my belly, and five on my bottom,
One on my forehead, and one on my eye.
One on my neck, and in case I might need ‘em
I have a box full of thirty-five more.
But oh! I do think it’s sort of a pity
I don’t have a cut or a sore!
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
When You Are Old
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Fugitive Poets of Fenway Park
The Chilean secret police
searched everywhere
for the poet Neruda: in the dark shafts
of mines, in the boxcars of railroad yards,
in the sewers of Santiago.
The government intended to confiscate his mouth
and extract the poems one by one like bad teeth.
But the mines and boxcars and sewers were empty.
I know where he was. Neruda was at Fenway Park,
burly and bearded in a flat black cap, hidden
in the kaleidoscope of the bleachers.
He sat quietly, chomping a hot dog
when Ted Williams walked to the crest of the diamond,
slender as my father remembers him,
squinting at the pitcher, bat swaying in a memory of trees.
The stroke was a pendulum of long muscle and wood,
Ted's face tilted up, the home run
zooming into the right field grandstand.
Then the crowd stood together, cheering
for this blasphemer of newsprint, the heretic
who would not tip his cap as he toed home plate
or grin like a war hero at the sportswriters
surrounding his locker for a quote.
The fugitive poet could not keep silent,
standing on his seat to declaim the ode
erupted in crowd-bewildering Spanish from his mouth:
Praise Ted Williams, raising his sword
cut from the ash tree, the ball
a white planet glowing in the atmosphere
of the right field grandstand!
Praise the Wall rising
like a great green wave
from the green sea of the outfield!
Praise the hot dog, pink meat,
pork snouts, sawdust, mouse feces,
human hair, plugging our intestines,
yet baptized joyfully with mustard!
Praise the wobbling drunk, seasick beer
in hand, staring at the number on his ticket,
demanding my seat!
Everyone gawked at the man standing
on his seat, bellowing poetry in Spanish.
Anonymous no longer,
Neruda saw the Chilean secret police
as they scrambled through the bleachers,
pointing and shouting, so the poet
jumped a guardrail to disappear
through a Fenway tunnel,
the black cap flying from his head
and spinning into center field.
This is true. I was there at Fenway
on August 7, 1948, even if I was born
exactly nine years later
when my father
almost named me Theodore.
-- Martin Espada [Connie Breece]
searched everywhere
for the poet Neruda: in the dark shafts
of mines, in the boxcars of railroad yards,
in the sewers of Santiago.
The government intended to confiscate his mouth
and extract the poems one by one like bad teeth.
But the mines and boxcars and sewers were empty.
I know where he was. Neruda was at Fenway Park,
burly and bearded in a flat black cap, hidden
in the kaleidoscope of the bleachers.
He sat quietly, chomping a hot dog
when Ted Williams walked to the crest of the diamond,
slender as my father remembers him,
squinting at the pitcher, bat swaying in a memory of trees.
The stroke was a pendulum of long muscle and wood,
Ted's face tilted up, the home run
zooming into the right field grandstand.
Then the crowd stood together, cheering
for this blasphemer of newsprint, the heretic
who would not tip his cap as he toed home plate
or grin like a war hero at the sportswriters
surrounding his locker for a quote.
The fugitive poet could not keep silent,
standing on his seat to declaim the ode
erupted in crowd-bewildering Spanish from his mouth:
Praise Ted Williams, raising his sword
cut from the ash tree, the ball
a white planet glowing in the atmosphere
of the right field grandstand!
Praise the Wall rising
like a great green wave
from the green sea of the outfield!
Praise the hot dog, pink meat,
pork snouts, sawdust, mouse feces,
human hair, plugging our intestines,
yet baptized joyfully with mustard!
Praise the wobbling drunk, seasick beer
in hand, staring at the number on his ticket,
demanding my seat!
Everyone gawked at the man standing
on his seat, bellowing poetry in Spanish.
Anonymous no longer,
Neruda saw the Chilean secret police
as they scrambled through the bleachers,
pointing and shouting, so the poet
jumped a guardrail to disappear
through a Fenway tunnel,
the black cap flying from his head
and spinning into center field.
