Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end of his life, found the names of familiar objects escaping him. He wanted to say something about a window, or a table, or a book on a table. But the word wasn't there, although other words could still suggest the shape of what he meant. Then someone, his wife perhaps, would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry, is there a draft?" He'd nod. She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by to visit, shook out his umbrella in the hall, remarked upon the rain. Later the word umbrella vanished and became the thing that strangers take away. Paper, pen, table, book: was it possible for a man to think without them? To know that he was thinking? We remember that we forget, he'd written once, before he started to forget. Three times he was told that Longfellow had died. Without the past, the present lay around him like the sea. Or like a ship, becalmed, upon the sea. He smiled to think he was the captain then, gazing off into whiteness, waiting for the wind to rise.
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INCANTATION by Czeslaw Milosz
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.
WHOA, MAN
THE PHOENIX HOPE
"The phoenix hope
can wing her way through the desert skies
and still defying fortune's spite
revive from ashes and rise."
~Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
AS ONCE THE WINGED ENERGY OF DELIGHT by Rainer Maria Rilke
As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.
SYMPTOM RECITAL by Dorothy Parker
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men….
I'm due to fall in love again.
IN THE DESERT by Stephen Crane
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON
To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under the heavens:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck
up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a
time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a
time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to
refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence,
and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
FOG by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER by Walt Whitman
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
SPRING by Edna St. Vincent Millay
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
ZEN MASTER RYOKAN
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
~Ryokan
TOTALLY LIKE WHATEVER, YOU KNOW? By Taylor Mali
In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?
Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?
What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!
And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!
I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?
Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?
What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!
And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!
I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.
WHEN THEY SLEEP
All people are children when they sleep.
There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
-- God, teach me the language of sleep.
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
-- God, teach me the language of sleep.
~Rolf Jacobsen
HAIKU by Basho [1644-1694]
The temple bell stops —
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
LOOK IT OVER by Wendell Berry
Received a letter from Dad today,
poetry enclosed, as is his habit:
"Here's a poem by the Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry.
It may be almost the perfect poem for me,
so I wanted y'all to read it too..."
LOOK IT OVER
I leave behind even
my walking stick. My knife
is in my pocket, but that
I have forgot. I bring
no car, no cell phone,
no computer, no camera,
no CD player, no fax, no
TV, not even a book. I go
into the woods. I sit down on
a log provided at no cost.
It is the earth I've come to,
the earth itself, sadly
abused by the stupidity
only humans are capable of
but, as ever, itself. Free.
A bargain! Get it while it lasts!
SAGUARO by Brenda Hillman
Often visitors there, saddened
by lack of trees, go out
to a promontory.
Then, backed by the banded
sunset, the trail
of the Conquistadores,
the father puts on the camera,
the leather albatross,
and has the children
imitate saguaros. One
at a time they stand there smiling,
fingers up like the tines of a fork
while the stately saguaro
goes on being entered
by wrens, diseases, and sunlight.
The mother sits on a rock,
arms folded
across her breasts. To her
the cactus looks scared,
its needles
like hair in cartoons.
With its arms in preacher
or waltz position,
it gives the impression
of great effort
in every direction,
like the mother.
Thousands of these gray-green
cacti cross the valley:
nature repeating itself,
children repeating nature,
father repeating children
and mother watching.
Later, the children think
the cactus was moral,
had something to teach them,
some survival technique
or just regular beauty.
But what else could it do?
The only protection
against death
was to love solitude.
YOU DON'T KNOW ME by Cindy Walker
You give your hand to me
And then you say "hello"
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me
No, you don't know the one
Who dreams of you at night
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
To you I'm just a friend
That's all I've ever been
'Cause you don't know me
For I never knew the art of making love
Though my heart aches with love for you
Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by
A chance that you might love me too
You give your hand to me
And then you say "goodbye"
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
No, you'll never ever know
The one who loved you so
Well, you don't know me
For I never knew the art of making love
Though my heart aches with love for you
Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by
A chance that you might love me too
You give your hand to me
And then you say "goodbye"
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh, you'll never, ever know
The one who loved you so
Well, you don't know me
POWER & POETRY
"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."
~John F. Kennedy
RÉSUMÉ by Dorothy Parker
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
PUT DOWN THE DUCKY
WHAT TEACHERS MAKE
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
MIGHT AS WELL DANCE
"We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance."
~From the Awa Odori, a Japanese traditional dance
BETWEEN THE SHADOW AND THE SOUL by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep