islands and lemons

This is a summer poem, and it's not actually that summery today. But it's also a New York City poem, and a love poem, and I've been wanting to post it while in New York for a while. We'll be down on Bleecker later tonight to see a show at the Lucille Lortel.

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,
for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,
for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom
of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!

When I press summer dusks together, it is
a month of street accordions and sprinklers
laying the dust, small shadows running from me.

It is music opening and closing, Italia mia, on Bleecker,
ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children
tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper;
it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water
down littered streets that lead you to no water,
and gathering islands and lemons in the mind.

There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame.
I would undress you in the summer heat,
and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.

—Derek Walcott (1930-2017), "Bleecker Street, Summer," from Collected Poems: 1948-1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986).

without a word

I couldn't decide which W. S. Merwin poem to post, so here are two, one for today and one to count for April 17. They're variations on a theme (it's a little weird to be back in Texas where it very much is already summer), and I really enjoy the way Merwin just doesn't use punctuation at all.

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

—W. S. Merwin (1927-2019), "Black Cherries," from Garden Time, 2016.

*

The first hay is in and all at once
in the silent evening summer has come
knowing the place wholly the green skin
of its hidden slopes where the shadows will
never reach so far again and a few
gray hairs motionless high in the late
sunlight tell of rain before morning
and of finding the daybreak under green
water with no shadows but all still the same
still known still the known faces of summer
faces of water turning into the themselves
changing without a word into the themselves

—W. S. Merwin (1927-2019), "After the Spring," published in Poetry (June 1992).

if you stay too long it will kill you

Sometimes I get poems stuck in my head, kind of like songs; today it's been this one. (I love this one.)

O California, don't you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for him? I'm bored with the ocean

I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow
I know, I'm strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.
I know something that doesn't die can’t be beautiful.

Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you
is light & it's gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you

& it's so sad, you know? You're the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can't shine.

—Danez Smith, "I'm Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense," which is a killer fucking title. Originally published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 54, Issue 3, Summer 2015.

your one wild and precious life

Today is April 30, and to close us out—on what was an absolutely stunningly gorgeous spring day—is a poem I had to check my spreadsheet and my archive four separate times to be sure I hadn't posted before. It's a classic. Thank you for reading with me, friends. See you next year. ♥

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "The Summer Day," from House of Light, 1990. I have closed five out of sixteen years with Mary Oliver, and I have no regrets.

nothing says revenge like the stillness of snow

I have had an absolutely lovely day in the sun by the pool and on the beach, so it only seems appropriate to post a poem about snow, right? Right. This was an Academy of American Poets poem-a-day in January, and I loved it so much that I actually tweeted about it at the time, but I also saved it for April. Not all April poems are spring poems.

This morning the snow
lowered so slowly, I was able
to lift my son—still in pajamas—
and show him each delicate
tendril of frost, the arctic structure
of a solitary flake. I was able
to make coffee and think only
of making coffee, a sensation
so sudden and dangerous
in its delight, I had to dilute it
by burning the toast. This morning
I breathed deeply, clicked on
the television and watched—
for a moment—a Boeing VC-25 fade
over our capital and dwindle
from sight. Nothing says revenge
like dwindle from sight. Later,
I’ll hear the new president pledge
to be better, try a bit harder.
I will try to believe him
the way a child believes a father
in an overcoat, by the door.
But for now, all is quiet.
My coffee tastes delicious,
and nothing says revenge like
the stillness of snow.

—Jared Harél, "January 20, 2021," originally published as the poem-a-day on January 20, 2022.

in her heart january

It's a beautiful day today, but every other day this week is supposed to rain. Also, it is just really, really a Monday. Here is a spring poem for a Monday.

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

—Thomas Carew (1595-1640), "The Spring." Spelling obviously modernized. Carew is not, like, my favorite of the Cavalier poets, but he sure does know his tropes. Sorry she didn't want to sleep with you, Tom, but given the syphilis you can't really blame her.

to carry within us an orchard

And here is today's second poem, for April 29. The only thing I can say about this poem is that it is perfect.

