Where have you gone
with your confident
walk with
your crooked smile
why did you leave
me
when you took your
laughter
and departed
are you aware that
with you
went the sun
all light
and what few stars
there were?
where have you gone
with your confident
walk your
crooked smile the
rent money
in one pocket and
my heart
in another.
Mari Evans, The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry, ed. Christopher Burns (The Seashell Press 2011)
July 12, 2019
In Praise of Dreams
In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.
I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.
I drive a car
that does what I want it to.
I am gifted
and write mighty epics.
I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.
My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.
I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.
Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.
I've got no problem
breathing under water.
I can't complain:
I've been able to locate Atlantis.
It's gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.
As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.
I'm a child of my age,
but I don't have to be.
A few years ago
I saw two suns.
And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.
Wislawa Szymborska, trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, View with a Grain of Sand (Harcourt, Inc., 1993)
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.
I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.
I drive a car
that does what I want it to.
I am gifted
and write mighty epics.
I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.
My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.
I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.
Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.
I've got no problem
breathing under water.
I can't complain:
I've been able to locate Atlantis.
It's gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.
As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.
I'm a child of my age,
but I don't have to be.
A few years ago
I saw two suns.
And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.
Wislawa Szymborska, trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, View with a Grain of Sand (Harcourt, Inc., 1993)
July 09, 2019
No Time
In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.
Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.
Billy Collins, Poetry, December 2000
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.
Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.
Billy Collins, Poetry, December 2000
Dim
Today my son realized someone's smarter
than him. Not me or his mom --
he still thinks we know everything --
one of the other kids, Nathan. Making fun
of him at the computer terminal
for screwing up at the math game.
Other kids laughing at him. Second grade.
I'm never going to be as smart as him,
he says.
I'm never gonna be as smart
as half my students, if we're talking
IQs. He doesn't want me to explain.
He wants me to acknowledge
that he's dumb. He's lying in bed
and taking his glasses off and on,
trying to get them perfectly clean
for the morning. I'm looking around
his dark room for a joke or some
decent words to lay on him. His eyes
are glassy with almost-tears. Second grade.
The world wants to call on him.
I take his hand in mine.
Jim Daniels, "The Paterson Literary Review" No. 32, Copyright 2004 by author.
than him. Not me or his mom --
he still thinks we know everything --
one of the other kids, Nathan. Making fun
of him at the computer terminal
for screwing up at the math game.
Other kids laughing at him. Second grade.
I'm never going to be as smart as him,
he says.
I'm never gonna be as smart
as half my students, if we're talking
IQs. He doesn't want me to explain.
He wants me to acknowledge
that he's dumb. He's lying in bed
and taking his glasses off and on,
trying to get them perfectly clean
for the morning. I'm looking around
his dark room for a joke or some
decent words to lay on him. His eyes
are glassy with almost-tears. Second grade.
The world wants to call on him.
I take his hand in mine.
Jim Daniels, "The Paterson Literary Review" No. 32, Copyright 2004 by author.
July 05, 2019
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
And sweetest -- in the Gale -- is heard --
And sore must be the storm --
That could abash the Bird
That kept so many warm --
I've heard it in the chillest land --
And on the strangest Sea --
Yet -- never -- in Extremity,
It asked a crumb -- of me.
Emily Dickinson
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
And sweetest -- in the Gale -- is heard --
And sore must be the storm --
That could abash the Bird
That kept so many warm --
I've heard it in the chillest land --
And on the strangest Sea --
Yet -- never -- in Extremity,
It asked a crumb -- of me.
Emily Dickinson
Where the Mind Is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore, published in 1910 before India gained its independence from Great Britain and was in the midst of protests and demonstrations against British rule. In 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore, published in 1910 before India gained its independence from Great Britain and was in the midst of protests and demonstrations against British rule. In 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
July 02, 2019
A Little Tooth
Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all
over: she'll learn some words, fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,
your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your
feet are sore. It's dusk. You're daughter's tall.
Thomas Lux, New and Collected Poems: 1975-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997)
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all
over: she'll learn some words, fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,
your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your
feet are sore. It's dusk. You're daughter's tall.
Thomas Lux, New and Collected Poems: 1975-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997)
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