*Poem of the day thread

[Greebo]

Corruptive

The dark wood after the dark wood: the cold
after cold in April's false November.
In that second worser place: more gone, less there,
but in that lurid present present, cast and held,

rooted, kept, like some old false-berried yew.
Just against; the door leading to preferment
shut; no longer believing in still, by some, few
means, method, could be, but for the bad day set,

left, leaning atop bad day.
Out- and un-

ranked, toothached, wronged— rankled corruptive thing!
Ill-wishing, in-iquitous, clipped, up-hoped, stripped: just plain: thin.
Dare thy commit: commit this final fatal sin:
God my God, I am displeased by spring.

by Olena Kalytiak Davis

 

[Dillinger4]

 

[Dillinger4]

The Black Walnut Tree by Mary Oliver

My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood–an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don't do
anything. That night I dream
of my fathers out of Bohemia
filling the blue fields
of fresh and generous Ohio
with leaves and vines and orchards.
What my mother and I both know
is that we'd crawl with shame
in the emptiness we'd made
in our own and our fathers' backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.

 

[Dillinger4]

Future Work by Fleur Adcock

It is going to be a splendid summer.
The apple tree will be thick with golden russets
expanding weightily in the soft air.
I shall finish the brick wall beside the terrace
and plant out all the geranium cuttings.
Pinks and carnations will be everywhere.

She will come out to me in the garden,
her bare feet pale on the cut grass,
bringing jasmine tea and strawberries on a tray.
I shall be correcting the proofs of my novel
(third in a trilogy–simultaneous publication
in four continents); and my latest play

will be in production at the Aldwych
starring Glenda Jackson and Paul Scofield
with Olivier brilliant in a minor part.
I shall probably have finished my translations
of Persian creation myths and the Pre-Socratics
(drawing new parallels) and be ready to start

on Lucretius. But first I'll take a break
at the chess championships in Manila–
on present form, I'm fairly likely to win.
And poems? Yes, there will certainly be poems:
they sing in my head, they tingle along my nerves.
It is all magnificently about to begin.

 

[Dillinger4]

After a long winter, giving
each other nothing, we collide
with blossoms in our hands.

 

[Dillinger4]

Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles From Tintern Abbey by Billy Collins

I was here before, a long time ago,
and now I am here again
is an observation that occurs in poetry
as frequently as rain occurs in life.

The fellow may be gazing
over an English landscape,
hillsides dotted with sheep,
a row of tall trees topping the downs,

or he could be moping through the shadows
of a dark Bavarian forest,
a wedge of cheese and a volume of fairy tales
tucked into his rucksack.

But the feeling is always the same.
It was better the first time.
This time is not nearly as good.
I'm not feeling as chipper as I did back then.

Something is always missing–
swans, a glint on the surface of a lake,
some minor but essential touch.
Or the quality of things has diminished.

The sky was a deeper, more dimensional blue,
clouds were more cathedral-like,
and water rushed over rock
with greater effervescence.

From our chairs we have watched
the poor author in his waistcoat
as he recalls the dizzying icebergs of childhood
and mills around in a field of weeds.

We have heard the poets long-dead
declaim their dying
from a promontory, a riverbank,
next to a haycock, within a copse.

We have listened to their dismay,
the kind that issues from poems
the way water issues forth from hoses,
the way the match always gives its little speech on fire.

And when we put down the book at last,
lean back, close our eyes,
stinging with print,
and slip in the bookmark of sleep,

we will be schooled enough to know
that when we wake up
a little before dinner
things will not be nearly as good as they once were.

Something will be missing
from this long, coffin-shaped room,
the walls and windows now
only two different shades of gray

the glossy gardenia drooping
in its chipped terra-cotta pot.
Shoes, socks, ashtray, the shroud of curtains,
the browning core of an apple.

Nothing will be as it was
a few hours ago, back in the glorious past
before our naps, back in that Golden Age
that drew to a close sometime shortly after lunch.

 

[Dillinger4]

Grammar by Tony Hoagland

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's conjugated a verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

 

[Dillinger4]

April Love by Ernest Dowson

We have walked in Love's land a little way,
We have learnt his lesson a little while,
And shall we not part at the end of day,
With a sigh, a smile?

A little while in the shine of the sun,
We were twined together, joined lips, forgot
How the shadows fall when the day is done,
And when Love is not.

We have made no vows--there will none be broke,
Our love was free as the wind on the hill,
There was no word said we need wish unspoke,
We have wrought no ill.

So shall we not part at the end of day,
Who have loved and lingered a little while,
Join lips for the last time, go our way,
With a sigh, a smile?

 

[Dillinger4]

Around this time last year (was it last year?!?) I was seeing someone and it didn't work out, and I found that poem just at that particular moment. I didn't look for it. Like it found me. It gave me a bit of solace. Spring heart.

 

[Dillinger4]

Midnight Song of the Seasons: Spring Song by Yue Fu

The spring wind moves a spring heart,
My eye flows to gaze at the mountain forest.
The mountain forest's extraordinarily beautiful,
The bright spring birds are pouring out clear sound.

 

[Greebo]

WHY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH IS NOT AS FAMOUS AS HER BROTHER

"I wandered lonely as a...
They're in the top drawer, William,
Under your socks -
I wandered lonely as a -
No not that drawer, the top one.
I wandered by myself -
Well wear the ones you can find.
No, don't get overwrought my dear, I'm coming.
"I wandered lonely as a -
Lonely as a cloud when -
Soft-boiled egg, yes my dear,
As usual, three minutes -
As a cloud which floats -
Look, I said I'll cook it,
Just hold on will you -
All right, I'm coming.

