April is National Poetry Month. It’s also Earth Month, STD Awareness Month, Mathematics Awareness Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, Financial Literacy Month, and Arab-American Month, too.
I don’t think I could conceivably combine all of those and if I tried the result would be awful, but the Poetry month so far has been really enjoyable thanks to the appearance of poems in my Twitter feed, my email inbox, and occasionally on public transport.
So I wanted to ask you: Do you have a favorite poem?
I have three favorites. The first line of ee cummings’ “i carry your heart” is carved inside Adam’s and my wedding bands
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
His reads, “i carry your heart.” Mine says, “i carry it in my heart.”
Amanda: I’m a huge e.e. fan and that is so sweet!
“If Your Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda was the first poem I remember crying to and reading it now, it still makes me cry. BRB, just sobbing for a minute.
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
Sarah: Wow.
Redheadedgirl: I like TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It’s a fave and has been for a long time, and weirdly, the poems of his we read (and over analyzed to DEATH) in high school I also love.
“Sweeney Among the Nightingales”
The circles of the stormy moon 5
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.
It’s just so much dread and danger.
Amanda: And then I have a special love for “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Anyone who could memorize it and recite it in my English class in high school would get extra credit. I memorized the shit out of that poem.
Sarah: I love how the poem is about the speaker knowing they’ll reminisce that they took the road “less traveled” when both paths were “really about the same.” Now it’s used to encourage people to take the less-traveled path – even though, if you read the whole poem, there was not much difference between the original paths in the yellow wood.
Elyse: I love “The Lady of Shallot.” And Loreena McKinnett turned it into a beautiful song.
Redheadedgirl: I also adore Langston Hughes’ use of rhythm.
That always makes me think of Anne Shirley.
“The Lady of Shallot,” not Hughes.
Elyse: True story: in sophomore English I had to write about “The Lady of Shallot” and Arthurian legend and I wrote that they should put a bag over Lancelot’s head because he’s fucking up stuff for women everywhere.
And I was told that was not valid literary criticism.
HAHA MOTHERFUCKER LOOK WHAT I DO FOR A JOB NOW
Redheadedgirl: There’s a thirteenth century French romance (in the classical sense) called Le Roman de Silence that’s an epic poem about the daughter of the earl of Cornwall who grew up raised as a boy.
Carrie: Scroll down to #5 – “Coastal”
a loon. It’s so sick,
she says when I ask.
Foolish kid,does she think she can keep
this emissary of air?
Is it trust or illness
It was printed as a solo poem in the New Yorker and I cut it out and have kept it over my desk for over twenty years because the girl in the poem represents the person I most wish to be.
I didn’t know it was part of a longer poem cycle until I looked for a link!
Sarah: You are that person. You are the girl and the loon.
Carrie: I actually did get to save a coastal bird on a beach once in Junior High on a field trip – it was caught in fishing line and I had a pocket knife and my friends held it while I cut it loose – it was very Disney.
Sarah: That’s pretty bad ass.
What about you? Do you have a favorite poem? Please share!
My favourite poem is “Am Mur Gorm” (The Blue Rampart) by Somhairle Macgill-Eain.
Mur b’e thusa bhiodh an Cuilithionn
‘na mhur eagarra gorm
ag crioslachadh le bhalla-criche
na tha ‘nam chridhe borb
Mur b’e thusa bhiodh a’ ghaineamh
tha’n Talasgar dumhail geal
‘na clar biothbhuan do mo dhuilean
air nach tilleadh an run-ghath
‘S mur b’e thusa bhiodh na cuantan
‘nan luasgan is ‘nan tamh
a’ togail cair mo bhuadhan
‘ga cur air suaimhneas ard
‘S bhiodh am monadh donn riabhach
agus mo chiall co-shint’
ach chuir thusa orra riaghladh
os cionn mo phianaidh fhin
Agus air creachainn chein fhasmhoir
chinn blathmhor Craobh nan Teud
‘na meangach duillich t’aodann
mo chiall is aogas reil
(But for you the Cuillin would be
an exact and serrated blue rampart
girding with its march-wall
all that is in my barbarous heart
But for you the sand
that is in Talisker compact and white
would be a measureless plain to my expectations
and on it the spear desire would not turn back
But for you the oceans
in their unrest and their repose
would raise the wave crest of my mind
and settle it on a high serenity
And the brown brindled moorland
and my reason would co-extend
but you imposed on them an edict
above my own pain
And on a distant luxuriant summit
there blossomed the Tree of Strings
among its leafy branches your face
my reason and the likeness of a star)
I love the imagery and lyricism and the references to the landscape and land that the poet knew so well. Simply gorgeous.
