You and Snow

by Jim Moore

Like snow, I was born 

in the distant belly of a mother 

I never knew as well as when, 

point by lovely point, 

I was forming myself inside her. 

I came from nowhere, 

fell softly on new air. 

I did not know where the drift of weather 

or the iron tide of chance would carry me. 

I fell far beyond my own control, 

giddy with release. 

I was most myself 

in this my only falling 

onto our earth.

Snow's depth is the instant shape 
it gives a thing: what snow touches shifts,
just slightly, bringing the sweet pleasure
of merest change,
the way a human will touch a human
lightly on the wrist and that day
is different, slightly and forever:

I am one among many,
our lives linked, as drifting snow
 is linked, in mutual need and fallen beauty.

- from The Freedom of History (1988)

Poem for 1/30/23 - Flower that Drops Its Petals by Natalia Toledo, trans. Clare Sullivan

Flower that Drops Its Petals

by Natalia Toledo, trans. Clare Sullivan 

I will not die from absence.
A hummingbird pinched the eye of my flower
my heart mourns and shivers
and does not breathe.
My wings tremble like the long-billed curlew
when he foretells the sun and the rain.
I will not die from absence, I tell myself.
A melody bows down upon the throne of my sadness,
an ocean springs from my stone of origin.
I write in Zapotec to ignore the syntax of pain,
ask the sky and its fire
to give me back my happiness.
Paper butterfly that sustains me:
why did you turn your back upon the star
that knotted your navel?

 — from The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems (Phoneme Media 2015)

for information about this poem and poet, see here.

Poem for 1/27/23 - Things By Lisel Mueller

This poem was chosen by my colleague, Rev. Rowan Van Ness, who leads a monthly poetry reflection group at Center Communities of Brookline.  

Things

By Lisel Mueller

What happened is, we grew lonely

living among the things,

so we gave the clock a face,

the chair a back,

the table four stout legs

which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues

as smooth as our own

and hung tongues inside bells

so we could listen

to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles

the pitcher received a lip,

the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us

was recast in our image;

we gave the country a heart,

the storm an eye,

the cave a mouth

so we could pass into safety.

Lisel Mueller, "Things" from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller.

Poem for 1/26/23 - Edgar Degas: The Millinery Shop by Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanaugh

 

Edgar Degas: The Millinery Shop

by Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanaugh

Hats are innocent, bathed in the soft light
which smoothes the contours of objects.
A girl is working.
But where are brooks? Groves?
Where is the sensual laughter of nymphs?
The world is hungry and one day
will invade this tranquil room.
For the moment it contents itself
with ambassadors who announce:
I’m the ochre. I’m the sienna.
I’m the color of terror, like ash.
In me ships sink.
I’m the blue, I’m cold, I can be pitiless.
And I’m the color of dying, I’m patient.
I’m the purple (you don’t see much of me),
for me triumphs, processions.
I’m the green, I’m tender,
I live in wells and in the leaves of birch trees.
The girl whose fingers are agile
cannot hear the voices, for she’s mortal.
She thinks of the coming Sunday
and the rendezvous she has
with the butchers son
who has coarse lips
and big hands
stained with blood.

Poem for 1/23/23 - TWO PUDDLES CHATTING by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

TWO PUDDLES CHATTING

by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

It rained during the night

And two puddles formed in the dark

And began chatting.

One said,

"It is so nice to at last be upon this earth

And to meet you as well,

But what will happen when

The brilliant Sun comes

And turns us back into spirit again?"

Dear ones,

Enjoy the night as much as you can.

Why ever trouble your heart with flight,

When you have just arrived

And your body is so full of warm desires.

And look:

So many meadows of soft hair are

Planted upon you.

Why ever trouble yourself with God

When He is so unjudging

And kind

Unless you are blessed and live

Near the circle of a

Perfect One?

Poem for 1/19/23 - A Coloured Print by Shokei Amy Lowell

 

     To see more images by Yamada Shokei, click here. 

A Coloured Print by Shokei

Amy Lowell - 1874-1925

          It winds along the face of a cliff
           This path which I long to explore,
          And over it dashes a waterfall,
           And the air is full of the roar
          And the thunderous voice of waters which sweep
          In a silver torrent over some steep.

          It clears the path with a mighty bound
           And tumbles below and away,
          And the trees and the bushes which grow in the rocks
           Are wet with its jewelled spray;
          The air is misty and heavy with sound,
          And small, wet wildflowers star the ground.

          Oh! The dampness is very good to smell,
           And the path is soft to tread,
          And beyond the fall it winds up and on,
           While little streamlets thread
          Their own meandering way down the hill
          Each singing its own little song, until

          I forget that 't is only a pictured path,
           And I hear the water and wind,
          And look through the mist, and strain my eyes
           To see what there is behind;
          For it must lead to a happy land,
          This little path by a waterfall spanned.

Poem for 1/18/23 - Praise Song by Hafizah Augustus Geter

 

Praise Song

Hafizah Augustus Geter

After she died, I’d catch her stuffing my nose with pine needles and oak, staring off into the shadows of early morning. Me, too jetlagged for the smells a ghost leaves behind. The tailor of histories, my mother sewed our Black Barbies and Kens Nigerian clothes, her mind so tight against the stitching, that in precision, she looked mean as hell, too. My mother’s laugh was a record skipping, so deep she left nicks in the vinyl. See? Even in death, she wants to be fable. I don’t know what fathers teach sons, but I am moving my mother to a land where grief is no longer gruesome. She loved top 40, yacht rock, driving in daylight with the wind wa-wa-ing through her cracked window like Allah blowing breath over the open bottle neck of our living. She knew ninety-nine names for God, and yet how do I remember her— as what no god could make?

