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Let's Remake The World
Let's remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.
Let's,
As Wordsworth said, remove
"The dust of custom" so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.
And then we'll see the world
As if for the first time.
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.
- Gregory Orr
Waste
Not even waste
is inviolate.
The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.
It is tiresome
how the grass
re-ripens, greening
all along the punched
and mucked horizon
once the bison
have moved on,
leaning into hunger
and hard luck.
- Kay Ryan
If, On Account Of The Political Situation
If, on account of the political situation,
there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and
men
Lying about in the countryside neither drunk nor
asleep,
If all sailings have been cancelled till further
notice,
If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,
Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,
The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,
That is not at all unusual for this time of year.
If that were all, we should know how to manage.
Flood, fire,
The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,
Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal
grief,
These are after all our familiar tribulations,
And we have been through them all before, many, many
times.
As events which belong to the natural world where
The occupation of space is the real and final fact
And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,
They occur again and again but only to pass
Again and again into their formal opposites,
From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to
work,
So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern
composed
By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly
happen
Is permanent in a general average way.
Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we
seemed
To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the
tiger,
The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,
Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:
To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not
So impossible after all; to cut our losses
And bury our dead was really quite easy. That was why
We were always able to say: "We are children of God,
And our Father has never forsaken His people."
But then we were children: That was a moment ago,
Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced
Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we
were.
Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain
We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone
In the waiting room of the country junction, looking
Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion
But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way
in?
Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:
We can only say that now It is there and that nothing
We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest
use,
For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if
We had left our house for five minutes to mail a
letter,
And during that time the living room had changed
places
With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;
It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered
Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching
our shadow
Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean
That the world of space where events reoccur is still
there,
Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere
Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:
I mean that although there's a person we know all
about
Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,
That person has become a fiction; our true existence
Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.
That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome
The nursery bogey or the winecellar ghost, why even
The violent howling of winter and war has become
Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are
afraid
Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare
Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.
This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.
- W.H. Auden
We are pleased to announce the third place winner in our Poems For Haiti contest, George Taylor's "Remembering Haiti". Tomorrow we will share the second place winner and on Wednesday the first place. Stay tuned.
Many thanks to all of you who submitted such beautiful gifts!
Remembering Haiti
I see their dark Haitian faces
in the halls at my mother's retirement home.
The men carry tape measures on plaster-stained leather belts.
Jean Phillipe holds a screw driver
in my mother's kitchen.
He says in a Caribbean-French accent
"Your mother is my teacher."
The his smile reaches out to me
across three hundred years of history
which neither of us mentions,
across the rift in the earth
which brought down Haiti's buildings
and across the screams of parents.
This broad white-toothed smile hovers thankfully
above the men and women unloading truckloads of food.
"She helps my English, very bad" Jean Phillipe says.
He smiles again
across the landscape between Haiti and Mill Valley
full of people who help each other
any way they can.
- George Taylor
Today we offer you the second place winner in our Poems For Haiti Contest.
In Memoriam
for Haiti
One minute heating up the stove
to cook a little lunch
then sweep the floor
the next a rumble
as if trains stampeded through rooms
through walls toppling like lincoln logs
she had given birth
the papers said
on a bed with blue sheets
her baby's face
no longer hers
but the thousands pinned beneath stone
singing could not break through
where they stood swaying
the jut of a hip or dusty feet under skirts
the sky buried itself
no time for
a lullaby, not even a kiss
on the mother's half-opened lips.
- Claire Drucker
Today we are pleased to share the first place winner in our Poetry For Haiti contest, Laurie Kirkpatrick's "Retrospect".
Retrospect
These photos have been altered
since New Year's week
when my daughter brought them home from Port-au-Prince.
Grey bungalows with fuchsia porches float over the treetops,
opening into air.
Stacked high under plastic tarps and Digicel umbrellas,
ripe guavas. Roosters wave their handful of orange feathers
and insolent blue tails. A wedding flickers in a church
of paper lanterns, baby's breath.
Hibiscus winds through barbed wire.
Archways are latticed in iron filigree.
The least windows are barred as if
the enemy can be shut out.
Before a door the turquoise color of portable latrines
a man carries a bag of soil, or maybe it's cement, on his head;
a woman balances a whole week's groceries in her hamper,
their strong arms and backs about to
shoulder the dead.
- Laurie Kirkpatrick
The Forge
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, one end square,
Set there immovable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
- Seamus Heaney
The Unknown Citizen
(To js/07/m/378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation,
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
- W.H. Auden
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Ernest Henley
Paschal
Easter was the old North
Goddess of the dawn.
She rises daily in the East
And yearly in spring for the great
Paschal candle of the sun.
Her name lingers like a spot
Of gravy in the figured vestment
Of the language of the Britains.
Her totem the randy bunny.
Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays
Are stained by syllables of thunder
And Woden's frenzy.
