Poet's Corner

[midcan5]

'The Shivering Beggar'

"Near Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.

Saint Edward cried, "It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old gray-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine."

He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet
And wrapped it round the aged varlet,
Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse,
Quaking and chattering seven times worse.

Said Edward, "Sir, it would seem you freeze
Most bitter at your extremities.
Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also,
That warm upon your way you may go."

The man took stocking and shoe and glove,
Blaspheming Christ our Saviour’s love,
Yet seemed to find but little relief,
Shaking and shivering like a leaf.

Said the saint again, "I have no great riches,
Yet take this tunic, take these breeches,
My shirt and my vest, take everything,
And give due thanks to Jesus the King."

The saint stood naked upon the snow
Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe,
Praying, "O God! my faith, it grows faint!
This would try the temper of any saint.

"Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray,
And drive these sinful thoughts away.
Make clean my heart if it be Thy will,
This damned old rascal’s shivering still!"

He stooped, he touched the beggar man’s shoulder;
He asked him did the frost nip colder?
"Frost!" said the beggar, "no, stupid lad!
’Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad.""

Robert Graves

 

[midcan5]

'The Use of Poetry'

"On the day a fourteen-year-old disappeared in Ojai, California,
having left a Christmas Eve slumber party barefoot
to “go with a guy” in a green truck,
and all Christmas Day volunteers searched for her body within a fifteen-mile radius,
and her father and grandfather searched
and spoke to reporters because TV coverage
might help them find her if she were still alive,
and her mother stayed home with the telephone,
not appearing in public, and I could imagine
this family deciding together this division of labor
and what little else they could do to do something,
and the kitchen they sat in, the tones they spoke in,
who cried and who didn’t, and how they comforted one another
with words of hope and strokings of backs and necks,
but I couldn’t imagine their fear that their daughter
had been murdered in the woods, raped no doubt,
tied up, chopped up, God knows what else,
or them picturing her terror as it was happening to her
or their own terror of her absence ever after,
cut off from them before she had a chance to grow through adolescence,
her room ever the same with its stupid posters of rock stars
until they can bear to take them down
because they can’t bear to leave them up anymore—
on this day, which happened to be Christmas,
at the kind of holiday gathering with a whole turkey and spiral-cut ham
and beautiful dishes our hosts spent their money and time making
to cheer their friends and enjoy the pleasure of giving,
in a living room sparkling with scented candles and bunting
and a ten-foot tree adorned with antique ornaments,
the girl’s disappearance kept surfacing in conversations across the room
while I was being cornered by a man who said his wife was leaving him
after twenty-one years of marriage, then recited his resume
as if this couldn’t happen to someone with his business acumen;
and it did again after I excused myself to refill my punch glass
when someone at the punch bowl said what she had heard about it from someone else
who had played tennis that morning with the girl’s mother’s doubles partner,
while I filled a punch glass for somebody’s dad
brought along so he wouldn’t be alone on Christmas,
a man in his eighties with a face like a raven’s,
his body stooped, ravaged by age and diseases,
who told me he was amazed to still be alive himself
after a year in which he had lost both his wife and son,
then, to my amazement, began telling me how important
he is in his business world
just like the man I had just gotten away from,
that he’s still a player in international steel
involved in top-drawer projects for the navy,
and I was selfish enough to be selfless enough
to draw him out a little, and the younger man, too
(who appeared at my elbow again and started talking again),
but not selfless enough to feel what they each were going through
because my own fear and hunger
cloud how I imagine everyone,
including the bereaved family of the missing girl,
and the girl herself, and certainly her murderer,
although I know what it is to hate yourself completely
and believe all human community is lies and bullshit
and what happens to other people doesn’t matter."

Michael Ryan

 

[midcan5]

'Brief reflection on killing the Christmas carp'

"You take a kitchen-mallet
and a knife
and hit
the right spot, so it doesn’t jerk, for
jerking means only complications and reduces profit.

And the watchers already narrow their eyes, already admire the
dexterity,
already reach for their purses. And paper is ready
for wrapping it up. And smoke rises from chimneys.
And Christmas peers from windows, creeps along the ground
and splashes in barrels.

Such is the law of happiness.

I am just wondering if the carp is the right creature.

A far better creature surely would be one
which—stretched out—held flat—pinned down—
would turn its blue eye
on the mallet, the knife, the purse, the paper,
the watchers and the chimneys
and Christmas,

And quickly

say something. For instance

These are my happiest days; these are my golden days.
Or
The starry sky above me and the moral law within me,
Or
And yet it moves.

Or at least
Hallelujah!"

