Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.


- Maggie Smith

[Larry Robinson]

A Song Of Peace

I closed my eyes in darkness
and opened them in light,
and over the world,
like a flag unfurled,
was a sweet sound and a holy sight.

A dove spread wings of magic;
its shadow was golden and broad,
and the people of earth,
in a passion of birth,
had shattered an ancient sword.

Oh, why is my country hated
and made such a thing of scorn,
this fruitful place
with its varied race,
this land where I was born?

And why is my country darkened,
when the rest of the world is light,
and cloaked in fear
of things once dear,
and weak in its frightful might?

And why are the people silent,
and where is the ancient song
that mankind found
was freedom's sound,
to shatter injustice and wrong?

We'll not have our country hated!
Our country is strong and grand.
Oh, be not dismayed
by those who betrayed
the heritage of our land.

If a song can be made so simple,
if a word can become a creed,
then the sound of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

Ask not why the land is silent;
let the people measure their toil,
and the human race
will share its grace
with the lonely folk of our soil.

Its grace is new and holy,
and peace is the dream of the world,
and the people of earth
in a passion of birth
will see their banner unfurled.

The banner is pure and sacred,
enough of the swine who destroy!
Enough of the night,
the world is bright-
and the future is filled with-joy.

Our cup is running over
with the graft and the lies and the hate,
and the renegade
is too well paid
with our broken dreams and our children's fate.

We'll open our eyes in the darkness,
and boldly look to the light,
and call to our side
with earnest pride
our people who dwell in the night.

And they'll see the dove so holy,
so pure and wide of wing,
wide as the earth
in its passion of birth-
with a joyful song to sing.

And the lilt will be made so simple,
and the word will become a creed,
and the song of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

- Howard Fast

[aFlowerChild]

Oh MY~ I hope I never look at a bird
to only think of a stone that might come by
Or receive a kindness from a stranger
even while thinking there might be one to bag me
I hope that I ever see the world as delightful and beautiful
Never mind the stains.

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.


- Maggie Smith

[Larry Robinson]

The Dugout

They like it here
shaded from the sun, drinking Gatorade
in the dugout among the solitude
of brothers.

After one strikes out
or misses a ball,
angry fathers climb the gated fence
that separates spectators
from players and curse.
All night only the male crickets chirp,

nocturnal and cold-blooded.
They take on the temperature
of their surroundings.
They run the top of one wing
along the teeth
at the bottom of the other.

Their wings up and open
like acoustical sails, the sound relentless
and unending.

- Jill Bialosky

[Larry Robinson]

The House Dog’s Grave

I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read–and I fear often grieving for me–
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided. . . .
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

- Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

Marrying Tricia Nixon

I woke up this morning recalling that Thanksgiving Day in 1962
when my seventeen-year-old self, having moved on, like a skin-shedding snake,
from his terrible, world-ending imaginings during the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous month,
had persuaded my boss, Dudley Stephenson, the wimpish,
vaguely effeminate bachelor librarian at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher
(with forty-seven lawyers then California's third-largest law firm),
to drive up Doheny Drive to Trousdale Estates, in the upper reaches of Beverly Hills,
park in front of Richard Nixon's house, and indulge the fantasy of a kid,
not two years liberated from the banal exile of foster care,
that my hero with the five o'clock shadow,
no doubt still licking his wounds from his recent loss of the California governor's race,
would drive out in his powder blue Oldsmobile 98,
take note of me, cheer up immediately,
and come to decide that I should, of course, marry Tricia.

- Bill Dickinson

[Larry Robinson]

America: A Prophecy (excerpt)

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.

For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.

- William Blake

[Larry Robinson]

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted


When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The ride you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the
Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly
accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his
freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

- W. H. Auden

[BothSidesNow]

Thanks to this grieving praising poem, many more than a few thousand think of this day every year. Thanks to you, Larry. Janet

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
...

[Larry Robinson]

Foreseeing


Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it’s as if you’d reached
the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,
so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,
but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time
you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,
the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty
of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can’t help
but admire it from afar,
especially now, while it’s simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,
waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate
by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you
define the landscape,
remind you that it won’t go on
like this forever.


- Sharon Bryan


“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
- Wendell Berry

[Roland Jacopetti]

One of my favorite poems by one of the great poets of the age. Thanks, Larry.
Roland

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
...

- W. H. Auden

[Larry Robinson]

Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
You dweller in the dark cabin,
To whom the watermelon is always purple,
Whose garden is wind and moon,

Of the two dreams, night and day,
What lover, what dreamer, would choose
The one obscured by sleep?

Here is the plantain by your door
And the best cock of red feather
That crew before the clocks.

A feme may come, leaf-green,
Whose coming may give revel
Beyond revelries of sleep,

Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,
So that the sun may speckle,
While it creaks hail.

You dweller in the dark cabin,
Rise, since rising will not waken,
And hail, cry hail, cry hail.