This is true. I was there at Fenway
on August 7, 1948, even if I was born
exactly nine years later
when my father
almost named me Theodore.
-- Martin Espada [Connie Breece]
When You Are Old
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.
-- William Butler Yeats [Elizabeth]
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.
-- William Butler Yeats [Elizabeth]
Forgetfulness
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
-- Billy Collins [Fred Elliott-Hart]
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
-- Billy Collins [Fred Elliott-Hart]
Mossbawn Sunlight
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
-- Seamus Heaney [Liam O'Connor]
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
-- Seamus Heaney [Liam O'Connor]
The Ides of March, 2008
Wouldn't it take a certain arrogance or pride to hold a party on the Ides of March?
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? To unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humanity?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:
-- there'd be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-- the keg would run flat, or worse, dry
-- Jerry's falsetto during "Danny Boy" would shatter our windshields
-- the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses
But, then again, the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And a wiser poet than I once said, "I'd walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog, for a well-pulled pint."
Who am I, a New York Jew, to argue?
Was it Yeats? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe - a Brit - who coined for us "the Ides of March."
I first read it in 10th grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the second-floor bathroom stall was accurate, eats pills.
In Act 1, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer, yes, a soothsayer, (Rome was lousy with them in those days) cries, "Beware the Ides of March!"
He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bad luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves on the much more common, unlucky clover.
Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed.
But there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a violent storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act 1, Scene 3:
"Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction."
And, if that's not enough, here's the dream of Calpurnia (wife of Caesar) from Act II, Scene 2:
"Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them."
So the heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,
And what does Caesar do?
Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick's Day party for all he cared.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once," he smugly answers his spouse.
"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
You can say that again. He gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
Always, as my Calpurnia would say, listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer's prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What's a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my father, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Antony's soliloquy for Mr. Wills' class:
Quoth he: "He who drinks beer, Shakespeare."
-- Steve Hodin
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? To unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humanity?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:
-- there'd be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-- the keg would run flat, or worse, dry
-- Jerry's falsetto during "Danny Boy" would shatter our windshields
-- the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses
But, then again, the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And a wiser poet than I once said, "I'd walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog, for a well-pulled pint."
Who am I, a New York Jew, to argue?
Was it Yeats? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe - a Brit - who coined for us "the Ides of March."
I first read it in 10th grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the second-floor bathroom stall was accurate, eats pills.
In Act 1, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer, yes, a soothsayer, (Rome was lousy with them in those days) cries, "Beware the Ides of March!"
He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bad luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves on the much more common, unlucky clover.
Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed.
But there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a violent storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act 1, Scene 3:
"Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction."
And, if that's not enough, here's the dream of Calpurnia (wife of Caesar) from Act II, Scene 2:
"Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them."
So the heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,
And what does Caesar do?
Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick's Day party for all he cared.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once," he smugly answers his spouse.
"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
You can say that again. He gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
Always, as my Calpurnia would say, listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer's prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What's a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my father, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Antony's soliloquy for Mr. Wills' class:
Quoth he: "He who drinks beer, Shakespeare."
-- Steve Hodin
Rocket to Space
NASA built a rocket to space
And everyone wanted to go
So they had a very big race
To see who would run round Mexico
Who won but a simple millipede with many many legs
And they decided to let him go, despite the others' pleas and begs
He shot past Mars
Quickly passing our stars
Now he sends postcards from Zigzagabaroon
Telling NASA "Hope to see you soon!"
-- Matthew Rappe
And everyone wanted to go
So they had a very big race
To see who would run round Mexico
Who won but a simple millipede with many many legs
And they decided to let him go, despite the others' pleas and begs
He shot past Mars
Quickly passing our stars
Now he sends postcards from Zigzagabaroon
Telling NASA "Hope to see you soon!"
