Poems for the Second Quarter

Poems for the Second Quarter

The Cross of Snow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the long, sleepless watchers of the night,

A gentle face—the face of one long dead—

Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such Is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changless since the day she died.

Song of Myself, 1

Walt Whitman

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belong to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born her from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

Not Waving but Drowning

Stevie SmithNot Waving but Drowning

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larkinglarking Playing tricks, kidding, fooling around.

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no nono, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

34

Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see--

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

The Eagle

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Prosody 101

Linda Pastan

When they taught me that what mattered most

was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping

over the page but the variations

in that line and the tension produced

on the ear by the surprise of difference,

I understood yet didn’t understand

exactly, until just now, years later

in spring, with the trees already lacy

and camellias blowsy with middle age

I looked out and saw what a cold front had done

to the garden, sweeping in like common language,

unexpected in the sensuous

extravagance of a Maryland spring.

There was a dark edge around each flower

as if it had been outlined in ink

instead of frost, and the tension I felt

between the expected and actual

was like that time I came to you, ready

to say goodbye for good, for you had been

a cold front yourself lately, and as I walked in

youlaughed and lifted me up in your arms

as if I too were lacy with spring

instead of middle-aged like the camellias,

and I thought: So this is Poetry.

The First

Wendell Berry

The first man who whistled

thought he had a wren in his mouth.

He went around all day

with his lips puckered,

afraid to swallow.

Dandelions

Henri Cole

He drew

these dandelions

during one

of the days

when the only

solace

was derived

from the labor

of getting

the white stems

and blurry seed heads

just right. “Nobody there,”

the new disease

announced,

with black-tie gloom,

“nobody there,”

after he’d succumbed.

Sometimes,

sleeping soundly

is almost

unbearable.

Please take

care of me,

he asked,

as they put

his crayons

with his wallet

in a box

by the stove.

In the distance,

beyond the tulips,

an insect chorus

droned:

we beat you up;

we beat you up.

Break of Day

John Donne

’Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be?

Oh, wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ’tis light?

Did we lie down because ’twas night?

Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither

Should, in despite of light, keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

If it could speak as well as spy,

This were the worst that it could say:

That, being well, I fain would stay,

And that I loved my heart and honor so,

That I would not from him that had them go.

Must business thee from hence remove?

Oh, that’s the worst disease of love;

The poor, the foul, the false, love can

Admit, but not the busied man.

He which hath business and makes love, doth do

Such wrong as when a married man doth woo.

The Word Plum

Helen Chasin

The word plum is delicious

pout and push, luxury of

self-love, and savoring murmur

full in the mouth and falling

like fruit

taut skin

pierced, bitten, provoked into

juice, and tart flesh

question

and reply, lip and tongue

of pleasure.

Marriage

William Carlos Williams

So different, this man

And this woman:

A stream flowing

The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain

Wallace Stevens

There it was, word for word,

The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,

Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed

A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,

Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,

Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactnesses

Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,

Recognize his unique and solitary home.

Thirty More Years

Wendell Berry

When I was a young man,

grown up at last, how large

I seemed to myself! I was a tree,

tall already, and what I had not

yet reached, I would yet grow

to reach. Now, thirty more years

added on, I have reached much

I did not expect, in a direction

unexpected. I am growing downward,

smaller, one among the grasses.

The Sick Rose

William Blake

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

The Verdicts

Rudyard Kipling

(JUTLAND)
1916

Not in the thick of the fight,

Not in the press of the odds,

Do the heroes come to their height,

Or we know the demi-gods.

That stands over till peace.

We can only perceive

Men returned from the seas,

Very grateful for leave.

They grant us sudden days

Snatched from their business of war;

But we are too close to appraise

What manner of men they are.

And, whether their names go down

With age-kept victories,

Or whether they battle and drown

Unreckoned, is hid from our eyes.

They are too near to be great,

But our children shall understand

When and how our fate

Was changed, and by whose hand.

Our children shall measure their worth.

We are content to be blind . . .

