POETS ON THIS PAGE:
W. H. AUDEN * MILLER WILLIAMS * PHILIP LARKIN * AL YOUNG * LOUIS SIMPSON * DENISE LEVERTOV * ROBERT PINSKY * SANDRA MCPHERSON * DANA GIOIA * WELDON KEES * JOE BOLTON * DENIS JOHNSON * MARY OLIVER * DYLAN THOMAS
[NEXT PAGE]
[RETURN TO 20TH CENTURY POETS INDEX]
A great poem by one of the 20th century’s greatest poets:
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES
She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead., A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died. She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept. The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
by W. H. Auden, 1907–1973
Music: Piano Rain by Teddy Bergström:
Another great poem by Auden:
RUBY TELLS ALL
When I was told, as Delta children were, That crops don't grow unless you sweat at night, I thought that it was my own sweat they meant. I have never felt as important again As on those early mornings, waking up, My body slick, the moon full on the fields. That was before air conditioning. Farm girls sleep cool now and wake up dry But still the cotton overflows the fields. We lose everything that's grand and foolish; It all becomes something else. One by one, Butterflies turn into caterpillars And we grow up, or more or less we do, And, Lord, we do lie then. We lie so much Truth has a false ring and it's hard to tell. I wouldn't take crap off anybody If I just knew I was getting crap In time not to take it. I could have won A small one now and then if I was smarter, But I've poured coffee here too many years For men who rolled in in Peterbuilts, And I have gotten into bed with some If they could talk and seemed to be in pain. I never asked for anything myself; Giving is more blessed and leaves you free. There was a man, married and fond of whiskey. Given the limitations of men, he loved me. Lord, we laid concern upon our bodies But then he left. Everything has its time. We used to dance. He made me feel the way A human wants to feel and fears to. He was a slow man and didn't expect. I would get off work and find him waiting. We'd have a drink or two and kiss awhile. Then a bird-loud morning late one April We woke up naked. We had made a child. She's grown up now and gone though God knows where. She ought to write, for I do love her dearly Who raised her carefully and dressed her well. Everything has its time. For thirty years I have never had a thought about time. Now, turning through newspapers, I pause To see if anyone was passed away Was younger than I am. If one was I feel hollow for a little while But then it passes. Nothing matters enough To stay bent down about. You have to see That some things matter slightly and some don't. Dying matters a little. So does pain. So does being old. Men do not. Men live by negatives, like don't give up, Don't be a coward, don't call me a liar, Don't ever tell me don't. If I could live Two hundred years and had to be a man I'd take my grave. What's a man but a match, A little stick to start a fire with? My daughter knows this, if she's alive. What could I tell her now, to bring her close, Something she doesn't know, if we met somewhere? Maybe that I think about her father, Maybe that my fingers hurt at night, Maybe that against appearances There is love, constancy and kindness, That I have dresses I have never worn.
by Miller Williams, 1930–2015
SPEEDING PAST THE I-40 EXIT TO BASCUM HE BEGINS TO THINK ABOUT TACKETT’S STATION AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND PEGGY HOOPER
Where the Woodrow Wilson School was once squat blocks of pastel siding slap back at the sun. Why should it be there? Who was Woodrow Wilson? We had a Dodge. When we hit a chicken we had chicken. Milton Tackett fixed tires and sold the rubbers you had to have in your wallet like a badge You’re under arrest. Take off all your clothes. Milton gave a package of rubbers free for any pair of panties. When you told him her name and he believed you you got a dozen. No sir I said I guess not. Well he said if I said pussy I could have one anyway A woman off the Titanic talked Sunday night. She said that all she heard them play was a waltz. I bought a Nash for 97 dollars. Sunday afternoons cotton rows running up to the road flicked by like spokes. The cropdusting plane put down its pattern back and forth across the field like a shuttle. I was drunk on speed and metaphor. The world was a weaving machine. But on the other hand said Alexander the Great bringing down the sword on the Gordian knot fuck fate Didn’t you used to live here? Don’t do that you’re going to tear something Look if I take off my clothes will it make you happy I’m sorry. What did you say? Nothing. Never mind.
