Exile

 'Yet, love endures..'

The ideas here shine with luminous truth.


Exile - Hart Crane

My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands, -
No, - nor my lips freed laughter since 'farewell',
And with the day, distance again expands
Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.

Yet, love endures, though starving and alone.
A dove's wings clung about my heart each night
With surging gentleness, and the blue stone
Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.

Snow Light

A snow poem and a love poem in one? Why yes. 



The Snow Light - May Sarton

In the snow light,
In the swan light,
In the white-on-white light
Of a winter storm,
My delight and your delight
Kept each other warm.

The next afternoon
And love gone so soon!—
I met myself alone
In a windless calm,
Silenced at the bone
After the white storm.

What more was to come?
Out from the cocoon,
In the silent room,
Pouring out white light,
Amaryllis bloom
Opened in the night.

The cool petals shone
Like some winter moon
Or shadow of a swan,
Echoing the light
After you were gone
Of our white-on-white.

Morning

It's Friday and to get that Friday feeling, here's free-rhythm maestro Frank O' Hara.


Morning - Frank O'Hara

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

Poetry Is What...?

Poetry is... a most magnificent magical force alright :)

Poetry is What? - Adrian Mitchell

Poetry is a beautiful mud-pie

Washed down with a glassful of stars.

Poetry is one of the best ways

Of singing to the whole wide world

Or whispering in the ear of your best friend.

Poetry tunnels you out of your dungeon.

Poetry captures the three-headed dragon.

And teaches it Ludo and Frisbee-throwing. 

Poetry is a Mammoth in a shopping mall,

A beggar with no legs in Disneyland,

A chocolate bicycle,

A truthburger with French flies

And the Moon's own telephone.

Poetry is your mind dancing

To the drumbeat of your own heart. 

January Stars

 

January - WS Mervin

So after weeks of rain
at night the winter stars
that much farther in heaven
without our having seen them
in far light are still forming
the heavy elements
that when the stars are gone
fly up as dust finer
by many times than a hair
and recognize each other
in the dark traveling
at great speed and becoming
our bodies in our time
looking up after rain
in the cold night together

Winter

Meh meh meh, winter.  Exactly what it feels like! Brrrrrrr, bleugh. 

Winter - Billy Collins

A little heat in the iron radiator,

the dog breathing at the foot of the bed,

and the windows shut tight,

encrusted with hexagons of frost.

I can barely hear the geese

complaining in the vast sky,

flying over the living and the dead,

schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

Robin in Snow

 

Have you ever seen a robin in snow? A sight to behold! (But don't forget to feed them...)


The North Wind Doth Blow 
(- Nursery Rhyme)

The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then?
Poor thing.

He'll sit in a barn,
And keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing.

Frozen In

And now, from the bite in the air, the prospect of snow looms, and thrills.


Frozen In - Annie Finch

Ours are the only mouths
to taste with this smothering slow

touch, and the only steps

to sink like bellsounds and cave

deep into the marble snow.

Women who go to the window

to push their arms out to the snow

and then bring the shutters back in

follow us as we fall

past their eyes where the black night lives.

We are snowflakes at last, as the thick

never locked, never closed doors

follow us through squares of light

their windows have left on the snow.

Once again, warmth that falls,

again, though our tracks fill and slow.

January: A Tale of Light & Dark

 

 

January - Betty Adcock

 

Dusk and snow this hour in argument have settled nothing. Light persists, and darkness. If a star shines now, that shine is swallowed and given back doubled, grounded bright. The timid angels flailed by passing children lift in a whitening wind toward night. What plays beyond the window plays as water might, all parts making cold digress. Beneath iced bush and eave, the small banked fires of birds at rest lend absences to seeming absence. Truth is, nothing at all is missing. Wind hisses and one shadow sways where a window’s lampglow has added something. The rest is dark and light together tolled against the boundary-riven houses. Against our lives, the stunning wholeness of the world.

 

Spiderweb

Spiderweb - Kay Ryan 

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live.

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live. - See more at: http://www.persimmontree.org/v2/summer-2011/sixteen-poems/#sthash.qSCOj5W9.dpuf

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live. - See more at: http://www.persimmontree.org/v2/summer-2011/sixteen-poems/#sthash.qSCOj5W9.dpuf

Good Night

Good Night - WS Mervin

Sleep softly my old love
my beauty in the dark
night is a dream we have
as you know as you know

night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end as you know

in the night where you go
sleep softly my old love
without end in the dark
in the love that you know

Epiphany

 

 

Well that's it, Christmas is officially over today with the feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings. This poem from UA Fanthorpe is ideal I think for the occasion, especially that last line. The spectacles and stories of Christmas may be over, but not their significance. Up to us now, alright.

 

The Wise Men and the Star - UA Fanthorpe

 

The proper place for stars is in the sky

Lighting the whole world,but negotiating only

With the highly qualified - master mariners, astro-physicists,

Professionals like ourselves.

This one came unscheduled, nudged us roughly

Out of routine, led us a wild - goose chase,

And perching here, above unspeakable rafters,

Common as a starling on a washing line,

Whistles to every callow Dick and Harry,

Idlling amazed around : OK, pals, I've done my bit.

Over to you, now, Earth.

 

Farewell Christmas Tree

 

It's always so sad putting away the Christmas tree and decorations!  But, it 'had its hour'  and now a time for a new chapter to begin, twinkle-lit memories to accompany us into it.


The Christmas Tree - Cecil Day Lewis

Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons - the same
That yesterday hid in the spinney and had no fame
Till we put out the lights now.
Hard are the nights now:

The fields at moonrise turn
to agate,
Shadows are cold as jet;
In dyke and furrow, in copse and faggot
The frost's tooth is set;
And stars are the sparks whirled out by the north wind's fret
On the flinty nights now.

So feast your eyes now
On mimic star and moon-cold bauble;
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen,
And the world cannot change or chill what its mysteries mean
To your hearts and eyes now.

The vision dies now
Candle by candle: the tree that embraced it
Returns to its own kind,
To be earthed again and weather as best it
May the frost and the wind.
Children, it too had its hour – you will not mind
If it lives or dies now.

Beginning

 

 

Beginning - James Wright

 

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moon's young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

 

Tomorrow

Happy New Year! And thank you all dear readers for your constant readership, comments and appreciation throughout the year. Here's to a lot more of 'metaphysics of the quotidian' in the coming year,  the real kind of magic, a lot of it translated of course through poetry. 




Tomorrow - Charles Wright

The metaphysics of the quotidian was what he was after:
A little dew on the sunrise grass,
A drop of blood in the evening trees,
                                                         a drop of fire.

If you don't shine you are darkness.
The future is merciless,
                                      everyone's name inscribed
On the flyleaf of the Book of Snow.