"One day I was out for a walk
When I saw this flock -
It can't be too hard, it had three minutes.
Well put some butter in it. -
This host of golden daffodils
As I was out for a stroll one -
"Oh you fancy a stroll, do you?
Yes all right, William, I'm coming.
It's on the peg. Under your hat.
I'll bring my pad, shall I, in case
You want to jot something down?"

Lynn Peters

 

[Greebo]

<snip> I didn't look for it. Like it found me. It gave me a bit of solace. Spring heart.

They do that sometimes.

 

[Ceej]

Dillinger4 - I love that Mary Oliver one so much.

Epitaph On The World by Henry David Thoreau
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
‘Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when ’twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.

 

[Dillinger4]

Dillinger4 - I love that Mary Oliver one so much.

I have posted this one before, but it bears repeating:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

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 your 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.

 

[Dillinger4]

Clear Morning by Ho Chi Minh

The morning sun
shines over the prison wall,

And drives away the shadows
and miasma of hopelessness.

A life-giving breeze
blows across the earth.

A hundred imprisoned faces
smile once more.

 

[Dillinger4]

A Colour of the Sky by Tony Hoagland

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

 

[Dillinger4]

Jet by Tony Hoagland

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

 

[Dillinger4]

Hard Rain by Tony Hoagland

After I heard It's a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood: there's nothing
we can't pluck the stinger from,

nothing we can't turn into a soft-drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people

quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.

"You can't keep beating yourself up, Billy,"
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
"about all those people you killed—
You just have to be the best person you can be,
one day at a time—"

And everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood—
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,

but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—

whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.

 

[Dillinger4]

Beauty by Tony Hoagland

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I’m probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

 

[Dillinger4]

Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen by Gary Snyder

In the high seat,
before-dawn dark,

Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging on Poorman
Creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.

 

[Dillinger4]

The First Madrigal by Anna Swir

That night of love was pure
as an antique musical instrument
and the air around it.

Rich
as a ceremony of coronation.
It was fleshy as a belly of a woman in labor
and spiritual
as a number.

It was only a moment of life
and it wanted to be a conclusion drawn from life.
By dying
it wanted to comprehend the principle of the world.

That night of love
had ambitions.

 

[Pickman's model]

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
By Thomas Gray

’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.

 

[Greebo]

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them,
say I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

W. H. Auden

 

[Greebo]

Possibly NSFW although Donne and Shakespeare could sneak far stronger stuff under the radar.

Spoiler

Fetish

I can see this relationship tanking,
so it's time to be honest, I think.
In the space between dreaming and wanking,
I've developed a striking new kink.

Though I used to be coy and coquettish,
as all men like their women to be,
my new-leaf aspirational fetish
is demanding, "what's in it for me?"

I can see this might be disconcerting
for a man who likes hookers and porn,
in whose mind every female is squirting
to the sound of his name, dusk till dawn,

so let's get you some sex education
with incentives: my Love USP
is undying devout adoration
but first tell me: what's in it for me?

You would like me to make you my hero,
to discuss, at great length, Aston Villa;
in exchange you are offering zero;
one-way traffic. So dull. So vanilla.

I'll forgive your flawed pacing (too snaily);
I'll provide all you need, and for free,
and I'm happy to email you daily
if you tell me what's in it for me.

Is it something I'm presently lacking?
A locked room with an out-of-reach key?
If you want my support and my backing
then I think anyone would agree
you must tell me what's in it for me.

Please, before I'm a hundred and three,
can you tell me what's in it for me?

Samantha Willis

 

[Greebo]

(a loose translation follows)
Warum - das weiß ich nicht

Ich schreibe ein Gedicht,
warum - das weiß ich nicht.
Vielleicht ist's wegen dir,
vielleicht auch wegen mir.
Wenn du es liesst, wird's deines sein,
wenn ich es les', wird's meines sein.
So ist halt ein Gedicht.
Warum - das weiß ich nicht

Wolfgang Doll (from "Der Bücherwurm - Gedichte zum Lächeln und Lachen")
............
The reason is unknown

I'm writing a poem,
the reason is unknown.
Perhaps because of you,
perhaps cos of me too.
When you read it it'll be thine,
when I read it, it'll be mine.
It's just a simple poem,
the reason is unknown.

 

[Dillinger4]

Possibly NSFW although Donne and Shakespeare could sneak far stronger stuff under the radar.

Spoiler

Fetish

I can see this relationship tanking,
so it's time to be honest, I think.
In the space between dreaming and wanking,
I've developed a striking new kink.

though I used to be coy and coquettish,
as all men like their women to be,
my new-leaf aspirational fetish
is demanding, "what's in it for me?"

I can see this might be disconcerting
for a man who likes hookers and porn,
in whose mind every female is squirting
to the sound of his name, dusk till dawn,

so let's get you some sex education
with incentives: my Love USP
is undying devout adoration
but first tell me: what's in it for me?

You would like me to make you my hero,
to discuss, at great length, Aston Villa;
in exchange you are offering zero;
one-way traffic. So dull. So vanilla.

I'll forgive your flawed pacing (too snaily);
I'll provide all you need, and for free,
and I'm happy to email you daily
if you tell me what's in it for me.

Is it something I'm presently lacking?
A locked room with an out-of-reach key?
If you want my support and my backing
then I think anyone would agree
you must tell me what's in it for me.

Please, before I'm a hundred and three,
can you tell me what's in it for me?

Samantha Willis

A question I often ask myself (but in reverse - 'What's in it for you?'). The only answer I can find is that I have almost nothing tangible to offer.

 

[Greebo]

A question I often ask myself (but in reverse - 'What's in it for you?'). The only answer I can find is that I have almost nothing tangible to offer.

What about the intangible?

 

[Dillinger4]

What about the intangible?

More of that. It doesn't always seem like a good thing.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

It's the best thing Dill.

 

[Dillinger4]

I think so.