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

—Li-Young Lee, "From Blossoms," from Rose, 1986.

the bewildering kinship of ice and sky

I brought what I knew about the world to my daily life
and it failed me. I brought senseless accidents
and a depravity sprung inside the jaw.
Also I brought what I had learned of love,
an air of swift entrance and exit, a belief in trouble
and desire. It will amount to something
I was told, and I was told to hold fast to decency,
to be spotlit and confident. I was told
next year's words await another voice.
But you are a hard mouth to speak to
and if I write the list it will be free of constancy.
It will include fierce birds, false springs,
a few oil lamps that need quickly to be lit.
Also dusk and weeds and a sleep that permits
utter oblivion from our stranded century.
This is not a natural world, and if there are
recoveries from confusion, they pass like rains.
I don't look to the robins for solace; neither do I trust
that to make an end is to make a beginning.
If we are not capable of company, we can at least
both touch the quartet inside evening,
the snow inside the willow, the bewildering kinship
of ice and sky. But as I walked
I saw crows ripping at shapes on the street,
a square of sunlight flare on the roof.
Take my hand, if only here and not in the time
that remains for us to spend together.
We will stand and watch the most delicate weathers
move, second by second, through the grim neighborhood.
I will lean into you, who have loved me in your way,
knowing where you are and what you care for.

—Joanna Klink, "Elemental," from Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin, 2015).

with your cargo of zithers

I've been feeling pretty crappy all day (headache, cramps, general icky malaise) and I almost went to bed without posting a poem. But then I thought, well, maybe a little Rita Dove would make the day a little better.

Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won't give.

So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing

a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!

—Rita Dove, "November for Beginners," Poetry Magazine, November, 1981.

but the line goes on

For yuletide this year, I wrote a story based on this poem, which is one of my favorite poems in the world. I thought it was probably time to post it, this year, even though April isn't quite the right season. 

Camelot is served

By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,

The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,

At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.

Beneath its rotunda, just to the left of the ticket windows,

Is a mosaic floor depicting the Round Table

(Where all knights, regardless of their station of origin

Or class of accommodation, are equal),

And around it murals of knightly deeds in action

(Slaying dragons, righting wrongs, rescuing maidens tied to the tracks).

It is the only terminal, other than Gare d'Avalon in Paris,

To be hung with original tapestries,

And its lavatories rival those at the Great Gate of Kiev Central.

During a peak season such as this, some eighty trains a day pass through,

Five times the frequency at the old Londinium Terminus,

Ten times the number the Druid towermen knew.

(The Official Court Christmas Card this year displays

A crisp black-and-white Charles Clegg photograph from the King's own collection.

Showing a woad-blued hogger at the throttle of "Old XCVII,"

The Fast Mail overnight to Eboracum. Those were the days.)

The first of a line of wagons have arrived,

Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,

And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,

Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,

Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,

Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,

To help mature women that they may encounter,

Report pickpockets, gather up litter,

And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)

Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.

He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch

(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):

The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,

And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.

He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,

Doling out pennies for platform tickets,

Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,

Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.

The patrons half turn—it's the fella from Camelot, innit?

And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.

He's barely halfway when a page tumbles in,

Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,

So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),

Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,

And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)

To summon his liveried army of lads.

* * *

Bors arrives behind steam, riding the cab of a heavy Mikado.

He shakes the driver's hand, swings down from the footplate,

And is like a locomotive himself, his breath clouding white,

Dark oil sheen on his black iron mail,

Sword on his hip swinging like siderods at speed.

He stamps back to the baggage car, slams mailed fist on steel door

With a clang like jousters colliding.

The handler opens up and goes to rouse another knight.

Old Pellinore has been dozing with his back against a crate,

A cubical, chain-bound thing with FRAGILE tags and air holes,

BEAST says the label, QUESTING, 1 the bill of lading.

The porters look doubtful but ease the thing down.

It grumbles. It shifts. Someone shouts, and they drop it.

It cracks like an egg. There is nothing within.

Elayne embraces Bors on the platform, a pelican on a rock,

Silently they watch as Pelly shifts the splinters,

Supposing aloud that Gutman and Cairo have swindled him.

A high-drivered engine in Northern Lines green

Draws in with a string of side-corridor coaches,

All honey-toned wood with stained glass on their windows.