My other favourite poem is by “The Silver Tassie” by Rabbie Burns (sung in that link by Emily Smith).
When my husband and I were not long married, he was sent to Afghanistan (one of the very first teams on the ground in late 2001) and the night before the men left, they had a dinner. After the dinner there was dancing and entertainment and, at the very end of the night, there was a young Scottish captain who had a guitar who sang a few songs. Much wine and port and brandy had been consumed by that point and he started off with Beatles numbers and the like – all upbeat songs that were good to sing along to. As it neared 3am and people began to think about thinning out to prepare for deployment the following evening, he slowed things down and he ended with a very poignant rendition of that song. I have really vivid memories of that couple of minutes – you know the way some images and memories are truly burned on your consciousness. We were all tired, nervous and trying to keep our upper lips appropriately stiff. We’d had a good dinner and a lot of laughs and were all avoiding talk of the following day. Everyone was a little dishevelled – bowties undone, mess jackets off or loosened, spurs lying on tables etc and there was this blonde guy with a guitar singing this song with his whole heart. I can remember Matt reaching under the table and gripping my hand so hard I thought my knuckles would break and yet he still wasn’t holding on hard enough. *sniff*
There were few there who were not moved, especially as we all knew that Afghanistan was a much different kind of deployment to the more usual Kosovo/Bosnia/NI of recent years. It was years ago now and he has been to Afghanistan several times since then but every time I hear that song, I get chills down my spine.
This video is from a live perfomance on the BBC Alba’s Transatlantic Session.
The lyrics are below:
Gae bring tae me a pint o wine,
And fill it in a silver tassie;
That I may drink, afore I go,
A service tae my bnonie lassie:
The boat rocks at the Pier o’ Leith,
Fu’ loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry,
The ship rides by the Berwick-law,
And I maun leave my bonnie Mary.
The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
The glittering spearsthey are ranked ready,
The shouts o’ war are heard afar,
The battle closes deep and bloody.
It’s not the roar o’ sea or shore,
Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shouts o’ war that’s heard afar,
It’s leaving thee, my bonnie Mary!
I have two favorite poems. One Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130:
My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks:
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads upon the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied by false compare.
(The poet knows his love is somewhat less than perfect, but she’s still his one and only.)
The other is Sea Fever by John Masefield:
I must go down the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And the gray mist on the sea’s face and a gray dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
(Mom taught me this one as a kid. I got goosebumps and tears the time I recited it on the deck of the Star of India, the oldest active iron-hulled sailing ship, built in 1863.)
I have so many favourite poems…
Just about anything my John Donne, but here is just one:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173363
Ditto for Leonard Cohen. Here he is, reading his poem A Thousand Kisses Deep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXaRT8CXmGE
And finally, The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje:
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
— your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…
When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.
For sweet romance, my husband gave me this one a few months into our relationship:
‘Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Cryst, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!’
For something a little more bawdy, I cannot go past John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. This one may amuse (I’ll just do a few of my favourite verses):
You Ladyes all of Merry England
Who have been to kisse the Dutchesse’s hand,
Pray did you lately observe in the Show
A Noble Italian call’d Signior Dildo?
The Signior was one of her Highness’s Train
And helpt to Conduct her over the Main,
But now she Crys out to the Duke I will go,
I have no more need for Seignior Dildo.
This Signior is sound, safe, ready, and Dumb,
As ever was Candle, Carret, or Thumb:
Then away with these nasty devices, and Show
How you rate the just merits of Signior Dildo.
