Just some pretty words for today.
On Foot I Wandered Through the Solar Systems
On foot
I wandered through the solar systems,
Before I found the first thread of my red dress.
Already I have a sense of myself.
Somewhere in space my heart hangs,
emitting sparks, shaking the air,
to other immeasurable hearts.
Edith Södergran
trans. Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström
All the warm nights
sleep in moonlight
keep letting it
go into you
do this
all your life
do this
you will shine outward
in old age
the moon will think
you are
the moon
Swampy Cree narrative poem
trans. Howard Norman (1972)
Another poem about self-care and sandwiches! I didn’t think there would be two. Now I wonder how many are out there (“collect them all!”).
VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God through the manhole covers,
but you want magic, to win
the lottery you never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant,
embrace the suffering.) The voice never
panders, offers no five-year plan,
no long-term solution, no edicts from a cloudy
white beard hooked over ears.
It is small and fond and local. Don’t look for
your initials in the geese honking
overhead or to see through the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious shit,
i.e. Put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
Mary Karr (2018)
I can’t get photos to upload this week so here’s a poem to start things off. After The Writer’s Almanac folded, I found Matthew Ogle’s “Pome” newsletter that sends out a short modern one every day and subscribed to that. This is from there and is delightful (I’ve always wondered what the world must look like as a bird hops along).
Walking Like a Robin
Bernadette Mayer (2016)
take 3 or 4 steps then stop
look smell taste touch & hear
is there anything to eat?
oh look, there’s some caviar
it must be my birthday, thanks
i must be very old, like seventy
i guess i’m falling apart, i’ll just
sew myself back together but will it last?
please take a piece of me back home, each piece
is anti-war and don’t pay your rent, in fact
remember: property is robbery, give everybody
everything, other birds walk this way too
There is no end of poems about spring and now that the leaves are coming out on the trees, I’m going to post them all. (This was mentioned on kottke.org this week.)
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón, 1976
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
The Trees
by Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
By Karen in poems 2 Comments
I was at a camp in the country,
you were home in the city,
and bad news had come to you.
You texted me as I sat
with others around a campfire.
It had been a test you and I
hadn’t taken seriously,
hadn’t worried about.
You texted the bad news word
cancer. I read it in that circle
around the fire. There was
singing and laughter to my right and left
and there was that word on the screen.
I tried to text back but,
as often happened in that county,
my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground.
I stood on a hill above the river and sent you
the most beautiful words I could manage,
put them together, each following each. Under
Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing,
I said what had been said
many times, important times, foolish times:
those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad.
The I love you we wrap around our
need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless
nothing and everything, take this.
I chose words to fling into the dark toward you
while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding
and the badger wandered the unlit hill
and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;
I sent the most necessary syllables
we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear:
I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.
***
(Keep my mom and my family in your thoughts, if you have some good vibes to spare. Posts may be a little lighter going forward but I’ll still be here.)
By Karen in poems, Theodore Roethke
It’s March, aka The Rollercoaster Month: The foot of snow from last week is melting; another six inches are on the way tomorrow; it’s going to be close to 50 degrees next week.
I have to re-read “The Shape of The Fire” every time about this year. The beginning is just so perfect to capture that early spring angst, the mess of the world before it all progresses at the end to high summer and a flower in a vase:
Water recedes to the crying of spiders.
An old scow bumps over black rocks.
A cracked pod calls.
[…]
Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field. Small birds pass over water.
Spirit, come near. This is only the edge of whiteness.
(Read the whole thing here, since it’s hard to quote from this one–you mostly have to just jump in and go ’til the end, not unlike listening to Richard Strauss.)
I hadn’t thought of this one in a long time, until I saw an ESCO service truck on the road the other day and went from ESCO to ESSO-SO-SO to “somebody loves us all.” Yes.
Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO—SO—SO—SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Despite all my decorating, I keep quoting the opening of A Charlie Brown Christmas to anyone who will listen (“Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”) I go back to this poem I found in 2012, which I think sums it up pretty well. If “Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole”–ok, we’re here; now what?
A Christmas Poem
by Robert Bly
Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole, where all
agree
To meet once a year. It has water, and grass for
horses;
All the fur traders can come in. We visited the place
As children, but we never heard the good stories.
Those stories only get told in the big tents, late
At night, when a trapper who has been caught
In his own trap, held down in icy water, talks; and a
man
With a ponytail and a limp comes in from the edge of
the fire.
As children we knew there was more to it—
Why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
Wasn’t explained, nor why we were so often
Near tears nor why the stars came down so close,
Why so much was lost. Those men and women
Who had died in wars started by others,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas
tree
Trembled just before we opened the presents?
There was something about angels. Angels we
Have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er
The plain. The angels were certain. But we could not
Be certain whether our family was worthy tonight.