by Miller Williams, 1930–2015
THE JESUS WOMAN STANDING AT MY DOOR
came with a bible in the middle of what I do How are things in Porlock I asked her No she said I’m from Joplin Missouri
by Miller Williams, 1930–2015
********************************************************************
Biographical documentary about Philip Larkin:
Tom O’Bedlam reads Larkin’s “Mr. Bleaney”:
Larkin reads his poem “Aubade”:
AUBADE
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can't escape, Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
by Philip Larkin, 1922–1985
BROADCAST
Giant whispering and coughing from Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum, ‘The Queen’, and huge resettling. Then begins A snivelling of the violins: I think of your face among all those faces, Beautiful and devout before Cascades of monumental slithering, One of your gloves unnoticed on the floor Beside those new, slightly-outmoded shoes. Here it goes quickly dark. I lose All but the outline of the still and withering Leaves on half-emptied trees. Behind The glowing wavebands, rabid storms of chording By being distant overpower my mind All the more shamelessly, their cut-off shout Leaving me desperate to pick out Your hands, tiny in all that air, applauding.
by Philip Larkin, 1922–1985
England’s Poet Laureate Motion reads Larkin’s “Going, Going”:
WILD OATS
About twenty years ago Two girls came in where I worked— A bosomy English rose And her friend in specs I could talk to. Faces in those days sparked The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt If ever one had like hers: But it was the friend I took out, And in seven years after that Wrote over four hundred letters, Gave a ten-guinea ring I got back in the end, and met At numerous cathedral cities Unknown to the clergy. I believe I met beautiful twice. She was trying Both times (so I thought) not to laugh. Parting, after about five Rehearsals, was an agreement That I was too selfish, withdrawn, And easily bored to love. Well, useful to get that learnt. In my wallet are still two snaps Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on. Unlucky charms, perhaps.
by Philip Larkin, 1922–1985
from Whitsun Weddings. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd. Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)
Larkin’s “The Whitsun Weddings” read by the author:
Talking In Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest. Yet more and more time passes silently. Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds about the sky, And dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
by Philip Larkin, 1922–1985
***************AL YOUNG****************
ONE AUGUST SUMMARY
The scents of summer, once so moist and vast, now scorch your nose. O how your pricked eyes water! This fire’s going to last and last and last until your in-laws, wife, two sons and daughter collapse among the Pepsis, Cokes and chips. The makeshift rescue center, where you’ve learned some distant neighbors’ names from their own lips, fills still with losers just like you. Hurt. Burnt. A dry La Niña winter, snow-melt, drought (July: Colfax, June: Colorado Springs, New Mexico) let heated winds strike out across your parchment landscape with a zing that flared up like a sulphurous safety match. But here’s the catch: Can this mean climate change is real? Do savvy Californians watch what happened back in 2009, the range of wildfires: Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz (their so-called Lockheed Fire), the Station Fire near L.A.? Half a million square miles. News. You sweat. Your wife and family, they perspire. Août, août, août, août! – August, moaned in French, needs no translation. You can smell and feel the fall and peel of summer. Inch by inch you sink into this smoky state. You reel. You suddenly realize what really counts: You’re still alive. Don’t underestimate again how unseen danger creeps and mounts. Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo – August stops you at its gate!
by Al Young, 1939–
UP JUMPED SPRING
for Nana
What’s most fantastical almost always goes unrecorded and unsorted. Take spring. Take today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee your night, creameries your dream factories. Take walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest means of conveyance: a dance. Take leave of the notion that this nation’s or any other’s earth can still be the same earth our ancestors walked. Chemistry strains to connect our hemispheres. The right and left sidelines our brain forms in the rain this new world braves—acid jazz. The timeless taste her tongue leaves in your mouth, stirred with unmeasured sugars, greens the day the way sweet sunlight oxygenates, ignites all nights, all daytimes, and you—this jumps. Sheer voltage leaps, but nothing keeps or stays. Sequence your afternoon as dance. Drink spring. Holding her hard against you, picture the screenplay. Take time to remember to get her spells together. Up jumps the goddess gratified, and up jumped spring.
