A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

 

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)

by Muriel Rukeyser

 

I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices

Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.

I would call my friends on other devices;

They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,

Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,

We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,

Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means

To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,

To let go the means, to wake.

 

I lived in the first century of these wars.

[brokenclay]

 

On Hierophany

by Karen An-Hwei Lee

 

One example of hierophany is the apparition of angels.

This is a new word I overheard this morning. It occurs

when the divine realm manifests — or the word intrudes — 

into our quotidian realm. The natural one, an untidy

fleshliness of the ordinary. Or the sacred and profane

is another way to say this. I asked whether it is a hernia,

and the answer was no. A herniated condition is viscera

on viscera — a disc, organs, the skin, or nerves. Besides,

such a comparison would be profane. A figure of speech

already exists, I said, in a hieratic silence of cursive

writing long ago dead. Not long ago, those two phrases

dwelled in separate worlds. I dare you to use the word

hernia in a poem, said a friend. So I not only used

the word, I invited God into language. Or God existed

before language, while God is also the word. Remember,

all theophanies are forms of  hierophany. However,

the converse is not always true — not all hierophanies

are theophanies — or God visible in our world.

 

[brokenclay]

Happy first day of Spring to all!

 

I'm taking the easy way out here: this is the poem of the day from the Poetry Foundation.

 

 

After the Winter

by Claude McKay

 

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves

     And against the morning’s white

The shivering birds beneath the eaves

     Have sheltered for the night,

We’ll turn our faces southward, love,

     Toward the summer isle

Where bamboos spire the shafted grove

     And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

 

And we will seek the quiet hill

     Where towers the cotton tree,

And leaps the laughing crystal rill,

     And works the droning bee.

And we will build a cottage there

     Beside an open glade,

With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,

     And ferns that never fade.

[brokenclay]

 

Scavenging the Road

by R. T. Smith

 

When fall brought the graders to Atlas Road, 

I drove through gray dust thick as a battle 

and saw the ditch freshly scattered with gravel. 

 

Leveling, shaving on the bevel, the blade 

and fanged scraper had summoned sleepers— 

limestone loaves and blue slate, skulls of quartz 

 

not even early freeze had roused. Some rocks 

were large as buckets, others just a scone 

tumbled up and into light the first time 

 

in ages. Loose, sharp, they were a hazard 

to anyone passing. So I gathered 

what I could, scooped them into the bed 

 

and trucked my freight away under birdsong 

in my own life's autumn. I was eager 

to add to the snaggled wall bordering 

 

my single acre, to be safe, to be still 

and watch the planet's purposeful turning 

behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones. 

 

Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones, 

I love their old smell, the familiar unknown. 

To be sure this time I know where I belong 

 

I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home.

[brokenclay]

I received this lovely card from a friend recently, and it sent me in search of a dragonfly poem.

 

 

Fly, Dragonfly!

by Joyce Sidman

 

Water nymph, you have

climbed from the shallows to don

your dragon-colors.

Perched on a reed stem

all night, shedding your skin, you dry

your wings in moonlight.

 

Night melts into day

Swift birds wait to snap you up.

Fly, dragonfly! Fly!

[brokenclay]

 

In the Loop

by Bob Hicok

 

I heard from people after the shootings. People 

I knew well or barely or not at all. Largely 

the same message: how horrible it was, how little 

there was to say about how horrible it was. 

People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed 

because they know I teach at Virginia Tech,

to say, there’s nothing to say. Eventually 

I answered these messages: there’s nothing 

to say back except of course there’s nothing 

to say, thank you for your willingness 

to say it. Because this was about nothing. 

A boy who felt that he was nothing, 

who erased and entered that erasure, and guns 

that are good for nothing, and talk of guns 

that is good for nothing, and spring 

that is good for flowers, and Jesus for some, 

and scotch for others, and “and” for me 

in this poem, “and” that is good 

for sewing the minutes together, which otherwise 

go about going away, bereft of us and us 

of them. Like a scarf left on a train and nothing 

like a scarf left on a train. As if the train, 

empty of everything but a scarf, still opens 

its doors at every stop, because this 

is what a train does, this is what a man does 

with his hand on a lever, because otherwise, 

why the lever, why the hand, and then it was over, 

and then it had just begun.

 

Copied out on Tuesday, 23 Mar 2021, Boulder, Colorado

 

[inkstainedruth]

Wow.  That poem is just chilling.  Especially since, when I turned on the TV about 45 minutes ago, there was a special report -- a press conference about Yet Another™ mass shooting.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[brokenclay]

16 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Wow.  That poem is just chilling.  Especially since, when I turned on the TV about 45 minutes ago, there was a special report -- a press conference about Yet Another™ mass shooting.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

That's why I chose it for today.

[inkstainedruth]

Yikes!  I hadn't noticed the location in your avatar until just now.   

That makes the third indirect connection I have to mass shootings: my in-laws in Connecticut knew some of the Sandy Hook victims and their families; and a guy who was in my amateur madrigal choir for a while had a relative in the Tree of Life shooting (plus another couple of friends lived just blocks away...). 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[brokenclay]

 

Liberty

by Archibald MacLeish

 

When liberty is headlong girl

And runs her roads and wends her ways

Liberty will shriek and whirl

Her showery torch to see it blaze.

