A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

50 minutes ago, Madeline said:

So beautiful! (and the paper! and the ink!)  

 

Diamine Claret in a Kaweco AL-Sport, 1.1 stub nib, on Tomoe River 52gsm.

[Madeline]

Almost a haiku!  thank you! 

[HogwldFLTR]

Oops

 

[brokenclay]

5 hours ago, HogwldFLTR said:

Oops

 

 

Oops? Is everything all right?

[brokenclay]

I'm not sure why/how this poem grabbed me so hard, but it did. 

 

 

Deep Ulster

by Harry Clifton

 

It was there, the elemental center,   

All the time. Eternally present, repeating itself   

Like seasons, where the times and dates   

For swallows and household fires are written down,   

 

The grouse are counted, the quotas of stocked rainbows.   

All that love of order, for its own sake.   

Only the hill-farms, and the high sheep country   

Above politics—the enormous relief   

 

Up there, as the dialect names of skies   

Return, along with their clouds, and the old knowledge   

Opens the mind again. To dream, to just potter   

In the yard, to fiddle with local stations   

 

In the kitchen, where news that is no news   

Finally, at last, fills up the years   

With pure existence. Lit from beneath   

The fields are evenings long, the tree by the house   

 

Where Vladimir and Estragon kept vigil   

With the stillness of commando and insurgent   

Frightens no one. Slow through the air   

A heron, shouldering aside the weight of the world,   

 

Is making for its colonies, coevals   

In a state plantation . . .   

                                  Nowhere but here   

In the high right hand of Ireland, do the weather fronts   

Give way so slowly, to such ambivalent light.

[Madeline]

I think this may be one of those poems to be read over and over, through the years, each line with more to say as time goes by.  Today (this day, this week, this year) the line that jumps out to me is "A heron, shouldering aside the weight of the world..."   I wish I could do that!  "shoulder... aside the weight of the world..."  Maybe especially these days.  Thank you for this one!    And for the poet.  I didn't know of his work, so it's another one for "the list."

[brokenclay]

31 minutes ago, Madeline said:

Today (this day, this week, this year) the line that jumps out to me is "A heron, shouldering aside the weight of the world..."   I wish I could do that!  "shoulder... aside the weight of the world...

 

Exactly! Me, too!

 

"Vladimir and Estragón" grabbed me, too, and "the enormous relief Up there" (maybe because I just had my first Covid shot, and the relief is both enormous and surprising [to me]).

[HogwldFLTR]

1 hour ago, brokenclay said:

 

Oops? Is everything all right?

 

Just posted to the wrong thread. No problem.

[Kenlowe]

 

 

From a mother to her adopted son

 

Not flesh of my flesh

Nor bone of my bone

But still, totally my own.

 

Never forget

For one single minute

That you didn't grow under my heart

But in it.

[brokenclay]

4 hours ago, Kenlowe said:

From a mother to her adopted son

 

Not flesh of my flesh

Nor bone of my bone

But still, totally my own.

 

Never forget

For one single minute

That you didn't grow under my heart

But in it.

 

Thank you!

 

Here is a poem that contains the following lines:

Quote

 

And I love fountain pens. I mean

I just love them. Cleaning them, 

filling them with ink, fills me

with a kind of joy, even if joy 

 

is so 1950. I know, no one talks about

joy anymore. It is even more taboo 

than love. And so, of course, I love joy. 

I love the way joy sounds as it exits

 

 

One of us?

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58763/the-bridge-56d23d6e802bf

[brokenclay]

 

After a Snowfall on the Second Day of Spring in 1992

by Askold Melnyczuk

 

For Gus and Eiko

 

What else are we here for?

The unfinished lives, the garages

uncleaned, the unwritten

love letters, most of them

filled with complaints, arguments

with the mysteriously missing

beloved who knows why she's here

no better than we,

the projects half

started, the novels and plays,

the efforts of politics, the partial

despair at how close we came

before falling, the friendships

that promise deliverance and maybe

come nearest of all to being

what they promised, the unvisited

cities, the grackles

unseen in our yards, the secret

life of the soil glimpsed only 

on television, the planets

dismissed with a shrug and some lies

about science, parents unknown,

the mothers and fathers mysterious

in their own homes, and to each other,

the endless talks with ourselves

and no answers, just

stutters, then spring.