- Wallace Stevens

[Larry Robinson]

#PHILANDOCASTILE

My granddaughter just turned four,
she holds as many fingers in the air and smiles,
our ancestral gap between her two front teeth,
her pearly face blushed.

She loves to sing and stands beside me
on a chair to help with food prep,
asks surprisingly complex questions
I often struggle to explain to her satisfaction.

I don’t know what to do with the headlines this morning.
I don’t want fear and hatred to win.

What words can I give you, Lavish,
that could possibly serve?

I can’t get out of my head,
your four-year-old girl comforting you,
you in handcuffs, partner dead.

Your courage, the facts, sir, the facts.
I see it. I hear it.
It's in my mouth, my lungs.
I cannot stop hearing her voice.

Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years, old.

- Kari Gunter-Seymour

[Larry Robinson]

Why I don't go to church (much)

Shit
late to kid's 1st communion mtg
(discretely) remove dripping raincoat in the empy front row
why stand in the back and not sit up front
will never understand people

kind Sr. Pat flushed shiny joyfully
gives her speil
asks 200 parents who here is "holy"?

I most minisculely tilt my head squinting ? trick question
ponder 0.7 seconds, raise my hand she grins even wider, nods at me

Shit again
I turn
of course, no other hands up
I say they all are, Sr. they just forgot

(note to kid: don't ever forget something THAT important)

- Diana Neill

[Roland Jacopetti]

Ah, Catholicism!

Why I don't go to church (much)

Shit
late to kid's 1st communion mtg
(discretely) remove dripping raincoat in the empy front row
why stand in the back and not sit up front
will never understand people

kind Sr. Pat flushed shiny joyfully
gives her speil
asks 200 parents who here is "holy"?

I most minisculely tilt my head squinting ? trick question
ponder 0.7 seconds, raise my hand she grins even wider, nods at me

Shit again
I turn
of course, no other hands up
I say they all are, Sr. they just forgot

(note to kid: don't ever forget something THAT important)

- Diana Neill

[Larry Robinson]

@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem

RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police
officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith,
Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all
their families. And to all those injured.


Let us celebrate the lives of all
As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths
Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace
& chanted Black Lives Matter
Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect
Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,
Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke
Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately
Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find
The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing

Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him
what happened in Afghanistan
what
flames burned inside

(Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot
Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm
& a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was
That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)

This could be the first step
in the new evaluation of our society This could be
the first step of all of our lives

- Juan Felipe Herrera
(America’s Poet Laureate)

[Larry Robinson]

Finding

The Hindus tell the story
that God was trying to choose a place
where He could hide from man.
Where was the last place
that man would think to look
for Him?
And he chose
the human heart.

I have always looked for God—
for my Soul, for that matter—
within.
Psalm 46 says the Lord of Hosts is
within.
Guru Nanak, whoever he is,
said,
So doth thy Lord abide within thee,
Why search Him without?

So when I meditated
I always focused inside.
Somewhere within my heart of hearts.
The upper room.
The inner sanctum.

But, God bless us, language
is powerful.
Within.
Tiny.
Small.
The still, small voice—
barely squeaking from inside
the left ventricle.

Maybe, I thought,
it was like a black hole:
if you go within enough—
past the event horizon—
and on through to another dimension,
it opens out again.

But it never did.

Lately, however,
I have had a different experience.
It is me that is small.
It is me that is hard and tiny.

My soul is large.
My soul surrounds me
and covers me like a blanket.
That desire to have someone
hold you in his arms and
let your head rest on his chest
is what the soul is like.

For the soul is immense.
It extends.
The incarnation is small,
but the soul is huge.
Warm.
Comforting.
Healing.

I like this new vision
of my soul.
I will consider it
a spiritual breakthrough.

But that’s only me.
Little me, the ego,
consciousness,
the body.

One day, all those things
will be gone.
But my soul will remain.
Joyous.
Expansive.
Me, as well.

I have not searched Him without.
I have just reconfigured the relationship.

O My Soul.

For the Creative Forces,
The Great Spirit,
the I-am-that-I-am,
is not without,
or within.
It is everywhere.

- Kerry Lichlyter

[Larry Robinson]

It Doesn’t Feel Like A Time To Write

being black feels like a lot right now.
they shot a man then they shot
the people mourning the man.
they shot a man while he was
a. handcuffed