(See what I mean.)
I’m quite partial to Banjo Patterson, a turn of the 20th century Aussie poet. I like the rhythm of his work and how conversational it is while still being very evocative of what its like to live in Australia.
Clancy of the Overflow.
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec’, addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow’.
And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
‘Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
`Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper’ where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the ‘buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.
And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —
But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow’.
Seems to me like someone needs to write a poem in which an Arab-American mathematician and a hippie CPA are brought together by their mutual love of jazz.
My favorite poem is probably Ulysses by Tennyson, but I’ve got to share this one because it is the perfect tragic romance in poetic form. There’s also a really good musical version by Loreena McKennitt.
The Highwayman
BY ALFRED NOYES
PART ONE
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
. . .
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
@Virginia E., I too loved that poem growing up. It was certainly in the back of my mind when I joined the Navy.
Wow, great picks!
I’m not totally sure why, but I have loved To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell forever. There’s something so cheeky about the fact that this great, long piece that we make young people read in literature classes is really just a guy trying to get a gal into bed. While I normally prefer a guy to stop trying to persuade after a ‘no,’ there’s something so earnest and sweet in the narrator’s voice that it doesn’t come off creepy (to me, at least)– more like he’s just so passionate about her he can’t shut up. Plus, the meter and rhythm are just out of control: it makes you feel your heart racing as it picks up speed, especially in the final section, which keeps repeating now, now, now until you get to the beautiful thesis statement of the last lines, which are just my absolute favorite:
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
And on a different note, my other favorite is Remember by Christina Rossetti, which, for me, is the ideal of unselfish love:
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Tl;dr: if a poem has love, the specter of death, and a killer closing line, I’m there. 🙂
It’s been a rough time dealing with my mom’s stage iv cancer, building a business (a family vineyard and winery) and being a single homeowner, and while I often find a poem or two that resonates, there is one that has really been a benefit to me lately. Especially since I often feel caught between despair and thankfulness for the blessings in my life (because overall I’m really happy with my life – it’s just that some parts of it suck) and this just caught the feeling of trying to get through to me – of the hope that it will get better. Enough so that I’ve been drawing up sample tattoos.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
– Emily Dickinson
SB Sarah, you might enjoy Richard Armitage reciting the ee cummings poem here http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/richard-armitage-eargasm#.kllamN1N7
He also does Keats and Shakespeare – in fact the whole of the Classic Love Poems recording is wonderful.
I have a great many favorite poems, depending on the hour and my mood. But the one that catches me today is this, Sonnet XXX by Edna St Vincent Millay:
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
I was about to mention that very sonnet, Allison! Edna St. Vincent Millay has been one of my favorite poets since I discovered her in high school. I love her sonnets, I love her happy-in-love poem “Recuerdo”, but “Dirge Without Music” has always held a special place in my heart.
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
I don’t think I have one, but if I had to pick a favorite poet, I think I’d go with Shel Silverstein. Stuff in A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends still makes me laugh.
What a beautiful treat to read this post and all of your favorites. This is reminding me how much I enjoyed poetry during my English-major days. I haven’t read much since then, and that needs to change.
Two of my favorites: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot and “Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats. I won’t post Prufrock because it is lo-ong. But here is an illustrated version of it that made me love the poem in a while new way: http://julianpeterscomics.com/page-1-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-by-t-s-eliot/
Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” smacks me in the feels too.
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
One of my favorites is “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.
I love (and memorized) the Shakespeare sonnet that begins: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/When yellow leaves, or few, or none do hang/Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,/Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Also love Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
(Poetry, May 1919)
I never finished memorizing that one, though I did memorize Millay’s First Fig.
My candle burns at both ends.
It will not last the night:
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!
Finally, my greatest memorization triumph (meaning something I can still recite after 40+ years), which still makes me giggle madly:
The Fat Budgie
by John Lennon
I have a little budgie.
He is my very pal.
I take him walks in Britain.
I hope I always shall.
I call my budgie Jeffrey.
My Grandad’s name’s the same.
I call him after Grandad
Who had a feathered brain.
