Poet's Corner

[midcan5]

'Talk'

"One day you sit down to talk with the woman you love
at the table in the kitchen, the scarred one with the extra leaf

that you never need now that you live so far from friends
and family, the table you daily bang your knee on, the only

piece of furniture you own from before you met her.
It could be after dinner with a drink or better still

on one of those brilliant fall mornings over a cup of coffee,
the brass mornings that go on forever, that all alone are enough

to hold you here though they mean less than nothing to her
without the people she loves. But instead of talking you think

about the farmer at the flea market who sold you the table,
the way he stood beside his wife embarrassed, tight lipped,

imagine the thousands of mornings they rose from that table
for the morning milking and were back out after supper,

in summer suffering the heat, in winter over a frozen path,
even before and after the child's funeral, the wife's wind-burned

face still wet, the husband's stiff blue suit re-hung in the closet,
barely a word passing between them except for work.

What was once water then becomes stone that no
talk or tears or surgeon's knife can begin to reach, and you

see now there is nothing left to say, so you sip your coffee
and smoke while the moon sets and a door upstairs closes."

Peter Klein

 

[midcan5]

'The History Teacher'

"Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off."

Billy Collins

 

[midcan5]

'Be Kind'

"we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is."

Charles Bukowski

 

[Bootneck]

The soldier stood and faced God,
Which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining,
Just as brightly as his brass.

'Step forward now, you soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true? '

The soldier squared his shoulders,
and said, 'No, Lord, I guess I ain't.
Because those of us who carry guns,
Can't always be a saint.

I've had to work most Sundays,
And at times my talk was tough.
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.

But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep...
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep.

And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.

I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around,
Except to calm their fears.

If you've a place for me here, Lord,
It needn't be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand.'

There was a silence all around the throne,
Where the saints had often trod.
As the soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.

'Step forward now, you soldier,
You've borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell.'


For the 32 men of 3 Commando Brigade who made the ultimate sacrifice.
RIP We shall not forget you.

 

[midcan5]

'In whom do I trust?'

"Me mate and me
out on patrol
eyes peeled
for any unrest,
scanning the roofs
for snipers bullets.
A car cruises past
thumping hearts
till it speeds on by
danger imagined.
A rock – skirted
for fear it’s real,
every step
a threat.
A typical day in Iraq.

Then in a vision
comes a woman
in black,
laden with goods
fresh from
the market.
Weighed down
she stumbles
dropping her wares.
Quick as a flash,
unrehearsed
my mate races -
across the dusty road.

I meet her look
stomach churning
something’s not right
something is wrong
the body is old
but the eyes are young.

I scream
GET B-A-C-K!
as the
water melon
EXPLODES
in his hand -
into fragments
of man – woman
into pulp of
flesh and bone.

I rock myself
to sleep
that night
full of
questions
full of doubt.

TELL ME; how
can I defend
when I know not
who to trust?

TELL ME; how
can I fight
when I achieve no good?

TELL ME; how
can I fight
in a war that’s unjust?

HOW can I kill
a woman
in cold blood?

TELL ME;
all you
politicians back home!

For I do not know
I just don’t know anymore
I just don’t know."

Janet Hedger

War poetry 2009

 

[midcan5]

'Forever'

"I do know that birds continue to live and procreate as long as
the weather is amenable and the food there—as if it were a
deal between them, the weather and the crops. No questions
asked. And the birds are in earnest about it, as I am in earnest
about finding a reason for their lives, for what reason I myself
do not understand. So I too in my way am ignorant of myself,
my purpose, to perform simply the role of questioner.

If I were to say that it is because I want to know, I will again
surely be carrying out my function of questioner, as the birds
carry out theirs of eating and procreating.

I must call it good because to deny it is not one of my
functions, or is it? And here I am asking a question once again,
carrying out the function I have been assigned.

Meditation is its name, to meditate on practically nothing and to
find something to say about it, this that I have written, its own
purpose in being, for the sake of living with questions forever."