-- Matthew Rappe
Magdalen Walks
THE little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, 5
The odour of leaves, and of grass, and of newly up-turned earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, 10
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen 15
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing a-down the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. 20
-- Oscar Wilde [Becky Miller]
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, 5
The odour of leaves, and of grass, and of newly up-turned earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, 10
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen 15
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing a-down the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. 20
-- Oscar Wilde [Becky Miller]
O Captain, My Captain!
1
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart! 5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, 15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
-- Walt Whitman
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart! 5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, 15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
-- Walt Whitman
Portrait With Still-Life
I find no reason to distract my father who is yelling at the empty prescription
bottle. After he returned from the war, which he didn't find to his liking, he
operated a drill press without distinction for nearly fifty years. He raised a
family that was barely passable. He strode forth only when the weather fit
his shoes. He stood in the backyard and painted all the landscapes that
passed through his head, "like tulip petals on their way to a farter version of
heaven." He learned to read when he was a very young child, but found this
was an impediment later in his life. He was not my father, but a kitchen
appliance in need of repairs.
-- John Yau [Jan Reitsma]
bottle. After he returned from the war, which he didn't find to his liking, he
operated a drill press without distinction for nearly fifty years. He raised a
family that was barely passable. He strode forth only when the weather fit
his shoes. He stood in the backyard and painted all the landscapes that
passed through his head, "like tulip petals on their way to a farter version of
heaven." He learned to read when he was a very young child, but found this
was an impediment later in his life. He was not my father, but a kitchen
appliance in need of repairs.
-- John Yau [Jan Reitsma]
Saturday, July 12, 2008
There Once Was an Irish Mechanic
There once was an Irish mechanic
Who was not very prone to a panic
When I heard this I thought
I might give him a shot
At a problem I knew was satanic.
Cars and trucks and bikes, you see
Are serviced every day
With logic and a diagram
You’ll soon be on your way
But mobile homes are different,
They’re relatively few,
And mine was even further rare,
There was no number 2.
For years I’d felt a growing pride
In my country, right or wrong,
And wrote a lot of glowing words,
I even tried a song
But the battle groups and radar domes
Could not be contained
The anti anti missle missles,
The rays that leave no stains
What concept could I summarize?
What image could I use?
To show the world the way I felt
That we’re not going to lose
The way of life so righteous
So pure and worry free
That paper bags or plastic are
Of no concern to me.
The seasons came the seasons went
And still the struggle grew,
My eyelid started quivering
And then my gums withdrew
But late one night it came to me
The thing our nation lacked
A symbol of the leadership
To get us back on track
A vision of the future
The way we must be led
A mobile home, of stainless steel
In the shape of Cheney’s head!
Our country’s been deprived of him
By those who make him stay
In that heavy duty bunker
So very far away
He must be safe from harm of course,
So this could be the thing
To bring his words and spirit out
And let the country sing
The songs of liberation
The terrorists must die
The weapons of mass destruction will be shot into the sky.
I shopped around and found a firm,
A family I could trust
To fabricate and execute
My vision of this bust
This rolling art would incorporate
The latest of today,
The cellular and satellite
And some birdies tucked away
For that special rare occasion
When good friends should happen by
If the urge should come upon us
To shoot at things that fly
The day arrived when it was done
It gleamed and sparkled in the sun
I took the keys
Sat in the mouth
Released the brake
And headed south
I took a route along the shore
Perhaps to hear the ocean’s roar
Instead I heard a sound most queer
Emitted from my hero’s ear
As I drove the volume rose
The sound now bellowed from the nose
I tried to place where I had heard
A sound so like that chilling word
Obama was, it seemed to me the cry
That soon enveloped me.
Where to go to fix this curse
I queried near and far
There’s only one can tackle this,
And he’s likely at the bar.
So many people said the same
I finally headed east
And set a course for sunrise
With hope to slay this beast!
I found him where they said I would
Seated on a stool
Sipping oysters from their shells
And looking rather cool.
I told him what had made me cringe
And begged him for some aid
He said it could be anything
I could not be delayed
He said I’d have to leave it
He’d look it over well
I bit my lip and trembled
My eyes began to well
You don’t know how important
This is to our way of life
Our country and our values
Your children and your wife
He slowly slid another oyster
Off it’s pearly shell
If I can’t fix it mister
I’ll send myself to hell.
