[Sven2]

TRACKING

for Carolyn Creedon


Yes, Carolyn, the ocean has its depths, its mezzanine,
the place between the blue, the green and those black waters
where the submarines feel their way by sound, the ear

the only guide when the lights grow dim, the place where
dawn has never reached, and there the giant Alba swims, ellipsis
of the deep, enormity, unseen, except on the sonar's

screen, bright shadow of leviathan or a merlin trick, for
at such a depth, such crushing pressures—it could not
live—and yet. The transitive exists, swimming the fissures,

like a recurring dream or a condor skimming the peaks,
as if Peru had been transposed below, or some great city sunk
and in its long, unlighted streets, finned giants slid along

the canyons of drowned tenements, and went their migrant way
through coral palings, kiosks hung with weed, falling ships
that spun like pearls in honey as they fell, while the great

Alba, scarcely a glimmer against the gloom,
swam on, its jaws wide, ingesting darkness like krill,
until it had swallowed all but its own glowing self,

and, tired of the conceit, shed its tons of matter,
rose in time to see first-light ignite the waves,
back in the blue delight of dawn, its ravishing until.

--Eleanor Wilner

[Water Lily]

Flood   
by Eliza Griswold 


I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.
The room itself: "You're wasting this life
expecting disappointment."
I packed my bag in the night
and peered in its leather belly
to count the essentials.
Nothing is essential.
To the east, the flood has begun.
Men call to each other on the water
for the comfort of voices.
Love surprises us.
It ends.

[Water Lily]

Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm   
by Carl Phillips 


So that each
is its own, now--each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.

There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld--almost always
correctly
as it's turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand--like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.

[Sven2]

The Guardian Angel


   Afloat between lives and stale truths,
       he realizes
   he's never truly protected one soul,

   they all die anyway, and what good
       is solace,
   solace is cheap. The signs are clear:

   the drooping wings, the shameless thinking
       about utility
   and self. It's time to stop.

   The guardian angel lives for a month
       with other angels,
   sings the angelic songs, is reminded

   that he doesn't have a human choice.
       The angel of love
   lies down with him, and loving

   restores him his pure heart.
       Yet how hard it is
   to descend into sadness once more.

   When the poor are evicted, he stands
       between them
   and the bank, but the bank sees nothing

   in its way. When the meek are overpowered
       he's there, the thin air
   through which they fall. Without effect

   he keeps getting in the way of insults.
       He keeps wrapping
   his wings around those in the cold.

   Even his lamentations are unheard,
       though now,
   in for the long haul, trying to live

   beyond despair, he believes, he needs
       to believe
   everything he does takes root, hums

   beneath the surfaces of the world.

 --Stephen Dunn

[Sven2]

Sadness


Sooner or later it comes to everyone:
the beautiful prom queen who has lost a breast,
the Don Juan of the tenth grade who has
turned up impotent, the fleet chiropodist
who has developed a limp. Sooner or later it comes,
and you are never prepared for it quite yet,
you who had hoped to be spared through another epoch
of your rightful happiness, you who had always
given to charity. Like a gargantuan tackle
lumbering toward you, it comes and comes,
and—though you may double lateral all you wish,
though you may throw a perfect spiral
up the middle to some ecstatic receiver
and be blessed blue-green some night
by the ministrations of strangers—it will not
spare you. It comes and comes, inevitable
as sunrise, palpable as longing,
and we must go on
laughing it right in the face
until it learns to sing again.

--Michael Blumenthal

[Sven2]

Desire


I remember how it used to be
at noon, springtime, the city streets
full of office workers like myself
let loose from the cold
glass buildings on Park and Lex,
the dull swaddling of winter cast off,
almost everyone wanting
everyone else. It was amazing
how most of us contained ourselves,
bringing desire back up
to the office where it existed anyway,
quiet, like a good engine.
I'd linger a bit
with the receptionist,
knock on someone else's open door,
ease myself, by increments,
into the seriousness they paid me for.
Desire was everywhere those years,
so enormous it couldn't be reduced
one person at a time.
I don't remember when it was,
though closer to now than then,
I walked the streets desireless,
my eyes fixed on destination alone.
The beautiful person across from me
on the bus or train
looked like effort, work.
I translated her into pain.
For months I had the clarity
the cynical survive with,
their world so safely small.
Today, walking 57th toward 3rd,
it's all come back,
the interesting, the various,
the conjured life suggested by a glance.
I praise how the body heals itself.
I praise how, finally, it never learns.