David Ignatow

 

[American Horse]

CARPENTER

Unasked, he once said what he required of life
and I was more surprised by the occasion of his
telling me than by his simple words;
rest when he got home, beer, and sports on tv;

he said it earnestly without swagger or resignation,
with the pride and appraisal of a man who perceived
himself ordinary and wanted what he had.
And I wondered if his flatness was meant to be

a check to me, carpenter, same as him but with desires
flagrant and helplessly exposed by the years.
He held the rope while I drove nails
at the edge of a steep roof above a sixty-foot drop.

I trusted him not because he was the least imaginative
but because he understood and accepted that I was scared.
A kind of respect really. As much as I longed
to tell my secrets he kept his mostly,

sitting on the ridge awkwardly transferring
a cigarette from hand to lip
as he adjusted the rope around his back and down to me—
occasionally holding it with one hand

as he took a drag, though not thoughtlessly.
He tied steel his first day, an apprentice
from the union accustomed to abuse, his hands clumsy
with the linesman's pliers but fast

from effort instead of skill—the sharp wire
leaving a dozen marks of his work
on the back of his hands before lunch.
In the union he only learned to run shearwall,

miles of it, but these mornings walking with cigarette
and coffee from his truck he asks about the day:
"What's up?" regarding me on his heels,
having learned most of what I've taught.

Now with a family at thirty-four his belly sags,
and when he runs the bases he comes back to the bench
with pain in his chest. On the phone his wife tells me
of him standing in her kitchen, tool belt on,

with the six-foot level I gave him for his birthday,
saying "Hey Hon, look!" And on the jobsite
we crown and cut a beam that we will raise to span
two gables and support the rafters on the roof

while discussing how to set the ladders, and who gets which
end: getting tasks and calls straight—then leaning, reaching
from his ladder, guiding the beam to the wall he grins
at me grimacing, anticipates the weight.


above from "Hammer poems" by Mark Turpin

.

 

[midcan5]

CARPENTER

Unasked, he once said what he required of life
and I was more surprised by the occasion of his
telling me than by his simple words;
rest when he got home, beer, and sports on tv;

I enjoyed that - it reminds me of a friend - younger but now in his fifties - I did a roof by myself in my fifties - I laid in bed that first night - and wondered if I'd be able to finish - my hands hurt so - finally did just before a rain - it made me think of labor - of all the men like him on roofs - we met recently at a funereal - sometimes that is where old friends meet most - he was stooped a bit - with large strong hands - but pain and resignation showing too.

 

[American Horse]

CARPENTER

Unasked, he once said what he required of life
and I was more surprised by the occasion of his
telling me than by his simple words;
rest when he got home, beer, and sports on tv;

I enjoyed that - it reminds me of a friend - younger but now in his fifties - I did a roof by myself in my fifties - I laid in bed that first night - and wondered if I'd be able to finish - my hands hurt so - finally did just before a rain - it made me think of labor - of all the men like him on roofs - we met recently at a funereal - sometimes that is where old friends meet most - he was stooped a bit - with large strong hands - but pain and resignation showing too.

Roofing labor is the most unforgiving for the novice. My worst experiences in construction were when I decided to not pay the very reasonable price a roofer wanted and did it myself. There's a good lesson in it about skill for the skill-less.

I heard one of these poems being read by Garrison Keelor in his nightly reading, and had to have the book....

