Alone

I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody's dalmatian. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on the lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.

That makes her happy the way it always did.
-Jack Gilbert

As the Poems Go

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.

it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.

leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.

~Bukowski

Elegy

I want to dig up the earth with my teeth,
I want to take dry, fiery bites
pulling it apart bit by bit.

I want to tear up the earth until I find you,
so I can kiss your noble skull,
bandage your mouth, and bring you back to life.

You will come back to the fig tree in my backyard:
your soul will be at peace there,
high up among the blossoms, gathering

the wax and honey of angelic hives.
You'll come back to words whispered through
grillwork windows by romantic field hands.

You'll blow away the shadows on my brow,
and your woman and the bees will take
turns claiming your blood as theirs.

Your heart, now only crumpled velvet,
calls from a field of surf-like almond trees
to my voice, wanting and full of love.

And I call you to come to the milky
almond blossoms who are souls flying.
I miss you, Ramón. Ramón, we still have
so many things to talk about.

From Elegy, Miguel Hernández.

Camilla, never ask

Camilla, never ask when it will happen, for we'll never know
how it comes or when. Leave divination to Julia, our friend
who orders predestination from catalogues of remaindered
theologies. Let us determine to take what comes, hot or cold,
whether we stay alive into old age or drop dead next Tuesday,
which is doubtless as good a day as any. Tonight let us fill
our wineglasses without fretting about the future, which only
sours the Beaujolais. Forget tomorrow's blueberries; eat today's.

`Donald Hall

The Coin

Into my heart's treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin, --

Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing

~Sara Teasdale

Persimmons

Finally understanding he was going blind,
my father would stay up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He's so happy that I've come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times eyes closed.
These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

From Persimmons, Li-Young Lee

An Epilogue

I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.

John Masefield

If Death is Kind

Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.

-Sarah Teasdale

An afternoon in the stacks

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages.
An echo,continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here, the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

-Intriguingly, this poem is attributed to both Mary Oliver and William Stafford.

XLIV from One Hundred Love Sonnets

You will know that I do and do not love you
just as life is of two minds,
a word is one wing of silence,
and fire is half made of ice.

-Neruda

Meeropol

How simple it seemed that spring, with a quart of green
cactus milk between us, on the ferry from Naxos

to Crete, when the moon was the one clock, and stars
only had gums. And the summer in Barcelona

when the French children actually cried at the sight
of my dreadlocks. I used to think, if we kissed

in every time zone, it would always be the blue hour
in which I loved you. It still is.

~From Meeropol, Jeffrey McDaniel

This is just to say

Yesterday afternoon J finally found the first red plums of the season and picked out a great many to bring home.
We passed the day, ate dinner, watched some tv. Then, he walked into the kitchen with a sense of purpose. I trailed after him, lured.
He carefully chose the best ones, washed them, handed them to me. We bit into that cool jewel-red flesh, almost breathless with the perfection of it. A little juice spilled down my shirt and J pointed and laughed. I smiled and ate the rest over the sink-there was much more spilling of that sweet juice.
Later, I said the William Carlos Williams poem aloud to him about the cold sweet plums. "This is just to say, I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast; Forgive me- they were delicious, so sweet and so cold..."
We slept better last night than we have in a while.

In and Out

The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life -- in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

~Jane Kenyon

The Guitarist Tunes Up

With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conquerer who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.

-Frances Darwin Cornford

An Old Man

Deep inside the noisy cafe,
huddled over the table sits an old man,
with a newspaper in front of him, all alone.

And in the indignity of his miserable old age
he ponders on how little he enjoyed the years
when he had vigor, eloquence, and looks.

He knows that he has aged a lot; he senses it, he sees it.
And yet the time when he was young seems like
yesterday. What a short span of time, what a short span.

And he reflects on how Prudence deceived him;
and how he always trusted her--what folly!--
that liar who used to say: 'Tomorrow. You still have plenty of time.'

He recalls impulses that he restrained; and how much
joy he sacrificed. Every lost opportunity
now mocks his mindless wisdom.

...But from too much reflection and reminiscence
the old man becomes dizzy. And he falls asleep
leaning upon the table of the cafe.

C.P.Cavafy (translated from Greek)