O my fellow-patriots loyal to this
Our modern world of high heels,
Vaccination, brain surgery—
May they pass over us, the old
Jovial raptors, Apollonian flayers,
Embodiments. Egg-hunt,
Crucifixion. Supper of encrypted
Dishes: bitter, unrisen, a platter
Compass of martyrdom,
Ground-up apples and walnuts
In sweet wine to embody mortar
Of affliction, babies for bricks.
Legible traces of the species
That devises the angel of death
Sailing over our doorpost
Smeared with sacrifice.
- Robert Pinsky
A Story
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
- Philip Levine
Ecclesiastes II:I
We must cast our bread
Upon the waters, as the
Ancient preacher said,
Trusting that it may
Amply be restored to us
After many a day.
That old metaphor,
Drawn from rice farming on the
River's flooded shore,
Helps us believe
That it's no great sin to give,
Hoping to receive.
Therefore I shall throw
Broken bread, this sullen day,
Out across the snow,
Betting crust and crumb
That birds will gather, and that
One more spring will come.
- Richard Wilbur
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back
may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
- Lucille Clifton
Planting a Sequoia
All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
Of an old year coming to an end.
In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth-
An olive or a fig tree-a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father's
orchard,
A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,
A promise of new fruit in other autumns.
But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
Defying the practical custom of our fathers,
Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord,
All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.
We will give you what we can-our labor and our soil,
Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
A slender shoot against the sunset.
And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
His mother's beauty ashes in the air,
I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you,
Silently keeping the secret of your birth.
- Dana Gioia
In Passing
How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
- Lisel Mueller
The Self-Unseeing
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollow and thin:
Here is the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here in her chair,
Staring into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
Childlike I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away.
- Thomas Hardy
Rock and Hawk
Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.
This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,
Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.
I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,
But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;
Life with calm death; the falcon's
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive
Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.
- Robinson Jeffers
Rock Bottom
So this is what it comes down to in the end: earth and sand
skimmed, trimmed, filleted from rocky bone, leaving only
solid unshakeable bottom, what doesn't in the end give in
to the relentless hammer, whoosh, and haul-away of tides
but stands there saying "Here I am here I stay," protestant
to the pin of its absolute collar, refusing to put off the sheen
on its clean-scoured surface, no mourning weeds in spite of loss
after loss – whole wedges of the continent, particles of the main
plummeting from one element to the other and no going back
to how things were once, but to go on ending and ending here.
- Eamon Grennan
Alba
Climbing in the mist I came to a terrace wall
and saw above it a small field of broad beans in flower
their white fragrance was flowing through the first light
of morning there a little way up the mountain
where I had made my way through the olive groves
and under the blossoming boughs of the almonds
above the old hut of the charcoal burner
where suddenly the sent of the bean flowers found me
and as I took the next step I heard
the creak of the harness and the mule’s shod hooves
striking stones in the furrow and then the low voice
of the man talking softly praising the mule
as he walked behind through the cloud in his white shirt
along the row and between his own words
he was singing under his breath a few phrases
at a time of the same song singing it
to his mule it seemed as I listened
watching their breaths and not understanding a word.
- W.S. Merwin
White Horse
Through the woods of Annadel,
past trees gently arched,
trunks and stones moss-matted —
comes the fair stallion steady on the trail
One angel on a treetop sings
one note, repeated,
repeated
Milky surface of stream,
little wall of water
falling into it,
and the white horse
coming nearer
with a steady sound
beating under the boughs
in the darkness of woods
as if by magic
moving towards
to where, upon the ribbed edge,
he passes
trails a veil of light
that shakes us
as though wind
as though ecstasy
— Katherine Hastings
Advice from a Tree
Dear Friend
Stand Tall and Proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of your true nature
Think long term
Go out on a limb
Remember your place among all living beings
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance
The Energy and Birth of Spring
The Growth and Contentment of Summer
The Wisdom to let go like leaves in the Fall
The Rest and Quiet renewal of Winter
Feel the wind and the sun
And the delight in their presence
Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
And the mystery of the stars at night
Seek nourishment from the good things in life
Simple pleasures
Earth, fresh air, light
Be content with your natural beauty
Drink plenty of water
Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes
Be flexible
Remember your roots
Enjoy the view!
- Ivan Shamir
Love This Miraculous World
Our understandable wish
to preserve the planet
must somehow be
reduced
to the scale of our
competence.
Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere
to the universe
or the planet
or the nation
or the institution
or the profession,
but to the singular
sparrows of the street,
the lilies of the field,
“the least of these
my brethren.”
Love this
miraculous world
that we did not make,
that is a gift to us.
- Wendell Berry
Hatred
See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape -
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.
It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.
One religion or another -
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another -
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in a grimace
of erotic ecstasy.
Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood
draw crowds?
Has compassion
ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?
Only hatred has just what it takes.
Gifted, diligent, hard working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread
over countless city squares and football fields?
Let's face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.
Hatred is a master of contrast -
between explosion and dead quiet,
red blood and white snow.
Above all, it never tires
of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner
towering over its soiled victim.
It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.
- Wislawa Szymborska
I strain my ears
I raise my head
and wait for the dawn breeze
How many times dreamily
herding an ox in the Spring rain?
