Written by
Mark Doty |
When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,
confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief.
Don't they depend on a compass
lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate
their true course? How many ways,
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to disaster?
That, in those days, was how
I'd come to see the world:
dark upon dark, any sense
of spirit an embattled flame
sparked against wind-driven rain
till pain snuffed it out.
I thought,
This is what experience gives us ,
and I moved carefully through my life
while I waited.
.
.
Enough,
it wasn't that way at all.
The whale
—exuberant, proud maybe, playful,
like the early music of Beethoven—
cruised the footings for smelts
clustered near the pylons
in mercury flocks.
He
(do I have the gender right?)
would negotiate the rusty hulls
of the Portuguese fishing boats
—Holy Infant, Little Marie—
with what could only be read
as pleasure, coming close
then diving, trailing on the surface
big spreading circles
until he'd breach, thrilling us
with the release of pressured breath,
and the bulk of his sleek young head
—a wet black leather sofa
already barnacled with ghostly lice—
and his elegant and unlikely mouth,
and the marvelous afterthought of the flukes,
and the way his broad flippers
resembled a pair of clownish gloves
or puppet hands, looming greenish white
beneath the bay's clouded sheen.
When he had consumed his pleasure
of the shimmering swarm, his pleasure, perhaps,
in his own admired performance,
he swam out the harbor mouth,
into the Atlantic.
And though grief
has seemed to me itself a dim,
salt suspension in which I've moved,
blind thing, day by day,
through the wreckage, barely aware
of what I stumbled toward, even I
couldn't help but look
at the way this immense figure
graces the dark medium,
and shines so: heaviness
which is no burden to itself.
What did you think, that joy
was some slight thing?
|
Written by
Robert Graves |
AN IDYLL
Back from the Somme two Fusiliers
Limped painfully home; the elder said,
S.
“Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years
This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.
”
R.
“But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough
”Where once a nonsense built her nest
With skulls and flowers and all things *****,
In an old boot, with patient breast
Hatching three eggs; and the next year…”
S.
“Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid
Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did.
”
Said he, “Before this quaint mood fails,
We’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,”
R.
“Hanging it up with monkey tails
In a deep grove all hushed and dim….
”
S.
“To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,”
R.
“Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,”
S.
“Which men are wise beyond their time,
And worship nonsense, no one more.
”
R.
“Hard by, among old quince and lime,
They’ve built a temple with no floor,”
S.
“And whosoever worships in that place,
He disappears from sight and leaves no trace.
”
R.
“Once the Galatians built a fane
To Sense: what duller God than that?”
S.
“But the first day of autumn rain
The roof fell in and crushed them flat.
”
R.
“Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls
When nonsense is foundation for the walls.
”
I tell him old Galatian tales;
He caps them in quick Portuguese,
While phantom creatures with green scales
Scramble and roll among the trees.
The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings
A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.
|
Written by
Ogden Nash |
They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful,
well, today I feel euphorian,
Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetitite of a
Victorian.
Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,
Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle
any swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers I will run away.
I will tame me a caribou
And bedeck it with marabou.
I will pen me my memoirs.
Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
I wasn't much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.
I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because
I am wearing moccasins,
And I practically know the difference between serums and antitoccasins.
Kind people, don't think me purse-proud, don't set me down as
vainglorious,
I'm just a little euphorious.
|
Written by
Fernando Pessoa |
Oh salted sea, how much of your salt
Are tears of Portugal!
For crossing you, how many mothers wept,
How many children prayed in vain!
How many brides remained unmarried
For you to be ours, Oh sea!
Was it worth it? everything is worthwhile
If the soul is not small.
The ones who want to go beyond Boyador
Have to go beyond pain.
God overboard danger and the abyss gave
But it was in it that he mirrored the sky.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
UNLIKE are we unlike O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing.
Thou bethink thee art 5
A guest for queens to social pageantries
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine to play thy part
Of chief musician.
What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me¡ª 10
A poor tired wandering singer singing through
The dark and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head¡ªon mine the dew¡ª
And Death must dig the level where these agree.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
WHEN our two souls stand up erect and strong
Face to face silent drawing nigh and nigher
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curving point ¡ªwhat bitter wrong
Can the earth do us that we should not long 5
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep dear silence.
Let us stay
Rather on earth Belov¨¨d¡ªwhere the unfit 10
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
KIND Sir, I’ve read your paper through,
And faith, to me, ’twas really new!
How guessed ye, Sir, what maist I wanted?
This mony a day I’ve grain’d and gaunted,
To ken what French mischief was brewin;
Or what the drumlie Dutch were doin;
That vile doup-skelper, Emperor Joseph,
If Venus yet had got his nose off;
Or how the collieshangie works
Atween the Russians and the Turks,
Or if the Swede, before he halt,
Would play anither Charles the twalt;
If Denmark, any body spak o’t;
Or Poland, wha had now the tack o’t:
How cut-throat Prussian blades were hingin;
How libbet Italy was singin;
If Spaniard, Portuguese, or Swiss,
Were sayin’ or takin’ aught amiss;
Or how our merry lads at hame,
In Britain’s court kept up the game;
How royal George, the Lord leuk o’er him!
Was managing St.
Stephen’s quorum;
If sleekit Chatham Will was livin,
Or glaikit Charlie got his nieve in;
How daddie Burke the plea was cookin,
If Warren Hasting’s neck was yeukin;
How cesses, stents, and fees were rax’d.
Or if bare a—— yet were tax’d;
The news o’ princes, dukes, and earls,
Pimps, sharpers, bawds, and opera-girls;
If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales,
Was threshing still at hizzies’ tails;
Or if he was grown oughtlins douser,
And no a perfect kintra cooser:
A’ this and mair I never heard of;
And, but for you, I might despair’d of.
So, gratefu’, back your news I send you,
And pray a’ gude things may attend you.
ELLISLAND, Monday Morning, 1790.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years the dear and wish'd-for years
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals old or young:
And as I mused it in his antique tongue 5
I saw in gradual vision through my tears
The sweet sad years the melancholy years¡ª
Those of my own life who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.
Straightway I was 'ware
So weeping how a mystic Shape did move 10
Behind me and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery while I strove
'Guess now who holds thee?'¡ª'Death ' I said.
But there
The silver answer rang¡ª'Not Death but Love.
'
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
IF thou must love me let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only.
Do not say
'I love her for her smile¡ªher look¡ªher way
Of speaking gently ¡ªfor a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine and certes brought 5
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'¡ª
For these things in themselves Belov¨¨d may
Be changed or change for thee¡ªand love so wrought
May be unwrought so.
Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: 10
A creature might forget to weep who bore
Thy comfort long and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake that evermore
Thou mayst love on through love's eternity.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
GO from me.
Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.
Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life I shall command
The uses of my soul nor lift my hand 5
Serenely in the sunshine as before
Without the sense of that which I forbore¡ª
Thy touch upon the palm.
The widest land
Doom takes to part us leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double.
What I do 10
And what I dream include thee as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes.
And when I sue
God for myself He hears that name of thine
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
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