Miroslav Holub

 

[midcan5]

'Christmas Eve'

"Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your moods--
that present that I lost.
Sweet girl, my deathbed,
my jewel-fingered lady,
your portrait flickered all night
by the bulbs of the tree.

Your face as calm as the moon
over a mannered sea,
presided at the family reunion,
the twelve grandchildren
you used to wear on your wrist,
a three-months-old baby,
a fat check you never wrote,
the red-haired toddler who danced the twist,
your aging daughters, each one a wife,
each one talking to the family cook,
each one avoiding your portrait,
each one aping your life.

Later, after the party,
after the house went to bed,
I sat up drinking the Christmas brandy,
watching your picture,
letting the tree move in and out of focus.
The bulbs vibrated.
They were a halo over your forehead.
Then they were a beehive,
blue, yellow, green, red;
each with its own juice, each hot and alive
stinging your face. But you did not move.
I continued to watch, forcing myself,
waiting, inexhaustible, thirty-five.

I wanted your eyes, like the shadows
of two small birds, to change.
But they did not age.
The smile that gathered me in, all wit,
all charm, was invincible.
Hour after hour I looked at your face
but I could not pull the roots out of it.
Then I watched how the sun hit your red sweater, your withered neck,
your badly painted flesh-pink skin.
You who led me by the nose, I saw you as you were.
Then I thought of your body
as one thinks of murder--

Then I said Mary--
Mary, Mary, forgive me
and then I touched a present for the child,
the last I bred before your death;
and then I touched my breast
and then I touched the floor
and then my breast again as if,
somehow, it were one of yours."

Anne Sexton

 

[midcan5]

"Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose...."

Michael Benedikt

 

[midcan5]

'Requiem for the New Year'

"On this first dark day of the year
my daddy was born lo
these eighty-six years ago who now
has not drawn breath or held
bodily mass for some ten years and still
I have not got used to it.
My mind can still form to that chair him
whom no chair holds.
Each year on this night on the brink
of new circumference I stand and gaze
towards him, while roads careen with drunks,
and my dad who drank himself
away cannot be found. Daddy, I’m halfway
to death myself. The millenium
hurtles towards me, and the boy I bore
who bears your fire in his limbs
follows in my wake. Why can you not be
reborn all tall to me? If I raise my arms
here in the blind dark, why can you not
reach down now to hoist me up?
This heavy carcass I derive from yours is
tutelage of love, and yet each year
though older another notch I still cannot stand
to reach you, or to emigrate
from the monolithic shadow you left."

Mary Karr

 

[midcan5]

'New Year’s Day'

"The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it."

Kim Addonizio

 

[Brubricker]

I have memorized the following poem and I often recite it out-loud to myself when I just need to take a moment to chill.



The Beautiful Changes
by Richard Wilbur


One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

 

[midcan5]

'Faith Healing'

"Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
Within whose warm spring rain of loving care
Each dwells some twenty seconds. Now, dear child,
What’s wrong, the deep American voice demands,
And, scarcely pausing, goes into a prayer
Directing God about this eye, that knee.
Their heads are clasped abruptly; then, exiled

Like losing thoughts, they go in silence; some
Sheepishly stray, not back into their lives
Just yet; but some stay stiff, twitching and loud
With deep hoarse tears, as if a kind of dumb
And idiot child within them still survives
To re-awake at kindness, thinking a voice
At last calls them alone, that hands have come
To lift and lighten; and such joy arrives
Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a crowd
Of huge unheard answers jam and rejoice—

What’s wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:
By now, all’s wrong. In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures. An immense slackening ache,
As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,
Spreads slowly through them—that, and the voice above
Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved."

Philip Larkin

 

[midcan5]

'Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight'

(In Springfield, Illinois)

"It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free;
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornwall, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?"

Vachel Lindsay

 

[midcan5]

'Everybody'

"I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody."

Marie Sheppard Williams

 

[midcan5]

'Faith'

"Leaves drift from the cemetery oaks onto late grass,
Sun-singed, smelling like straw, the insides of old barns.
The stone angel's prayer is uninterrupted by the sleeping
Vagrant at her feet, the lone squirrel, furtive amid the litter.

Someone once said my great-grandmother, on the day she died,
rose from her bed where she had lain, paralyzed and mute
For two years following a stroke, and dressed herself—the good
Sunday dress of black crepe, cotton stockings, sensible, lace-up shoes.

I imagine her coiling her long white braid in the silent house,
Lying back down on top of the quilt and folding her hands,
Satisfied. I imagine her born-again daughters, brought up
In that tent-revival religion, called in from kitchens and fields
To stand dismayed by her bed like the sisters of Lazarus,
Waiting for her to breathe, to rise again and tell them what to do.