b. walking away

c. already dead

the terrorists i fear played balled with the cops
or they is the cops. i ain’t got much left to give
these poems, black folks of every kind
of body are dying, & yes at our own
hands too & before you start
pointing fingers wash yo bloody
bloody hands. if you still say
things like we need all the info,
there must be a reason
then i can’t waste
anymore time on you. the world
is burning for real for real – some
some us burning, some staying warm.
i turn to the cards, the stars,
G-d, the gods, my sweet dead, all them
say it’s an age of smoke. i pray to everything
i’ve been taught to pray towards.
i smoke a blunt, drink the last of the whiskey
but nothing brings me peace.
i got a fear of being black in public
& white folks are raised to fear of me.
niggagoraphobia has taken over the nation
& i’ve never been more afraid
of a white man’s temper.
in my dreams all the black folks
turn to ants & America is a toddler
stomping us out – she’s so damn scared
& we can’t get away.
//
i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t scared. every word
i say translate to farewell. joy feels like a kind
of revolt. sometimes i’m just your average
American: too broke & late for brunch, looking
for a new job & hungover, just trying to Netflix
& fuck a little bit then you watch the news or
you hear the worry in your mama’s voice when
she tells you to be careful driving cause the ice
is slick & the cops is bad & she know both
can lead to an accident
//
my friends are in the streets again because again
& again & so forth & how many more?
poems feel so small right now
my little machines fail me
all i’ve ever wanted to say:
1. We are tired of your reality

2. Until we are guilty the same as you

3. We beg for peace but you hear fire!

4. What you call country, we call the reaping

5. Stop killing us

//
America, my sweet boy
your lips turn into a cleaver
when you kiss my neck
//
if a white man who murdered is allowed
to be gentle & a black body murdered
is assumed at fault – if my son gets shot, who
gets mourned? him or the bullet?
//
it doesn’t feel like a time to write
when all my muses are begging
for their lives.
- Danez Smith

[Larry Robinson]

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

- Thomas Gray

[Larry Robinson]

Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane.
The news would pour out of various devices
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

- Muriel Rukeyser

[REALnothings]

good choice, Larry. We have indeed hit another such time...different in the particulars, but I think not in the essence. time to persevere with

[Larry Robinson]

Sonoma Weekend

Valley hills bake a heated welcome,
soft cat echoes ecstatic purrs,
ears of kangaroo hare watch while
Blue jay screeches questionings.

Near rustling oak and maple, newly
watered bright pink flowers lie
Reality… Possibility…
They too welcome, watch, inquire.

Ember burned memories glow in fire
winter chill grey of second day.
Silent space waits expectantly for
encountered knowing.

Furred meow leaps to glass, watches
small bird becoming. It chirps
and flits from branch to branch
from past and now to what may be.

Cat stretches now on hearth place rug
Content completion in all her moves.
I sit and rock and move unhurriedly
From past, and now, to that in need of me.

Grey then moves from muted tones to
darkness of the night.
An owl is heard in search and hunt
while fire’s coals go cold.

What wills, what needs, what wants to be
first grows in darkness, thrusts thru pain
And then Becomes through choiceful acts
in times like these.

- LynneAnne Forest

[Larry Robinson]

Sabbaths VI
(for Jonathan Williams)


The yellow-throated, the highest remotest voice
of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sycamores,
but one day he came twice to the railing of my porch
where I sat at work above the river. He was too close
to see with binoculars. Only the naked eye could take him in,
a bird more beautiful than every picture of himself,
more beautiful than himself killed and preserved
by the most skilled taxidermist, more beautiful
than any human mind, so small and inexact
could hope to remember. My mind became
beautiful by the sight of him. He had the beauty only
of himself alive in the only moment of his life.
He had upon him like a light the whole
beauty of the living world that never dies.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Open Carry

When I first heard it
I thought it was a term for liquor,
imagined a thin man
swilling in plain sight
from one of those empty amber bottles
that litter the trail
on my morning trek.
They could be almost beautiful
if you turn your head sideways,
a kind of millennial flower:
cubist, hard, transparent.
No ambiguity there.
Men pile into football stadiums
toting semi-automatics
like picnic baskets.
Families stroll the malls of America
loaded for bear.
Watching "The Free State of Jones"
I shield my face as the pigs are
ushered in to lap up the blood,
the floors are mopped with it.
Rifles blast everything that moves
in this kill-or-be-killed dystopia.
At least there was a reason,
a freedom worth fighting for,
my rational mind palavers.
The lone mother, children gathered
in the shelter of her skirts,
hunkered in the mountain's bosom
husband on the front lines,
a shotgun, her only defender.
At a military funeral
I hear the rifle's safety snapping into place
watch the words "bombs bursting in air"
leave the mouths of boys too young to shave.
My mouth is mute with shame for this,
our symbol of renown.

- Sandra Anfang

[Larry Robinson]

I Am a Madman

My thatched cottage stands
just west of Thousand Mile Bridge

this Hundred Flower Stream
would please a hermit fisherman

bamboo sways in the wind
graceful as any court beauty

rain makes the lotus flower
even more red and fragrant

but I no longer hear from friends
who live on princely salaries

my children are always hungry
with pale and famished faces

does a madman grow more happy
before he dies in the gutter?

I laugh at myself -- a madman
growing older, growing madder.

- Du Fu (712 - 770)

[Larry Robinson]

I Hear an Army

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging; foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the Charioteers.


They cry into the night their battle name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long grey hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

- James Joyce

[Larry Robinson]

The Second Coming

Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

[BothSidesNow]

What rough beast, indeed. But not slouching, strutting.

The Second Coming
...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats