A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

 

One Perfect Rose

by Dorothy Parker

 

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet

One perfect rose.

 

I knew the language of the flow'ret;

"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.

 

Why is it no one ever sent me yet

One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Ah no, it's always just my luck to get

One perfect rose.

 

Sometimes you just need a little sarcasm...

[brokenclay]

5 hours ago, txomsy said:

There is Art in saying without saying. Your poems reminded me of this one from Blas de Otero

 

 

 

EN EL PRINCIPIO
Si he perdido la vida, el tiempo, todo
lo que tiré, como un anillo, al agua,
si he perdido la voz en la maleza,
me queda la palabra.
Si he sufrido la sed, el hambre, todo
lo que era mío y resultó ser nada,
si he segado las sombras en silencio,
me queda la palabra.
Si abrí los labios para ver el rostro
puro y terrible de mi patria,
si abrí los labios hasta desgarrármelos,
me queda la palabra.

 

IN THE BEGINNING
If I've lost the life, the time, everything
that I threw away, as a ring, to the water,
if I've lost the voice among the thicket,
I still have the word.
If I have suffered thirst, hunger, everything
that was mine and turned out to be nothing,
if I have reaped the shadows in silence,
I still have the word.
If I opened my eyes to see the pure and terrible
face of my homeland,
if I opened my lips until I torn them apart,
I still have the word.

 

 

Sorry for meddling. Sorry for the blob and terrible hand. It's freezing here (now, talk of lame excuses...)

Here I was just thinking, "What a lovely hand..." 🙂

[txomsy]

5 hours ago, brokenclay said:

Here I was just thinking, "What a lovely hand..." 🙂

Thanks. You mean the blob, right? 🙂

 

[brokenclay]

46 minutes ago, txomsy said:

Thanks. You mean the blob, right? 🙂

 

 

Love the blob, but I meant the script. I used to have that lowercase "p" (German school).

[hh1990]

 

Homecoming - Paul Celan

 

Snowfall, denser and denser,
dove-coloured as yesterday,
snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping.

White, stacked into distance.
Above it, endless,
the sleigh track of the lost.

Below, hidden,
presses up
what so hurts the eyes,
hill upon hill,
invisible.

On each,
fetched home into its today,
an I slipped away into dumbness:
wooden, a post.

There: a feeling,
blown across by the ice wind
attaching its dove- its snow-
coloured cloth as a flag.

[Carrau]

9 hours ago, brokenclay said:

Here I was just thinking, "What a lovely hand..." 🙂

I thought it was very pleasant, and easy on the eyes.

[brokenclay]

 

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

by Thomas Campion

 

Now winter nights enlarge 

The number of their hours; 

And clouds their storms discharge 

Upon the airy towers. 

Let now the chimneys blaze 

And cups o’erflow with wine, 

Let well-turned words amaze 

With harmony divine. 

Now yellow waxen lights 

Shall wait on honey love 

While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights 

Sleep’s leaden spells remove. 

 

This time doth well dispense 

With lovers’ long discourse; 

Much speech hath some defense, 

Though beauty no remorse. 

All do not all things well; 

Some measures comely tread, 

Some knotted riddles tell, 

Some poems smoothly read. 

The summer hath his joys, 

And winter his delights; 

Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, 

They shorten tedious nights.

 

 

 

[hh1990]

 

Poem for My Twentieth Birthday - Kenneth Koch

 

Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday

the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green,

the years’ quick focus of faces I do not remember . . .

 

The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants

for my birthday, and all the hot adolescent memories

seen through a screen of water . . .

 

For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual:

expected to perform the action, not to ponder

the reality beyond the fact,

the man standing upright in the dream.

[brokenclay]

For the mathematical philosophers (or philosophical mathematicians) among us:

 

 

The Festival of Almost Getting There

by Renée Ashley

 

At the festival of almost getting there

Zeno pokes his head out halfway, asks

 

directions, half-heartedly, to the train,

admits he’s been riding on the tortoise,

 

been running after arrows to watch them

stand still. He understands course, path,

 

way, even relative position (dichotomize,

divide) but motion’s still a figment:

 

distance halved and halved (split infinity,

twin trajectory) the long, long way, and all

 

that longing (two-fold, doubled) (moments,

instants, continuous or discrete) for some

 

unfamiliar end—such unforgiving progress,

portioned, yes, bisected. A half-assed effort?

 

No, he’s as good as got it. So much struggle

and amends. Sure, we’re goddamned tired of

 

this much waiting, but look! He’s halfway there.

 

[hh1990]

[brokenclay]

Reading this as I listen to the wind howling outside my house...

