Category: Not My Poetry

Parents' Evening

We feel she may be cheating
at reading and spelling.
She has failed to grasp the planets
and the laws of science,
has proven violent in games
and fakes asthma for attention.
She is showing promise with the Odyssey,
has learned to darn starfish
and knitted a patch for the scarecrow.
She seems to enjoy measuring rain,
pretending her father is a Beatle
and insists upon your death
as the conclusion to all her stories.

– Rhian Edwards (Welsh poet, contemporary, birthdate ungooglable)

This poem made me think of my students.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

A Postcard From The Volcano

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is … Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

– Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

What Then?

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. ' What then?'

All his happier dreams came true —
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then.?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'
– William Butler Yeats (Irish poet, 1865-1939)

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Wyrm com snican, toslat he {m}an;
ða genam Woden VIIII wuldortanas,
sloh ða þa næddran, þæt heo on VIIII tofleah.
Þær geændade æppel and attor,
þæt heo næfre ne wolde on hus bugan.

A worm came creeping, he tore a man in two
then Woden took 9 Glory-Twigs,
struck the adder then, that it flew apart into 9 (bits).
There brought about the apple and poison,
that she [the adder] would never enter a house.

– from anonymous "Nine Herbs Charm" 10th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript Lacugna (prayers and incantations)

[daily log: walking, 8km]

THE THOUGHT-FOX

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

– Ted Hughes (British poet, 1930-1998)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

A Farewell

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson (English poet, 1809-1892)

[daily log: walking]

In the Element of Antagonisms

If it is a world without genius,
It is most happily contrived. Here, then,

We ask which means most, for us, all the genii
Or one man who, for us, is greater than they,

On his gold horse striding, like a conjured beast,
Miraculous in its panache and swish?

Birds twitter pandemoniums around
The idea of the chavalier of chevaliers,

The well-composed in his burnished solitude,
The tower, the ancient accent, the wintry size.

And the north wind's mighty buskin seems to fall
In an excessive corridor, alas!

-Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Mi corza

En Ávila, mis ojos…
– SIGLO XV

Mi corza, buen amigo,
mi corza blanca.

Los lobos la mataron
al pie del agua.

Los lobos, buen amigo,
que huyeron por el río.

Los lobos la mataron dentro del agua.
– Rafael Alberti (poeta español, 1902-1999)

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Continuing To Live

Continuing to live — that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries —
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise —
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it’s chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.

And what’s the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,

On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
– Philip Larkin (British poet, 1922-1985)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Valéry as Dictator

Sad. And it comes
tomorrow. Again, gray, the streaks
of work
shredding the stone
of the pavement, dissolving
with the idea
of singular endeavor.  Herds, the
herds
of suffering intelligences
bunched,
and out of
hearing. Though the day
come to us
in waves,
sun, air, the beat
of the clock.
Though I stare at the radical
world,
wishing it would stand still.
Tell me,
and I gain at the telling.
Of the lie, and the waking
against the heavy breathing
of new light, dawn, shattering
the naive cluck
of feeling.
What is tomorrow
that it cannot come
today?

– Amiri Baraka (American poet, 1934-2014)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

La Chair chaude des mots

Prends ces mots dans tes mains et sens leurs pieds agiles
Et sens leur cœur qui bat comme celui d’un chien
Caresse donc leur poil pour qu’ils restent tranquilles
Mets-les sur tes genoux pour qu’ils ne disent rien

Une niche de sons devenus inutiles
Abrite des rongeurs l’ordre académicien
Rustiques on les dit mais les mots sont fragiles
Et leur mort bien souvent de trop s’essouffler vient

Alors on les dispose en de grands cimetières
Que les esprits fripons nomment des dictionnaires
Et les penseurs chagrins des alphadécédets

Mais à quoi bon pleurer sur des faits si primaires
Si simples éloquents connus élémentaires
Prends ces mots dans tes mains et vois comme ils sont faits
– Raymond Queneau (poète français, 1903-1976)

[daily log: walking, among words]

The Cat And The Moon

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet.
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
– William Butler Yeats (Irish poet, 1865-1939)

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Año nuevo

A las doce de la noche, por las puertas de la gloria
y al fulgor de perla y oro de una luz extraterrestre,
sale en hombros de cuatro ángeles, y en su silla gestatoria,
San Silvestre.

Más hermoso que un rey mago, lleva puesta la tiara,
de que son bellos diamantes Sirio, Arturo y Orión;
y el anillo de su diestra hecho cual si fuese para
Salomón.

Sus pies cubren los joyeles de la Osa adamantina,
y su capa raras piedras de una ilustre Visapur;
y colgada sobre el pecho resplandece la divina
Cruz del Sur.

Va el pontífice hacia Oriente; ¿va a encontrar el áureo barco
donde al brillo de la aurora viene en triunfo el rey Enero?
Ya la aljaba de Diciembre se fue toda por el arco
del Arquero.

A la orilla del abismo misterioso de lo Eterno
el inmenso Sagitario no se cansa de flechar;
le sustenta el frío Polo, lo corona el blanco Invierno
y le cubre los riñones el vellón azul del mar.

Cada flecha que dispara, cada flecha es una hora;
doce aljabas cada año para él trae el rey Enero;
en la sombra se destaca la figura vencedora
del Arquero.

Al redor de la figura del gigante se oye el vuelo
misterioso y fugitivo de las almas que se van,
y el ruido con que pasa por la bóveda del cielo
con sus alas membranosas el murciélago Satán.

San Silvestre, bajo el palio de un zodíaco de virtudes,
del celeste Vaticano se detiene en los umbrales
mientras himnos y motetes canta un coro de laúdes
inmortales.

Reza el santo y pontifica y al mirar que viene el barco
donde en triunfo llega Enero,
ante Dios bendice al mundo y su brazo abarca el arco
y el Arquero.

-Rubén Darío (poeta nicaragüense, 1867-1916)

[daily log: walking, year to year]

At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death's bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides … High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
– Hart Crane (American poet, 1899-1932)

[daily log: walking, 6km]