by Al Young, 1939–
© 2006 and 2007
***************LOUIS SIMPSON**************
James Wright and Louis Simpson read poety and are interviewed by James Dickey:
A STORY ABOUT CHICKEN SOUP
In my grandmother's house there was always chicken soup And talk of the old country—mud and boards, Poverty, The snow falling down the necks of lovers. Now and then, out of her savings She sent them a dowry. Imagine The rice-powdered faces! And the smell of the bride, like chicken soup. But the Germans killed them. I know it's in bad taste to say it, But it's true. The Germans killed them all. * In the ruins of Berchtesgaden A child with yellow hair Ran out of a doorway. A German girl-child— Cuckoo, all skin and bones— Not even enough to make chicken soup. She sat by the stream and smiled. Then as we splashed in the sun She laughed at us. We had killed her mechanical brothers, So we forgave her. * The sun is shining. The shadows of the lovers have disappeared. They are all eyes; they have some demand on me— They want me to be more serious than I want to be. They want me to stick in their mudhole Where no one is elegant. They want me to wear old clothes, They want me to be poor, to sleep in a room with many others— Not to walk in the painted sunshine To a summer house, But to live in the tragic world forever.
by Louis Simpson, 1923-2012
MY FATHER IN THE NIGHT COMMANDING NO
My father in the night commanding No Has work to do. Smoke issues from his lips; He reads in silence. The frogs are croaking and the street lamps glow. And then my mother winds the gramophone, The Bride of Lammermoor begins to shriek— Or reads a story About a prince, a castle, and a dragon. The moon is glittering above the hill. I stand before the gateposts of the King— So runs the story— Of Thule, at midnight when the mice are still. And I have been in Thule! It has come true— The journey and the danger of the world, All that there is To bear and to enjoy, endure and do. Landscapes, seascapes . . . where have I been led? The names of cities—Paris, Venice, Rome— Held out their arms. A feathered god, seductive, went ahead. Here is my house. Under a red rose tree A child is swinging; another gravely plays. They are not surprised That I am here; they were expecting me. And yet my father sits and reads in silence, My mother sheds a tear, the moon is still, And the dark wind Is murmuring that nothing ever happens. Beyond his jurisdiction as I move Do I not prove him wrong? And yet, it’s true They will not change There, on the stage of terror and of love. The actors in that playhouse always sit In fixed positions—father, mother, child With painted eyes. How sad it is to be a little puppet! Their heads are wooden. And you once pretended To understand them! Shake them as you will, They cannot speak. Do what you will, the comedy is ended. Father, why did you work? Why did you weep, Mother? Was the story so important? "Listen!" the wind Said to the children, and they fell asleep.
by Louis Simpson, 1923 – 2012
Another great poem by Louis Simpson:
THE RIDERS HELD BACK
One morning, as we traveled in the fields Of air and dew With trumpets, and above the painted shields The banners flew, We came upon three ladies, wreathed in roses, Where, hand in hand, They danced–three slender, gentle, naked ladies, All in a woodland. They'd been to the best schools in Italy; Their legs were Greek, Their collarbones, as fine as jewellery, Their eyes, antique. ‘Why do lambs skip and shepherds shout "Ut hoy!"? Why do you dance?' Said one, ‘It is an intellectual joy, The Renaissance. ‘As do the stars in heaven, ruled by Three, We twine and move. It is the music of Astronomy, Not men, we love. ‘And as we dance, the beasts and flowers do; The fields of wheat Sway like our arms; the curving hills continue The curves of our feet. ‘Here Raphael comes to paint; the thrushes flute To Petrarch's pen. But Michael is not here, who carved the brute Unfinished men.' They danced again, and on the mountain heights There seemed to rise Towers and ramparts glittering with lights, Like Paradise. How the bright morning passed, I cannot say. We woke and found The dancers gone; and heard, far, far away, The trumpet sound. We galloped to it. In the forest then Banners and shields Were strewn like leaves; and there were many slain In the dark fields.
by Louis Simpson, 1923 – 2012
From The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001, BOA Editions, 2003.