[brokenclay]

Instead of posting a poem today, I'm going back to The Lake Isle from last July, because my choir has just released its virtual performance recording of Ola Gjeilo’s The Lake Isle: https://cantabilesingers.org/the-lake-isle-by-ola-gjeilo-cantabile-singers-and-altius-quartet/. The instrumentals were recorded in person, with everybody masked and appropriately distanced. The vocals were recorded individually by each singer and mixed by our director.

 

On 7/20/2020 at 2:04 PM, brokenclay said:

Found in a little book called Silver Pennies that, according to the inscription, was a gift to my husband on his second birthday in 1944.

 

 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By William Butler Yeats

 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

 

 

 

[hh1990]

 

Light of the moon
Moves west, flowers' shadows
Creep eastward.

 

-Yosa Buson

[HogwldFLTR]

Perhaps my favorite poet still living at over 100 years of age!!!

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by HogwldFLTR

[brokenclay]

 

The World is Too Much With Us

by William Wordsworth

 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

[hh1990]

 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost

 

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

 

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

 

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

[hh1990]

 

Stray - Carl Phillips

 

When he speaks of deserved and undeserved as more

than terms — how they can matter, suddenly — I can tell

he believes it. Sometimes a thing can seem star-like

when it’s just a star, stripped of whatever small form of joy

likeness equals. Sometimes the thought that I’m doomed

to fail — that the body is — keeps me almost steady, if

steadiness is what a gift for a while brings — feathers, burst-

at-last pods of milkweed, October — before it all fades away.

Before the drugs and the loud music, before tears and

restraining orders and the eventual go (bleep) yourself get your

ass out of here don’t go, the apartments across the street

were a boys’ grammar school — before that, a convent,

the only remains of which, ornamenting the far parking lot,

is a marble pedestal with some Latin on it that translates as

Heart of Jesus, have mercy, as if that much, at least, still

remained relevant, or should. If it’s true that secrets resist

always the act of telling, how come secrets, more often than

not, seem the entire story? Caladium, Cleome — how delicate,

this holding of certain words in the mouth, the all but lost

trick of lifting for salvage the last windfalls as, across them,

the bees make their slow-muscled, stunned, moving scab ...

[brokenclay]

Since it's everywhere, why not here, too?

 

 

Wellerman

There once was a ship that put to sea
And the name of that ship was the Billy o' Tea
The winds blew hard, her bow dipped down
Blow, me bully boys, blow (Huh!)

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

She had not been two weeks from shore
When down on her a right whale bore
The captain called all hands and swore
He'd take that whale in tow (Hah!)

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

Before the boat had hit the water
The whale's tail came up and caught her
All hands to the side, harpooned and fought her
When she dived down below (Huh!)

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

No line was cut, no whale was freed;
The Captain's mind was not on greed
But he belonged to the whaleman's creed;
She took that ship in tow (Huh!)

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

For forty days, or even more
The line went slack, then tight once more
All boats were lost, there were only four
But still that whale did go

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

As far as I've heard, the fight's still on;
The line's not cut and the whale's not gone
The Wellerman makes his a regular call
To encourage the Captain, crew, and all

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

[HogwldFLTR]

In Humility

Sunday, January 17, 2021

8:22 AM

In humble clothes he made his stay,

Not in palace, more a tomb,

All presence gone of his today,

His simple dwelling a mere room.

 

His thoughts not of the here and now,

Of flighting images and metered lines,

On page a war of will and love allow.

To make an art of thoughts and rhymes.

 

I could not see his glory start,

But decades past look back and see,

He, humbly stationed to pursue his art,

The payment was then blind to me.

 

Today surrounded by material things,

Accomplishments of solid sort,

Yet his humble writer's garret rings,

To no more my blurred vision distort.

 

Mere possessions don't a life define,

Nor family friends and children dear,

Give me something that for ages shines,

In mind's for future visions to appear.

 

So today as the light grows dim,

Still bright enough to see what's real,

My thoughts then seemed but mere whim,

Perhaps greater rewards did reveal.

Edited January 17, 2021 by HogwldFLTR

[brokenclay]

 

At the Seven-Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas

by Naomi Shihab Nye

 

I live like I know what I'm doing.

 

When I hand the horses a square of hay,

when I walk on the road of stones

or chew on cactus pulp,

there's a drumming behind me,

the day opens up to let me pass through.

 

I know the truth,

how always I'm following each small sign that appears.

This sheep that materialized behind a clump of cenizo bushes

knows I didn't see him till he raised his head.

 

Out here it's impossible to be lonely.

The land walking beside you is your oldest friend,

pleasantly silent, like already you've told the best stories

and each of you knows how much the other made up.

 

From: Hugging the Jukebox