Cold Poem

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

-- Mary Oliver

If You Asked Me

I want you with me, and yet you are the end
of my privacy. Do you see how these rooms
have become public? How we glance to see if--
who? Who did you imagine?
Surely we're not here alone, you and I.

I've been wandering
where the cold tracks of language
collapse into cinders, unburnable trash.
Beyond that, all I can see is the remote cold
of meteors before their avalanches of farewell.

If you asked me what words
a voice like this one says in parting,
I'd say, I'm sweeping an empty factory
toward which I feel neither hostility nor nostalgia.
I'm just a broom, sweeping.

-- Chase Twichell

April Inventory

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I'd ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who's trusted me
I'd be substantial, presently.

I haven't read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead's notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler's.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body's hunger;
That I have forces true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

-- W.D. Snodgrass

Alles gute zu gebertstag, Ludwig


1. Freude schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten Feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt.
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
|: Brüder, überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen, :|

2. Wem der große Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!
Was den großen Ring bewohnet,
Huldige der Sympathie.
|: Zu den Sternen leitet sie,
Wo der Unbekannte thronet. :|

3. Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur,
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod,
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
|: Such ihn überm Sternenzelt!
Über Sternen muß er wohnen. :|

4. Freude heißt die starke Feder,
In der ewigen Natur,
Freude, Freude treibt die Räder
In der großen Weltenuhr.
Blumen lockt sie aus den Keimen,
Sonnen aus dem Firmament,
Sphären rollt sie in den Räumen
Die des Sehers Rohr nicht kennt.
Froh wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächtigen Plan,
|: Laufet Brüder, eure Bahn,
freudig wie ein Held zum Siegen! :|

5. Aus der Wahrheit Feuerspiegel
Lächelt sie den Forscher an.
Zu der Tugend steilem Hügel
Leitet sie des Dulders Bahn.
Auf des Glaubens Sonnenberge
Sieht man ihre Fahnen wehn,
Durch den Riß gesprengter Särge
Sie im Chor der Engel stehn.
Duldet mutig, Millionen!
Duldet fur die beßre Welt!
|: Droben überm Sternenzelt
Wird ein großer Gott belohnen. :|

6. Göttern kann man nicht vergelten,
Schön ists, ihnen gleich zu sein.
Gram und Armut soll sich melden,
Mit den Frohen sich erfreun.
Groll und Rache sei vergessen,
Unserm Todfeind sei verziehn,
Keine Träne soll ihn pressen,
Keine Reue nage ihn.
Unser Schuldbuch sei vernichtet!
Ausgesöhnt die ganze Welt!
|: Brüder - überm Sternenzelt
Richtet Gott, wie wir gerichtet. :|

7. Freude sprudelt in Pokalen;
In der Traube goldnem Blut
Trinken Sanftmut Kannibalen,
Die Verzweiflung Heldenmut. -
Brüder, fliegt von euren Sitzen,
Wenn der volle Römer kreist;
Laßt den Schaum zum Himmel spritzen:
Dieses Glas dem guten Geist!
Den der Sterne Wirbel loben,
Den des Seraphs Hymne preist,
|: Dieses Glas dem guten Geist
Überm Sternenzelt dort oben! :|

8. Festen Mut in schweren Leiden,
Hilfe, wo die Unschuld weint,
Ewigkeit geschwornen Eiden,
Wahrheit gegen Freund und Feind,
Männerstolz vor Königsthronen -
Brüder, gält' es Gut und Blut:
Dem Verdienste seine Kronen,
Untergang der Lügenbrut!
Schließt den heilgen Zirkel dichter!
Schwört bei diesem goldnem Wein,
|: Dem Gelübde treu zu sein,
schwört es bei dem Sternenrichter! :|

(Schiller)

The poem you forgot:

Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more of the same.

Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.
We begin to believe

the night would not end.
Someone was saying the music was over and no one had noticed.
Then someone said something about the planets, about the stars,
how small they were, how far away.

-- Mark Strand, "From the Long Sad Party"

Chodesh tov.

A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
    The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays.
          The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring:
    For I am every dead thing
    In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
          For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness.
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
    I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
    Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
          Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
    Were I a man, that I were one
    I needs must know; I should prefer,
          If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love. All, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
    At this time to the Goat is run
    To fetch new lust, and give it you,
          Enjoy your summer all.
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

-- J. Donne

Woke up it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I heard
Was a song outside my window and the traffic wrote the words
It came ringing up like Christmas bells and rapping up like pipes and drums
Oh, won't you stay? We'll put on the day
And we'll wear it till the night comes

Woke up it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I saw
Was the sun through yellow curtains and a rainbow on my wall
Red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal bells to beckon
Oh, won't you stay? We'll put on the day
There's a sun show every second

Now the curtain opens on a portrait of today
And the streets are paved with passers by
And pigeons fly and papers lie
Waiting to blow away

Woke up it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges too
And the light pured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, won't you stay? we'll put on the day
And we'll talk in present tenses

When the curtain closes and the rainbow runs away
I will bring you incense owls at night
By candle light, by jewel light if only you will stay
Pretty baby won't you
Wake up, it's a Chelsea morning

Joni