--Stephen Dunn

[Sven2]

Atheism's Easier

Abstain from staring too long at the sky.
Stick to screens, little keyboards;
block out birds with private earbuds;
never hear the wind breathe harder.
Watch TV. Always drive.
Try to avoid a night outside
in ladled moonlight, glowing broth.
Eschew solitude; cut back on silence;
call up someone just to gossip;
send lots of messages; read them, too.
Make sure not to spend a winter in the woods,
a month on a summit, a week in a desert,
time by the sea if it promotes thinking
how it's acceptance without conditions
that makes me acceptable, and pretty soon,
though tough at first, atheism's easier.


--Stephen Cushman

[Water Lily]

At a Window   
by Carl Sandburg 


Give me hunger, 
O you gods that sit and give 
The world its orders. 
Give me hunger, pain and want, 
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame, 
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! 
 
But leave me a little love, 
A voice to speak to me in the day end, 
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness. 
In the dusk of day-shapes 
Blurring the sunset, 
One little wandering, western star 
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window, 
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk 
And wait and know the coming 
Of a little love.

[Sven2]

It corresponds with the poem you posted, Mz.Lily:


Great Things Have Happened


We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

--Alden Nowlan

[Sven2]

God's Letters


When God thought up the world,
the alphabet letters
whistled in his crown,
where they were engraved
with a pen of fire,
each wanting to begin
the story of Creation.

S said, I am Soul.
I can Shine out
from within your creatures.
God replied, I know that,
but you are Sin, too.

L said, I am Love,
and I brush away malice.
God rejoined, Yes,
but you are Lie,
and falsehood is not
what I had in mind.

P said, I am Praise,
and where there's a celebration,
I Perform
in my Purple coat.
Yes, roared God,
but at the same time,
you are Pessimism—
the other side of Praise.
And so forth.

All the letters
had two sides or more.
None was pure.
There was a clamor
in paradise, words,
syllables, shouting
to be seen and heard
for the glory
of the new heavens and earth.

God fell silent,
wondering,
How can song
rise from that commotion?

Rather than speculate,
God chose B,
who had intoned,
Bashfully, Boldly,
Blessed is his name.

And he made A
first in the Alphabet
for admitting, I am All—
a limitation
and a possibility.


--Grace Schulman

[Water Lily]

Having it Out with Melancholy   



If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.

A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard



  1  FROM THE NURSERY


When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.


And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad -- even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.


You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
"We're here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated."


I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours -- the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.



           2  BOTTLES


Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powdery ones smell
like the chemistry lab at school
that made me hold my breath.



3  SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND


You wouldn't be so depressed
if you really believed in God.



           4  OFTEN


Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep's
frail wicker coracle.



5  ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT


Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.


I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors -- those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few


moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.


Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
"I'll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!" After that, I wept for days.



       6  IN AND OUT


The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life -- in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .



           7  PARDON


A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to be stouthearted, tired
beyond measure.


We move on to the monoamine
oxidase inhibitors. Day and night
I feel as if I had drunk six cups
of coffee, but the pain stops
abruptly. With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair.



           8  CREDO


Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well-being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.


Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can't
take the trouble to speak; someone
who can't sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can't read, or call
for an appointment for help.


There is nothing I can do
against your coming.
When I awake, I am still with thee.



  9  WOOD THRUSH


High on Nardil and June light
I wake at four,
waiting greedily for the first
note of the wood thrush. Easeful air
presses through the screen
with the wild, complex song
of the bird, and I am overcome


by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.

Jane Kenyon

[Water Lily]

I Wish You Tears,  I wish You Prayer's
In Memory Of Sandy Hook Elementary School by

I wish you a million tears,
I wish you A thousand prayers.
I wish you a great prayer,
I  lift my voice to your hearts,
I lift my ears to your words.
I bless you with the voice of God,
I bless you with the words
of reason and compassion.
I wish you a million tears.
I wish  you a thousand prayers




Author JWW

Newtown Ct, the World grieves with you....

[Water Lily]

Your Mother wait's.....

You asked your mom
before going to school
in your sweet voice
with love in your eyes
"When I get back,
will you play with me?"
and she replied
with a big hug and smile
yes my love, I will
then she gave you a kiss
and you went to school
to return back home soon

But that was not meant to be...

Devil struck in a human shape
and your innocent life was taken away
there is no doubt in anyone's mind
you went to heaven straight away

but what about your mom
though many days have passed by
she is still in disbelief
and cannot sleep at nights
she just remembers
when you asked her
before going to school
in your sweet voice
with love in your eyes
"When I get back,
will you play with me?"
and she is still waiting for you....

Author Unknown

[Sven2]

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness


Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

--Mary Oliver

[Sven2]

Year's End

Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.

--Ted Kooser