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SEAMUS HEANEY

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Tree

by Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house.

Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose.

That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books —

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

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Speech to the Young, Speech to the Progress-Toward

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, “Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.” You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.

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How Some of It Happened

by Marie Howe

My brother was afraid, all his life, of going blind, so deeply that he would turn the dinner knives away from looking at him,

he said, as they lay on the kitchen table. He would throw a sweatshirt over those knobs that lock the car door

from the inside, and once, he dismantled a chandelier in the middle of the night when everyone was sleeping.

We found the pile of sharp and shining crystals in the upstairs hall. So you understand, it was terrible

when they clamped his one eye open and put the needle in through his cheek and up and into his eye from underneath

and held it there for a full minute before they drew it slowly out once a week for many weeks. He learned to lean into it,

to settle down he said, and still the eye went dead, ulcerated, breaking up green in his head, as the other eye, still blue

and wide open, looked and looked at the clock.

After our father died, my brother promised me he wouldn't. He shook my hand on a train going home one Christmas and gave me five years,

as clearly as he promised he'd be home for breakfast when I watched him walk into that New York City autumn night. By nine, I promise,

and he was, he did come back. And five years later he gave me five years more. So much for the brave pride of premonition,

the worry that won't let it happen. You know, he said, I always knew I would die young. And then I got sober

and I thought, OK, I'm not. I'm going to see thirty and live to be an old man. And now it turns out that I am going to die.

Isn't that funny? One day it happens: what you have feared all your life, the unendurably specific, the exact thing. No matter what you say or do. This is what my brother said: Here, sit closer to the bed so I can see you.

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The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog

by Robert Bly

I never intended to have this life, believe me — It just happened. You know how dogs turn up At a farm, and they wag but can’t explain. It’s good if you can accept your life — you’ll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can’t believe how much you’ve changed. Sparrows in winter, if you’ve ever held one, all feathers, Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee. You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you, But you can’t quite get back to the winter sparrow. Your life is a dog. He’s been hungry for miles, Doesn’t particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

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Swimming, One Day in August by Mary Oliver

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How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry

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Here by Grace Paley

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oh man. oh jeez

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Anne Sexton

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[July is over and there's very little trace] by Frank O'Hara

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Alex Dimitrov, “August,” in Love and Other Poems [ID in alt text]

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Fanny Howe

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Storm by Leila Chatti

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On Walking Backwards

by Anne Carson

My mother forbade us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.

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California Poems

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Anecdote by Elizabeth Clark Wessel