 

When liberty is wedded wife

And keeps the barn and counts the byre

Liberty amends her life.

She drowns her torch for fear of fire.

[brokenclay]

 

blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

 

                                                          (at St. Mary's)

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back     may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

[Madeline]

Beautiful!  I would like to send this poem to everyone I know, it is so like the wind, the sea, the sail which it describes and then gives away.  And what is that lovely pen lurking behind its dotted-Swiss paper?

 

 

[brokenclay]

On 3/25/2021 at 3:52 PM, Madeline said:

And what is that lovely pen lurking behind its dotted-Swiss paper?

 

A surprise favorite! That's a Kanwrite Desire in Orange Swirl, with a flex nib, all of $19 from Fountain Pen Revolution. It makes me smile every time I write with it.

 

When I got my Pelikan M205 Moonstone, it came with a bottle of Edelstein Moonstone ink and a sample of Fritz Schimpf Niebla. I inked a pen with Niebla for the first time this afternoon, and had to go looking for a poem to partner with it ("Niebla" means fog or mist). It's a purply grey. The photo doesn't really capture it. I would be very interested in the original poem in French, but wasn't able to find it online.

 

 

Mist

by Gerard Chaliand

translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian

 

I am watching great ships

gliding from the port of Hamburg

through the Elbe's wide estuary

that opens into the undersea rivers.

A lost siren's voice is calling

in the distant fog as

all my memories gather

in mist over the icy water.

 

In the north, vast plains stretch

and die in the birch trees

while a fine amber rain

dimples the Baltic sea swollen

with waters from the gorged earth

and from canals running along

peaceful red-tiled houses.

 

Cafés of Vienna, meandering

streets of Prague—I lean my life

against silvered mirrors and

remember what I have never lived.

 

 

[Madeline]

On 3/27/2021 at 8:20 PM, brokenclay said:

 

A surprise favorite! That's a Kanwrite Desire in Orange Swirl, with a flex nib, all of $19 from Fountain Pen Revolution. It makes me smile every time I write with it.

 

When I got my Pelikan M205 Moonstone, it came with a bottle of Edelstein Moonstone ink and a sample of Fritz Schimpf Niebla. I inked a pen with Niebla for the first time this afternoon, and had to go looking for a poem to partner with it ("Niebla" means fog or mist). It's a purply grey. The photo doesn't really capture it. I would be very interested in the original poem in French, but wasn't able to find it online.

 

Oh, that's beautiful!  Now there will be two of us looking for the French original :-)

 

[brokenclay]

 

Wind

by Florida Watts Smyth

 

What does wind stir in me

That stirs not in the tree?

It stirs a farther hope.

Trees stand, but I shall run

Beyond that slope,

Beyond the sun,

And see,

Windswept, the space of eternity.

 

We are enjoying a fine chinook today, winds at 20-30 mph and a high of 73F/23C before tomorrow's snow flurries.

[brokenclay]

 

Origami

by Joyce Sutphen

 

It starts

with a blank sheet,

an undanced floor,

 

air where no sound

erases the silence.

As soon as

 

you play the first note,

write down a word,

step onto the empty stage,

 

you've moved closer

to the creature inside.

Remember—

 

a square

can end up as frog, cardinal,

mantis, or fish.

 

You can make

what you want,

do what you wish.

[brokenclay]

I like the language play here ("will", a noun meaning fixed purpose), and the phrase "this corn is highly leveraged" is just awesome.

 

 

Will

by Rae Armantrout

 

In English

we place a noun

meaning fixed purpose

before our verbs

to create the future

tense.

 

Here, in the private life

my team invents,

I’m in a floodlit kitchen

like the set

of an old-time ad

for Tide

 

and I am chopping 

something.

 

Isn’t this the past

perfect?

Should I feel nostalgic?

 

This corn is highly 

leveraged

 

and I’m wearing

a pink slip.

 

[BigBlot]

A time traveler, just for a lark,

Went back to see Lewis and Clark

Kissed Sacagawa,

Returned to Montpelier,

To find it a Russian's theme park.

[brokenclay]

I'm missing my choir. Thirteen months now since we've met in person and sung together.

 

 

Sing a While Longer

by Edwin Markham

 

Has the bright sun set,

   Has the gale grown stronger?

Still we’ll not grieve yet:

   We will sing a while longer!

 

Has our youth been met

   By Time the wronger?

Let us not grieve yet,

   Let us sing a while longer!

 

Is the world beset,

   Do the sorrows throng her?

Let us not grieve yet:

   Let us sing a while longer!

 

[brokenclay]

 

Learning how to use albums.

 

From The Pat Sonnets

by Max Wickert

 

III, 7

When in my kitchen mood I go to cook,

    I brook no interference from your hands.

A word distracts, a mere inquiring look

   Can trip the steps each recipe demands.

      You've learned to let me fuss alone, you set

         The table, entertain the guests, because

      You trust in me for banquets that will whet

         All waiting tongues for pleasure and applause.

 

Not so our life: four eyes read each direction,

   Four hands must stir the broth we drink tomorrow,

      Two hearts season for frying pan or fire

   The meal of habit with the salt of sorrow,

      The sweet of love, the bitter of desire—

Pot-luck of joy or perilous confection.