Rest

Untitled - Jeffrey Yang

west of rest is sleep
east, dream
where waters meet
north, emptiness,
south, wakefulness,
and out, rising up
to the stars, peace.

Losses

 

Losses - Kay Ryan

Most losses add something—
a new socket or silence,
a gap in a personal
archipelago of islands.

We have that difference
to visit—itself
a going-on of sorts.

But there are other losses
so far beyond report
that they leave holes
in holes only

like the ends of the
long and lonely lives
of castaways
thought dead but not.

The Region November

 

 'Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying...'

The Region November - Wallace Stevens

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Language of Love

Permanently - Kenneth Koch

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing - for example,

"Although it was a dark rainy day when the Adjective walked by,
I shall remember the pure and sweet expression on her face
until the day I perish from the green, effective earth."

Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"

Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on
the window sill has changed color recently to a light
yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory which
exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat -
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

Night Life

 

The Night, The Porch - Mark Strand

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart

What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself

To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.

Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.

What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort

Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux

Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting

For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—

The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,

Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there

Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

 

Full Moon Self

  
'There's no material as variable as moonlight...'

There's a lovely full moon out tonight. Make or do with it what you will.

 

Full Moon - Alice Oswald 

Good God!

What did I dream last night?

I dreamt I was the moon.

I woke and found myself still asleep.

It was like this: my face misted up from inside

And I came and went at will through a little peephole.

I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,

except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.

Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.

Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.

Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking

No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.

Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,

Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,

There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer

Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.

I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.

There's no material as variable as moonlight.

I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:

Good God! Who have I been last night?

Riddle

Richard Wilbur - Riddle

Where far in forest I am laid,
In a place ringed around by stones,
Look for no melancholy shade,
And have no thoughts of buried bones;
For I am bodiless and bright,
And fill this glade with sudden glow;
The leaves are washed in under-light;
Shade lies upon the boughs like snow.