New Year’s Poem by Margaret Avison

Posted on January 3, 2012 by admin
The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle
Along the window-ledge.
             A solitary pearl
Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party
Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness
Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.   
And all the furniture that circled stately
And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed
With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver
Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses
Into its previous largeness.
             I remember   
Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave
Where cold so little can contain;
I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones
Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,
And the long loop of winter wind
Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down
To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,
And the still window-ledge.
             Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.



“New Year’s Poem” by Margaret Avison. Reprinted from Always Now: The Collected Poems (in three volumes) by Margaret Avison by permission of the Porcupine’s Quill. © The Estate of Margaret Avison, 2003.

Source: Always Now: The Collected Poems (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003)


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Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye

Posted on January 2, 2012 by admin
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.


So much of any year is flammable,   
lists of vegetables, partial poems.   
Orange swirling flame of days,   
so little is a stone.


Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   
I begin again with the smallest numbers.


Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   
only the things I didn’t do   
crackle after the blazing dies.



Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)


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New Year by Bei Dao

Posted on January 1, 2012 by admin
a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year
a conductor tattooing darkness
listens to the shortest pause


hurry a lion into the cage of music
hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse
moving in parallel nights


who’s the visitor? when the days all
tip from nests and fly down roads
the book of failure grows boundless and deep


each and every moment’s a shortcut
I follow it through the meaning of the East
returning home, closing death’s door



“New Year” by Bei Dao, translated by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen, from LANDSCAPE OVER ZERO, copyright © 1995, 1996 by Zhao Zhenkai, Translation copyright © 1995, 1996 by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: LANDSCAPE OVER ZERO (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996)


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Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk by Sir Walter Ralegh

Posted on December 31, 2011 by admin
Nature, that washed her hands in milk,
And had forgot to dry them,
Instead of earth took snow and silk,
At love’s request to try them,
If she a mistress could compose
To please love’s fancy out of those.


Her eyes he would should be of light,
A violet breath, and lips of jelly;
Her hair not black, nor overbright,
And of the softest down her belly;
As for her inside he’d have it
Only of wantonness and wit.


At love’s entreaty such a one
Nature made, but with her beauty
She hath framed a heart of stone;
So as love, by ill destiny,
Must die for her whom nature gave him,
Because her darling would not save him.


But time (which nature doth despise,
And rudely gives her love the lie,
Makes hope a fool, and sorrow wise)
His hands do neither wash nor dry;
But being made of steel and rust,
Turns snow and silk and milk to dust.


The light, the belly, lips, and breath,
He dims, discolors, and destroys;
With those he feeds but fills not death,
Which sometimes were the food of joys.
Yea, time doth dull each lively wit,
And dries all wantonness with it.


Oh, cruel time! which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days.




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Milk by Shirley Kaufman

Posted on December 30, 2011 by admin
I


You pump it from six goats
morning and evening
and renew your own. The baby
is harnessed to your back,
her dark head wobbling. Your life
and its order that isn’t mine.


I’ve come as close to you
as I can. Over the sudsy milk
I watch your hands,
the little tough spots
at the tips of your fingers.
We tell it again:


how grandma stopped eating
and spit out her mush,
how the rice fields were burning,
how you stayed in your room
with the candles and the incense
and played your guitar.


Once in our terrible anger
you struck at me wildly
and I couldn’t see. Light
was a bolt from the laser
riveting my eye. Black flakes
floated between us for a long time.


The buckets are full. I lift
your daughter from her warm pouch
into your arms
as if I were lifting you
out of my empty body.
We’re not who we are


to our mothers. Even now
in this sweet flesh
isn’t there something starting
to withdraw? The child
is reminded of herself.
She wakes to cry.




2


Oner goat has an udder the size
of a cow’s. The weight of that
huge sack slung beneath her
seems to be more than she can bear.
She struggles to stay on her feet,
and you tell me she’s overbred.
Some misplaced passion for cheese
or being the best.


I warm the goat milk on your stove
and think of how scared you were
to go to school for the first time,
how you wept in my arms
because you didn’t know how to read.
You thought you must know already
what you would have to learn.
The way we cry till we’re red at birth
not knowing how to live.


So perfect ourselves, wanting
to come out grander than we are,
two women trying once more
like Piranesi after fifteen years
etching his prisons again
to get them right. The great beams
are stronger than ever,
shadows are denser than before,
the space in the front left corner
that seemed to be empty
is filled with chains.


Only to see more clearly
what is there.
We stoke the Rayburn with new wood
and carry the pots of milk
out to the shed.
There is a smell of goat cheese ripening.



“Milk” from Rivers of Salt by Shirley Kaufman. Published in 1993 by Copper Canyon Press. www.coppercanyonpress.com

Source: Rivers of Salt (Copper Canyon Press, 1993)


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Sparrow by Farnoosh Fathi

Posted on December 29, 2011 by admin
This was more like the atmosphere
had been pinched, whose chirp was an unexpected gust
in a harmonium enough
to break all that high horse talk
that curdles the atmosphere. While centaurs


ate grass and hurdled epitaphs, that chirp
in the midst did change one of us.
‘Twas clawed out in a feeling’s flock
‘Twas ‘couraged by the tall grass
Did you not catch it?


It is enough to gather at your age;
It is enough to note just what
was said that provoked the Alps to rage.
And the eye sews along. But can it cup
a crazing off the tops of trees?


Just one eye as yours could be enough—
one for six moons that surround
the mind’s water birth, while a lily on its cot
bloated, lapses. Sparrow, here again! Countless
consuls tower and luff but the world sizes
down to a restless heart:


To the one note that repeats itself and is all.
To the note one repeats to one’s self and all. 
To the one line spitting the heart into flight.


Metaphor is elsewhere, a jewel resulting
in the snout of a pig. Sparrow, here—nearly unresting thing
which always seems suddenly to never have left
my mind. Because you will so easily disappear,
I think of you as infinitely near. 



Source: Poetry (November 2011).


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Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope

Posted on December 28, 2011 by admin
Happy the man, whose wish and care
   A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
                            In his own ground.


Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
   Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
                            In winter fire.


Blest, who can unconcernedly find
   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
                            Quiet by day,


Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
   Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
                            With meditation.


Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
   Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
                            Tell where I lie.




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One Day by Robert Creeley

Posted on December 27, 2011 by admin
One day after another—
Perfect.
They all fit.



Robert Creeley, “One Day” from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975. Copyright © 2006 by Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.

Source: The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975 (University of California Press, 2006)


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[little tree] by E. E. Cummings

Posted on December 26, 2011 by admin
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower


who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see          i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly


i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid


look          the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,


put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy


then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud


and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”




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Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree by George Starbuck

Posted on December 25, 2011 by admin
O
fury-
bedecked!
O glitter-torn!
Let the wild wind erect
bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect
frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn
all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!
It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;
bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born
now
now
while ox and ass and infant lie
together as poor creatures will
and tears of her exertion still
cling in the spent girl’s eye
and a great firework in the sky
drifts to the western hill.



George Starbuck, “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” from The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades. Copyright © 2003 by University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa). Reprinted with the permission of The University of Alabama Press.

Source: Poetry (December 1978).


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