Gareth steps down from a compartment, then Gaheris and Aggravaine,

All warmly tucked up in Orkney sweaters;

Gawaine comes after in Shetland tweed.

Their Gladstones and steamers are neatly arranged,

With never a worry—their Mum does the packing.

A redcap brings forth a curious bundle, a rude shape in red paper--

The boys did that one themselves, you see, and how does one wrap a unicorn's head?

They bustle down the platform, past a chap all in green.

He hasn't the look of a trainman, but only Gawaine turns to look at his eyes,

And sees written there Sir, I shall speak with you later.

Over on the first track, surrounded by reporters,

All glossy dark iron and brass-bound mystery,

The Direct-Orient Express, ferried in from Calais and Points East.

Palomides appears. Smelling of patchouli and Russian leather,

Dripping Soubranie ash on his astrakhan collar,

Worry darkening his dark face, though his damascene armor shows no tarnish,

He pushes past the press like a broad-hulled icebreaker.

Flashbulbs pop. Heads turn. There's a woman in Chanel black,

A glint of diamonds, liquid movements, liquid eyes.

The newshawks converge, but suddenly there appears

A sharp young man in a crisp blue suit

From the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,

That elegant, comfortable, decorous, close-mouthed firm;

He's good at his job, and they get not so much as a snapshot.

Tomorrow's editions will ask who she was, and whom with...

Now here's a silver train, stainless steel, Vista-Domed,

White-lighted grails on the engine (running no extra sections)

The Logres Limited, extra fare, extra fine,

(Stops on signal at Carbonek to receive passengers only).

She glides to a Timkin-borne halt (even her grease is clean),

Galahad already on the steps, flashing that winning smile,

Breeze mussing his golden hair, but not his Armani tailoring,

Just the sort of man you'd want finding your chalice.

He signs an autograph, he strikes a pose.

Someone says, loudly, "Gal! Who serves the Grail?"

He looks—no one he knows—and there's a silence,

A space in which he shifts like sun on water;

Look quick and you may see a different knight,

A knight who knows that meanings can be lies,

That things are done not knowing why they're done,

That bearings fail, and stainless steel corrodes.

A whistle blows. Snow shifts on the glass shed roof. That knight is gone.

This one remaining tosses his briefcase to one of Kay's pages,

And, golden, silken, careless, exits left.

Behind the carsheds, on the business-car track, alongside the private varnish

Of dukes and smallholders, Persian potentates and Cathay princes

(James J. Hill is here, invited to bid on a tunnel through the Pennines),

Waits a sleek car in royal blue, ex-B&O, its trucks and fittings chromed,

A black-gloved hand gripping its silver platform rail;

Mordred and his car are both upholstered in blue velvet and black leather.

He prefers to fly, but the weather was against it.

His DC-9, with its video system and Quotron and waterbed, sits grounded at Gatwick.

The premature lines in his face are a map of a hostile country,

The redness in his eyes a reminder that hollyberries are poison.

He goes inside to put on a look acceptable for Christmas Court;

As he slams the door it rattles like strafing jets.

Outside the Station proper, in the snow,

On a through track that's used for milk and mail,

A wheezing saddle-tanker stops for breath;

A way-freight mixed, eight freight cars and caboose,

Two great ugly men on the back platform, talking with a third on the ballast.

One, the conductor, parcels out the last of the coffee;

They drink. A joke about grails. They laugh.

When it's gone, the trainman pretends to kick the big hobo off,

But the farewell hug spoils the act.

Now two men stand on the dirty snow,

The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.

The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,

Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.

There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,

Considering. The men mount up.

By the roundhouse they pause,

And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,

The look for a long time at the turntable,

Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"

And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."

They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.

The sun is winter-low. Kay's caravan is rolling.

He may not run a railroad, but he runs a tight ship;

By the time they unload in the Camelot courtyard,

The wassail will be hot and the goose will be crackling,

Banners snapping from their towers, fir logs on the fire, drawbridge down,

And all that sackbut and psaltery stuff.

Blanchefleur is taking the children caroling tonight,

Percivale will lose to Merlin at chess,

The young knights will dally and the damsels dally back,

The old knights will play poker at a smaller Table Round.