For days I gnawed my knuckles
My hair came out in clumps
My lower lip was sushi
My fingernails were stumps.
When long at last the message came
To come and pick it up
I spilled my coffee on my leg
Then tripped upon the cup.
A Larry Craig was on each ear
A Ferraro on the nose
A Clinton clambered on each eyebrow
Grabbing with their toes…..
3/15/08
Ed Braverman
TO BE CONTINUED
Who was not very prone to a panic
When I heard this I thought
I might give him a shot
At a problem I knew was satanic.
Cars and trucks and bikes, you see
Are serviced every day
With logic and a diagram
You’ll soon be on your way
But mobile homes are different,
They’re relatively few,
And mine was even further rare,
There was no number 2.
For years I’d felt a growing pride
In my country, right or wrong,
And wrote a lot of glowing words,
I even tried a song
But the battle groups and radar domes
Could not be contained
The anti anti missle missles,
The rays that leave no stains
What concept could I summarize?
What image could I use?
To show the world the way I felt
That we’re not going to lose
The way of life so righteous
So pure and worry free
That paper bags or plastic are
Of no concern to me.
The seasons came the seasons went
And still the struggle grew,
My eyelid started quivering
And then my gums withdrew
But late one night it came to me
The thing our nation lacked
A symbol of the leadership
To get us back on track
A vision of the future
The way we must be led
A mobile home, of stainless steel
In the shape of Cheney’s head!
Our country’s been deprived of him
By those who make him stay
In that heavy duty bunker
So very far away
He must be safe from harm of course,
So this could be the thing
To bring his words and spirit out
And let the country sing
The songs of liberation
The terrorists must die
The weapons of mass destruction will be shot into the sky.
I shopped around and found a firm,
A family I could trust
To fabricate and execute
My vision of this bust
This rolling art would incorporate
The latest of today,
The cellular and satellite
And some birdies tucked away
For that special rare occasion
When good friends should happen by
If the urge should come upon us
To shoot at things that fly
The day arrived when it was done
It gleamed and sparkled in the sun
I took the keys
Sat in the mouth
Released the brake
And headed south
I took a route along the shore
Perhaps to hear the ocean’s roar
Instead I heard a sound most queer
Emitted from my hero’s ear
As I drove the volume rose
The sound now bellowed from the nose
I tried to place where I had heard
A sound so like that chilling word
Obama was, it seemed to me the cry
That soon enveloped me.
Where to go to fix this curse
I queried near and far
There’s only one can tackle this,
And he’s likely at the bar.
So many people said the same
I finally headed east
And set a course for sunrise
With hope to slay this beast!
I found him where they said I would
Seated on a stool
Sipping oysters from their shells
And looking rather cool.
I told him what had made me cringe
And begged him for some aid
He said it could be anything
I could not be delayed
He said I’d have to leave it
He’d look it over well
I bit my lip and trembled
My eyes began to well
You don’t know how important
This is to our way of life
Our country and our values
Your children and your wife
He slowly slid another oyster
Off it’s pearly shell
If I can’t fix it mister
I’ll send myself to hell.
For days I gnawed my knuckles
My hair came out in clumps
My lower lip was sushi
My fingernails were stumps.
When long at last the message came
To come and pick it up
I spilled my coffee on my leg
Then tripped upon the cup.
A Larry Craig was on each ear
A Ferraro on the nose
A Clinton clambered on each eyebrow
Grabbing with their toes…..
3/15/08
Ed Braverman
TO BE CONTINUED
Friday, March 28, 2008
Poker
There were five of us playing that night,
Padge, Kieran, Neal and me --
and, stretched out in his coffin, Uncle Charlie.
We dealt him a hand each time
and took turns to bet for him,
waiving his losses, pooling his wins,
for what good were coins to him?
What could he win but his life?
Still, five of us played that night
and when we stopped it was daylight.