THE CRADLE TRAP
A bell and rattle, a smell of roses, a leather Bible, and angry voices . . . They say, I love you. They shout, You must! The light is telling terrible stories. But night at the window whispers, Never mind. Be true, be true to your own strange kind.
by Louis Simpson, 1923 – 2012
WHAT WERE THEY LIKE?
1) Did the people of Viet Nam use lanterns of stone? 2) Did they hold ceremonies to reverence the opening of buds? 3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter? 4) Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver, for ornament? 5) Had they an epic poem? 6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing? 1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone. It is not remembered whether in gardens stone gardens illumined pleasant ways. 2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom, but after their children were killed there were no more buds. 3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth. 4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy. All the bones were charred. 5) It is not remembered. Remember, most were peasants; their life was in rice and bamboo. When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces, maybe fathers told their sons old tales. When bombs smashed those mirrors there was time only to scream. 6) There is an echo yet of their speech which was like a song. It was reported their singing resembled the flight of moths in moonlight. Who can say? It is silent now.
by Denise Levertov, 1923–1997
Celebration
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day. Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors, deft hands. And every prodigy of green – whether it's ferns or lichens or needles or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes – greener than ever before. And the way the conifers hold new cones to the light for the blessing, a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind transcribes for them! A day that shines in the cold like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds with the claims of reasonable gloom.
Denise Levertov, 1923–1997
from The Great Unknowing: Last Poems, © 1999
************ROBERT PINSKY*******
SHIRT
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes— The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity. A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers— Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning. ”Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader, The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields: George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone, The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
by Robert Pinsky, 1940–
GINZA SAMBA
A monosyllabic European called Sax Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting Infinitely upward through an upturned Swollen golden bell rimmed Like a gloxinia flowering In Sax's Belgian imagination And in the unfathomable matrix Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven Humming into the cells of the body Or cupped in the resonating grail Of memory changed and exchanged As in the trading of brasses, Pearls and ivory, calicos and slaves, Laborers and girls, two Cousins in a royal family Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks. In Christendom one cousin's child Becomes a "favorite negro" ennobled By decree of the Czar and founds A great family, a line of generals, Dandies and courtiers including the poet Pushkin, killed in a duel concerning His wife's honor, while the other cousin sails In the belly of a slaveship to the port Of Baltimore where she is raped And dies in childbirth, but the infant Will marry a Seminole and in the next Chorus of time their child fathers A great Hawk or Bird, with many followers Among them this great-grandchild of the Jewish Manager of a Pushkin estate, blowing His American breath out into the wiggly Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths—the Ginza Samba of breath and brass, the reed Vibrating as a valve, the aether, the unimaginable Wires and circuits of an ingenious box Here in my room in this house built A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere: It is like falling in love, the atavistic Imperative of some one Voice or face—the skill, the copper filament, The golden bellful of notes twirling through Their invisible element from Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering Speed in the variations as they tunnel The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup And anvil echoing here in the hearkening Instrument of my skull.
by Robert Pinsky, 1940–
*********SANDRA MCPHERSON**********
ONE WAY SHE SPOKE TO ME
I would say whisper and she could never figure how to do it. I would say, speak louder into the phone, nor could she raise her voice. But then I found such a whisper, the trail as she began to write to me in snails in silver memos on the front door in witnesses to her sense of touch. Home late, I found them slurred and searching, erasing the welcome she'd arranged them in. H--12 snails. I--seven or six. They were misspelling it, digressing in wayward caravans and pileups, mobile and rolling but with little perspective, their eyestalks smooth as nylons on tiny legs. I raised her in isolation. But it is these snails who keep climbing the walls. For them, maybe every vertical makes an unending tree-- and every ascension's lovely. Why else don't they wend homeward to ground? But what do we do? We are only part of a letter in a word. And we are on our bellies with speech wondering, wondering slowly, how to move towards one another.
