Thursday Poem

Here’s Wendell Berry–“American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer”– not pulling any punches.

 

Questionnaire
by Wendell Berry

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Thursday Poem

I ran into this one on the Reddit poetry forum and what language: “trellising” as a verb, “beefsteaks like baubles,” what a combo.

In my next life let me be a tomato

lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation
I have always been scared of my own ripening,
mother standing outside the fitting room door.
I only become bright after Bloody Marys, only whole
in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles,
sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms
in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden
that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread.
Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel
with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning
after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more
sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water,
they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version
of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits
are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come
willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched
arm always offering something sweet. I want to return
from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and
buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble
space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing
I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato
will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life,
so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly.
For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me
yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping
under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take
more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.

– by Natasha Rao

The Last August Poem

Here’s one for the end of August, titled the same, about not looking to the literal or metaphorical winter ahead (even though it feels like it’s looming).

 

Vespers (End of August)
by Louise Glück

End of August. Heat
like a tent over
John’s garden. And some things
have the nerve to be getting started,
clusters of tomatoes, stands
of late lilies—optimism
of the great stalks—imperial
gold and silver: but why
start anything
so close to the end?
Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies
winter will kill, that won’t
come back in spring. Or
are you thinking
I spend too much time
looking ahead, like
an old woman wearing
sweaters in summer;
are you saying I can
flourish, having
no hope
of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory
of the open throat, white,
spotted with crimson.

Wednesday Poem

Oh, Mary Oliver. “The linen of words” is pretty great but nothing like your pond.

Work
by Mary Oliver

How beautiful
this morning
was Pasture Pond.

It had lain in the dark, all night,
catching the rain

on its broad back.
All day I work
with the linen of words

and the pins of punctuation
all day I hang out
over a desk

grinding my teeth
staring.
Then I sleep.

Then I come out of the house,
even before the sun is up,

and walk back through the pinewoods
to Pasture Pond.

A Poem About Getting Things Done in the Morning

In the last 8 months of my new job, I’ve become someone who gets up, gets coffee, and gets an hour or two of work in before the gym. (Don’t worry, I take that hour or two back with my gym break; I’m not working extra.)  If a project needs my brain, I have to do it early in the morning or my focus is shot… so I agree with Jane here.

 

A Day Is Vast
by Jane Hirshfield

A day is vast.
Until noon.
Then it’s over.

Yesterday’s pondwater
braided still wet in my hair.

I don’t know what time is.

You can’t ever find it.
But you can lose it.

August Poem

It’s been a while since we had some Mary Oliver but it’s August now and this is appropriate. (It was also Lughnasadh yesterday but I’m refusing to think that there are only six more weeks of summer and just willing it all to continue.) What a jewel of a turn in these two lines: “Each of us wears a shadow./ But just now it is summer again.”

 

The Pond
by Mary Oliver

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I’ll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be singing.

 

Wednesday Labor Poem

I only knew Bertolt Brecht from music history classes that mostly focused on Kurt Weil, so I never really made the connection that he wrote poems (although, thinking about it, that’s pretty much what a libretto is). Anyway, I’m here for pro-labor stuff, especially the day after Prime Day.

 

A Worker Reads History
Bertolt Brecht, 1936

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.

Thursday Poem

This one from Ron Padgett has some overtones of Gary Snyder being Zen. Nice.

Poem

You’re here-
and if you relax
for a moment
your back
and other parts
will arrive
and you can be
together,
with yourself,
a little happiness.

(From Big Cabin, Coffee House Press, 2019)

Thursday Poem

This is an Instagram find, by an account named Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin (perfect). It’s run–and written–by Lyndsay Rush and it’s in the vibes of Maximum Summer of Ease that I want to channel.

It’s Called Maximalism, Babe

Why shouldn’t I stop and smell the espresso beans / Or say, in a voice a little too loud, This is the best margarita I’ve ever had!! /  Or use the full curse word / Or have my dessert first? / Why shouldn’t I give it my all / And do it for the story / And leap before looking / And let love consume me? / Why shouldn’t I use my expensive face creams with abandon/ Triple text my crush / Laugh at my own jokes / Cry at commercials / Sing at the top of my lungs while I vacuum / Buy the orange chair / Paint the town purple / And fly across the country for the weekend just to pinch a cheek? / Why shouldn’t I hold your face in both of my hands at 11:30AM on a Tuesday while you’re chopping a salad and remind you that you’re the center of my happiest days? / Why shouldn’t I memorize how the sun comes in from the front window / Turn the music up / Give the dog a piece of cheese / Say what I mean /  Let my hair down / Forgive fast / Believe that the best is yet to come? / Tell me—no really—why shouldn’t I? / Why shouldn’t we? / Why shouldn’t you?

Thursday Poem

Just over here thinking about our inevitable deaths and how the endless cycle of nature can be a comfort. This is by Laura Gilpin, from “Life and Death (for Burnett, 1945-1971)”.

 

IV

The things I know:
how the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
So that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it

and in the spring the rabbits find it
and build their nest inside
and their young will live safely
and have their young
inside the dead tree
So that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.