Poem by Wilfred Owen

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

September-October 1917

A Poem by Denise Levertov

Pleasures

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board--

tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
the heart, but fragile, substance
belying design. Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the seed:
the seed a stone of wood, carved and

polished, walnut-colored, formed
like a brazilnut, but large,
large enough to fill
the hungry palm of a hand.

I like the juicy stem of grass that grows
within the coarser leaf folded round,
and the butteryellow glow

in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory
opens blue and cool on a hot morning.

Denise Levertov
-1957-

Kin to Sorrow by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door --
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Under Sorrow's hand?
Marigolds around the step
And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow --
And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door --
Oh, come in!

Nevertheless by Marianne Moore

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

Hurt Hawks by Robinson Jeffers

Hurt Hawks

I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,

The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.

You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

II

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.


-1928-

Fire-Caught by Langston Hughes

The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.

How Kind of You To Let Me In

There
were
Blue Jays raiding
my dreams
this morning.
Lewd as
mean hatchets
in their
rough
untimely
screams.

Albino blue
blood eyed
babies
insistent
as knotted blades.

Arising,
in a starved
fire,

with a mind
unnerved by
the foggy dew of
wilted dreams.

Again,
as fortune has
kindly delivered
it so,
if I tip forward just
a little...
Salted palms
pushing back
and up
and over
in erratic
labored
windmills!

May I share
in the misfortunes
of desperate space
and learn to
graciously
blink
with a wonderful
defeat(does it need to be so?)

The light,
having
just caught the signal,
removes blackened
obstructions
from the
space between leaves.

What shall we do
now
you blueblood-eyed babies?

What can we
do
in this
restless
mountain song?

Garden

I

You are clear
O rose, cut in rock,
hard as the descent of hail.

I could scrape the colour
from the petals
like spilt dye from a rock.

If I could break you
I could break a tree.

If I could stir
I could break a tree—
I could break you.

II

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

Hilda Doolittle
-1916-

Piano

PIANO
By D.H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

1918

Flowers by the Sea

When over the flowery, sharp pasture's
edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form-chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone

but color and the movement-or the shape
perhaps-of restlessness, whereas

the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem

-William Carlos Williams-
-1934-

Disillusionment of Ten O"Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
-Wallace Stevens-
1915

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--W. B. Yeats

Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries

EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES

by: A.E. Housman (1860-1936)

THESE, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Follow'd their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandon'd, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

"My

dear,
really there is no point in giving a gift unless one also treasures it oneself."

-Colette

Resistant Gosling

Resistant
gosling
to
a coal sunrise
and
a shower
of chilled water
from the rain gutter.
What little task (always unknown?)
could you have missed
this time
...any
given
time.
Pinched light from
the little kitchen window.
There will
be no
breakfast
at
the dinner table.

This day.

Schoolyard in an hour.
Mean little murmuring
shoes
and
the walk
is swollen with
young wrathful
tears.

A simple request-
beyond the peril
that pounds
from the taunts
embedded in
woodchips

To Leap.

Fallen from rusted metal bars,
with breath
searing through a
fledgling
cage…

To leap!

From
cemented booties
into the
coal
blue
sundown.

Gosling,
resistant
to
safety
as you are
and have been.
This
mornings
curses
were
destroyed
in the pebbles,
in the gravel,
as you
left
with
naked
heels
and
freshly
scabbed
knees.

These
steps
have been
sympathetically
left

to
untangle.

If and When I See You

If and when I see
You
You might be one of the trees
both straight and loping.
The tallest parts
of your California
limbs shake just
so slightly,
it sounds of paper
oceans and passing storms.
Eucalyptus!


But then I passed
The Sycamore,
and here I saw you again.
Susceptible skin
paired away
crackling
layers
on a
rouged
trunk.
Smiling.

What drove the
wrench in
though,
what cut to
the marrow
as you say
was the Giant Redwood,
always
slumbering
ever just so.

With a golden mind.
A diseased mind.

With slow amber words
that came in blazes,
You did
manage to
fold
us.

And it seemed to
take all the ages
before we could
have the
want to
see you again.

wanting
and terrified
and wonderful
in
a summer fog..

A twisted
frail necked
Cyprus
that belonged more to
what grew beyond the shore
than to the
untimely voices
of little ones.

On the land.

Raised and
sloped
and
slope

and slumber

and slumber

and rest.

