Adam's Curse

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.

Salamanders

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.

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.

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?

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.

--

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

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.

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.