Here, no cross escapes the erosion of age, no voice breaks
The silence; the only certainty in the crow's flight
Or the sun's measured descent is the coming of winter.
Even the angel's outstretched arms offer only a formulated
Grace, her blind blessings as indiscriminate as acorns,
Falling on each of us, the departed and the leaving."

Judy Loest

 

[midcan5]

'Boy and Egg'

"Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day."

Naomi Shihab Nye

 

[midcan5]

'Hurry'

"We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands."

Marie Howe

 

[midcan5]

'Sober Song'

"Farewell to the starlight in whiskey,
So long to the sunshine in beer.
The booze made me cocky and frisky
But worried the man in the mirror.
Goodnight to the moonlight in brandy,
Adieu to the warmth of the wine.
I think I can finally stand me
Without a glass or a stein.
Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka,
Ta-ta to the menthol in gin.
I'm trying to do what I ought to,
Rejecting that snake medicine.
I won't miss the blackouts and vomit,
The accidents and regret.
If I can stay off the rotgut,
There might be a chance for me yet.
So so long to God in a bottle,
To the lies of rum and vermouth.
Let me slake my thirst with water
And the sweet, transparent truth."

Barton Sutter

 

[American Horse]

On the Way to Work

Life is a bitch. And then you die.
—a bumper sticker

I hated bumper stickers, hated
the notion of wanting to be known
by one glib or earnest thing.
But this time I sped up to see
a woman in her forties, cigarette,
no way to tell how serious
she was, to what degree she felt
the joke, or what she wanted from us
who'd see it, philosophers all.
If I'd had my own public answer—
"New Hope For The Dead,"
the only sticker I almost stuck—
I would have driven in front of her
and slowed down. How could we not
have become friends
or the kind of enemies
who must talk into the night,
just one mistake away from love?
I rode parallel to her,
glancing over, as one does
on an airplane at someone's book.
Short, straight hair. No make-up.
A face that had been a few places
and only come back from some.
At the stop light I smiled
at her, then made my turn
toward the half-life of work
past the placebo shops
and the beautiful park, white
like a smokescreen with snow.
She didn't follow, not in this
bitch of a life.
And I had so much to tell her
before we die
about what I'd done all these years
in between, under, and around
truths like hers. Who knows
where we would have stopped?

Stephen Dunn - from Between Angels.

 

[midcan5]

The Effect of Bumper Stickers

When I road a bicycle to work
There was no place
For 'this is what I think'
Demonstrative slogans.
So attached to my backpack
Mondale Ferraro,
One driver shouted
If they're elected
there'll be no money
for your bicycle upkeep.
When Kerry Edwards lost
I told my wife
I'd leave it till
A week went by
And I saw no Kerry Edwards,
But a year went by and more.
I kept the backpack pin till
Veterans for Obama
replaced my Obama for President,
This time it worked.
So next time
be specific
One out of three ain't bad.

 

[midcan5]

'At The Top Of The Food Chain
But The Bottom Of The Line'

"I am an American.
I rush to be before the bullet,
as I push air out of my way.
I snap commands, advice
without request, involuntarily.
I wait only briefly for anything.
I comb my hair without looking,
as fast as possible, then
cant understand why my
strands are haphazard.
I brush past, my goal in sight,
but you, who are you?

I am an averter.
My eyes have never touched
anyone. I will rush to my grave
and even in the tomb
will be pissed, for everything
I didnt get to finish.

I am an American. I pledge allegiance
to the clock, to productivity, to the bottom line. "


Judith Pordon

 

[midcan5]

'The Pessimist'

"Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air
Quick as a flash 't is gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.

Nothing to sing but songs,
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst,
Nothing to have but what we've got;
Thus thro' life we are cursed.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes."

Ben King

 

[American Horse]

HAWK


What a needy, desperate thing
to claim what's wild for oneself,
yet the hawk circling above the pines
looks like the same one I thought

might become mine after it crashed
into the large window and lay
one wing spread, the other loosely
tucked, then no, not dead, got up

dazed, and in minutes was gone.
Now once again
this is its sky, this its woods.
The tasty small birds it loves

have seen their God and know
the suddenness of such love
as we know lightning or flash flood.
If hawks can learn, this hawk learned

what's clear can be hard
down where the humans live,
and that the hunting isn't good
where the air is such a lie.

It glides above the pines and I
turn back into the room, the hawk book
open on the cluttered table
to Cooper's Hawk

and the unwritten caption:
that to be wild
means nothing you do or have done
needs to be explained.

Stephen Dunn - from Between Angels