Some people don’t like budgies
The little yellow brats.
They eat them up for breakfast
And feed them to their cats.
My uncle ate a budgie.
It was so fat and fair.
I cried and called him Ronnie.
He didn’t seem to care
Although his name was Arthur.
It didn’t mean a thing.
He went into a petshop
And ate up everything.
The doctors looked inside him
To see what they could do
But he had been too greedy.
He died just like a zoo.
My Jeffrey chirps and twitters
When I walk into the room.
I make him scrambled eggs on toast
and feed him with a spoon.
He sings like other budgies,
But only when in trim.
But most of all on Sundays
That’s when I plug him in.
He flies about the room sometimes
And sits upon my bed
And if he’s really happy,
He does it on my head.
He’s on a diet now, you know,
From eating far too much.
They say if he gets fatter
He’ll have to wear a crutch.
It would be funny, wouldn’t it,
A budgie on a stick.
Imagine all the people
Laughing till they’re sick.
So that’s my budgie Jeffrey,
Fat and yellow too.
I love him more than Daddy,
And I’m only thirty-two.
(A Spaniard in the Works, sometime in the 60s/ please excuse my inaccurate punctuation; memory only works for words–mostly.)
‘The Ballad of Calgary Street’ by James K. Baxter was one I studied at school and always made me laugh (“Her polished oven spits with rage”) but my favourite poet is Hone Tuwhare and No Ordinary Sun is my fav poem of his – it’s evocative and scary.
Oh, gosh — me, too Lostshadows! My favorite:
If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore
I say the last four lines EVERY TIME I have to dry dishes.
A touchstone of mine since my college days has been “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. This poem has brought me strength at some dark times in my life, whether the dying of the light is fighting cancer or fear of losing my income.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
So many beloved poems in my life. Instead of sharing a poem, I offer a recommendation. Share poetry with the children you love when they are very young. For my 11th birthday I received The Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer, illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund. My parents showed me their favorite poems in the book, and although I often leafed through the book, poems revealed themselves to me as I became older. That book was my best company when I was home sick from school and remains the irreplaceable book in my life. The love for poetry it created survived high school English classes.
Here’s a poem I read as a young girl which has stuck with me to this day, Ragged John by Beatrice Farrington
Tattered clothes all fluttering
Worn out voice still muttering
Ragged John comes knocking
At all the doors in town.
And when a door swings open
Then you can hear the hope in
The thin, cracked voice that wonders
If you’ve seen his unicorn.
And we all know John is crazy
And his mind has gone all hazy
And the only thing we really wish
Is that he just would let us be.
But John, he keeps on questing
And the poor man knows no resting
For there’s something hurt within him.
And the pain won’t go away.
I’ve heard when John was younger
He was taken with a hunger
To see the white-horned wonder
They call the unicorn.
But when that star-horned, moon-maned dancer
Finally called, John could not answer;
Fear held him like a prisoner,
And he watched it walk away.
So now empty-eyed John hobbles
Across the village cobbles,
And the only fear he feels is
It will never come again.
Oh, when I watch old Ragged John
Go staggering by and wandering on,
I know there’s nothing sadder
Than a heart that feared its dreams.
If a unicorn should call to you
Some moon-mad night all washed in dew,
Then here’s the prayer to whisper:
Grant me the heart to follow.
It’s a toss up for me.
Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver
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,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear 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.
O
Colors passing through us
By Marge Piercy
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
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Marge Piercy, “Colors passing through us” from Colors Passing Through Us (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). First appeared in The Southern California Anthology 16 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999, 2003 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc. Used by permission of the Wallace Literary Agency, Inc.
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Poems on divers subjects:
“My-Oh-Wow! Book”
I’m lying here
and I’m sick in bed
with a terrible
horrible
pain in my head,
and these funny bumps
that my ma says look
like the chicken pox,
and my-oh-wow!-book,
and some Band-Aids (six)
for the spots I hurt
where I fell on stones
when I missed the dirt,
and my-oh-wow!-book,
and my swollen thumb
that the door slammed on,
and this aching stom-
ach from fifths on root beer
and thirds on pie,
and my-oh-wow!-book,
which I’m not gonna die
till I finish.