And at the great glass station, motion goes on,

The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,

The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,

The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,

The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,

Running to a schedule as the world ought,

Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,

The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,

The boilers that turn raw fire into power,

The driving rods that put the power to use,

The turning wheels that make all places equal,

The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;

The train may stop

But the line goes on.

—John M. Ford (1957-2006), "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" (1988). The poem is online in a couple of places, and printed in Heat of Fusion and Other Stories (2004).

hermeneutics

I initially read this poem because of the title, but then I fell in love a little. 

All winter she's been growing more powerful.

Radiant, says the man at the bar.

Voluptuous, says the docent.

Nervy, says God.

All winter her soul has been juddering.

It feels like drinking gold flakes!

The word sleeps inside the stone.

The wind tongues the underside of the lake.

Inside the rifle scope of time, God

teaches her Grounding Techniques

through his emissary, a Certified Therapist.

Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees.

God says, You cling to deixis

like a life raft. Here, you

say. Now, you say. All winter, you say, like it means

something, days crossed off your compulsive

calendar, wind tied to your wrist like

a pet. This dumb hunger for

fixity! I made your cells

to shed, says God. See them

everywhere, everywhere.

She bites her lip till it bleeds.

Who wouldn't immanentize the eschaton, if they could,

build heaven on earth in the backyard?

She wouldn't, is who.

Day a slit-throated ewe.

She wears a prayer around her neck

in another language, no clue

what it says.

Who will translate the prayer?

Listen: she loved a happy libertine

and thought that was heaven.

To ground herself

she strips berries from the juniper bushes.

Well, says God,

Alexander the Great dyed his hair

saffron. We are all

made fools in this world.

—Kerri Webster, "Hermeneutics," Poetry (October 2016).

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.

let my words turn into sparks

It's April 30, which means that this is the last poem of the month. Time is kind of weird, right? This is not an April poem, or even a spring poem; it's actually a Yom Kippur poem, which is maybe a little weird to post in April. But for me, this time of year is always a transitional moment, and I think this poem is the right one to be going on with, this year.

On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?

How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.

—Marge Piercy (b. 1936), "The birthday of the world," from The Crooked Inheritance (2006), although in this case from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 (2012).

See you next year, friends. ♥

where are the songs of spring?

Good morning, April! April is the cruelest month, breeding | Lilacs out of the dead land, | Mixing memory and desire, stirring | Dull roots with spring rain my favorite month, and it is my favorite month not only because it is the month of my birth, but also because it is National Poetry Month in the U.S. For those of you new to this journal, this will be my -- holy crap -- fourth year posting poetry for National Poetry Month. I post a poem every day, and I endeavor (with varying degrees of success) not to repeat myself. I have a spreadsheet! I look forward to this all year!

This year, I am going to begin with a poem that has nothing to do with spring. I never post this poem, because it's about entirely the wrong time of year -- still, though, it seems a good place to start, with the warm breeze, and the slightly-hazy blue sky, and the birds twittering outside my open window. It's my favorite of his odes, no matter what time of year. And I do like beginning with Keats.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, --
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~John Keats (1795–1821), To Autumn, 1819.

this ghoul-haunted woodland

It is a blustery day, and that puts me in mind of Gothic Melodrama. Consequently, I shall provide Gothic Melodrama. Although really, given my taste for dramatic, blustery poetry, I wonder if October, not April, should be National Poetry Month. I think my favorite part of this poem is the rhyme of "senescent" and "liquescent." Oh, Edgar Allen, how silly you are in your doom and gloom.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll,
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole,
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,
Our memories were treacherous and sere,
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year,
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn,
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn,
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs,
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies,
To the Lethean peace of the skies:
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes:
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust,
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!—let us fly! for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust,
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust,
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its sibyllic splendor is beaming
With hope and in beauty to-night:
See, it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright:
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom,
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb,
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere,
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—"It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed—I journeyed down here,
That I brought a dread burden down here:
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,
This misty mid region of Weir:
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

~Edgar Allen Poe, Ulalume, 1847

it's the wrong time of year for this poem

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard, and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on they brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a fancy's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on her pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For a sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said
"I love thee true."

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd - Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried, "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

~John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, original version, 1819

Do we have sedge in Massachusetts?