share 43 fabulous poems

pilfered off GrammaG’s list.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

translated by W.S. Merwin

Oh Kit, how gleamy you are!
I want to lick your shininess—
you make me want to pose with puppies.

“At the San Francisco Airport”
To my daughter, 1954
by Yvor Winters

This is the terminal: the light
Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
The metal glitters, deep and bright.
Great planes are waiting in the yard—
They are already in the night.

And you are here beside me, small,
Contained and fragile, and intent
On things that I but half recall—
Yet going whither you are bent.
I am the past, and that is all.

But you and I in part are one:
The frightened brain, the nervous will,
The knowledge of what must be done,
The passion to acquire the skill
To face that which you dare not shun.

The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently. The score:
There comes what will come. The expense
Is what one thought, and something more—
One’s being and intelligence.

This is the terminal, the break.
Beyond this point, on lines of air,
You take the way that you must take;
And I remain in light and stare—
In light, and nothing else, awake.

“Night-Flowering Cactus” by Thomas Merton

I know my time, which is obscure, silent and brief
For I am present without warning one night only.

When sun rises on the brass valleys I become serpent.

Though I show my true self only in the dark and to no man
(For I appear by day as serpent)
I belong neither to night nor day.

Sun and city never see my deep white bell
Or know my timeless moment of void:
There is no reply to my munificence.

When I come I lift my sudden Eucharist
Out of the earth’s unfathomable joy
Clean and total I obey the world’s body
I am intricate and whole, not art but wrought passion
Excellent deep pleasure of essential waters
Holiness of form and mineral mirth:

I am the extreme purity of virginal thirst.

I neither show my truth nor conceal it
My innocence is described dimly
Only by divine gift
As a white cavern without explanation.

He who sees my purity
Dares not speak of it.
When I open once for all my impeccable bell
No one questions my silence:
The all-knowing bird of night flies out of my mouth.

Have you seen it? Then though my mirth has quickly ended
You live forever in its echo:
You will never be the same again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the thirty eigth year
of my life,
plain as bread
round as a cake
an ordinary woman.

an ordinary woman.

i had expected to be
smaller than this,
more beautiful,
wiser in Afrikan ways,
more confident,
i had expected
more than this.

i will be forty soon.
my mother once was forty.

my mother died at forty four,
a woman of sad countenance
leaving behind a girl
awkward as a stork.
my mother was thick,
her hair was a jungle and
she was very wise
and beautiful
and sad.

i have dreamed dreams
for you mama
more than once.
i have wrapped me
in your skin
and made you live again
more than once.
i have taken the bones you hardened
and built daughters
and they blossom and promise fruit
like afrikan trees.
i am a woman now.
an ordinary woman.

in the thirty eighth
year of my life,
surrounded by life,
a perfect picture of
blackness blessed,
i had not expected this
loneliness.

if it is western,
if it is the final
europe in my mind,
if in the middle of my life
i am turning the final turn
into the shining dark
let me come to it whole
and holy
not afraid
not lonely
out of mother’s life
into my own.
into my own.

i had expected more than this.
i had not expected to be
an ordinary woman.

OH BELOVED IT IS SO

THY WRATH, THY WRATH IS SO

THESE FEET, THESE BURNING FEET

MOVE UPON THY WRATH

PRAISE THEE IN THEIR DANCE

WITH OUTSTRETCHED PALMS

THY WRATH IS COME

CONSUMED IN FLAME

OF LIFE OF LOVE

MAY THY ANGER

BE SLOW, BE SWEET

MAY IT DISSIPATE

LIFT NOT THY HOLY HANDS

AGAINST ME

TAKE MY BURNING ARMS

MY TURNING SKIRTS

TO THY TRUTH

TO THY

TRANSPARENT

BREAST

nine

The eyes of children follow me as I walk through the streets
A clothesline waves in this November afternoon
The sea gulls dipping their wings in the harbor
Traffic roars across Houston Street
I just ate a potato pancake
it cost me twenty cents
O water towers
O beautiful sky
where are the angels
in the underground of cities shivering prostitutes
walk up Third Avenue
hard faces pass them by
faces of nickels and dimes and half dollars
I see aerials
drums are beating in a vacant loft
the cold air brushes against my face
history is a lie and time is a whore
The lips of dead dogs lie in the street
The twentieth century races by
and civilization is a worm that crawls sucking
Children smile at me as I walk by
their eyes like dandelions
No need to tell them what a poet is
The wagon is picking up some old rummies
One of these days I will run wild in the streets
and smell the indian corn under the pavements
The sky grows dark
The twilight is coming
O Manhattan where are the indians now
four million souls in the rattle of trains
four million
and a poet conquers a city
O city! infamous, cruel, undeserving
city of stone and lost loves
Those children’s eyes
I am blind to the sky
let the light shine
It is time to stop the clocks!
Most people want to love but they can’t
that is the crime
I want to be with angels!

_{In Siberia, during the wedding, the bride was required to wash the feet of the groom and drink the water. Only then was she
considered worthy to be taken as a wife.}

She lifts his right foot
then his left
soaping between the toes
scooping dirt from under nails
doing what must be done
scrubbing in unleavened silence.

Pale glue of tears clinging to lashes,
she licks her lips tasting the instant
when she was none other than herself
sitting in the kitchen
curtains drawn
floor swept
dipping into the curve and coil of wife
practicing
until she got it right.

The night before, she dreamt of spring shoots
pushing purple tongues through earth’s skin,
of babies swimming toward her
slippery as tadpoles
her unskilled hands can’t capture.
And in the morning, she awakes
to pinpricks of sun, birds
blading against the horizon.

This is her wedding day
air thick with accordion notes
swirling skirts, embroidered shirts
the smell of lamb and kumiss.

He sits like a boulder in the sun.
His voice makes him taller.
When he bends a listening face toward her
she unknots a smile

takes one last look over her shoulder
at childhood so remote
it belongs to someone else.
Nothing’s left Not a ribbon Not a thread
And lifts the basin to her lips.