The Garden of Love by William Blake

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Hard

These speckets of days
have been labeled as
the times the sun,
occluded by
downy nests
sat
drinking anise liquor
resignedly,
from a
hawkish
floating tumbler.

Why does her always say
why?

Below,
simpering
and right on schedule,
a chorus of peacock
kettles
fretfully
beg for
half naked
understanding.

Gloomyriders,
bundled
in
peevish
vapors
remain
unconvinced
yet
determined to fly.

Say why does him always
scream why?

Yes,
the menacing closeness
and territorial mouth
of
mechanical buffalo's
is omnipresent.

Yet,
how quickly graveled
twists
and
arrogant neeighhhhss
did
take thee down!

Record this.
Put it there.

The delicate frame,
and ready breath
forgotten in a lick
and
with a wily gesture...
...barely a gasp
the beginning
of this hardness
threads it’s eye.

Tell they,
why does them always
moan
why?

Put it down.
With a strong headwind
and icy rain pellets,
transition on the seat
and keep in
undifferentiated awareness.

Tell my then
why?
Her
is one way to
be in this mess.

March 29th-For my dearest Mom, on her birthday.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

Dearface

Look
at the tales that
lay
in these twisted
sleeping palms.
They are
the daybreaks
worst greeting.
Arched
knotted fingers
that
weave through
shattered air,
silently etching
muted
jade
regret
into the
breath of pillows.

Sister!
Look,
at the clothes that have been ungraciously cast upon this
splintered floor.
They beckon so
longingly for your removal
that
their heads have snapped
in shame.

Was it the nitty gritty
night?
Assessed from the
agitation of coquettish
heels.

Cariña,
oh dearface
look,
the exit is paved
with curious insects
and
as your grip on the
floor is released...
See?
The knob will turn
with
natural elegance.

Cowboy

There was a cowboy in the city today,
with a leather swagger
and a face
of broken canyons.

It isn’t the hurried
structures
that brought him here.
For the cowboy,
his palms
bring
sympathetic
cues.
With a fox shimmer
dart,
he
releases
rusted
hatches
from wired cages.

And he
sees us,
dancing as we
cry
crying from paper\cuts
and
stolen wisdom.
Smothered into the hands,
the hands of anxious strangers.

Upright,

he stands close by,
his smile:
melted winks,
retreating
into
painted
archways.

The cowboys days
of hustling are
laughing,
and
settling
in the sand beds
of the
Snake River.

"We Don't Know How to Say Goodbye"

We don't know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you're moody, I am your shadow.

Let's step inside a church and watch
baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead.
Why are we different from the rest?
Outdoors again, each of us turns his head.

Or else let's sit in the graveyard
on the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.

-1917
Anna Akhmatova

Today's Soldier

Today
the wilted
cast iron
figurine
of
the soldier
sits in
stoic haste.
The soldier
is guarded
and
obscured
by oily
pastoral
landscapes,
belligerently
sequined ladybugs
and
gorgeeeeeessssss
bone china.

And they all wait,
in moments
of disarrayed
contemplation.

But the soldier waits the longest,
is passed over always,
by
the groups of
irreverent
crabs
and
the flocks
of
pale
ornery
pigeons.

After hours,
as the clocks in the walls
mumble dirty jokes,
as the porcelain
doll stills
the folds on her
satin dress
listlessly
and as the
antique
washboards,
and
apothecary
bottles
settle bets...

the soldier
keeps
in basic goodness.

With aches
that have
gathered
in his porous
spine..

Smiling,
amongst
the
carnivores.

What does it look like
to
be
strong.

The soldier
thinks:
“this is just as good
a burial place as any.”

Strong Hearted Hummingbird

Hummingbird,
Humming
bird,

only the palest
sharks should keep
with you now.
This time,
little tragedy,
you must not
forgo safe harbor.

It had been sung,
from woven perch’s
that
you were intended for
more than this
looming
sphere.

Yours
the trills
that fog
and stars
stood devoted
in
patterns
for.

leeeeettttle
lovvveeerrrrr
llleeelllyyyy
one.

Honey laced filaments,
gathered,
beating,
in
winged
agreement.


Fragrant stamens ache,
beholden.

What great resistance
it takes
not to pounce
to cradle,
to crush
a cheek
into this
alluring

talisman.

Please do-
resist,
that is.

For she has
escaped
the beaded,
portentous
fists
for this long...

and
even
strong
hearts
become
negligent
in
thorny weather.

