on the day the world ends

Today is April 1, which seems pretty bizarre since time no longer has any meaning. Nevertheless, it's a beautiful spring day here in New York City, and it's the first day of National Poetry Month. For anybody new (is there anybody new? after thirteen years that seems sort of doubtful, but you're very welcome here), that means I try to post a poem a day for the month of April. I almost never manage all thirty days, but I do my best; I also try not to repeat poems I've posted before, except in special circumstances.

I think the challenge, in this year of global pandemic, is going to be variety—I am sure I will be posting some depressing poems, war poems and grief poems and loss poems, and probably quite a few poems about finding joy in small things and perseverance and triumphing against the odds. It just seems...likely. But I'll try to shake it up a little, as much as one can when living in a fairly constant state of intense anxiety. The good news, at least for me, is that I find poetry to be enormously helpful when dealing with complex emotions and hard times.

I've been doing this since 2007, when I was 21 and a senior in college. This April I turn 35, and it's kind of incredible to look back on all these years of Aprils as a chronicle of my life and the world I've lived in and what's changed and what's stayed the same; a lot of it is pretty crappy, but a lot of it is pretty beautiful, too. I don't mean to make it a bigger thing than it is, but I feel very aware, this year in particular, of what it can mean to keep that kind of record. I guess this is my quarantine journal, in its own way.

Let's start, this year, with Czeslaw Milosz:

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
       
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

—Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), "A Song on the End of the World," translated by Anthony Milosz, and in this case from The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 by Czeslaw Milosz (Ecco Press, 1988).

and to shine

Mary Oliver died in January, so I always knew that I was going to close out the month with her—although she is also the poet I've concluded poetry month with the most frequently (in 2007, 2012, 2015, and this year, making for an impressive 4/13). Choosing the poem was much more difficult, because I've posted a lot of Mary Oliver over the years, and I've already posted most of my favorites. Of those, "Wild Geese" remains one of the most perfect poems in existence, and "In Blackwater Woods" and "When Death Comes" are not only two of my favorite poems in the world, they're also both about loss and grief and death in ways that really matter to me, and obviously mattered to Oliver. She was also very prolific, and wrote so many wonderful poems that it's easy to get lost in reading them, and harder, sometimes, to come up for air. This is not a bad thing. 

Eventually, though, I stopped overthinking it quite so much (would it even be possible to encapsulate all my Mary Oliver feelings in one Mary Oliver poem?) and went with this one. 

When I am among the trees, 

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

    but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It’s simple," they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine."

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "When I Am Among The Trees," from Thirst, 2006. 

Thanks for reading, friends. Happy Poetry Month 2019! See you next year. ♥

to rain falling on the open sea

There's just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,

and to the clerk stocking cans of carrots

in the night.

            It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

—Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), "Happiness," from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, originally published posthumously in 1996. This whole poem is wonderful, but the last line fucking kills; I love a poem that sticks the landing the way this one does.

achieved flight

We were dancing—it must have

been a foxtrot or a waltz,

something romantic but

requiring restraint,

rise and fall, precise

execution as we moved

into the next song without

stopping, two chests heaving

above a seven-league

stride—such perfect agony,

one learns to smile through,

ecstatic mimicry

being the sine qua non

of American Smooth.

And because I was distracted

by the effort of

keeping my frame

(the leftward lean, head turned

just enough to gaze out

past your ear and always

smiling, smiling),

I didn't notice

how still you’d become until

we had done it

(for two measures?

four?)—achieved flight,

that swift and serene

magnificence,

before the earth

remembered who we were

and brought us down. 

—Rita Dove, "American Smooth," from American Smooth, 2004. Sometimes you just have to post a poem about dancing.

possibility

In thirteen years of posting poems, I have posted very little famous Emily Dickinson. She wrote so many poems that it's not actually that hard to post non-famous ones, but the truth is that the famous ones are sometimes famous for good reasons. I really love this poem. 

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "I dwell in Possibility," #466, in this case from the R. W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, via Poetry Foundation. Emily Dickinson is a metaphysical poet; fight me.

like sky-written letters on a windy day

I'm counting this poem for yesterday (there will be another poem later today), but it's also sort of a first: this is the first year in poetry month history where I don't have a John Donne poem on my schedule. But I do have this one, which isn't exactly not a John Donne poem. 

Every reader loves the way he tells off

the sun, shouting busy old fool

into the English skies even though they

were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning. 

And it's a pleasure to spend this sunny day

pacing the carpet and repeating the words, 

feeling the syllables lock into rows

until I can stand and declare, 

the book held closed by my side, 

that hours, days, and months are but the rags of time. 

But after a few steps into stanza number two, 

wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress's eyes, 

I can feel the first one begin to fade

like sky-written letters on a windy day. 

And by the time I have taken in the third, 

the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now, 

a wavering line of acrid smoke. 

So it's not until I leave the house

and walk three times around this hidden lake

that the poem begins to show

any interest in walking by my side. 

Then, after my circling, 

better than the courteous dominion

of her being all states and him all princes, 

better than love's power to shrink 

the wide world to the size of a bedchamber, 

and better even than the compression 

of all that into the rooms of these three stanzas

is how, after hours stepping up and down the poem, 

testing the plank of every line, 

it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within. 

—Billy Collins, "Memorizing 'The Sun Rising' by John Donne," from Horoscopes for the Dead, 2011. I posted "The Sun Rising" back in 2008.

our bodies, possessed by light

I missed yesterday for migraine reasons (I am not feeling amazing today, either, but poetry month continues, and makes me feel better about most things), so here are two poems by two different poets with the same title. The second one was already on my poem schedule, but I also really love the first one, and it made sense to post them together. Both poems do kind of amazing and completely different things with poetic structure, and both, of course, are about Scheherazade, and storytelling, and love. 

