A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

 

My Dearest Dust

By Lady Catherine Dyer

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty day

Afford thy drowzy patience leave to stay

One hower longer: so that we might either

Sate up, or gone to bedd together?

But since thy finisht labor hath possest

Thy weary limbs with early rest,

Enjoy it sweetly: and thy widdowe bride

Shall soone repose her by thy slumbring side.

Whose business, now, is only to prepare

My nightly dress, and call to prayre:

Mine eyes wax heavy and ye day growes old.

The dew falls thick, my beloved growes cold.

Draw, draw ye closed curtaynes: and make room:

My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

[inkstainedruth]

 

That's an interesting approach. I'm deeply wedded to etymology and meaning; I think I'd have a very hard time with that assignment.

Oh it's worse than that. It was, IIRC, supposed to ALSO be used for a poem about a painting or photo. (The one I used was the photo I took of Janis Joplin's car -- a Porsche, if you can believe it -- on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH when we were there a few years ago; the car had been painted over by a later owner but was tracked down and they repainted it to match the original paint job as best they could from photographs).

As fr the poem, I was swearing so much the air was blue around me (and if I had known how to pronounce Polish, the language the original poem was in, I would have been cursing in TWO languages...). That one is still a work very much in progress. I did better with another prompt, where you had to sort of re-write a proverb and than use that new one as the basis for a poem.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[brokenclay]

No kidding, that is worse!

 

To honor the concept of translation, here's a poem by Idea Vilariño, Uruguayan translator of Shakespeare.

 

 

Todo es muy simple

by Idea Vilariño

Todo es muy simple mucho

más simple y sin embargo

aun así hay momentos

en que es demasiado para mí

en que no entiendo

y no sé si reírme a carcajadas

o si llorar de miedo

o estarme aquí sin llanto

sin risas

en silencio

asumiendo mi vida

mi tránsito

mi tiempo.

Everything is so simple so

much simpler and yet

even so there are times

when it is too much for me

when I don't understand

and I don't know if I should laugh out loud

or cry out of fear

or be here without tears

without laughter

in silence

accepting my life

my path

my time.

[brokenclay]

I feel reactionary and rebellious, hand-writing a poem about texting...

 

 

Text

by Carol Ann Duffy

I tend the mobile now

like an injured bird

We text, text, text

our significant words.

I re-read your first,

your second, your third,

look for your small xx,

feeling absurd.

The codes we send

arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,

their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press

will ever be heard.

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by brokenclay

[brokenclay]

In honor of Tas' little film...

 

 

Koi

by Jennifer Wong

 

Among heart-shaped leaves

the white fish gleams, red tail.

Soft lotuses sleep.

[brokenclay]

 

What Kind of Times Are These

By Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

[brokenclay]

 

Poetry

by Reg Saner

 

... as when one

right, audacious word

turns to the mirror

myself the reader, naked

and surprised.

[brokenclay]

I'm learning about short poetic forms. Rispetto is an Italian poetic form. Eight lines, 11 syllables per line, ababccdd rhyme scheme.

 

 

Rispetto

By Sara Teasdale

Was that his step that sounded on the stair?

Was that his knock I heard upon the door?

I grow so tired I almost cease to care,

And yet I would that he might come once more.

It was the wind I heard, that mocks at me,

The bitter wind that is more cruel than he;

It was the wind that knocked upon the door,

But he will never knock nor enter more.

[brokenclay]

A cinquain is an unrhymed poem with five lines. The first and last line have two syllables, the second and fourth lines have four syllables, the third line has six.

 

 

Niagara

By Adelaide Crapsey

 

(Seen on a Night in November)

 

How frail

Above the bulk

Of crashing water hangs,

Autumnal, evanescent, wan,

The moon.

Edited July 19, 2020 by brokenclay

[Madeline]

Thank you! Thank you! for all these gorgeous poems. So much needed. So much needed now, now.

[brokenclay]

Today I am trying to reduce screen time even more, so I went poetry-shopping in my own bookshelves, and was surprised at how much poetry I found! This is from a small book of collected poems of Nelly Sachs, complete with a book review cut out from the Washington Post in 1967.

 

 

So einsam ist der Mensch

By Nelly Sachs

So einsam ist der Mensch

sucht gen Osten

wo die Melancholia im Dämmerungsgesicht erscheint

Rot ist der Osten vom Hähnekrähen

O höre mich –

In der Löwensucht

und im peitschenden Blitz des Äquators

zu vergehn

O höre mich –

Mit den Kindergesichtern der Cherubim zu verwelken

am Abend

O höre mich –

Im blauen Norden der Windrose

wachend zur Nacht

schon eine Knospe Tod auf den Lidern

so weiter zur Quelle –

How Lonely is Man

How lonely is man

looking east

where melancholy appears in the face of the dawn

The east is red with with the rooster's crow*

O hear me –

To perish

in the lion's frenzy

and in the crack of equatorial lightning

O hear me –

To wither

with the infant faces of the cherubim

in the west

O hear me –

Wakeful at night

in the blue north of the compass rose

death already budding on the eyelids

so onward to the source –

*I had translated this slightly differently, but the FPN profanity redaction software changed it for me :-)

[brokenclay]

Found in a little book called Silver Pennies that, according to the inscription, was a gift to my husband on his second birthday in 1944.

