[Sven2]

The Apple Orchard


You won't remember it—the apple orchard
We wandered through one April afternoon,
Climbing the hill behind the empty farm.

A city boy, I'd never seen a grove
Burst in full flower or breathed the bittersweet
Perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust.

A quarter mile of trees in fragrant rows
Arching above us. We walked the aisle,
Alone in spring's ephemeral cathedral.

We had the luck, if you can call it that,
Of having been in love but never lovers—
The bright flame burning, fed by pure desire.

Nothing consumed, such secrets brought to light!
There was a moment when I stood behind you,
Reached out to spin you toward me...but I stopped.

What more could I have wanted from that day?
Everything, of course. Perhaps that was the point—
To learn that what we will not grasp is lost.

--Dana Gioia

[Sven2]

Surfer Girl


I'm walking on the beach this cold brisk morning,
the bleached sea grass bending in the wind, when there,
up ahead, in the pewter waves, I see a surfer in his wet suit,
sleek as a seal, cutting in and out of the curl, shining in the light.
I'm on the far side of sixty, athletic as a sofa, but this is where
the longing starts, the yearning for another life, the one
where I'm lithe and long-limbed, tanned California bronze,
short tousled hair full of sunshine. The life where I shoulder my board,
stride into the waves, dive under the breakers, and rise; my head shaking
off water like a golden retriever. I am waiting for that perfect wave
so I can crouch up and catch it, my arms out like wings, slicing back
and forth in the froth, wind at my back, sea's slick metal polished
before me. Nothing more important now than this balance between
water and air, the rhythm of in and out, staying ahead of the break,
choosing my line like I choose these words, writing my name
on water, writing my name on air.

--Barbara Crooker

[Sven2]

The Blind Old Man

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.
Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,
Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,
Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,
Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.
The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.
The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived
Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,
Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,
And why our children are mostly fond of us,
And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.

--Robert Bly

[Sven2]

Take Love for Granted


Assume it's in the kitchen,
under the couch, high
in the pine tree out back,
behind the paint cans
in the garage. Don't try
proving your love
is bigger than the Grand
Canyon, the Milky Way,
the urban sprawl of L.A.
Take it for granted. Take it
out with the garbage. Bring
it in with the takeout. Take
it for a walk with the dog.
Wake it every day, say,
"Good morning." Then
make the coffee. Warm
the cups. Don't expect much
of the day. Be glad when
you make it back to bed.
Be glad he threw out that
box of old hats. Be glad
she leaves her shoes
in the hall. Snow will
come. Spring will show up.
Summer will be humid.
The leaves will fall
in the fall. That's more
than you need. We can
love anybody, even
everybody. But you
can love the silence,
sighing and saying to
yourself, "That' s her."
"That's him." Then to
each other, "I know!
Let's go out for breakfast!"

--Jack Ridl

[Sven2]

The gods envy us.

They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment may be our last.

Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.

You will never be lovelier than you are now.

We will never be here again.


Homer, Iliad

[Sven2]

August


Just when you'd begun to feel
You could rely on the summer,
That each morning would deliver
The same mourning dove singing
From his station on the phone pole,
The same smell of bacon frying
Somewhere in the neighborhood,
The same sun burning off
The coastal fog by noon,
When you could reward yourself
For a good morning's work
With lunch at the same little seaside cafe
With its shaded deck and iced tea,
The day's routine finally down
Like an old song with minor variations,
There comes that morning when the light
Tilts ever so slightly on its track,
A cool gust out of nowhere
Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass
Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits
Are piled on the sale table,
And the back of your hand,
Which you thought you knew,
Has begun to look like an old leaf.
Or the back of someone else's hand.

--George Bilgere

[Sven2]

Dämmerung


In later life I retired from poetry,
ploughed the profits
into a family restaurant
in the town of Holzminden, in lower Saxony.

It was small and traditional:
dark wood panelling, deer antlers,
linen tablecloths and red candles,
one beer tap on the bar

and a dish of the day, usually
Bauernschnitzel. Weekends were busy,
pensioners wanting the set meal, though
year on year takings were falling.

Some nights the old gang came in—
Jackie, Max, Lavinia,
Mike not looking at all himself,
and I'd close the kitchen,

hang up my striped apron,
take a bottle of peach schnapps
from the top shelf and say,
"Mind if I join you?"

"Are we dead yet?" someone would ask.
Then with a plastic toothpick
I'd draw blood from my little finger
to prove we were still among the living.

From the veranda we'd breathe new scents
from the perfume distillery over the river,
or watch the skyline
for the nuclear twilight.