James Joyce's Ulysses

Fed and feeding brains about me:under glowlamps,impaled,
with faintly beating feelers: and in
my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant,
shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds.
Thought is the thought of thought.
Tranquil brightness.
The soul is in a manner all that is:
the soul is the form of forms.
Tranquility sudden,
vast,
candescent:
form of forms.

-Ulysses

The Sovereign's of Broken Glass

The sovereign’s of broken glass…

have been libeled
and maligned.
Their names cast about
as
coquettish flies
in
hop infused air.

Strategies
based on hypothetical
wretchedness.
Disparaging glances
towards
ripe,
threadbare
wardrobes.

Steady on
mechanical quills!
Do your duty by
these
carping citizens.
Must not forget to drop a quarter.
Hear.
And…
“Sympathy”
from afar
lest
we have relations.


Por supuesto,
best interests in mind.
But of course.

Cemented in tonsils,
sovereign's,
your invisibility is
palpable.
And no one
can
eliminate
your steps.

Sacrosanct chimes
clang
before the sun rises.
Lapis lazuli,
indigo gold,
sapphire glints and
fluorescent scented metals.

One can’t pretend to know.

Perhaps it’s just an
idyllic moment
caught,
stilled.

Gathered
in friendly hives
along the riverbanks.
Hypnotic
shhhhhhhhhhhhhh
of the concrete plants
and passing
barges.
Sharing stories of the city,
into the ears of trees.
Laying,
slumped,
or taut
amongst sweet pea
vines,
sun
bleached grass
and geese crap.

Peeking
From on high.
Saluting!
Salutations!

Mighty
compañero’s.

No Need For Ceremony

After a memory is resurrected,
slow, slow...
Quick.
The breath is discordant and
morning’s eye is hostile.
Steps that trundle as
defeated trains
enter open aired markets.

DEFIANT!

Seemingly unsolicited
we burst
into our neighbors,
releasing the
acrimonious casings
of our closest
snakes.

Whether
disguised as a vulpine dove,
or concealed
by aching masks,
we are yoked in ire.
We are
sallow
with
luxurious
boredom.

See this ship,
It cannot bear
our landscape.

And so looking to smile,
and sit,
with day laborer's,
cooling swollen eyes
in
rainwater.
If looking
to learn,

but from the humble and rare exceptions,

may we take note.

Now
and
through this famine,
may
our foreheads
become
weathered and
calloused
from
obsequious bows,
on
unsentimental
ground.

with d

little,
she can't pronounce special yet.
so it's fossil..


my fossil one,

where is my fossil one?

Want To Share Times?

Humility’s song-
can be a night of certain execution.
The air is laden with voices,
numbly hysterical,
familiar,
indistinguishable from any era.
Sentences might have shifted slightly, to compliment
today’s gilded lies.
Yet the weight of this fine collection,
these found speeches of precious cutlery
cannot hold.

And as the burden of our language,
boils and festers under rational lenses,
we can no longer afford our
bloated artillery of monologues.

And so it may go,
that as a chandelier,
unhinged and impatient
implodes and dives
at a hostile foundation,
our fraudulent declarations,
disguised as chatoyant gems
scatter,
in shame.
Then,
a wild scurry to tuck away
and hide
and hold
and hide.

Are you here?
Yes.

Well alright,
let’s try this again.

Instead of being caught in
our steady version of barbed wire,
let’s try a fresh song,
one
of curious alyssums,
shared.
...
And let’s sway,
widely,
as the most amicable of willows,
in bemused silent fields.
With
nothing
in
mind.

Tomatillo

Dearest,
They have decided not to lay cover crops this year.
Sitting outside, leaning really
against haggard bricks and a chain linked fence,
a feeling arises,
becomes clear amongst the smoke tendrils,
something akin to reverie.
There are scatterings of transparent husks, arranged according to their falls.
They perch alive,
amongst the hay, boggy compost, and molded root systems.
Collected dew clings to gossamer skin.
Opal and peridot hues take their leave from winter light; settle in a breathless touch.
This match,
frailty and strength,
have aligned with obtuseness.

…And dearest, you are not needed here.
There are no wishes embedded in the sweat of guarded palms.
No calls tethered to hopeful wings, released.
Withered vocal chords, beseeching in a cacophony of desperate prayers.

No,
none of this dear.

No voice close by,
compelled to proselytize the infallible works of god.

Just this,

Silent tomatillo, little green tomato
may I be with you?