 

 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I love "bee-loud glade" and "deep heart's core". There is a beautiful choral setting of this peom by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo:

Edited July 20, 2020 by brokenclay

[brokenclay]

The final lines of Goethe's Faust.

 

 

From Faust, A Tragedy

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alles Vergängliche

Ist nur ein Gleichnis;

Das Unzulängliche,

Hier wird's Ereignis;

Das Unbeschreibliche,

Hier ist's getan;

Das Ewig-Weibliche

Zieht uns hinan.

Translation by Walter Arndt

All in transition

Is but reflections;

What is deficient

Here becomes action;

Human discernment

Here is passed by;

Woman Eternal

Draws us on high.

 

[brokenclay]

Still mining the local physical books. From Jacques Prévert, La Pluie et le beau temps.

 

 

Droit de regard

by Jacques Prévert

Vous

Je ne vous regarde pas

ma vie non plus ne vous regarde pas

J’aime ce que j’aime

et cela seul me regarde

et me voit

J’aime ceux que j’aime

je les regarde

ils m’en donnent droit.

(Very rough translation, French not being one of my better languages - French speakers should feel free to correct me!)

Right of inspection

You

I'm not looking at you

My life is none of your business

I like what I like

And that's all that matters

All that sees me

I love those whom I love

I look at them

They allow it.

[brokenclay]

 

Translation

By Anne Spencer

We trekked into a far country,

My friend and I.

Our deeper content was never spoken,

But each knew all the other said.

He told me how calm his soul was laid

By the lack of anvil and strife.

“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note

To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”

And when at the day’s end

We laid tired bodies ’gainst

The loose warm sands,

And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;

When star after star came out

To guard their lovers in oblivion—

My soul so leapt that my evening prayer

Stole my morning song!

[brokenclay]

 

Angrily Standing Outside in the Wind

By Brenda Hillman

—kept losing self control

but how could one lose the self

after reading so much literary theory?

The shorter "i" stood under the cork trees,

the taller "I" remained rather passive;

the brendas were angry at the greed, angry

that the trees would die, had lost interest

in the posturing of the privileged,

the gaps between can't & won't...

Stood outside the gate of permissible

sound & the wind came soughing

through the doubt debris

(soughing comes from swāgh—to resound...

echo actually comes from this also—)

we thought of old Hegel across

the sea—the Weltgeist—& clouds

went by like the bones of a Kleenex...

it's too late for countries

but it's not too late for trees...

& the wind kept soughing

with its sound sash, wind with

its sound sash, increasing

bold wind with its sound sash,

increasing bold—

[Madeline]

So very powerful, today's choice. I am still in awe over the lines "it's too late for countries/but it's not too late for trees..."

[brokenclay]

So very powerful, today's choice. I am still in awe over the lines "it's too late for countries/but it's not too late for trees..."

 

Yes, that's the bit that hit me, too. My daughter also picked it up from the table and immediately read out those lines.

 

Also have to love a poet who puts an etymology lesson right there in the poem.

[brokenclay]

A month or so ago I got tired of coloured inks, bought a sampler of blacks from Goulet, and have been writing only in black and blue. Today I suddenly wanted green.

 

 

Green Pear Tree in September

By Freya Manfred

On a hill overlooking the Rock River

my father’s pear tree shimmers,

in perfect peace,

covered with hundreds of ripe pears

with pert tops, plump bottoms,

and long curved leaves.

Until the green-haloed tree

rose up and sang hello,

I had forgotten. . .

He planted it twelve years ago,

when he was seventy-three,

so that in September

he could stroll down

with the sound of the crickets

rising and falling around him,

and stand, naked to the waist,

slightly bent, sucking juice

from a ripe pear.

[brokenclay]

 

Memories

by Xenophanes

 

This is the kind of thing

we should say

by the fireside in winter,

as we lie on soft couches

after a fine dinner,

drinking sweet wine

and crunching chickpeas:

 

"What country do you

hail from, good sir?

And how old are you?

And how old were you

when the Mede came?"

 

The reference to 'the Mede' is to the conquest of Ionia by Harpagos, a Mede who served as a general in the army of the Persian King Cyrus. The Ionian cities had formerly been under the sway of King Croesus of Lydia, and when Cyrus attacked Lydia he asked the Ionians to revolt in his support. They refused, so after his victory in 540 BCE Cyrus sent an expedition to punish them. Rather than submit to Persian rule many of the Greeks sailed away from their cities.

--A.C. Grayling, The History of Philosophy