Judith Viorst
“Late Fragment”
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
“Portrait of the Artist”
Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the windows passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.
Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.
Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double…
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.
Dorothy Parker
“Portrait of the Artist”
Reading through this comments section is a treat!
Adding my own personal favorite, which I fell in love with because I am a sucker for good rhymes, and I love the theme of gentle, yet unyielding perseverance. And that last line is just so great.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
And one more:
“Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Women”
I learned in my credulous youth
That women are shallow as fountains.
Women make lies out of truth
And out of a molehill their mountains.
Women are giddy and vain,
Cold-hearted or tiresomely tender;
Yet, nevertheless, I maintain
I dote on the feminine gender.
(For the female of the species may be deadlier than the male
But she can make herself a cup of coffee
Without reducing the entire kitchen to a shambles.)
Perverse though their taste in cravats
Is deemed by their lords and their betters,
They know the importance of hats
And they write you the news in their letters.
Their minds may be lighter than foam,
Or altered in haste and in hurry,
But they seldom bring company home
When you’re warming up yesterday’s curry.
(And when lovely woman stoops to folly,
She does not invariably come in at four a.m.
Singing “Sweet Adeline”)
Oh, women are frail and they weep,
They are recklessly given to scions
But, unduly wakened from sleep,
They are milder than tigers and lions.
Women hang clothes on their pegs
Nor groan at the toil and the trouble.
Women have rather nice legs
And chins that are guiltless of stubble.
Women are restless, uneasy to handle,
But when they are burning both ends of the scandal,
They do not insist with a vow that is votive,
How high are their minds and how noble the motive.
As shopping companions they’re heroes and saints;
They meet you in tearooms nor murmur complaints;
They listen, entranced, to a list of your vapors;
At breakfast they sometimes emerge from the papers;
A Brave Little Widow’s not apt to sob-story ’em,
And they keep a cool head in a grocery emporium.
Yes, I rise to defend
The quite possible She,
For the feminine gend
Er is O.K. by me.
(Besides, everyone admits it’s a Man’s World,
And just look what they’ve done to it!)
Phyllis McGinley
I need to go back through and read all the poems posted here! My favorite isn’t the best for a romance website – it’s not very romantic. It’s kind of messed up. (Side note: have you heard Tom Hiddleston’s reading of ee cummings’ poem? OMG, look it up right now if you haven’t – if you have, you’re doing it because any mention of the fact that this recording exists will prompt you to revisit it).
Love Song: I and Thou
BY ALAN DUGAN
Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.
Alan Dugan, “Love Song: I and Thou” from Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry. Copyright © 2001 by Alan Dugan.
So many poems made an impact… The Rhyme if the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge gave me one of my best memories. In high school we had to memorize verses of it and recite parts of it in class. Well one evening my friends and I were trying to get the damn thing down and my friend says the following: did you notice how the stanza follow to the tune of The Gilligans Island theme? I dare you to not see it! I apologize in advance for the ear worm. 🙂
Water water everywhere and all the boards did shrink.
Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul.
If I may suggest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AWcixNpAs Enjoy! And you’re welcome.
Many of us mentioned the Beauty & the Beast series a few posts back and Beauty And The Beast – Of Love and Hope – Music & Poetry was one of the best things to come out of it. Bubble bath, glass of wine, Ron Perlman reading poetry: my end of the week stress reliever untill my Walkman burned out. I really need to find this on cd….
Also, HUGE Sonnets From the Portuguese fan – not the over used XLIII, but XXXVIII:
“First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, ‘My love, my own.'”
And XIV
“If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”
This one was a favorite of mine in high school, and I still like it.
The Preacher: Ruminates behind the Sermon by Gwendolyn Brooks
I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No. Despite
The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright
Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.
Picture Jehovah striding through the hall
Of his importance, creatures running out
From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout
Appreciation of His merit’s gaze.
But who walks with Him?–dares to take His arm,
To slap Him on the shoulder, tweak His ear,
Buy Him a Coca-Cola or a beer,
Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool?
