October 2011
31 posts
2 tags
Sonnet 100
by Lord Brooke Fulke Greville
In night when colors all to black are cast, Distinction lost, or gone down with the light; The eye a watch to inward senses placed, Not seeing, yet still having powers of sight,
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense, Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny, Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense, Doth forge and raise impossibility:
Such as...
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A Dog After Love
by Yehuda Amichai
After you left me I had a bloodhound sniff at my chest and my belly. Let it fill its nostrils and set out to find you.
I hope it will find you and rip your lover’s balls to shreds and bite off his cock— or at least bring me one of your stockings between its teeth.
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A Nocturnal Reverie
by Anne Finch
In such a night, when every louder wind Is to its distant cavern safe confined; And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings; Or from some tree, famed for the owl’s delight, She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right: In such a night, when passing clouds give place, Or thinly veil the heavens’ mysterious face; When in some river, overhung...
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Misgivings
by William Matthews
“Perhaps you’ll tire of me,” muses my love, although she’s like a great city to me, or a park that finds new ways to wear each flounce of light and investiture of weather. Soil doesn’t tire of rain, I think, but I know what she fears: plans warp, planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away by floods. And worse than what we can’t control is what we could; those drab, scuttled...
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Chicago
by Sherwood Anderson
I am mature, a man child, in America, in the West, in the great valley of the Mississippi. My head arises above the cornfields. I stand up among the new corn.
I am a child, a confused child in a confused world. There are no clothes made that fit me. The minds of men cannot clothe me. Great projects arise within me. I have a brain and it is cunning and shrewd.
I want leisure...
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On Zen
by Dai-o Kokushi
There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth; Indeed, it has no form, much less a name; Eyes fail to see it; It has no voice for ears to detect; To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature, For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air; It is not Mind, nor Buddha; Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating in a mysterious way, It allows itself to be perceived...
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R-E-M-O-R-S-E
by George Ade
The cocktail is a pleasant drink; It’s mild and harmless — I don’t think! When you’ve had one, you call for two, And then you don’t care what you do. Last night I hoisted twenty-three Of those arrangements into me. My wealth increased, I swelled with pride, I was pickled, primed, and ossified; But R-E-M-O-R-S-E! The water wagon is the place for me. I think...
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Coyote
by Hiromi Ito
My grandmother was a medium My mother was a magician My mother’s older sister was a geisha My mother’s younger sister had tuberculosis My mother’s other younger sister was barren All were wonderfully beautiful The spells mother taught me All required saké, rice, and salt We were afraid of snakes, water, and the east My daughter began speaking baby talk at two months When the coyote...
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Tell Me
by Sara London
In my country you say, “there is no word for it.” In my country you say, “our way of life.” In my country you might over- hear the story of the woman with eleven children, who never once achieved orgasm. Here, the diffident are the squires of conviction; they know that talking undid a few people. Here, a woman saddened by love might lose her gloves, blame her children, then find...
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Clothespins
by Robert Bly
I’d like to have spent my life making Clothespins. Nothing would be harmed, Except some pines, probably on land I owned and would replant. I’d see My work on clotheslines near some lake, Up north on a day in October, Perhaps twelve clothespins, the wood Still fresh, and a light win blowing.
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The Truth the Dead Know
by Anne Sexton
For my mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 and my father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church, refusing the stiff procession to the grave, letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky, where the sea swings in like an iron...
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Hurry
by Marie Howe
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally...
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Here Am I
by Anis Mojgani
we all wanted that high school sweetheart we wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves and sock hops and lawns, lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them
we wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a girl that was thirteen and alive and walk with her past the grandstands, to sit and hold hands, to sit and kiss, to sit and sit, like it was something you...
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Vanity
by O. Henry
A Poet sang so wondrous sweet That toiling thousands paused and listened long; So lofty, strong and noble were his themes, It seemed that strength supernal swayed his song. He, god-like, chided poor, weak, weeping man, And bad him dry his foolish, shameful tears; Taught that each soul on its proud self should lean, And from that rampart scorn all earth-born fears. The Poet...
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The Sonnet
by Edith Wharton
Pure form, that like some chalice of old time Contain’st the liquid of the poet’s thought Within thy curving hollow, gem-enwrought With interwoven traceries of rhyme, While o’er thy brim the bubbling fancies climb, What thing am I, that undismayed have sought To pour my verse with trembling hand untaught Into a shape so small yet so sublime? Because...
