Memoranda - Carl Sandburg

[bluerosesgirl.livejournal.com]

This handful of grass, brown, says little. This quarter mile field of it, waving seeds ripening in the sun, is a lake of luminous firefly lavender.

Prairie roses, two of them, climb down the sides of a road ditch. In the clear pool they find their faces along stiff knives of grass, and cat-tails who speak and keep thoughts in beaver brown.

These gardens empty; these fields only flower ghosts; these yards with faces gone; leaves speaking as feet and skirts in slow dances to slow winds; I turn my head and say good-by to no one who hears; I pronounce a useless good-by.

Stephen Dobyns

[ghostofchance.livejournal.com]

HIDE AND SEEK

At first it's just a form of play. Your mother
shuts her eyes or hides them with her hand.
Briefly, she is gone. Are you afraid? Then,

surprise, she's back again. A few years later,
your favorite game is hide and seek. You wait
behind a tree as your best friend counts to ten.

Then, when it's your turn, you hunt for him.
Doesn't this suggest the impossibility
of getting lost? Your mother uncovers her eyes,

your friend uncovers your hiding place-
the world's machinery won't let you disappear.
As you grow older you read of runaways returned,

stolen children found again. We long to believe
the world wants each of us in our own spot,
secure and respected, the fortunate held dear.

Yet increasingly on the street you see the lost,
men and women adrift between destinations.
Do you see that man in the park behind the tree?

He waits for someone to finish counting.
Then you notice a woman on a bench, a man
idly smoking. Don't they, too, seem to be waiting?

If the whole beginning of your life attempts
to prove you can't be lost, then what belief
directs the rest, or are you lost from the start?

That man behind the tree, see how he listens.
Does he think someone seeks him even now?
Does he regret that he hid himself so well?

He stands up. It begins to rain. As you pass
on a bus, the man glances toward you as if
at a scrap of paper being blown down the street.

Briefly, you feel alarm. Lost, lost, you ask,
when were we ever found? Then your view
is blocked by shops; the man slips from sight.

The bus turns and stops, starts and turns again.
You forget but don't quite forget as you watch
people with pursuits much like your own hurry

between two points-not quite lost, not yet found.
Consider this: our first breath brought us here
and as sparks rise up from a fire so we disappear.

"Renascence", Edna St. Vincent MIllay

[adroanzi.livejournal.com]

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line         5
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.         10
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small         15
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.         20
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;         25
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;         30
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass         35
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,         40
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard and knew at last         45
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence         50
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll         55
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate         60
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—         65
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;         70
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;         75
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.         80
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,         85
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.         90
 
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[kareninssmile.livejournal.com]

Isolation: To Marguerite -- Continued

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour--

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renters vain their deep desire?--
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

-Matthew Arnold