universalhumansituation-blog

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robert frost

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way, That would have joined the house in flame Had it been the will of the wind, was left To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end For teams that came by the stony road To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, And the aged elm, though touched with fire; And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm; And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad. But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, One had to be versed in country things Not to believe the phoebes wept.

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marianne moore

To a Snail

If "compression is the first grace of style," you have it. Contractility is a virtue as modesty is a virtue. It is not the acquisition of any one thing that is able to adorn, or the incidental quality that occurs as a concomitant of something well said, that we value in style, but the principle that is hid: in the absence of feet, "a method of conclusions;" "a knowledge of principles," in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.

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edna st. vincent millay

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

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joy williams

Fathers and Sons

The Lord was in a den with a pack of wolves.

“You really are so intelligent,” the Lord said, “and have such glorious eyes. Why do you think you’re hounded so? It’s like they want to exterminate you, it’s awful.”

“Well, sometimes it’s the calves and the cows,” the wolves said.

“Oh those maddening cows,” the Lord said. “I have a suggestion. What if I caused you not to have a taste for them anymore?”

“It wouldn’t matter. Then it would be the deer or the elk. Have you seen the bumper stickers on the hunters’ trucks—did a wolf get your elk?”

“I guess I missed that,” the Lord said.

“Sentiment is very much against us down here,” the wolves said.

“I’m so awfully sorry,” the Lord said.

“Thank you for inviting us to participate in your plan anyway,” the wolves said politely.

The Lord did not want to appear addled, but what was the plan his sons were referring to exactly?

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sharon olds

The Race

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk, bought a ticket, ten minutes later they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors had said my father would not live through the night and the flight was cancelled. A young man with a dark brown moustache told me another airline had a nonstop leaving in seven minutes. See that elevator over there, well go down to the first floor, make a right, you'll see a yellow bus, get off at the second Pan Am terminal, I ran, I who have no sense of direction raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish slipping upstream deftly against the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those bags I had thrown everything into in five minutes, and ran, the bags wagged me from side to side as if to prove I was under the claims of the material, I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast, I who always go to the end of the line, I said Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then run. I lumbered up the moving stairs, at the top I saw the corridor, and then I took a deep breath, I said goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort, I used my legs and heart as if I would gladly use them up for this, to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of women running, their belongings tied in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my long legs he gave me, my strong heart I abandoned to its own purpose, I ran to Gate 17 and they were just lifting the thick white lozenge of the door to fit it into the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not too rich, I turned sideways and slipped through the needle's eye, and then I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet was full, and people's hair was shining, they were smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a mist of gold endorphin light, I wept as people weep when they enter heaven, in massive relief. We lifted up gently from one tip of the continent and did not stop until we set down lightly on the other edge, I walked into his room and watched his chest rise slowly and sink again, all night I watched him breathe.

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kenneth koch

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2 We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do no know what I am doing.

3 I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4 Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

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robert creeley

The Warning

For love—I would split open your head and put   a candle in behind the eyes.

Love is dead in us if we forget the virtues of an amulet   and quick surprise.

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james wright

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   Down the ravine behind the empty house,   The cowbells follow one another   Into the distances of the afternoon.   To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines,   The droppings of last year’s horses   Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.

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stanley plumly

Grievers

Like some dreams, they appear, then reappear, cloistered in the space of their own wounding, their public mourning, their gravity's gray coat. Even at a distance, as if drawn by being seen, they come straight at you, the almost-elegant woman in the aisle, the tall young bird-like silent weeping man. And no one need have died, no one you know, to know their voices and half-faces, the scent of the spirit passing, for whom blood on the door or blessing means nothing. But, then, everyone died or didn't, who calls to you in sleep after your back is turned. In the parable, like the dream, you're all the characters, though come the day, in real life, you must choose.

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joseph brodsky

A Song (Ученый Кот)

I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish you sat on the sofa and I sat near. the handkerchief could be yours, the tear could be mine, chin-bound. Though it could be, of course, the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish we were in my car, and you'd shift the gear. we'd find ourselves elsewhere, on an unknown shore. Or else we'd repair To where we've been before.

I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear, when the moon skims the water that sighs and shifts in its slumber. I wish it were still a quarter to dial your number.

I wish you were here, dear, in this hemisphere, as I sit on the porch sipping a beer. It's evening, the sun is setting; boys shout and gulls are crying. What's the point of forgetting If it's followed by dying?

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michael mcclure

For Joanna

PINK ON THE CEILING— blue-gray in the eaves. The doves are mumbling. The fall of the leaves. My eyes love yours. Hold my hand, please.

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rainer maria rilke

Excerpt from a letter about living the questions.

.. As I read it now, in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than when I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. 

Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. 

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything. ...

Worpswede, near Bremen July 16, 1903

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amy lowell

Decade Poem

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

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mary oliver

Hurricane

It didn't behave like anything you had ever imagined. The wind tore at the trees, the rain fell for days slant and hard. The back of the hand to everything. I watched the trees bow and their leaves fall and crawl back into the earth. As though, that was that. This was one hurricane I lived through, the other one was of a different sort, and lasted longer. Then I felt my own leaves giving up and falling. The back of the hand to everything. But listen now to what happened to the actual trees; toward the end of that summer they pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs. It was the wrong season, yes, but they couldn't stop. They looked like telephone poles and didn't care. And after the leaves came blossoms. For some things there are no wrong seasons. which is what I dream of for me.

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c. p. cavafy

Caesarion Translated by Avi Sharon

In part to verify a date, and in part just to pass the time, last night I picked up a volume of Ptolemaic inscriptions and began reading. Those endless poems of praise and flattery all sound the same. All the men are brilliant, great and good, mighty benefactors; most wise in all their undertakings. The same for the women of the dynasty, all the Berenices and Cleopatras, wonderful, each and every one. When I managed to find the date in question, I'd have put the book aside had a brief mention of King Caesarion, an insignificant note really, not suddenly caught my eye... Ah, there you stood, with that vague charm of yours. And since history has devoted just a few lines to you, I had more freedom to fashion you in my mind's eye... I made you handsome, capable of deep feeling. My art gave your face an appealing, dreamlike beauty. In fact, I imagined you so vividly last night, that when my lamp went out—I let it go out on purpose— I actually thought you had come into my room; you were there, standing before me, just as you would have looked in defeated Alexandria, pale and tired, ideal in your sorrow, still hoping for mercy from those vicious men who kept on whispering 'too many Caesars.'

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radmila lazić

Love

I sharpened knives All night. To welcome you In the brilliance of their blades, And among them, My love sparkles For your eyes only.

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mark doty

The Embrace

You weren’t well or really ill yet either; just a little tired, your handsomeness tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. I didn’t for a moment doubt you were dead. I knew that to be true still, even in the dream. You’d been out--at work maybe?-- having a good day, almost energetic. We seemed to be moving from some old house where we’d lived, boxes everywhere, things in disarray: that was the story of my dream, but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative by your face, the physical fact of your face: inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert. Why so difficult, remembering the actual look of you? Without a photograph, without strain? So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face, your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held each other for the time the dream allowed. Bless you. You came back, so I could see you once more, plainly, so I could rest against you without thinking this happiness lessened anything, without thinking you were alive again.