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The Sharks
by Denise Levertov
Well then, the last day the sharks appeared. Dark fins appear, innocent as if in fair warning. The sea becomes sinister, are they everywhere? I tell you, they break six feet of water. Isn’t it the same sea, and won’t we play in it any more? I like it clear and not too calm, enough waves to fly in on. For the first time I dared to swim out of my depth. It was sundown when...
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We Stopped at Perfect Days
by Richard Brautigan
We stopped at perfect days and got out of the car. The wind glanced at her hair. It was as simple as that. I turned to say something—
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Go Long
by Joanna Newsom
Last night again you were in my dreams— Several expendable limbs were at stake. You were a prince, spinning rims, All sentiments Indian-given and half-baked. I was brought in on a palanquin Made of the many bodies of beautiful women, Brought to this place to be examined, Swaying on an elephant, a princess of India.
We both want the very same thing. We are praying I am the...
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On French Bread
by Sarah Orne Jewett
O little pains! Mes petite breads! I break with joy your crisp young heads. In you no dreadful soda lurks To stab me with a thousand dirks. Some baker immigrant should bring You to my New World suffering!
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The Baby Year
by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Fiercely is the north wind blowing, drives a rasping, sleety shower; Yet today upon the mountain there’s an apple-tree in flower; To it honey-bees are going, butterflies around it play, Near it through the snow, a fountain leaps in whirls of silver spray. In the tree a nest is swinging, wove of rushes green and sere, Softly lined with down and roses for the dainty...
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Meditation
by Charles Baudelaire
Be good, my Sorrow: hush now, settle down. You sighed for dusk, and now it comes: look there! A denser atmosphere obscures the town To some restoring peace, to others care.
While the lewd multitude, like hungry beasts, By pleasure scourged (no thug so fierce as he!) Go forth to seek remorse among their feasts — Come, take my hand; escape from them with me.
From balconies...
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Business
by Ambrose Bierce
Two villains of the highest rank Set out one night to rob a bank. They found the building, looked it o’er, Each window noted, tried each door, Scanned carefully the lidded hole For minstrels to cascade the coal— In short, examined five-and_twenty Short cuts from poverty to plenty. But all were sealed, they saw full soon, Against the minions of...
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Slow Dancing on the Highway: the Trip North
by Elizabeth Hobbs
You follow close behind me, for a thousand miles responsive to my movements. I signal, you signal back. We will meet at the next exit. You blow kisses, which I return. You mouth “I love you,” a message for my rearview mirror. We do a slow tango as we change lanes in tandem, gracefully, as though music were guiding us. It is tighter than bodies locked in heat, this...
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After a Death
by Tomas Tranströmer
Once there was a shock that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail. It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy. It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.
One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun through brush where a few leaves hang on. They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories. Names swallowed by the cold.
It is still beautiful to...
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Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out
by Richard Siken
Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation. Dear...
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The Red Poster
by Louis Aragon
You demanded neither glory nor tears Nor organ not last rites; Eleven years already— how quickly eleven years go by. You made use simply of your weapons. Death does not dazzle the eyes of the Parisians.
You had your picture on the walls of our cities, Black with beard and night hirsuite menacing, The poster that looked like a bloodstain— Because your names are hard to...
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here is the truth about october:
by Anna Peters
the earth takes a breath and slows down just enough for the chilled air to slip between the folds of your sweater and you hurry on as the trees tremble sacrificing their leaves to the dirt one by one by one
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Mnemosyne
by Trumbull Stickney
It’s autumn in the country I remember. How warm a wind blew here about the ways! And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber During the long sun-sweetened summer-days. It’s cold abroad the country I remember. The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain At midday with a wing aslant and limber; And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain. It’s empty down the...
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Going
by Philip Larkin
There is an evening coming in Across the fields, one never seen before, That lights no lamps.
Silken it seems at a distance, yet When it is drawn up over the knees and breast It brings no comfort.
Where has the tree gone, that locked Earth to sky? What is under my hands, That I cannot feel?
What loads my hands down?
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Leaves Fell
by Juhan Liiv
A gust roused the waves, leaves blew into the water, the waves were ash-gray, the sky tin-gray, ash-gray the autumn.
It was good for my heart: there my feelings were ash-gray, the sky tin-gray, ash-gray the autumn.
The breath of wind brought cooler air, the waves of mourning brought separation: autumn and autumn befriend each other.
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Lines to a Portrait by a Superior Person
by Bret Harte
When I bought you for a song, Years ago—Lord knows how long!— I was struck—I may be wrong— By your features, And—a something in your air That I couldn’t quite compare To my other plain or fair Fellow creatures.
In your simple, oval frame You were not well known to fame, But to me—‘twas all the same— Whoe’er drew you; For...