Who realizes that this intention pierces heaven?
Just remain with rising eyebrows
And blinking eyes
- Dogen Zenji
Gratitude Goulash
Take down your biggest pot,
bigger than you think you need.
Slice, dice or cut into manageable pieces
the desiccated remains
of all your life's
calamitous events.
Look around for missed ingredients.
Add clean water, local honey and vinegar.
Bring this mess to a rolling boil then
simmer on a back burner for several days.
When your kitchen smells good,
Ask a close friend to come over.
Get out two old bowls,
they need not match.
Just before serving add a dollop of success
and a smidgen of failure.
Then be very liberal with paprika.
Solemnly bless the goulash,
and take a few bites…
Laugh together, forgive yourself,
then gratefully
go out to eat.
- Doug von Koss
Farewell Song
There is a new bird in this forest - song so sweet it breaks my heart to be
leaving. Twenty-seven years of the Stellar Jay's harsh voice drowning out
the songbirds. And now, melodious song rings all around, a solitary
woodpecker accompanying on percussion. Yesterday I recorded them with a plan
to reveal their identities. But for now, the trees sing with this mystery of
sweetness - my farewell song.
What then, if I let the world break my heart with it's terrible beauty and
unceasing change?
- Kay Crista
Signals and Leaves
The signals we give—yes, or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
If we listen to the lesson of the falling leaves
we will send the right signals to each other,
the yes, the no, the maybe. We will send
love
and faith
and the knowledge that letting go
is the only way of knowing whether our signals
(of grace, of god)
are coming through
true.
- Fran Claggett
After reading “Ritual to Read to Each Other” by William Stafford
and “The Lesson of the Falling Leaves” by Lucille Clifton
Parade
Across the valley
carried by the fullness of the spring sun
echo something distant and
familiar: drums. The high
school band prepares again
in the heat of early morning
for the annual parade in our town,
small enough that anyone who
wants can join in,
whose neighbors, children, friends,
animals, enemies, rivals, and anonymous
relatives will march, all steady, then
pause to wait for those ahead
to perform before the judging stand and
then march on, and on, and on
out to the edge of town, out off the far end, marching still
to where they
will echo
and someday start, I know,
for I can feel it already,
a single tear
to salt my closed
and grateful eye.
- Scott O'Brien
To A Young Poet
Don’t believe our outlines, forget them
and begin from your own words.
As if you are the first to write poetry
or the last poet.
If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,
but to correct our errs
in the book of agony.
Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?
You know who your mother is.
As for your father, be your own.
Truth is white, write over it
with a crow’s ink.
Truth is black, write over it
with a mirage’s light.
If you want to deal with a falcon
soar with the falcon.
If you fall in love with a woman,
be the one, not she,
Who desires his end.
Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think
of the matter too much lest we hurt emotion’s health.
If you ponder a rose for too long
you won’t budge in a storm.
You are like me, but my abyss is clear.
And you have roads whose secrets never end.
They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.
You might call the end of youth
the maturity of talent
or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,
the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.
One thousand birds in the hand
don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.
A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.
Example is not easy to attain
so be yourself and other than yourself
behind the borders of echo.
Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.
So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,
follow it before you reach your path.
Don’t tell the beloved, you are I
and I am thou, say
the opposite of that: we are two guests
of an excess, fugitive cloud.
Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.
Don’t place two stars in one utterance
and place the marginal next to the essential
to complete the rising rapture.
Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.
Believe only the caravan’s trace.
A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart
a deadly wisdom.
Be strong as a bull when you’re angry
weak as an almond blossom
when you love, and nothing, nothing
when you serenade yourself in a closed room.
The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:
plains and hills, rivers and valleys.
Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily
follows you or the gallows.
Your tasks are not what worry me about you.
I worry about you from those who dance
over their children’s graves,
and from the hidden cameras
in the singers’ navels.
You won’t disappoint me,
if you distance yourself from others, and from me.
What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.
From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.
Don’t think when you melt in sorrow
like candle tears, of who will see you
or follow your intuition’s light.
Think of yourself: is this all of myself?
The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.
No advice in love. It’s experience.
No advice in poetry. It’s talent.
And last but not least, Salaam.
- Mahmoud Darwish
Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah
The Morning After
I’m contemplating how the snake knows
it’s time to shed her skin. Imagining the internal
clock of now that wakes her, or, simply,
winter over, spine expanding
exponentially when she stretches,
straightens from the eternal coil
of sleeping and waking. Maybe
it’s the startle of a boy stepping near
above the rock she’s chosen
to wait for summer heat.
One day, like a tossed glove, like
a dress which no longer contains the shape
of her seduction, skin breaks.
The slow pull of self comes
like Nature always taught. The robes
of distinction, of wife, mother, lover,
sinner, are all behind her.
The boy whose eye is keen
will find the remnant, take it home,
tack it above his bed.
He’ll admire the length and depth,
will dream the dream of her
the knowledge of her existence
full in his head, the way to sun baked
rock, winding, but clear.
- Cindy Dubielak Yeager