--Simon Armitage

[Sven2]

Elegy for the Giant Tortoises


Let others pray for the passenger pigeon
the dodo, the whooping crane, the eskimo:
everyone must specialize

I will confine myself to a meditation
upon the giant tortoises
withering finally on a remote island.

I concentrate in subway stations,
in parks, I can't quite see them,
they move to the peripheries of my eyes

but on the last day they will be there;
already the event
like a wave travelling shapes vision:

on the road where I stand they will materialize,
plodding past me in a straggling line
awkward without water

their small heads pondering
from side to side, their useless armour
sadder than tanks and history,

in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralysed,
lumbering up the steps, under the archways
toward the square glass altars

where the brittle gods are kept,
the relics of what we have destroyed,
our holy and obsolete symbols.

--Margaret Atwood

[Sven2]

Heaven

The leaves are turning, one by one carried away in the crisp wind.
In one letter he penned,
Coleridge turned away, calling love
a local anguish he meant to leave
behind him. Away, away,
says the blue and gold day, and no one hears it but the wind, whose law
it echoes. The dog has a red ball to chase.
You pick a flat, perfect stone for the wall you hope to live long enough
to rebuild. I prune
briars, pick burrs from the dog's fur.
I teach Come and Sit. Sit here—
a longer sit beneath the cedars. The grass is freshly cut,
sun low, all the energy
of a summer's day rushing into bulb and root.
The dog runs off, returns. The stones balance
steeply. Good work. Good dog. This is
heaven. Sit. Stay.

--Margaret Gibson

[Sven2]

Of Bright & Blue Birds & The Gala Sun


Some things, niño, some things are like this,
That instantly and in themselves are gay
And you and I are such things, O most miserable...

For a moment they are gay and are a part
Of an element, the exactest element for us,
In which we pronounce joy like a word of our own.

It is there, being imperfect, and with these things
And erudite in happiness, with nothing learned,
That we are joyously ourselves and we think

Without the labor of thought, in that element,
And we feel, in a way apart, for a moment, as if
There was a bright scienza outside of ourselves,

A gaiety that is being, not merely knowing,
The will to be and to be total in belief,
Provoking a laughter, an agreement, by surprise.


--Wallace Stevens

[Sven2]

ENDLESS YEARNING I

"I am endlessly yearning
To be in Changan.
...Insects hum of autumn by the gold brim of the well;
A thin frost glistens like little mirrors on my cold mat;
The high lantern flickers; and deeper grows my longing.
I lift the shade and, with many a sigh, gaze upon the moon,
Single as a flower, centered from the clouds.
Above, I see the blueness and deepness of sky.
Below, I see the greenness and the restlessness of water....
Heaven is high, earth wide; bitter between them flies my sorrow.
Can I dream through the gateway, over the mountain?
Endless longing
Breaks my heart."

--Li Po
(701-762 A.D.)

[Sven2]

How It Is


Late October
and the pitiless drift
begins in earnest. And all
that whispered in the pockets
of summer's green uniform
is shaken out and dumped.
My mimosa knew, for wasn't
that death fingering the leaves
all summer? Yet the tree
plumped its pods, spending
all July squeezing them out,
going about its business, as did
the slash pine and loblolly,
spraying pollen—coating
windows, cars, filling every
idle slit with sperm.
What does life mean
but itself? Ask the sea.
You'll get a wet slap back-
handed across your mouth.
Ask the tiger. I dare you.
And your life, with its
tedium of suffering, what
does it mean but what it is?
And mine—balancing
checkbooks and whomping up
a mess of vittles as my son
used to say. My son, the funny one,
the always-hungry-for-supper-
and-the-happy-ending-
I-was-never-able-to-give-him one.
Who am I to write the user's manual
for a life, except to say,
Look at trees, dug in and defiant.
Be like the river. Stick out your tongue.
Why not? What's to lose
when what's to lose is everything?

--Alice Friman

[Sven2]

Question and Answer on the Mountain


You ask for what reason I stay on the green mountain,
I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.
Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,
Apart, I have heaven and earth in the human world.

Li Po
(701-762 A.D.)

[Water Lily]

Eternity Affirms the Hour

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;

Not in semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for the earth too hard.

The passion that left the ground to love itself in the sky.
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

~ Robert Browning.

[Water Lily]

Each In His Own Tongue

A fire mist and a planet.
A crystal and a cell.
A jellyfish and saurian.
And caves where the cavemen dwell.
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod,
Some call it Evolution ,and others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty, a mother starved for her brood,
Socrates drinking hemlock, and Jesus on the rood,
And millions who humble and nameless, the straight hard pathway plod.
Some call it Concecration, and others call it God.
H.W. Carruth