Here's another

The Man Who Built This House


First realize he didn't build it for himself,
and that changes a man, and the way he thinks
about building a house. There is joy but
it's a colder type—he'd as easily joy in
tearing it down, as we have done, down
to the bare frame, loaded boxes of lath
and plaster, stirring a dust unstirred since
well, we know the date: Thursday, June 19, 1930.
Date on the newspaper stuffed between
the doorbell battery and the box it lodged in.
Not so long ago, seventy years, historical
only to a Californian. The headline: "Admiral Byrd
Given Welcome In N.Y." "Rear Admiral
Richard E. Byrd, conqueror of the South Pole."
Safe to say, the man who built this house
is gone or nearly gone by now—and we think
of the houses we have built, and the strangers
who will certainly, eventually come to change
or tear them down—that further event that
needs to happen. And there is foulness
to this dust, dust locked in walls till
we arrived to release it to the world again.
So, maybe, all is as it should be. Still, the man
himself haunts me. I noticed it—especially
after my apprentice saw fit to criticize his work,
this neat but spindly frame of rough 2x4's
2x4's for the walls, the rafters, even for the ceiling joists
(that he tied to the ridge to keep the ceiling from sagging)
that functioned adequately all these years
till we knocked it loose. And so, for reasons
my apprentice wouldn't understand, I admit
a liking, yes, for him and for this sketch
of a house, the lightness of his eye, as if
there might be something else to think about:
a sister taken sick, or maybe just a book or
a newspaper with a coffee and a smoke, as if
to say to the world: This is all you take from me.
Of course, having lived here a month already,
I know better—accustomed now to the
hieroglyphs of his keel marks, his red crayon
with an arrow denoting the sole plate of a wall,
imaginary, invisible lines that he
unknowing, passes on to me, numbers and lines
radiating from the corners and the eaves
—where the bird nests hide inside the vents—
all lining up, falling plumb, coming square and true
for me, and all his offhand easiness just a guise
for a mind too quick ever to be satisfied
—just moving quickly through the motions.
And, now, what he has to show for it, hauled away
in boxes and bags, and me about to alter
what's left—not like Byrd's Pole, fixed
forever. The pure radiating lines forever
flowing and unalterable—lines of mind only,
without a house attached. And yet, even a South Pole
doesn't seem much of an accomplishment to us—
to have merely found another place on Earth.
There is a special pity that we reserve
for the dead, trapped in their newspapers'
images of time, wearing what they wore,
doing what they did. I feel as much for this man here,
and for the force it took to pull a chalked string
off the floor, let it snap, and, make a wall.
Something apart from something else,
Not forever but for a little while.
He must have felt it too, a man like him,
Else why leave the newspaper for us?

above from "Hammer poems" by Mark Turpin

I remember once as a small child, when my dad cut into a wall to add the bathroom we didn't have - we'd previously enjoyed the benefits of an out-house and a #5 round galvanized "tub" we'd used for our weekly baths on Saturday night - and finding a newspaper from the time the house had been built, about the beginning of the last century. When found, and it was about 40 years old in 1946, it was fascinating and unexpectedly oddly interesting at the time.

During the years I build homes, I'd leave my own mark like that one to reveal the date, and something about our work there. But more than newspapers and "notes from the past" our houses are full of "archaeology" about the builders, and their daily thinking, for those who are interested in deciphering it.

 

[midcan5]

During the years I build homes, I'd leave my own mark like that one to reveal the date, and something about our work there. But more than newspapers and "notes from the past" our houses are full of "archaeology" about the builders, and their daily thinking, for those who are interested in deciphering it.

Nice. I rebuilt our first home room by room, it was as if the original builder used any wood of any size he could find. Circa 1920. Nothing was level or straight and nothing easy. lol

Philip Levine is another working man poet. Here's one.

'What Work Is'

"We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is."

Philip Levine

Philip Levine Poems and Poetry

 

[American Horse]

During the years I build homes, I'd leave my own mark like that one to reveal the date, and something about our work there. But more than newspapers and "notes from the past" our houses are full of "archaeology" about the builders, and their daily thinking, for those who are interested in deciphering it.

Nice. I rebuilt our first home room by room, it was as if the original builder used any wood of any size he could find. Circa 1920. Nothing was level or straight and nothing easy. lol

There is a real talent in making the most of what you have at hand. I respect it when I see it. I know my own father built our first house without the benefit of electricity, using a hand saw, brace and bit, wood chisels, and hand planes to get the job done with native lumber.

Good poem...

.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Mary Rose sat on a pin.
Mary rose.

 

[midcan5]

The Interview II

"I represent The Morning Shout. We hear you are dying.
May we interview you before you pass on?

Certainly. There won't be another such another opportunity, I'm sure.

We'd like to know what you will miss most, at your death.

