The art of poetry.

"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful." - Rita Dove, 1952 - present. A collection of poesies for the poetic souls. There will be no new posts; this tumblelog is is now an archive.

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September Song

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by Geoffrey Hill

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable you were not. Not forgotten or passed over at the proper time. As estimated, you died. Things marched, sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries. (I have made an elegy for myself it is true) September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. This is plenty. This is more than enough. 

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To Have Without Holding

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by Marge Piercy 

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind  roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously,  conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can’t do it, you say it’s killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

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The Primer

by Christina Davis

She said, I love you. He said, Nothing.  (As if there were just one  of each word and the one  who used it, used it up).  In the history of language the first obscenity was silence.

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Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age

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by Margaret Atwood

I know I change have changed but whose is this vapid face pitted and vast, rotund suspended in empty paper as though in a telescope the granular moon I rise from my chair pulling against gravity I turn away and go out into the garden I revolve among the vegetables, my head ponderous reflecting the sun in shadows from the pocked ravines cut in my cheeks, my eye- sockets 2 craters among the paths I orbit the apple trees white white spinning stars around me I am being eaten away by light

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Last Picnic

by Charles Simic

Before the fall rains come, Let’s have one more picnic, Now that the leaves are turning color And the grass is still green in places.

Bread, cheese and some black grapes Ought to be enough, And a bottle of red wine to toast the crows Puzzled to find us sitting here.

If it gets cold—and it will—I’ll hold you close. Night will come early. We’ll watch the sky, hoping for a full moon To light our way home.

And if there isn’t one, we’ll put all our trust  In your book of matches And my sense of direction As we grope our way in the dark.

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Ditty of First Desire

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by Federico García Lorca

  In the green morning I wanted to be a heart. A heart.

  And in the ripe evening I wanted to be a nightingale. A nightingale.

  (Soul, turn orange-colored. Soul, turn the color of love.)

  In the vivid morning I wanted to be myself. A heart.

  And at the evening’s end I wanted to be my voice. A nightingale.

  Soul, turn orange-colored. Soul, turn the color of love.

—

From Selected Verse, Songs, 1921-1924  translated by Alan S. Trueblood

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(once like a spark)

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by e. e. cummings

(once like a spark) if strangers meet life begins— not poor not rich (only aware) kind neither nor cruel (only complete) i not not you not possible; only truthful —truthfully,once if strangers(who deep our most are selves)touch: forever (and so to dark)

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A Girl

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by Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands,  the sap has ascended my arms,  the tree has grown in my breast - downward,  the branches grow out of me, like arms.  Tree you are, moss you are,  you are violets with wind above them.  A child - so high - you are,  and all this is folly to the world. 

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Visible World, Richard Siken

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diamondnight:

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow flat on the wall. The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs. You had not expected this, the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light pummeling you in a stream of fists. You raised your hand to your face as if to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light streamed straight to the bone, as if you were the small room closed in glass with every speck of dust illuminated. The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.

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Love's Secret

by William Blake

Never seek to tell thy love,  Love that never told can be;  For the gentle wind does move  Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,  I told her all my heart;  Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,  Ah! she did depart!

Soon as she was gone from me,  A traveler came by,  Silently, invisibly  He took her with a sigh.

[heliophobus]

The Gardener (41)

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by Rabindranath Tagore

I long to speak the deepest words I have to say to you; but I  dare not, for fear you should laugh.  That is why I laugh at myself and shatter my secret in jest.  I make light of my pain, afraid you should do so.

I long to tell you the truest words I have to say to you; but I  dare not, being afraid that you would not believe them.  That is why I disguise them in untruth, saying the contrary of  what I mean.  I make my pain appear absurd, afraid that you should do so.

I long to use the most precious words I have for you; but I dare  not, fearing I should not be paid with like value.  That is why I gave you hard names and boast of my callous  strength.  I hurt you, for fear you should never know any pain.

I long to sit silent by you; but I dare not lest my heart come  out at my lips.  That is why I prattle and chatter lightly and hide my heart  behind words.  I rudely handle my pain, for fear you should do so.

I long to go away from your side; but I dare not, for fear my  cowardice should become known to you.  That is why I hold my head high and carelessly come into your  presence.  Constant thrusts from your eyes keep my pain fresh for ever.

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Forty Years by Mary Oliver

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pausesandsilences:

for forty years the sheets of white paper have passed under my hands and I have tried      to improve their peaceful   emptiness putting down little curls little shafts of letters words      little flames leaping not one page was less to me than fascinating discursive full of cadence      its pale nerves hiding in the curves of the Qs behind the soldierly Hs in the webbed feet of the Ws      forty years and again this morning as always I am stopped as the world comes back wet and beautiful I am thinking      that language is not even a river is not a tree is not a green field is not even a black ant traveling      briskly modestly from day to day from one golden page to another. —Mary Oliver, “Forty Years,” from West Wind (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

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Like Kerosene

by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Yes, it’s daily that we move into each other—but this morning I was separate even from myself— my hands were shovels, I had mosquito netting for hair, and the insect beating against the night was my heart. My name was hallow and the sky was made of shale when I walked into a part of morning I’ve never seen: the sky still heavy, still smoldering with the nightmares of others, the drunkenness and sorrow rising like dew, like fog, like smoke back into the clouds. Suddenly, my face was wet with it. I wanted to lie down with it. To rest against the almost exhausted night. Uncertain of what to do there I started dividing the layers, the sediment, thinking: Usually I sleep through his sadness. And the morning asking: Why do you keep track of the middle of the day when you should be waxing the moon? How can these young fragile branches be left out in the darkness, and who set that darkness wandering inside your heart? Who can your love ignite, like this, like kerosene? And then the sky lit the morning. And then I went in to set my own house on fire. And then I lay down next to you: a body filling with feathers or with snow asking: and who are you that my love can light like this, like kerosene.

(discovered from here)

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The circle game

by Margaret Atwood

i

The children on the lawn joined hand to hand go round and round each arm going into

the next arm, around full circle until it comes back into each of the single bodies again

They are singing, but not to each other: their feet move almost in time to the singing

We can see the concentration on their faces, their eyes fixed on the empty moving spaces just in front of them.

We might mistake this tranced moving for joy but there is no joy in it

We can see (arm in arm) as we watch them go round and round intent, almost studious (the grass underfoot ignored, the trees circling the lawn ignored, the lake ignored) that the whole point for them of going round and round is (faster        slower) going round and round More

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After Love

by Maxine W. Kumin

Afterward, the compromise. Bodies resume their boundaries. These legs, for instance, mine. Your arms take you back in. Spoons of our fingers, lips admit their ownership. The bedding yawns, a door blows aimlessly ajar and overhead, a plane singsongs coming down. Nothing is changed, except there was a moment when the wolf, the mongering wolf who stands outside the self lay lightly down, and slept.

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Firework

by Stacie Cassarino

The day my body caught fire the woodland darkened. The horizon was a sea of maids, rushing to piece me back into a girl. Out of the girl came yellow flowers, came stem & sepal. You never happened, they said. The meadow was a narration of lessness. Inside the corral, horses fell from the impact of lightning. They broke down. I heard gunshots in my sleep. I was a keeper of breath, of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones. You can build a house out of bones. You can stand at the doorway quarrelling with your legs to enter or run until you turn to ash.