[Sven2]

Lost Content

You couples lying
where moon-scythes and day-scythes reaped you,
browning fruit falls and sleeps
in tangled nests, the wild grass,
falls from your apple tree that still grows here:
cry for your dead hero, his weak sword, his flight,
that you were slaughtered and your bed poured whiteness,
the issue of murdered marriage dawns.
The streets crack, a house falls open to the air,
sun and rain lie on the bed.
And the river still runs in a child's hands
under the factory's black hulk,
four stacks that used to bloom with smoke
over shining leaves, beneath thunderheads.
Then the storm
shatters and beats and after
in woods
a scented smoke of light,
a dripping quiet, and the small gold snake
sparkles at the pond's edge.
But who is he? What were
the goods he made, what became of his loved wife,
his children, and where
has he gone, fearsome, powerless? The silver
path of air from the river's bend to its rippling away
beneath the low concrete bridge
is still pure. No one comes, and the child
who watched by it has vanished.
Or sometimes he appears for a day, a night,
in the walls and windows reflected on the water,
in goldfinches' flight, cricket song, the heron's great
rise from the bank. Last a carp leaps,
voices and a lantern slide down the secret stream
in black and gold peace,
past the child's husk, the family never born.

--by A. F. Moritz

[Sven2]

As One Listens to the Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it's raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt's shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page

--Octavio Paz

[Sven2]

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be
in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull
and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you
compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always
there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your
achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in
the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue
there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full
of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about
love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial
as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of
youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do
not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and
loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you
have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the
universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and
whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep
peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful
world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

-- Max Ehrmannn

(Despite finding the poem very straightforward and thus didactic to a fault, I like it, so here it is)

[laurel]

"All Last Night . . ."
ALL last night I had quiet
In a fragrant dream and warm:
She became my Sabbath,
And round my neck, her arm.

I knew the warmth in my dreaming;
The fragrance, I suppose,
Was her hair about me,
Or else she wore a rose.

Her hair I think; for likest
Woodruffe 'twas, when Spring
Loitering down the wet woodways
Treads it sauntering.

No light, nor any speaking;
Fragrant only and warm.
Enough to know my lodging,
The white Sabbath of her arm.

Lascelles Abercrombie

[laurel]

A Prayer

TEND me my birds, and bring again
The brotherhood of woodland life,
So shall I wear the seasons round
A friend to need, a foe to strife;

Keep me my heritage of lawn,
And grant me, Father, till I die
The fine sincerity of light
And luxury of open sky.

So, learning always, may I find
My heaven around me everywhere,
And go in hope from this to Thee,
The pupil of Thy country air.

Norman Rowland Gale

[laurel]

Eros Turannos

SHE fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reason to refuse him.
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost
As if it were alone the cost--
He sees that he will not be lost,
And waits, and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees
Envelops and allures him;
Tradition, touching all he sees,
Beguiles and reassures him.
And all her doubts of what he says
Are dimmed by what she knows of days,
Till even Prejudice delays
And fades, and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates
The reign of her confusion;
The pounding wave reverberates
The dirge of her illusion.
And Home, where passion lived and died,
Becomes a place where she can hide,
While all the town and harbor side
Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,
The story as it should be,
As if the story of a house
Were told, or ever could be.
We'll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen--
As if we guessed what hers have been,
Or what they are or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm, for they
That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
Take what the god has given.
Though like waves breaking it may be,
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea,
Where down the blind are driven.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

[Sven2]

Story

Tell me the one
about the sick girl —
not terminally ill, just years in bed
with this mysterious fever —
who hires a man
to murder her — you know,
so the family is spared
the blight of a suicide —
and the man comes
in the night, a strong man,
and nothing is spoken
—he takes the pillow
to her face — tell me
how he is haunted the rest
of his life — did he
or didn't he
do the right thing — tell me
how he is forgiven,
and marries, and has
2 daughters, and is happy —
no, tell me she doesn't
die, but is cured and
gives her life to God,
and becomes a hand-holder for
men on death row —
tell me the one where the man
falls in love with the girl
and can't do it, or
the girl falls in love
with a dog and calls
the man to tell him
not to come, or
how each sees their pain
mirrored in the other's eyes —
tell me how everyone is already
forgiven every story
they ever told themselves
about living
or not living —
tell me, oh tell me
the one where love wins, again
and again                and again.


---Sabine Miller

[Cissy]

Just to thank you Sven, I've tried to live by the Desiderata forever, it was good to open the page and find those well remembered and comforting words there waiting for me. Thanks.
(I did post a tiny poem last night but cannot find it today)

[skordamou]

Dover Beach- Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Sven2]

Skor, there is a somewhat sarcastic, a'la Bukowski poem by Anthony Hecht, "The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life", doesn't fit here thematically, it's crass. Oh, poetry is freedom, I will post it. As far from "spiritual enlightenment" as it is, the poem is good.  

[Sven2]

The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life

for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,   
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,   
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad   
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read   
Sophocles in a fairly good translation   
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,   
But all the time he was talking she had in mind   
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like   
On the back of her neck. She told me later on   
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,   
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds   
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought   
All the way down from London, and then be addressed   
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort   
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.   
Anyway, she watched him pace the room   
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,   
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,   
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while   
And she always treats me right. We have a drink   
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year   
Before I see her again, but there she is,   
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.   
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.

--Anthony Hecht

[Sven2]

Cissy, you're welcome.
Where did you post your poem? Can you post it again, please, I hope you didn't delete it on your computer!

[Sven2]

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

--Jane Kenyon

[Sven2]

Briefly It Enters, Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .

--Jane Kenyon

[Sven2]

No One Lives In The House Anymore
CESAR VALLEJO

No one lives in the house anymore - you tell me - all have gone. The living room, the bedroom, the patio, are deserted. No one remains any longer, since everyone has departed.

And I say to you: When someone leaves, someone remains. The point through which the man passed is no longer empty.The only place that is empty, with human solitude, is that through which no man has passed. New houses are deader than the old ones, for their walls are of stone or steel but not of men. A house comes into the world, not when people finish building it, but when they begin to inhabit it. A house lives only off men, like a tomb. That's why there is an irresistible resemblance between a house and a tomb. Except that the house is nourished by the life of man, while the tomb is nourished by the death of man. That is why the first is standing, while the second is laid out.

Everyone has departed from the house, in reality, but all have remained in truth. And it is not their memory that remains, but they themselves. Nor is it that they remain in the house, but that they continue about the house. Functions and acts leave the house by train or by plane or on horseback, walking or crawling. What continues in the house is the organ, the agent in gerund and in circle. The steps have left, the kisses, the pardons, the crimes. What continues in the house are the foot, the lips, the eye, the heart. Negations and affirmations, good and evil, have dispersed. What continues in the house is the subject of the act.

--Translated by Clayton Eshleman