[Doulton]

Thank you for the poem by Melnyczuk.  I like her mundane examples which underscore the many ways that one could have/had a different life and that the limits of our abilities will never be plumbed.   Are the dead-ends, the cul-de-sacs, the roads that are not chosen, the U-turns in life the "mother of beauty"?

[Madeline]

Poems about spring often seem layered and brimming with possibilities.  This one in particular.  Love that!  (And the "roads not taken" remind me of the deeper-than-the-lines-suggest ideas in the Frost poem--the one we all look at so briefly and miss the meaning beneath the ink.)  Thank you, brokenclay and Doulton!  And all who have been contributing to this thread, this line of bread crumbs through these days. 

 

 

[brokenclay]

An expression of freedom:

 

 

Napped half the day,

no one

punished me!

 

by Kobayashi Issa

translated by Robert Hass

[txomsy]

Since haikus seem to be so appealing...

 

 

Snowfall

 

Winter is over

Yet, fields in white are cover'd

Almond trees blossom!

 

Nevada

 

El invierno pasó

Blancos siguen los campos

¡Almendros en flor!

 

Neigeux

 

L'hiver terminant

Mais les champs sont toujours blancs

Amandes fleurissant!

 

(translated by yours truly)

[brokenclay]

37 minutes ago, txomsy said:

(translated by yours truly)

 

Thank you!

 

I woke very early today (Daylight Savings?), and while the sun was not yet up, everything was white, reflected from the snow. Eerie and peaceful. The snow was up to the dog's belly when I let him out.

[brokenclay]

 

"Gymnopédies No. 1"

by Adrian Matejka

 

That was the week 

            it didn’t stop snowing. 

 

That was the week 

             five-fingered trees fell 

 

             on houses & power lines 

             broke like somebody waiting 

 

for payday in a snowstorm. 

That snow week, my daughter 

 

& I trudged over the broken branches 

             fidgeting through snow 

 

             like hungry fingers through 

             an empty pocket. 

 

Over the termite-hollowed stump 

as squat as a flat tire. 

 

             Over the hollow 

             the fox dives into 

when we open the back door at night. 

 

That was the week of snow

             & it glittered like every 

             Christmas card we could 

             remember while my daughter 

 

poked around for the best place 

to stand a snowman. One 

 

with a pinecone nose. 

             One with thumb-pressed 

 

             eyes to see the whole 

picture once things warm up.

[brokenclay]

 

That Country

by Grace Paley

 

This is about the women of that country

Sometimes they spoke in slogans

They said

       We patch the roads as we patch our sweetheart’s trousers   

       The heart will stop but not the transport

They said

       We have ensured production even near bomb craters   

       Children let your voices sing higher than the explosions

                                                    of the bombs

They said

       We have important tasks to teach the children

       that the people are the collective masters

       to bear hardship

       to instill love in the family

       to guide the good health of the children (they must

       wear clothing according to climate)

They said

       Once men beat their wives

       now they may not

       Once a poor family sold its daughter to a rich old man   

       now the young may love one another

They said

       Once we planted our rice any old way

       now we plant the young shoots in straight rows

       so the imperialist pilot can see how steady our

       hands are

 

In the evening we walked along the shores of the Lake   

                                                of the Restored Sword

 

I said   is it true?   we are sisters?   

They said   Yes, we are of one family

[brokenclay]

 

Half the Sky

by Imtiaz Dharker

 

 

妇女能顶半边天

 

 

[brokenclay]

We've been watching All Creatures Great and Small, both the 70s/80s version with Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy and the new version running in the US on PBS. The action takes place in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s and 40s. I was fascinated to find this essay from Leeds Library: The Silent Traveller in the Yorkshire Dales, about Chiang Yee, who wrote and drew his impressions of the Dales in the same time frame.

 

 

The Returning Shepherd

by Chiang Yee

 

Heaven and earth are one big camp–

Cows and sheep are scattered over the growing grass.

The shepherd chases the setting sun,

Driving his flock in rows on the homeward road.

The white mist touches my clothes ;

The gentle wind brings a subtle coolness.

I turn to rest under a pine tree,

The fragrance of the wild flowers is wafted towards me intermittently.