Music, nothing but music. Classical and popular, if someone or an
orchestra will play during my last hour. I'll be very thankful.

Are you happy to be passing on?

Well, I'm of two minds about it. One, I'd like to hang on a bit longer
and, on the other hand, if I can't, I'd like my passing on to be considered
an event of some importance.

Next question: Do you have any regrets for having lived as you did?
Is there anything you would have done differently if you were given
a second chance?

Oh, yes. I'd like to have said hello to my parents more often rather
than ignoring them, as I did, even as a young man. I'm sorry about
that.

Is there something you can say you are proud of having done in life
that you would do over again if given the chance?

Oh, yes. I enjoyed making lots of money, and I'm very proud of having
left a fortune. It was a pleasure to accumulate, and I'd gladly do it
again, especially to see my name listed in the Obituary, with mention
of my wealth. Excuse me, I think I'm beginning to sink rapidly. I will
have to say good-by to you for now.

One last question: What are you experiencing at this moment in passing on?

Oh, a slight headache and a feeling of missing out on something.
Good-by.

Finally: Are you dead and, if so, can you describe it for us, for your
admiring public.

No comment."

David Ignatow

 

[American Horse]

“Burnt Norton”


Time Past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbor where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

~ T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets​

 

[midcan5]

'Dust'

I

"My wife tells me that when she was six
she came home from school to an empty house
put down her lunch box, sat on a hassock
by her father's chair, and simply waited.
Someone known would return home soon, she was sure.
The house was still, silent, holding its breath.
the late-afternoon sunlight streamed in
the unshaded windows and turned the dust
into tiny golden planets floating
before her. Sixty-four years later
she declares, "It was beautiful," and goes
on to describe the sense of awe and peace
before this vision of the universe
that descended from nowhere or perhaps
rose from within. North-central Iowa,
1933, her grandmother's house.
Nothing else remains of the day. She gazes
into space seeing again those whirling
worlds more perfectly than the room she's in,
her smile open, her glazed eyes radiant."

Philip Levine

 

[Phoenix]

Perhaps my favorite poem:

A Day
(Emily Dickinson)

I'll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

........................
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.




Another good one from the same author:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

 

[American Horse]

From Faust
Johann W. von Goethe

But Still I'm troubled by one thing:
Time is short and art is long.
I'd think you'd let yourself be taught.
Associate yourself with a poet and let
him gallop through all fields of thought
and heap all noble qualities on your honored head
the lions courage, the stags speed,
the fiery Italian blood, the Normans fortitude.

 

[midcan5]

'Crimson Invitation'

"More sex, more books, more cake, more murder--consider the invitation to do it all again, could it be that some might refuse the journey? What does the cruel soul have to look forward to but further cruelty? Why should the shy soul locate itself in one more clumsy body? The suicides, the downcast, the rejected--why should they return if they can remain bodiless, carried aloft as specks of light? What must have happened not to want it again? Never to watch the sun sink into the sea, never to embrace, never to live again. The beggar, would he refuse the journey? The woman who lost her children, the man whose dear love ran off with another? Yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a fistful of ash--so Marcus Aurelius tells us. But consider all that comes between, the fleeting, the sweet, never to be repeated, never to happen again.

I think of skiing through the woods in winter, a few sparrows and chickadees in the branches, sunlight glistening on the snow, rabbit tracks, the whisper of trickling water beneath the ice, the silence rising into the blue bowl of sky. What does it mean never to want it again? I think of the faces of my children, the caress of my wife's fingertips against my cheek. Yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a fistful of ash. Is Marcus Aurelius's dark soul still a point of light carried aloft by currents of wind? I want them all to want to again, not just the happy ones or thoughtless ones or the ones who believed themselves successful. For even one to hang back creates a shard of doubt, a stone in the shoe."

[excerpt]

Stephen Dobyns

 

[American Horse]

See what you think of this one written by E.A. POE:

ELDORADO

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

THE END

.​

 

[midcan5]

'Possibilities'

"I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being."

Wislawa Szymborska