by Sandra McPherson, 1943–
FOR ELIZABETH BISHOP
The child I left your class to have Later had a habit of sleeping With her arms around a globe She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented. I always felt she could possess it, The pink countries and the mauve And the ocean which got to keep its blue. Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach, Which you had never had to do, you took A bare-walled room, alone, its northern Windowscapes as gray as walls. To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna. I thought you must have skipped summer that year, Southern winter, southern spring, then north For winter over again. Still, it pleased you To take credit for introducing us, And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook Of partners dancing, and a ring With a secret whistle. —All are Broken now like her globe, but she remembers Them as I recall the black madonna Facing you across the room so that In a way you had the dark fertile life You were always giving gifts to. Your smaller admirer off to school, I take the globe and roll it away: where On it now is someone like you?
by Sandra McPherson, 1943-
POPPIES
Orange is the single-hearted color. I remember How I found them in a vein beside the railroad, A bumble-bee fumbling for a foothold While the poppies' petals flagged beneath his boot. I brought three poppies home and two buds still sheathed. I amputated them above the root. They lived on artlessly Beside the window for a while, blazing orange, bearing me No malice. Each four-fanned surface opened To the light. They were bright as any orange grove. I watched them day and night stretch open and tuck shut With no roots to grip, like laboratory frogs' legs twitching Or like red beheaded hens still hopping on sheer nerves. On the third afternoon one bud tore off its green glove And burst out brazen as Baby New Year. Two other poppies dropped their petals, leaving four Scribbly yellow streamers on a purple-brimmed and green Conical cadaver like a New Year's hat. I'd meant to celebrate with them, but they seemed So suddenly tired, these aging ladies in crocheted Shawl leaves. They'd once been golden as the streets Of heaven, now they were as hollow. They couldn't pull together for a last good-bye. I had outlived them and had only their letters to read, Fallen around the vase, saying they were sorry.
by Sandra McPherson, 1943-
for more on Sandra McPherson [CLICK HERE]
******************************************************************
SUMMER STORM
We stood on the rented patio While the party went on inside. You knew the groom from college. I was a friend of the bride. We hugged the brownstone wall behind us To keep our dress clothes dry And watched the sudden summer storm Floodlit against the sky. The rain was like a waterfall Of brilliant beaded light, Cool and silent as the stars The storm hid from the night. To my surprise, you took my arm– A gesture you didn’t explain– And we spoke in whispers, as if we two Might imitate the rain. Then suddenly the storm receded As swiftly as it came. The doors behind us opened up. The hostess called your name. I watched you merge into the group, Aloof and yet polite. We didn’t speak another word Except to say goodnight. Why does that evening’s memory Return with this night’s storm– A party twenty years ago, Its disappointments warm? There are so many might have beens, What ifs that won’t stay buried, Other cities, other jobs, Strangers we might have married. And memory insists on pining For places it never went, As if life would be happier Just by being different.
by Dana Gioia, 1950-
THE ANGEL WITH THE BROKEN WING
I am the Angel with the Broken Wing, The one large statue in this quiet room. The staff finds me too fierce, and so they shut Faith’s ardor in this air-conditioned tomb. The docents praise my elegant design Above the chatter of the gallery. Perhaps I am a masterpiece of sorts— The perfect emblem of futility. Mendoza carved me for a country church. (His name’s forgotten now except by me.) I stood beside a gilded altar where The hopeless offered God their misery. I heard their women whispering at my feet— Prayers for the lost, the dying, and the dead. Their candles stretched my shadows up the wall, And I became the hunger that they fed. I broke my left wing in the Revolution (Even a saint can savor irony) When troops were sent to vandalize the chapel. They hit me once—almost apologetically. For even the godless feel something in a church, A twinge of hope, fear? Who knows what it is? A trembling unaccounted by their laws, An ancient memory they can’t dismiss. There are so many things I must tell God! The howling of the damned can’t reach so high. But I stand like a dead thing nailed to a perch, A crippled saint against a painted sky.
