poems

Wednesday Poem

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I found this on the Swiss Miss blog, which I’m reading again. It’s by Thich Nhat Hanh and I don’t know if it was originally meant to be a poem or prose–but I don’t think that matters much.

 

The Good News

They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information, poems

1. I will read anything Anne Helen Petersen writes about jobs, work, “productivity culture,” and how none of those things benefit the actual workers. This is from her latest newsletter:

 

This is the dystopian reality of productivity culture. Its mandate is never “You figured out how to do my tasks more efficiently, so you get to spend less time working.” It is always: “You figured out how to do your tasks more efficiency, so you must now do more tasks.”
[…] Capitalism does not care for that reality, or for the human wreckage it leaves behind. Leaders will seek out workers who can meet the new production quotas that technology suggests they can achieve, and dispose of them when they can no longer do so. And do not fool yourself: this is as true for factory and physical labor as it is for the office and “knowledge work.” I’m not scared that a robot is going to be able to write a blog post, or write my next book. I’m scared that I’ll be expected to write five books in the time I would’ve previously been expected to write one — and for the same amount of pay.

 

2. In honor of Valentine’s Day Sunday, here’s a love poem from Naomi Shihab Nye (author of this favorite, too). Those last two lines!

Do I Need To Sew A YELLOW Coat Now?

By in fashun, poems

A literal bright spot in yesterday’s emotional roller coaster was poet Amanda Gorman reading in her yellow coat. I mean, she could have worn anything and done that reading and the entire world would still have fallen in love with her, but just look at this fashion (it’s Prada):

If you didn’t hear it–or even if you did–listen to her read “The Hill We Climb” again and marvel at this 22 year old and her perfection. The kids are all right.

Today

By in poems

Today marks two years since my mom died of pancreatic cancer. It’s also Inauguration Day and the person responsible for so much needless suffering over the last four years is losing power. The best of times, the worst of times.

I don’t have a lot to say today. I saw this poem last week, linked in Laura Olin’s newsletter, and it made me cry–I think because of the hope, and tiny beautiful things in with the awful things.

 

You Can’t Have It All

Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

Wednesday Poem

By in poems

It’s been a minute since we’ve had any Mary Oliver. I’ve posted this before but seeing the poem typeset is nice (from my new fav account). Also: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

 

Happy 2021

By in poems

Hello, friends! Having a week off was so, so great: I made a coat! I got nine hours of sleep! We went to a new fabric store! I turned 41! And I found this poem on this new account and thought it was a nice mindset for the New Year.

No resolutions or words to live by this year–I plan to just “keep on keeping on,” doing the work and trying to be kind (especially to myself).

Monday Poem

By in Christmas, poems

This seems appropriate to the season and today’s weather:

Christmas
by Bernard O’Donoghue

Despite the forecast’s promise,
It didn’t snow that night;
But in the morning, flakes began
To glide all right.
Not enough to cover roads
Or even hide the grass;
But enough to change the light.

Wednesday Poetry Reading

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Apparently the poet Seamus Heaney is a favorite of Joe Biden; he quoted from The Cure at Troy in a speech at the DNC in August and has also used it before at different events (which you can read about here if you can access the Washington Post).

I’m not gonna lie, when I heard this for the first time Monday morning I just bawled. Some of it was the emotional hangover from the last four years; some of it was the poem itself; and some of it, as my friend who shared this put it, was the relief at having “a president who not only reads, but reads poetry, and has a favorite poet that he clearly deeply understands.”

(Sharing the official version because of the captioning; the Irish RTE broadcast used the audio with its own montage to end the news Saturday night.)

Wednesday Poem

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This seems appropriately doloroso as we wait for results and bite our nails completely off (and realize just how many Americans are really terrible people).

 

from October
by Louise Gluck

4.

The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.

This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn: you will not be spared

The songs have changed; the unspeakable
has entered them.

This is the light of autumn, not the light that says
I am reborn.

Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered.
This is the present, an allegory of waste.

So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate:
the ideal burns in you like a fever.
Or not like a fever, like a second heart.

The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.
They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind.
They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.

And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly
in anticipation of silence.
The ear gets used to them.
The eyes gets used to disappearances.

You will not be spared, nor will what you love be
spared.

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;
it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.

How privileged you are, to be passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

Maestro, doloroso:

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.

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