Perhaps–who knows?–He tires of looking down.
Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight.
Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great
In solitude. Without a hand to hold.
I so enjoyed reading everyone’s posts. I am reminded of high school english; I always imagined the various poets rolling in their graves at the analyses their work was saddled with.
Thought I would mention (for the Robert Frost fans) that there is a collection of choral settings of his poems by Randall Thompson (the collection is titled “Frostiana”). Included are settings of “The Road Not Taken” (here is an example):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUn_SvcY1k8
and another favorite: “Choose Something Like a Star”. I’ve been lucky enough to sing both of these.
The poem I have carted with me since sixth grade? It’s one by Frank Horne, titled “Kid Stuff”. I even included it in my homemade Christmas cards one year (back when I had time for that sort of thing).
Kid Stuff
The wise guys
tell me
that Christmas
is Kid Stuff…
Maybe they’ve got
something there –
Two thousand years ago
the wise guys
chased a star
across a continent
to bring
frankincense and myrrh
to a Kid
born in a manger
with an idea in his head…
And as the bombs
crash
all over the world today
the real wise guys know
that we’ve all got to go
chasing stars
again
in the hope
that we can get back
some of that
Kid Stuff
born two thousand years ago.
Ever since I did my English Literature A level i have loved this poem about getting old,
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension
on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals,
and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired,
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,
And run my stick along the public railings,
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens,
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go,
Or only bread and pickle for a week,
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats
and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
And pay our rent and not swear in the street,
And set a good example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me
are not too shocked and surprised,
When suddenly I am old
and start to wear purple!
Jenny Joseph
This is going to be a bit long . . .
In chronological order:
Shakespeare
Sonnet 80
O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark inferior far to his
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or being wreck’d, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this; my love was my decay.
Sonnet 81
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
Henry King’s The Exequy, written upon the death of his first wife. I memorized the last third in high school and then it drove me nuts being incomplete in my head so memorized the whole thing. Only a link here though because it’s 119 lines long (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-exequy/)
And three from Edna St. Vincent Millay. I love most of her irk but I am especially fond of the more surprising ones, and Sonnet XLI is such a lovely antidote to poems like Richard Lovelace’s The Scrutiny (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180721) which I have memorized but fills me with rage regardless.
Sonnet XLI
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, —let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
To The Not Impossible Him
How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,–but oh, my dear
If I should ever travel!
A True Encounter
“Wolf!” cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.
“Wolf! Wolf!”—and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.
At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.
Crud.
I love most of Enda St. Vincent Millay’s WORK not her irk.
My mother read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments, etc.) at my wedding, which was lovely. (I chased my tail for weeks trying to think of a reading I’d like before I went ‘Hang on, I’ve actually only got one favourite love poem…’ *facepalm*).
Two more I really like:
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
by Ernest Dowson
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
Warming Her Pearls
by Carol Ann Duffy
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,
resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.
She’s beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.
I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.
Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head…. Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way
she always does…. And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.
“If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We’d hunt down Love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain.”
― Algernon Charles Swinburne
I had to memorize in the eighth grade, and have liked it for many years after.
Thank you for this celebration of poetry. So many of my favourites have already been included. I am re-reading Mary Oliver at the moment, but won’t include one of hers, even though I think she is a genius.
One of my most favourite poems was written by Seamus Heaney, the splendid Irish poet. I was privileged to hear him read part of it. It makes me cry every time I read it.
Clearances
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
She taught me what her uncle once taught her:
How easily the biggest coal block split
If you got the grain and hammer angled right.
The sound of that relaxed alluring blow,
Its co-opted and obliterated echo,
Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen,
Taught me between the hammer and the block
To face the music. Teach me now to listen,
To strike it rich behind the linear black.
1
A cobble thrown a hundred years ago
Keeps coming at me, the first stone
Aimed at a great-grandmother’s turncoat brow.
The pony jerks and the riot’s on.
She’s crouched low in the trap
Running the gauntlet that first Sunday
Down the brae to Mass at a panicked gallop.