by Dana Gioia, 1950-
Dana Gioa’s poem “Prayer” was set to music by Morten Lauridsen and performed by the Wartburg College choir:
TO SEE GIOA’S POEM ABOUT JAZZ TRUMPETER BIX BEIDERBECKE [CLICK HERE] AND SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE
***************WELDON KEES*************
ASPECTS OF ROBINSON
Robinson at cards at the Algonquin; a thin Blue light comes down once more outside the blinds. Gray men in overcoats are ghosts blown past the door. The taxis streak the avenues with yellow, orange, and red. This is Grand Central, Mr. Robinson. Robinson on a roof above the Heights; the boats Mourn like the lost. Water is slate, far down. Through sounds of ice cubes dropped in glass, an osteopath, Dressed for the links, describes an old Intourist tour. —Here’s where old Gibbons jumped from, Robinson. Robinson walking in the Park, admiring the elephant. Robinson buying the Tribune, Robinson buying the Times. Robinson Saying, “Hello. Yes, this is Robinson. Sunday At five? I’d love to. Pretty well. And you?” Robinson alone at Longchamps, staring at the wall. Robinson afraid, drunk, sobbing Robinson In bed with a Mrs. Morse. Robinson at home; Decisions: Toynbee or luminol? Where the sun Shines, Robinson in flowered trunks, eyes toward The breakers. Where the night ends, Robinson in East Side bars. Robinson in Glen plaid jacket, Scotch-grain shoes, Black four-in-hand and oxford button-down, The jeweled and silent watch that winds itself, the brief- Case, covert topcoat, clothes for spring, all covering His sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.
by Weldon Kees, 1914–1955
ROBINSON
The dog stops barking after Robinson has gone. His act is over. The world is a gray world, Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano, The nightmare chase well under way. The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall, Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black. Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian. Which is all of the room—walls, curtains, Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson’s first wife, Rugs, vases, panatellas in a humidor. They would fill the room if Robinson came in. The pages in the books are blank, The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair, Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here. All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson Calling. It never rings when he is here. Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun. Outside, the birds circle continuously Where trees are actual and take no holiday.
by Weldon Kees, 1914–1955
from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press. © renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press
Hear Weldon Kees read his poem “1926”:
1926
The porchlight coming on again, Early November, the dead leaves Raked in piles, the wicker swing Creaking. Across the lots A phonograph is playing Ja-Da. An orange moon. I see the lives Of neighbors, mapped and marred Like all the wars ahead, and R. Insane, B. with his throat cut, Fifteen years from now, in Omaha. I did not know them then. My airedale scratches at the door. And I am back from seeing Milton Sills And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old. The porchlight coming on again.
by Weldon Kees, 1914–1955
FOR MY DAUGHTER
Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read Beneath the innocence of morning flesh Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed. Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands; The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland, Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen That may be hers appear: foul, lingering Death in certain war, the slim legs green. Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel Bride of a syphilitic or a fool. These speculations sour in the sun. I have no daughter. I desire none.
by Weldon Kees, 1914–1955
from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press. © renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press.
************JOE BOLTON********************
LINES FOR HANK WILLIAMS
The way his high voice would break and break down,
Beautifully lonesome, lost . . . who once wrote
A song at gunpoint in a hotel downtown,
Fingers shaking to hold the simple chords.
The world was one long night, endless Nashvilles,
A jambalaya of women, whiskey, and pills.
At the Opry they poured coffee down his throat
Backstage before the show, until he’d cough
And rise, trying to remember his own words.