We left the cards with him
to remind him, forever, of that game
and Padge, Kieran, Neal and me
went up the road to our beds
and slept until we buried him,
then played until we had to agree
the good hands had gone with Uncle Charlie.
--Matthew Sweeney [Nora O'Connor]
Padge, Kieran, Neal and me --
and, stretched out in his coffin, Uncle Charlie.
We dealt him a hand each time
and took turns to bet for him,
waiving his losses, pooling his wins,
for what good were coins to him?
What could he win but his life?
Still, five of us played that night
and when we stopped it was daylight.
We left the cards with him
to remind him, forever, of that game
and Padge, Kieran, Neal and me
went up the road to our beds
and slept until we buried him,
then played until we had to agree
the good hands had gone with Uncle Charlie.
--Matthew Sweeney [Nora O'Connor]
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Tree and the Garden
There was an oak tree
In the front of the house
Which blazes forth in spring and is
Struck by changing colors as though
It was lightning instead of time
Which brought the fall
It’s known to all rememberers
Who have ever
Suffered its shade
While out the back
There is a garden, which
With an unassuming, steady gait
Filled plates
And beds of marigolds
Accompanied tomatoes
In a forever dance
Keeping pace, without rest
With never a fallow season blessed
And as for time and passers-by
Who could know? that it was
Neither the sun nor water
Nor seeds nor spring that gave it such
Plenty while
Dispensing safety
But rather
The hoe and rake
And touch
And grace
And give and take
And tender love
Of the gardener’s hand.
Michael O'Connor
In the front of the house
Which blazes forth in spring and is
Struck by changing colors as though
It was lightning instead of time
Which brought the fall
It’s known to all rememberers
Who have ever
Suffered its shade
While out the back
There is a garden, which
With an unassuming, steady gait
Filled plates
And beds of marigolds
Accompanied tomatoes
In a forever dance
Keeping pace, without rest
With never a fallow season blessed
And as for time and passers-by
Who could know? that it was
Neither the sun nor water
Nor seeds nor spring that gave it such
Plenty while
Dispensing safety
But rather
The hoe and rake
And touch
And grace
And give and take
And tender love
Of the gardener’s hand.
Michael O'Connor
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Change
The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.
In the park the daffodils came up
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.
Sometimes I think that nothing really changes -
The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he's a dummy.
but remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes
some tough little European blonde
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite -
We were just walking past the lounge
and got sucked in by the screen above the bar,
and pretty soon
we started to care about who won,
putting ourselves into each whacked return
as the volleys went back and forth and back
like some contest between
the old world and the new,
and you loved her complicated hair
and her to-hell-with-everybody stare,
and I,
I couldn't help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips
and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,
hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln's throat,
like she wasn't asking anyone's permission.
There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,
and I don't watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there
in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes
as that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure
and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.
And the little pink judge
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck,
still managing to smile into the camera flash,
even though everything was changing
and in fact, everything had already changed -
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
Tony Hoagland
Note: You can hear this poem read aloud by Garrison Keillor by clicking here and scrolling down a bit.
In the park the daffodils came up
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.
Sometimes I think that nothing really changes -
The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he's a dummy.
but remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes
some tough little European blonde
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite -
We were just walking past the lounge
and got sucked in by the screen above the bar,
and pretty soon
we started to care about who won,
putting ourselves into each whacked return
as the volleys went back and forth and back
like some contest between
the old world and the new,
and you loved her complicated hair
and her to-hell-with-everybody stare,
and I,
I couldn't help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips
and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,
hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln's throat,
like she wasn't asking anyone's permission.
There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,
and I don't watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there
in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes
as that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure
and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.
And the little pink judge
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck,
still managing to smile into the camera flash,
even though everything was changing
and in fact, everything had already changed -
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
Tony Hoagland
Note: You can hear this poem read aloud by Garrison Keillor by clicking here and scrolling down a bit.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Make the Pie Higher
A poem in honor of our 43rd President made up entirely of his quotes.
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
I am the Decider!
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
I am the Decider!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