Dumb was as good as dead; 

better to utter. 

Inside a bottle, a genie. 

Abracadabra. 

Words were a silver thread

stitching the night. 

The first story I said

led to the light. 

Fact was in black and white; 

fiction was colour. 

Inside a dragon, a jewel. 

Abracadabra. 

A magic carpet took flight, 

bearing a girl. 

The hand of a Queen shut tight

over a pearl. 

Imagination was world; 

clever to chatter. 

Inside a she-mule, a princess. 

Abracadabra. 

A golden sword was hurled

into a cloud. 

A dead woman unfurled

out of a shroud. 

A fable spoken aloud

kindled another. 

Inside a virgin, a lover. 

Abracadabra. 

Forty thieves in a crowd, 

bearded and bold. 

A lamp rubbed by a lad

turning to gold. 

Talking lips don't grow cold; 

babble and jabber. 

Inside a beehive, a fortune. 

Abracadabra. 

What was lost was held

inside a tale. 

The tall stories I told

utterly real. 

Inside a marriage, a gaol; 

better to vanish. 

Inside a mirror, an ogre;

better to banish. 

A thousand and one tales;

weeping and laughter. 

Only the silent fail. 

Abracadabra. 

—Carol Ann Duffy, "Scheherazade," from The Bees, 2011. 

*

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake

                                         and dress them in warm clothes again.

      How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running

until they forget that they are horses.

            It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,

      it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,

                  how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days

were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple

                                                                to slice into pieces.

Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means

      we’re inconsolable.

                        Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

                                            Tell me we'll never get used to it.

—Richard Siken, "Scheherazade," from Crush, 2005.

will in overplus

Today is Shakespeare Day! The tradition in recent years, on Shakespeare Day, has been to post one sonnet and one poem that is not by Shakespeare, but relates in some way to Shakespeare. This year, a pun-filled sonnet (sometimes the sonnets are really ludicrous), and an incredible poem that I was introduced to by a friend, which has some things to say about Hamlet. 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'

And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea all water, yet receives rain still

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'

One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 135

*

To C.M.

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man

though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant

nothing but black sun with broken rays

I could never think of your hands without smiling

and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests

they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this

The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart

and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier

the only ritual I am acquainted with a little

There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts

crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums

drums I know nothing exquisite

those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule

one has to take the city by neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life

you believed in crystal notions not in human clay

always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras

wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit

you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to

and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me

you chose the easier part an elegant thrust

but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching

with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair

with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project

and a decree on prostitutes and beggars

I must also elaborate a better system of prisons

since as you justly said Denmark is a prison

I go to my affairs This night is born

a star named Hamlet We shall never meet

what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos

and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

—Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998), "Elegy of Fortinbras," translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) is also the "C. M." of the dedication. The poem was originally published in 1961, but I couldn't find a date for the translation. Thanks to Clare for this poem.

my rivers and my stars

This poem is a little in conversation with John Donne in a way I really adore, but I don't think you need the Donne to appreciate it; it's a phenomenal poem about bodies and aging and embodiedness, and it's by Ursula Le Guin. What more do you need to know? 

The map of the tributaries of the Amazon

in blue, on the right thigh; 

lesser river systems

on the lower left leg. 

Extremities far more extreme: 

knobbed, wired, bent, and multiknuckled. 

Some dun cloud

drifts across the color of the eye, 

that aged nestling in its baggy nest, 

still avid, still insatiable. 

Replacement of cheek by jowl, 

of curve by hook or crook. 

Moles, warts, wenlets, cancerlings, 

a distressed finish, constellations, 

here the Twins, there the Cluster, 

flesh Pleiades

coming out thick at evening of the skin, 

pied beauty—there is none

that hath not some Strangeness in the Proportion. 

So the columnar what was waist

sockets to the cushioned pediment

of hips and buttocks. Parts are missing. Scars

lie smiling soft and small among the folds

and hillocks of that broad countryside. 

Oh, have I not my rivers and my stars, 

my wrinkled ranges in the Western sun? 

Oh, have I not my Strangeness? 

I am this continent, 

and still explore and find no boundary, 

for the far sandy beaches of my mind

where soft vast waves and winds erase

the words, the faces—this is still

endless, this is endless still. 

I am that wind, that ocean. 

—Ursula K. Le Guin (1928-2018), "Inventory," from In the Red Zone: Mount St. Helens, October 1981, although I have it in Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010 (2012). Other direct references in this poem include Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty" and Francis Bacon's "Of Beauty."

people in exile write so many letters

I had a request for Anne Carson, before I even started the month, but the problem I always have with posting Anne Carson during National Poetry Month is that her stuff is so difficult to excerpt, and I like her long things—Autobiography of Red, the Oresteia translation, the Glass Essay—more than her short things, a lot of the time. I'm also in a weird place with Anne Carson right now because the show we saw last night was...her id on stage? And I love her work, but I'm not sure the stage is the right place for her id. On the other hand, sometimes she does short really well. The line breaks on this poem are pretty arbitrary and (as far as I can tell) somewhat dependent on the printing, but as prose poetry it does work for me, which prose poetry rarely does. Maybe it's the Ovid. 

I see him there on a night like this but cool, the 

moon blowing through black streets. He sups

and walks back to his room. The radio is on the 

floor. Its luminous green dial blares softly. He

sits down at the table; people in exile write so 

many letters. Now Ovid is weeping. Each night

about this time he puts on sadness like a 

garment and goes on writing. In his spare time he 

is teaching himself the local language (Getic) in 

order to compose in it an epic poem no one will 

ever read. 

—Anne Carson, "On Ovid," from Short Talks, 1992.