And once, driving through the dark of night
In a Cadillac with Minnie Pearl, he broke
Into “I Saw the Light,” then broke it off,
His voice losing volume as he spoke:
“There ain’t no light, Minnie. There ain’t no light.”
by Joe Bolton, 1961-1990
Ballroom Dancing in the Barrio
South Tucson wind would blow away the stars If they weren’t nailed in place above the night As we arrive in loud clothes and loud cars That slink like dealers in the parking lot Where bulldozers muscle up to mangle What’s left of the barrio. Here, a girl Could lose it all in one serpentine tango, In the Scotch-cigarette-and-salsa swirl Of this lit synergy, this dying to live— Heat of black silk on flesh, a slow burning In the slick bilinguistics of desire. Coming to get what we can’t come to give, We shine and shine on, querulous, turning. We weren’t just dancing, see. We were on fire.
by Joe Bolton, 1961-1990
Tropical Courtyard
It is a rage against geometry: The spiked fans of the palmetto arcing Like improvised brushstrokes in the light breeze; Like shadowplay, somewhere a dog barking. Against the height of new and old brick walls, Confounding stone, transplanted pine and palm Lift in imperfection, as heavy bells That would force order fade into the calm Of azure and a faint scent of musk. (Is it eucalyptus or just the past?) There's nothing in this warm, vegetal dusk That is not beautiful or that will last.
by Joe Bolton, 1961-1990
***************DENIS JOHNSON************
HEAT
Here in the electric dusk your naked lover tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth. It’s beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin, Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover, streaming with hatred in the heat as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones, and such a last light—full of spheres and zones. August, you’re just an erotic hallucination, just so much feverishly produced kazoo music, are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night, this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion, the bogus moon of tenderness and magic you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?
by Denis Johnson, 1949–2017
VESPERS
The towels rot and disgust me on this damp peninsula where they invented mist and drug abuse and taught the light to fade, where my top-quality and rock-bottom heart cries because I’ll never get to kiss your famous knees again in a room made vague by throwing a scarf over a lamp. Things get pretty radical in the dark: the sailboats in the inlet sail away; the provinces of actuality crawl on the sea; the dusk now tenderly minsters to the fallen parking lots– the sunset instantaneous on the fenders, memory and peace . . . the grip of chaos . . .
by Denis Johnson, 1949–2017
PASSENGERS
The world will burst like an intestine in the sun, the dark turn to granite and the granite to a name, but there will always be somebody riding the bus through these intersections strewn with broken glass among speechless women beating their little ones, always a slow alphabet of rain speaking of drifting and perishing to the air, always these definite jails of light in the sky at the wedding of this clarity and this storm and a woman’s turning — her languid flight of hair traveling through frame after frame of memory where the past turns, its face sparking like emery, to open its grace and incredible harm over my life, and I will never die.
by Denis Johnson, 1949–2017
TO SEE THE TEXT TO DENIS JOHNSON’S POEM “THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH” CLICK [HERE]
POWOW AT THE END OF THE WORLD
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours; the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.
by Sherman Alexie, 1966-
From “The Native American Broadcasting System”
Part 9 I am the essence of powwow, I am toilets without paper, I am fry bread in sawdust, I am bull dung on rodeo grounds at the All-Indian Rodeo and Horse Show, I am the essence of powwow, I am video games with with braids, I am spit from toothless mouths, I am turquoise and boootleg whiskey, both selling for twenty bucks a swallow, I am the essence of powwow , I am fancydancers in flannel, I am host drum amplified, I am Fuck you don't come back and Leave me the last hard drink. I am the essence of powwow, I am the dream you lace your shoes with, I am the lust between your toes, I am the memory you feel across the bottom of your feet when ever you walk too close.
by Sherman Alexie, 1966-
Mary Oliver reads her poem “The Summer Day”:
THE SUMMER DAY
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
by Mary Oliver, 1935–2019
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 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.
by Mary Oliver, 1935–2019
HOW WOULD YOU LIVE THEN?
What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
flew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang
from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver
of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
and every day — who knows how, but they do it—were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?
by Mary Oliver, 1935–2019
Tom O’Bedlam reads Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”:
Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas’ poem “Fern Hill”:
Another version:
FERN HILL
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
by Dylan Thomas, 1914–1953
*************************** | ******************************************************* |