somewhere i have never travelled by e.e. cummings

[mysterytours.livejournal.com]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

"From the Sky" by Martha Collins

[pirate-poet.livejournal.com]

I think this poem feels best when read aloud. Try it.


From the Sky

Snow is expected to fall from the sky.
--Boston Globe, March 1999


Snow will fall from the sky
Snow will turn to rain
Rain will fill our streams
The earth will turn again

Snow will turn to rain
Blossoms will fill the trees
The earth will turn again
Petals will fill the air

Blossoms will fill the trees
Petals will fall like snow
Petals will fill the air
Green will fill the trees

Petals will fall like snow
Petals will fall to earth
Green will fill the trees
Where air was, leaves will be

Petals will fall to earth
Leaves will fall from trees
Where air was, leaves will be
Leaves, where there was snow

Leaves will fall from trees
Colors will brighten the air
Leaves, where there was snow
Leaves will fall to earth

Colors will brighten the air
Like hair and blood and skin
Leaves will fall to earth
Where we will fall from our lives

Like hair and blood and skin
Leaves will turn to earth
Where we will fall from our lives

Like hair and blood and skin
Leaves will turn to earth
Where we will fall from our lives
Where we were, air will be

Leaves will turn to earth
Rain will fill our streams
Where we were, air will be
Snow will fall from the sky


--Martha Collins

"Finding" by Rupert Brooke (1909)

[eancais.livejournal.com]

Finding

From the candles and dumb shadows,
And the house where love had died,
I stole to the vast moonlight
And the whispering life outside.
But I found no lips of comfort,
No home in the moon's light
(I, little and lone and frightened
In the unfriendly night),
And no meaning in the voices....
Far over the lands and through
The dark, beyond the ocean,
I willed to think of you!
For I knew, had you been with me
I'd have known the words of night,
Found peace of heart, gone gladly
In comfort of that light.

Oh! the wind with soft beguiling
Would have stolen my thought away;
And the night, subtly smiling,
Came by the silver way;
And the moon came down and danced to me,
And her robe was white and flying;
And trees bent their heads to me
Mysteriously crying;
And dead voices wept around me;
And dead soft fingers thrilled;
And the little gods whispered....
But ever
Desperately I willed;
Till all grew soft and far
And silent...
And suddenly
I found you white and radiant,
Sleeping quietly,
Far out through the tides of darkness.

And I there in that great light
Was alone no more, nor fearful;
For there, in the homely night,
Was no thought else that mattered,
And nothing else was true,
But the white fire of moonlight,
And a white dream of you.

(no subject)

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

Paregoric Babies


Clocks blue seconds fold over me
slow as swamp dreams I feel
heavy like metal shade pre-dawn thickness

I sit

in my chair of nods shivering
from a sickness I took years to perfect

dark paddling in the wave membrane
the moneky woman's dream steams

are places of shy creatures, head infants
I had born on a whim and abandoned...my eye

drips the strain in the sweet March air, frozen
pure as my blood refuses to flow...
stilled, sweat that shines the breath of my poem

--Jim Carroll

another james tate poem

[meandyouyouyou.livejournal.com]

Made In Holland

Pigtails fiddles with my riverbed,
she shoots some plutonium up my harpsicord.
I am here in Holland up a nut tree.
I walk the shopping mall in my pajamas.
My cologne seems to intoxicate everyone.
Deluded cattle walk out of the barbershop
saying things like "Nice pajamas," and
"Didn't I see you at the golf club last week?"
"Alms," I say, "Alms for The Sacred Rifles.
Alms for The Pampered Daughters of the Dragonfly."
Papa's up a nut tree in Holland, Pigtails
reposes over the fretwork of his dominion.
I am tethered to some daft subterfuge.
A doorbell rings, but there is no door.
Chuckle. A buzz, a bundle arrives:
someone in clogs is bringing it toward me.
It is my fever they want. I reach for the mop
and fall, fall quaintly against fluffy sashes,
and I fall on Pigtails, prod her
bereaved haven, skim the blemish of her starch.
And that is why I am in Holland.
That must be why, tulip.

- James Tate

two people together is a work / heroic in its ordinariness

[grammarfight.livejournal.com]

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev

(leader of a woman's climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev's husband found and buried the bodies.)

The cold felt cold until our blood
grew colder      then the wind
died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak
it's with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say      with voices)
When the wind tore      our breath from us at last
we had no need of words
For months      for years      each one of us
had felt her own yes      growing in her
slowly forming      as she stood at windows      waited
for trains      mended her rucksack      combed her hair
What we were to learn      was simply      what we had
up here      as out of all words      that yes      gathered
its forces      fused itself      and only just in time
to meet a No of no degrees
the black hole      sucking the world in

I feel you climbing toward me
your cleated bootsoles leaving      their geometric bite
colossally embossed      on microscopic crystals
as when I trailed you in the Caucasus
Now I am further
ahead      than either of us dreamed      anyone would be
I have become
the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind
the women I love      lightly flung      against the mountain
that blue sky
our frozen eyes unribboned      through the storm
we could have stitched that blueness      together      like a quilt

You come (I know this)      with your love      your loss
strapped to your body      with your tape-recorder      camera
ice-pick      against advisement
to give us burial in the snow      and in your mind
While my body lies out here
flashing like a prism      into your eyes
how could you sleep      You climbed here for yourself
we climbed for ourselves

When you have buried us      told your story
Ours does not end      we stream
into the unfinished      the unbegun
the possible
Every cell's core of heat      pulsed out of us
into the thin air      of the universe
the armature of rock beneath these snows
this mountain      which has taken      the imprint of our minds
through changes elemental and minute
as those we underwent
to bring each other here
choosing ourselves      each other      and this life
whose every breath      and grasp      and further foothold
is somewhere      still enacted      and continuing

In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready
and each of us knows it      I have never loved
like this      I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training      the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

In the diary as the wind      began to tear
at the tents over us      I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together      but till now
we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean      "to survive"
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow      We will not live
to settle for less      We have dreamed of this
all of our lives

-Adrienne Rich



cross-posted from grammarfight

Shmu'el Hanagid, "It's Heart That Discerns"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

IT'S HEART THAT DISCERNS

It's heart that discerns
   between evil and good,
so work to develop your heart.

How many are there
   who heartless destroy,
and think their destruction a start?


SHMU'EL HANAGID (993-1056)

Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole