here's what poetry can do

Despite planning out exactly which poems I was going to post on which days for the rest of the month, I have been so busy and tired that I have utterly failed to post them. I think years ending in 8 must be bad for poetry, somehow, because 2008 was my most erratic year before this one. Anyway, here is the poem I meant to post yesterday, which I am feeling strongly today.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939), "Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry." I couldn't find a citation for this poem (I am pretty sure I got it from wintercreek many years ago), but oh well; it's a great poem.

we're on the moon

Last April, there was an article in The New York Times (admittedly a publication that is Dead To Me, except for the Recipes section) about protest poetry in the United States, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. I feel very strongly about poetry as a means of resistance, now and always; one of the things I really like about this poem in particular, though, is how raw and immediate it feels—both because it's about the election, and because it isn't about the election. Anyway, poetry is kind of magic. Let's win the Midterms.

I'm looking at the moon tonight,
the closest it's been to Earth since 1948
and feel relieved we can do little to ruin it.
That can't be true, you say, and for a moment
even the moon's loneliness escapes isolation
and depends on something else. It's attached.
Like us and what we abandon. Us
and the evil we refuse. The same evil
we share history with, the thin membrane
between you or me and the worst of life.
It's already past midnight and another election
is over in the United States of America.
The oceans will not continue into infinity.
Nor will our money. Nor will this suffering.
We have voted and proven again
we do not know one another. I am trying
so hard to understand this country
, I tell youeven as I'm about to fail loving you (I know this)
in the way people need to be loved
which is without deception, which is almost
impossible. Don't you love it though, you say,
and I remember the first time I saw you in a room
without anyone else. Don't you love the moon?
And because it's easy to say it, I do, I make sure
to tell you I do. Despite the news I knew years ago:
no one saves anyone. We’re on the moon.

—Alex Dimitrov (b. 1984), "The Moon After Election Day" from Resistance, Rebellion, Life (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2017), and in this case from The New York Times, "Poems of Resistance: A Primer," April 21, 2017.

even the mistakes sound like jazz

It's Shakespeare Day! My tradition is to post both a poem that has something to do with Shakespeare, and a sonnet by Shakespeare. This year, it's Rita Dove and Sonnet 55.

He drums the piano wood,
crowing.

Champion Jack in love
and in debt,
in a tan walking suit
with a flag on the pocket,
with a red eye
for women, with a
diamond-studded
ear, with sand
in a mouthful of mush—

poor me
poor me
I keep on drifting 
like a ship out 
on the sea

That afternoon two students
from the Akademie
showed him the town.
Munich was misbehaving,
whipping
his ass to ice
while his shoes
soaked through. His guides
pointed at a clock
in a blue-tiled house.
And tonight

every song he sings
is written by Shakespeare
and his mother-in-law.
I love you, baby,
but it don’t mean
a goddam thing.
In trouble
with every woman he’s
ever known, all of them
ugly—skinny legs, lie gap
waiting behind the lips
to suck him in.

Going down slow
crooning Shakespeare say
man must be
careful what he kiss
when he drunk,
going down
for the third set
past the stragglers
at the bar,
the bourbon in his hand
some bitch’s cold
wet heart,
the whole joint

stinking on beer;
in love and winning
now, so even the mistakes
sound like jazz,
poor me, moaning
so no one hears:

my home’s in Louisiana,
my voice is wrong
I’m broke and can’t hold 
my piss;
my mother told me
there’d be days like this.

—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Shakespeare Say" from Museum, 1983.

*

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 55.

their prayers were weathered rib bones

Happy Sunday, friends. ♥

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards, 
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow 
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long 
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese, 
and were happy in spite of the pain, 
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen 
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand. 
When they arrived at Mecca 
they would circle the holy places, 
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily, 
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses, 
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America. 
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
           Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones. 
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool, 
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats, 
and was famous for his laugh.

—Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "Different Ways to Pray" from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). I fucking love Naomi Shihab Nye.

and the deep river ran on

It's always a little bit of a challenge, deciding what Auden poem to post each year. This actually wasn't the one I was planning on, but it's a classic, and it has some pretty phenomenal metaphors, as well as being a killer poem in general.

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   "Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

"I'll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "As I Walked Out One Evening," 1937, from Another Time, 1940. I think I post more poems from Another Time than I do any other era of Auden, actually—it's not intentional, and I love all eras of Auden, but the poems in Another Time are pretty consistently some of my favorites.

all those books

And for today, a little bit of Nikki Giovanni:

This is my first memory:

A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky

       wood floor

A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center

Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply

       too short

              For me to sit in and read

So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided

To the left side the card catalogue

On the right newspapers draped over what looked like

       a quilt rack

Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian

The anticipation in my heart

All those books—another world—just waiting

At my fingertips

—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), "My First Memory (of Librarians)" from Acolytes, 2007. It's actually pretty weird that I've never posted this poem before, because it was my introduction to Nikki Giovanni, and I love it very much.

the branch, the iron blade

For April 19—yesterday—in honor of the news that Hadestown is COMING TO BROADWAY IN 2019, after a run at the National in London. I'm so excited? It's so good? Oh my god. Anyway, Rilke:

Rufe mich zu jener deiner Stunden,
die dir unaufhörlich widersteht:
flehend nah wie das Gesicht von Hunden,
aber immer wieder weggedreht,

wenn du meinst, sie endlich zu erfassen.
So Entzognes ist am meisten dein.
Wir sind frei. Wir wurden dort entlassen,
Wo wir meinten, erst begrüßt zu sein.

Bang verlangen wir nach einem Halte,
wir zu Jungen manchmal für das Alte
und zu alt für das, was niemals war.

Wir, gerecht nur, wo wir dennoch preisen,
Weil wir, ach, der Ast sind und das Eisen
Und das Süße reifender Gefahr.


Call me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog’s imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you’ve captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold—
We, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;

doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), II, 23 from The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1923, translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1989).

nothing was mine

I'm sick, and this week has basically been a bust so far, but here is a Dorianne Laux poem.

I couldn't name it, the sweet
sadness welling up in me for weeks.
So I cleaned, found myself standing
in a room with a rag in my hand,
the birds calling time-to-go, time-to-go.
And like an old woman near the end
of her life I could hear it, the voice
of a man I never loved who pressed
my breasts to his lips and whispered
"My little doves, my white, white lilies."
I could almost cry when I remember it.

I don't remember when I began
to call everyone "sweetie,"
as if they were my daughters,
my darlings, my little birds.
I have always loved too much,
or not enough. Last night
I read a poem about God and almost
believed it—God sipping coffee,
smoking cherry tobacco. I've arrived
at a time in my life when I could believe
almost anything.

Today, pumping gas into my old car, I stood
hatless in the rain and the whole world
went silent—cars on the wet street
sliding past without sound, the attendant's
mouth opening and closing on air
as he walked from pump to pump, his footsteps
erased in the rain—nothing
but the tiny numbers in their square windows
rolling by my shoulder, the unstoppable seconds
gliding by as I stood at the Chevron,
balanced evenly on my two feet, a gas nozzle
gripped in my hand, my hair gathering rain.

And I saw it didn't matter
who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.
The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty
of the Iranian attendant, the thickening
clouds—nothing was mine. And I understood
finally, after a semester of philosophy,
a thousand books of poetry, after death
and childbirth and the startled cries of men
who called out my name as they entered me,
I finally believed I was alone, felt it
in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo
like a thin bell. And the sounds
came back, the slish of tires
and footsteps, all the delicate cargo
they carried saying thank you
and yes. So I paid and climbed into my car
as if nothing had happened—
as if everything mattered—What else could I do?

I drove to the grocery store
and bought wheat bread and milk,
a candy bar wrapped in gold foil,
smiled at the teenaged cashier
with the pimpled face and the plastic
name plate pinned above her small breast,
and knew her secret, her sweet fear,
Little bird. Little darling. She handed me
my change, my brown bag, a torn receipt,
pushed the cash drawer in with her hip
and smiled back.

—Dorianne Laux (b. 1952), "After Twelve Days of Rain," from What We Carry, 1994.

angels and america

While we are on the subject of sonnets, I thought I would post some for my birthday, which is today! I woke up with a scratchy throat and what feels like a cold, which is not awesome given that I am going to see eight hours of theatre—both parts of Angels in America on Broadway. But I will persevere, because both parts of Angels in America.

On the poetry front: it's a John Donne year, but I also missed posting a poem yesterday, so for yesterday and today: one double sonnet about angels, and a single sonnet about America.

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
     Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
     But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
     More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
     And therefore what thou wert, and who,
          I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
     Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
     For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
     Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
     So thy love may be my love's sphere;
          Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Aire and Angels" or "Air and Angels" with modernized spelling, which this version of the poem has. From Songs and Sonnets, which is mostly made up of neither songs nor sonnets, but in this case the poem is a double sonnet, and I love that about it—the notes in my grad school edition say "double sonnet! multiple vultas!" and "more mobile sonnet?" which...I am not sure what I meant by that. But anyway, it's a neat poem. I'm less into the misogyny at the end, but there's not exactly a small amount of misogyny in Songs and Sonnets in general; JD was working through some issues.

*

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), "The New Colossus." Guys, I've never posted any Emma Lazarus? IN ELEVEN YEARS? Honestly, this isn't even my favorite of her poems; but it's a classic, and it's a sonnet, and despite the last part being immensely famous, I frequently feel like we should read the whole poem more often. So anyway, here is to both angels and America.

the flame is your dominion

Eleven years, and very slowly working my way through Neruda, one love sonnet at a time. I mean, there are a hundred of them, and in eleven years I've only posted two, so I may be here for a while. I fucking adore One Hundred Love Sonnets—in my opinion, they are some of the sexiest and most romantic poems every written.

Cuántas veces, amor, te amé sin verte y tal vez sin recuerdo,
sin reconocer tu miranda, sin mirarte, centaura,
en regiones contrarias, en un mediodía quemante:
eras sólo el aroma de los cereales que amo.

Tal vez te vi, te supuse al pasar levantando una copa
en Angol, a la luz de la luna de junio,
o eras tú la cintura de aquella guitarra
que toqué en las tinieblas y sonó como el mar desmedido.

Te amé sin que yo lo supiera, y busqué tu memoria.
En las casas vacías entré con linterna a robar tu retrato.
Pero yo ya sabía cómo eras. De pronto

mientras ibas conmigo te toqué y se detuvo mi vida:
frente a mis ojos estabas, reinándome, y reinas.
Como hoguera en los bosques el fuego es tu reino.


Love, how often I loved you without seeing—without remembering you—
not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
in the wrong place, scorching in the hot noon,
but I loved only the smell of wheat.

Or maybe I saw you, imagined you lifting a wineglass
in Angol, by the light of the summer’s moon;
or were you the waist of that guitar I strummed
in the shadows, the one that rang like an impetuous sea?

I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
I broke into houses to steal your likeness,
though I already knew what you were like. And, suddenly,

when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
stopped: you stood before me, you took dominion like a queen:
like a wildfire in the forest, and the flame is your dominion.

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), XXII from Cien sonetos de amor or One Hundred Love Sonnets, 1959, translated by Stephen Tapscott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

that nothing can tear or mend

My body is really mad at me today, but I still love poetry.

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

—Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953), "For What Binds Us" from Of Gravity & Angels, 1988.

a new knowledge of reality

A little bit of Wallace Stevens, on this Tuesday night:

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself" in this case from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 1954.

the universe is made of distance and of dust

I need to get back in the habit of posting poems in the morning, because I keep forgetting until late in the day, or forgetting completely—although in my defense, I have had houseguests (wonderful houseguests, but houseguests nonetheless) for pretty much two straight weeks. Anyway, my awesome friend ashpags, herself a badass lady astronomer, directed me to this wonderful poem inspired by Henrietta Leavitt.

      After Henrietta Leavitt, astronomer

The difference between luminosity and brightness
is the difference between being

and being perceived, between the energy emitted
and the apparent magnitude. O, to be

significant! To have some scope and scale!
Size and heat. Why not make that obvious,

ostensible, stretch it out for all the world to see?
Distance makes a world of difference.

The universe is made of distance and of dust.
More dust than star out there,

more crimson than cobalt from here, looking,
our eyes telling the truth slant

through the almost-nothing
of the universe’s finely grained mattering.

—Anna Leahy (b. 1965), "The Habits of Light" from Aperture (2017). You can read more about the poem, and Henrietta Leavitt, and watch Anna Leahy read the poem aloud (if that's your thing) at brainpickings.

hope's fairy-colors

The day has pass'd in storms, though not unmix'd
With transitory calm. The western clouds,
Dissolving slow, unveil the glorious sun,
Majestic in decline. The wat'ry east
Glows with the many-tinted arch of Heav'n.
We hail it as a pledge that brighter skies
Shall bless the coming morn. Thus rolls the day,
The short dark day of life; with tempests thus,
And fleeting sun-shine chequer'd. At its close,
When the dread hour draws near, that bursts all ties,
All commerce with the world, Religion pours
Hope's fairy-colors on the virtuous mind,
And, like the rain-bow on the ev'ning clouds,
Gives the bright promise that a happier dawn
Shall chase the night and silence of the grave.

—Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), "The Rain-bow."

carve into me with knives of light

I have been saying for years that one day, someday, I would post Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay," which is a truly exceptional and extraordinary poem. I haven't done so before because it's also a very long poem, but I think today is the day. "The Glass Essay" is a poem about loss and heartbreak and recovery, sex and poetry and family and Emily Brontë, and although it's not quite about grief in the way my April 5th grief poems usually are, I am posting it for both yesterday and today. I think it's long enough, and special enough, to count for two days.

each day is fulminant

Today was both Maya Angelou's birthday—she would have been 90—and the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. I was booked solid all day and am completely exhausted and haven't really had any energy to think about any of that, but: Angelou, right?

     FOR DAVID P—B    

The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms 
The gentle buttocks of a young 
Giant. In the nestle,
Old adobe bricks, washed of 
Whiteness, paled to umber,
Await another century.

Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land, 
Then quiet pools whisper 
Private childhood secrets.

Flush on inner cottage walls 
Antiquitous faces,
Used to the gelid breath
Of old manors, glare disdainfully 
Over breached time.

Around and through these 
Cold phantasmatalities, 
He walks, insisting
To the languid air,
Activity, music,
A generosity of graces.

His lupin fields spurn old
Deceit and agile poppies dance
In golden riot.   Each day is
Fulminant, exploding brightly 
Under the gaze of his exquisite 
Sires, frozen in the famed paint 
Of dead masters. Audacious 
Sunlight casts defiance
At their feet.

—Maya Angelou (1928-2014), "California Prodigal" from And Still I Rise, 1978.

rhythm & spores

If I am not Ulysses, I am
his dear, ruthless half brother.
Strap me to the mast
so I may endure night sirens
singing my birth when water
broke into a thousand blossoms
in a landlocked town of the South,
before my name was heard
in the womb-shaped world
of deep sonorous waters.
Storms ran my ship to the brink,
& I wasn't myself in a kingdom
of unnamed animals & totem trees,
but never wished to unsay my vows.
From the salt-crusted timbers
I could only raise a battering ram
or cross, where I learned God
is rhythm & spores. If I am
Ulysses, made of his words
& deeds, I swam with sea cows
& mermaids in a lost season,
ate oysters & poison berries
to approach the idea of death
tangled in the lifeline's slack
on that rolling barrel of a ship,
then come home to more than just
the smell of apples, the heavy oars
creaking the same music as our bed.

—Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947), "Latitudes" from The Emperor of Water Clocks, 2015.

It rained all day, and I'm making Cat watch the beginning of Black Sails, and I never can get enough of Odysseus.

the life principle

It snowed this morning (gross, slushy snow, now almost entirely melted), which gives me—on some level, anyway—the opportunity to post out-of-season poetry. I went looking for winter poems and found this one, and, well. Yeah. Margaret Atwood has a way with turning prosaic things into poetry that is rivaled by almost nobody. Also, fairestcat is visiting me from Canada, so, you know, here's to Margaret Atwood.

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

—Margaret Atwood, “February” from Morning in the Burned House, 1995.

the descending blue

Good morning and welcome to National Poetry Month! It's 2018, which is honestly pretty weird, and I am WOEFULLY under-prepared for National Poetry Month. However, do not be deterred: under-prepared just means that things will probably be a little wacky and spontaneous.

In addition to being April 1, today is Easter, and the second day of Passover, and while spring remains elusive, I am optimistic. So here is my favorite queer Jesuit priest on spring:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
    Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
    The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
    A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
    Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
    Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Spring," May 1877.