POEMS OF MY CLOSERS

                                                                  More...

                        I was angry with my friend:

                        I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

                        I was angry with my foe:

                        I told it not, my wrath did grow.

 

                        And I water'd it in fears,

                        Night & morning with my tears;

                        And I sunned it with smiles,

              And with soft deceitful wiles.

 

                        And it grew both day and night,

                        Till it bore an apple bright;

                        And my foe beheld it shine,

              And he knew that it was minea

              

                        And into my garden stole

                        When the night had veil'd the pole:

              In the morning glad I see

                        My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

 

William Blake

THE TYGER

                        Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

                        In the forest of the night,

                        What immortal hand or eye

                        Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

                        In what distant depps or skies

                        Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

                        On what the hand dare sieze the fire?

 

                        And what shoulder, & what art,

                        Could twist the sinews of the heart?

                        And when thy heart began to beat,

                        What dread hand? & what dread feet?

 

                        What the hammer? what the chain?

                        In what furnace was the brain?

                        What the anvil? what dread gasp

                        Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

 

                        When the stars threw down their spears,

                        And water'd heaven with their tears,

                        Did he smile his work to see?

                        Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

 

                        Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

                        In the forest of the night,

                        What immortal hand or eye

                        Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

                        Among these mountains, do you know,

                        I have a farm, and on it grow

                        A thousand lovely Christmas trees.

                        I'd like to send you one of these,

              But it's against the law.

                        A man may give a little boy

              A book, a useful knife, a toy,

              Or even a rhyme like this by me

                        (I write it just like this you see),

              But nobody may give a tree

                        Excepting Santa Claus. 

 

                        "For Allan, who wanted to see how I wrote a poem".

Robert Frost

AN AFTERNOON IN THE STACKS

                       Closing the book, I find I have left my head 

                        inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open

                        their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,

                        words adjusting themselves to their meaning.

                        Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,

                        continuous from the title onward, hums

                        behind me. From in here, the world looms,

              a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences

                        carved out when an author traveled and a reader

              kept the way open. When this book ends

                        I will pull it inside-out like a sock

              and throw it back in the library. But the rumor

                        of it will haunt all that follows in my life.

              A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

William Stafford

                        I am the man whose heart for

                        four days lost in a cave

                        beat when the water dripped:

                        I was found, and the water stopped,

                        never to start again. 

                        Now even the cave is lost

              where the lost, in order to hear,

                        held the whole breath of the earth.

                        In the night I strike a match,

              one little glory, a flame

              the world surrounds, a stutter

              that leaps as the light goes out

                        and the trail to the cave begins:

              impenetrably disguised as myself

                        

                        I range the whole world in the dark

                        to hammer on doors with my heart.

William Stafford

                        1

                        Times in the morning early

                        when it rained and the long gray

                        buildings came forward from darkness

              offering their windows for light.

 

                        2

              Evenings out there on the plains

              when sunset donated farms

                        that yearned so far to the west that the world

              centered there and bowed down.

                        

                        3

                        A teacher at a country school

                        walking home past a great marsh

                        where ducks came gliding in --

              she saw the boy out hunting and waved.

 

                        4

                        Silence on a hill where the path ended

                        and then the forest below

                        moving in one long whisper

              as evening touched the leaves.

 

                        5

                        Shelter in winter that day --

                        a storm coming, but in the lee

                        of an island in a cover with friends --

              oh, little bright cup of sun.

William Stafford

                        We must begin to catch hold of everything

                        around us, for nobody knows what we

                        may need. We have to carry along

                        the air, even; and the weight we once

              thought a burden turns out to form

                        the pulse of our life and the compass for our brain.

              Colors balance our fears, and existence

              begins to clog unless our thoughts

                        can occur unwatched and let a fountain of essential silliness

              out through our dreams.

                        

                        And oh I hope we can still arrange

                        for the wind to blow, and occasionally

              some kind of shock to occur, like rain,

              and stray adventures no one cares about --

                        harmless love, immoderate guffaws on corners, 

              families crawling around the front room growling,

                        being bears in the piano cave.

William Stafford

                        As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,

                        And ebb into a former life, or seem

                        To lapse far back in some confused dream

                        To states of mystical similitude,

              If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,

                        Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,

                        So that we say, 'All this hath been before,

                        All this hath been, I know not when or where;'

                        So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face,

              Our thought gave answer each to each, so true --

                        Opposed mirrors each reflecting each -- 

                        That, tho I knew not in what time or place,

                        Methought that I had often met with you,

              And either lived in either's heart and speech.

Alfred Tennyson

MIRACLES

                       WHY, who makes much of a miracle?

                        As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,

                        Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

                        Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

                        Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

                        Or stand under trees in the woods,

                        Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,

                        Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

                        Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

                        Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

                        Or animals feeding in the fields,

                        Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

                        Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

                        Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

                        These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 

                        The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

       

                        To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

                        Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

                        Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

                        Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. 

 

                        To me the sea is a continual miracle,

                        The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships with the men in them,

              What stranger miracles are there?

 

Walt Whitman

 

 

WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER

                        WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,

                        When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

                        When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

                        When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,

                        How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

                        Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

                        In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

                       Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

 More...