He whips on through the town to cries of ‘Lundy!’
Call her ‘The Convert’. ‘The Exogamous Bride’.
Anyhow, it is a genre piece
Inherited on my mother’s side
And mine to dispose with now she’s gone.
Instead of silver and Victorian lace,
The exonerating, exonerated stone.
2
Polished linoleum shone there. Brass taps shone.
The china cups were very white and big—
An unchipped set with sugar bowl and jug.
The kettle whistled. Sandwich and tea scone
Were present and correct. In case it run,
The butter must be kept out of the sun.
And don’t be dropping crumbs. Don’t tilt your chair.
Don’t reach. Don’t point. Don’t make noise when you stir.
It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead,
Where grandfather is rising from his place
With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head
To welcome a bewildered homing daughter
Before she even knocks. ‘What’s this? What’s this?’
And they sit down in the shining room together.
3
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
4
Fear of affectation made her affect
Inadequacy whenever it came to
Pronouncing words ‘beyond her’. Bertold Brek.
She’d manage something hampered and askew
Every time, as if she might betray
The hampered and inadequate by too
Well-adjusted a vocabulary.
With more challenge than pride, she’d tell me, ‘You
Know all them things.’ So I governed my tongue
In front of her, a genuinely well-
Adjusted adequate betrayal
Of what I knew better. I’d naw and aye
And decently relapse into the wrong
Grammar which kept us allied and at bay.
5
The cool that came off sheets just off the line
Made me think the damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we’d stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she’d sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.
6
In the first flush of the Easter holidays
The ceremonies during Holy Week
Were highpoints of our Sons and Lovers phase.
The midnight fire. The paschal candlestick.
Elbow to elbow, glad to be kneeling next
To each other up there near the front
Of the packed church, we would follow the text
And rubrics for the blessing of the font.
As the hind longs for the streams, so my soul. . .
Dippings. Towellings. The water breathed on.
The water mixed with chrism and with oil.
Cruet tinkle. Formal incensation
And the psalmist’s outcry taken up with pride:
Day and night my tears have been my bread.
7
In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
‘You’ll be in New Row on Monday night
And I’ll come up for you and you’ll be glad
When I walk in the door . . . Isn’t that right?’
His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed.
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
8
I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high.
I heard the hatchet’s differentiated
Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh
And collapse of what luxuriated
Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all.
Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.
Seamus Heaney, “Clearances” from Opened Ground: Selected poems 1966-1996. Copyright © 1990 by Seamus Heaney. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://www.fsgbooks.com. All rights reserved.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: Opened Ground: Selected poems 1966-1996 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990)
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I love this. My favorite, the one we printed on our wedding programs seven years ago, is Summons by Robert Francis:
Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.
I also love ‘i carry your heart with me’, Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (oh, yeah!), and I remember ugly crying over WHen You are Old by Yeats as a teenager…as if I knew what old was then! I also have a soft spot for The Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash for the ultimate in self-reliant heroines:
sabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry.
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.
Once in a night as black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch.
the witch’s face was cross and wrinkled,
The witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled.
Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,
I’ll turn you into an ugly toad!
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry,
She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,
But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.
Isabel met a hideous giant,
Isabel continued self reliant.
The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forhead.
Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,
I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.
She nibled the zwieback that she always fed off,
And when it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off.
Isabel met a troublesome doctor,
He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.
The doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills
And the doctor’s satchel bulged with pills.
The doctor said unto Isabel,
Swallow this, it will make you well.
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.
She took those pills from the pill concocter,
And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.
This is a great thread! @The Other Kate, I love “Ulysses” by Tennyson! This verse:
“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone;”
And then the climax always give me chills; I used it in a memorial to my father:
“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 that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; 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.”
I like the beat poets, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg. This is from Ginsberg’s poem, “A Supermarket in California”
“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!–and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?”
And many, many others, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Dylan Thomas, Yeats.
Here is Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hops”
“these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top”
not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty
Elizabeth Austen, “On Punctuation,” from The Girl Who Goes Alone. Seattle: Floating Bridge Press, 2010.