But we know that we walk on a new-born earth

With the saviours of mankind.

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

I saw a man this morning

Patrick Shaw-Stewart

I saw a man this morning

Who did not wish to die

I ask, and cannot answer,

If otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning

Against the Dardanelles;

The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks

Were cold as cold sea-shells.

But other shells are waiting

Across the Aegean sea,

Shrapnel and high explosive,

Shells and hells for me.

O hell of ships and cities,

Hell of men like me,

Fatal second Helen,

Why must I follow thee?

Achilles came to Troyland

And I to Chersonese:

He turned from wrath to battle,

And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles,

So very hard to die?

Thou knewest and I know not—

So much the happier I.

I will go back this morning

From Imbros over the sea;

Stand in the trench, Achilles,

Flame-capped, and shout for me.

The Red wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

A Daughter of Eve

Christina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,

And wake when night is chilly

Beneath the comfortless cold moon;

A fool to pluck my rose too soon,

A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;

Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept:

Oh it was summer when I slept,

It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring

And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:—

Stripp'dbare of hope and everything,

No more to laugh, no more to sing,

I sit alone with sorrow.

447

Emily Dickinson

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

I am Trying to Break Your Heart

Kevin Young

I am hoping

to hang your head

on my wall

in shame—

the slightest taxidermy

thrills me. Fish

forever leaping

on the living-room wall—

paperweights made

from skulls

of small animals.

I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve

& break

your heart like a horse

or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then

all at once, you're mine—

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy

along my knuckles. I assassin

down the avenue

I hope

to have you forgotten

by noon. To know you

by your knees

palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science—

consider the taxidermist's

tender hands

trying to keep from losing

skin, the bobcat grin

of the living.

Better to Marry Than to Burn

Traci Brimhall

Home, then, where the past was.

Then, where cold pastorals repeated

their entreaties, where a portrait of Christ

hung in every bedroom. Then was a different

country in a different climate in a time when

souls were won and lost in prairie tents. It was.

It was. Then it was a dream. I had no will there.

Then the new continent and the new wife

and the new language for no, for unsaved,

for communion on credit. Then the daughter

who should’ve been mine, and the hour a shadow

outgrew its body. She was all of my failures,

my sermon on the tender comforts of hatred

in the shape of a girl. Then the knowledge

of God like an apple in the mouth. I faced

my temptation. I touched its breasts with

as much restraint as my need allowed,

and I woke with its left hand traced again

and again on my chest like a cave wall

disfigured by right-handed gods who tried

to escape the stone. It was holy. It was fading.

My ring, then, on my finger like an ambush,

as alive as fire. Then the trees offered me a city

in the shape of a word followed by a word

followed by a blue madonna swinging from

the branches. A choir filed out of the jungle

singing hallelujah like a victory march and it was.

Sonnet 30

William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Advice to My Son

Peter Meinke

The trick is, to live your days

as if each one may be your last

(for they go fast, and young men lose their lives

in strange and unimaginable ways)

but at the same time, plan long range

(for they go slow: if you survive

the shattered windshield and the bursting shell

you will arrive

at our approximation here below

of heaven or hell).

To be specific, between the peony and the rose

plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;

beauty is nectar

and nectar, in a desert, saves—

but the stomach craves stronger sustenance

than the honied vine.

Therefore, marry a pretty girl

after seeing her mother;

speak truth to one man,

work with another;

and always serve bread with your wine.

But, son,

always serve wine.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

A gentle face — the face of one long dead —

Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Sonnet 29

William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee—and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

Wallace Stevens

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.

To a Daughter Leaving Home

Linda Pastan

When I taught you

at eight to ride

a bicycle, loping along

beside you

as you wobbled away

on two round wheels,

my own mouth rounding

in surprise when you pulled

ahead down the curved

path of the park,

I kept waiting

for the thud

of your crash as I

sprinted to catch up,

while you grew

smaller, more breakable

with distance,

pumping, pumping

for your life, screaming

with laughter,

the hair flapping