Poem for 1/12/23 - One for the Rose - by Philip Levine

 

One for the Rose

            (Published in The New Yorker, January 1, 1979) 

by Philip Levine

Three weeks ago I went back
to the same street corner where

27 years ago I took a bus for Akron,
Ohio, but now there was only a blank space
with a few concrete building blocks
scattered among the beer cans
and broken bottles and a view of
the blank backside of an abandoned hotel.

I wondered if Akron was still down there
hidden hundreds of miles south among
the small, shoddy trees of Ohio,
a town so ripe with the smell
of defeat that its citizens lied
about their age, their height, sex,
income, and previous condition
of anything. I spent all of a Saturday
there, disguised in a cashmere suit
stolen from a man twenty pounds
heavier than I, and I never unbuttoned
the jacket. I remember someone
married someone, but only the bride's
father and mother went out

on the linoleum dance floor and leaned

into each other like whipped school kids.

I drank whatever I could find and made
my solitary way back to the terminal
and dozed among the drunks and widows
toward dawn and the first thing north.

What was I doing in Akron, Ohio,
waiting for a bus that groaned slowly
between the sickened farms of 1951
and finally entered the smeared air
of hell on U.S. 24 where the Rouge plant
destroys the horizon? I could have been
in Paris at the foot of Gertrude Stein,
I could have been drifting among
the reeds of a clear stream,
like the little Moses, to be found
by a princess and named after a conglomerate
or a Jewish hero. Instead I was born
in the wrong year and in the wrong place
and I made my way so slowly and badly
that I remember every single turn,
and each one smells like an overblown rose,
yellow, American, beautiful, and true.

Poem for 1/11/23 - RESISTANCE by David Lehman

 

RESISTANCE

by David Lehman

The sunset earlier, the sky spooky

as the nineteenth century, skeletal trees,

a brief orange glow before the blues

and grays darken in a landscape that lasts

for an hour before the shapes dissolve

into the dark of All Hallows', a night

as sacred as would scare us, the guiltless ones,

who maintain our belief in metaphysics,

which French philosophes declared dead

in 1970 or so. As the last branches

disappear into the heavenly darkness,

what remains is what resists and what

clings to the oblivion of a fallen world

that exists in memory only, and poetry.

Poem for 1/10/23 - THE OLD PAINTER ON A WALK - by Adam Zagajewski

THE OLD PAINTER ON A WALK

- by Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021)

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

In his pockets treats for local dogs

He sees almost nothing now

He almost doesn't notice trees suburban villas

He knows every stone here

I painted it all tried to paint my thoughts And caught so little

The world still grows it grows relentlessly And yet there is always less of it

 (from the New Yorker, November 28, 2022)

EASEMENT

by Jameson Fitzpatrick

I didn't know what to call the sudden
green glimpse from the road, lush
but low, from which rose a line of 

utility poles, all in pairs, so that together
they gave the impression of a long 

succession of gates leading somewhere 

greener still. This was a common feature 

of the landscape against which I grew up.

But this one, loved, because it was 

on the way to my boyfriend's,

two towns over, where it brought me such 

pleasure to drive, singing along to the songs 

we made ours. Hours into months.

For an anniversary he gave me a Polaroid 

of this place I'd point out, though the curve

was steep there and the glimpse brief.

How he'd taken it he'd never tell.

Once dumped, I cut the photo up.

This was what is meant by "a lifetime ago."

That time before you I call my childhood, 

when there were many boyfriends to lose

and the songs I played were not yet a portal 

to anything. Now, coming up on a view 

of a much sharper drop, I'm surprised

to think of him only fondly and in passing.

To give you permission to cut through me, 

as needed, on your way down to sweetness.

Poem for 1/6/23 - Jamaica Pond by Chiang Lee

The Silent Traveller in Boston

By Chiang Yee

Jamaica Pond

On Jamaica Pond

Ducks float in rank and file

Accompanying me to enjoy the autumn light.

Finding no food for them

They turn away.

How frivolous!

Our leaf-like boat

Drifts with the wind at will.

漆我含泰美塔美

華监錢塘美言

舟别我的要烤

国太因

港六益行

I Sing the Body Electric

BY WALT WHITMAN

3

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,

And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,

The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners,

These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,

He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,

They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,

They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,

He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face,

He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,

When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,

You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

Poem for 1/4/23 - American Gothic {after the painting by Grant Wood, 1930) by John Stone

 

American Gothic (1930, Grant Wood, 1891–1942)

American Gothic

after the painting by Grant Wood, 1930

John Stone (1931-2008)

Just outside the frame
there has to be a dog
chickens, cows and hay

and a smokehouse
where a ham in hickory
is also being preserved

Here for all time
the borders of the Gothic window
anticipate the ribs

of the house
the tines of the pitchfork
repeat the triumph

of his overalls
and front and center
the long faces, the sober lips

above the upright spines
of this couple
arrested in the name of art

These two
by now
the sun this high

ought to be
in mortal time
about their businesses

Instead they linger here
within the patient fabric
of the lives they wove

he asking the artist silently
how much longer
and worrying about the crops

she no less concerned about the crops
but more to the point just now
whether she remembered

to turn off the stove.

Poem for 1/2/23 - Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me by Jane Hirshfield

Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me

Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

The world asks, as it asks daily: 

And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

I count, this first day of another year, what remains. 
I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands. 

Can admire with two eyes the mountain, 
actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.
Can make, from last year’s late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.

For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain, 
then to the question.

The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old, 
and still they surprised.

I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea, 
brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. 
Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder. 

Today, I woke without answer. 

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend

don't despair of this falling world, not yet

didn't it give you the asking