Evening Poetry, October 27

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The Book of a Monastic Life (from Rilke’s Book of Hours)

I, 12

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

You can find this poem in Rilke’s Book of Hours.

Evening Poetry, October 26

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The Owl Cries At Night

by Freya Manfred

The owl cries at night,

and I imagine her wide gold eyes

and feathered ears tuned

to the trembling woods and waters,

seeing and hearing what

I will never see or hear:

a red fox with one bloody paw,

a hunch-backed rabbit running,

sand grains grating on the shore,

a brown leaf crackling

under a brown mouse foot.

With so much to learn,

I could stop writing forever,

and still live well.

You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Turtle.

Evening Poetry, October 25

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Wind Artist

by John O Donohue

For Ellen Wingard

Among the kingdom of the winds,

Perhaps, there is one of elegant mind

Who has no need to intrude

On the solitude of single things.

A wind at ease with the depth

Of its own emptiness, who knows

How it was in the beginning,

Before the silence became unbearable

And space rippled to dream things.

A wind who feels how an object strains

To be here, holding its darkness tight

Against the sever of air, ever eager

To enter, and with a swell of light

Dissolve the form in its breathing.

A wind from before memory

Whose patience will see things become

Passionate dust whorled into sighs

Of ghost-song on its wings.

You can find this poem in Conamara Blues by John O’ Donohue.

Evening Poetry, October 24

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Dreams

by Mary Oliver

All night

the dark buds of dreams

open

richly.

In the center

of every petal

is a letter,

and you imagine

if you could only remember

and string them all together

they would spell the answer.

It is a long night,

and not an easy one–

you have so many branches,

and there are diversions–

birds that come and go,

the black fox that lies down

to sleep beneath you,

the moon staring

with her bone-white eye.

Finally you have spent

all the energy you can

and you drag from the ground

the muddy skirt of your roots

and leap awake

with two or three syllables

like water in your mouth

and a sense

of loss–a memory

not yet of a word,

certainly not yet the answer–

only how it feels

when deep in the tree

all the locks click open,

and the fire surges through the wood,

and the blossoms blossom.

You can find this poem in Dream Work.

Evening Poetry, October 23

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Time-Web

by Amy Lowell

The day is sharp and hurried

As wind upon a dahlia stem;

It is harsh and abrupt with me

As a North-east breeze

Striking a bed of sunflowers.

Why should I break at the root

And cast all my fragile flowers in the dust–

I who am no taller than a creeping pansy?

I should be sturdy and definite,

Yet I am tossed, and agitated, and pragmatically bending.

You can find this poem in Amy Lowell: Selected Poems.

Evening Poetry, October 22

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To A Young Artist

by Freya Manfred

My poems are written by a spirit on a stone,

and there are many tellers, many stories, and many stones,

in honor of our braided paths and solitary ways.

Now, at sunset, I’m called to where water merges with land and sky,

where an eagle drops from a tall pine, dips her beak into darkening waves,

rises with a flapping silver fish, and flies away.

I wish you work that weaves a spell, and love,

and breath–uncounted, irretrievable, sacred breath,

flying from its cage of bones–eagle falling, fish-rising, free.

You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle.

Evening Poetry, October 20

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Autumn

by T. E. Hulme

A touch of cold in the Autumn night— 
I walked abroad, 
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge 
Like a red-faced farmer. 
I did not stop to speak, but nodded, 
And round about were the wistful stars 
With white faces like town children.

You can find this poem in Selected Writings: Thomas Ernest Hulme.

Evening Poetry, October 19

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Beginning

by James Wright

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

You can find this poem in Above the River: The Complete Poems.

Evening Poetry, October 18

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The Empty House

by Walter de la Mare

See this house, how dark it is 
Beneath its vast-boughed trees! 
Not one trembling leaflet cries 
To that Watcher in the skies— 
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze, 
Innocent of heaven’s ways, 
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright, 
On secrets hidden from sight.’ 

‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind, 
‘Vacancy is all I find; 
Every keyhole I have made 
Wails a summons, faint and sad, 
No voice ever answers me, 
Only vacancy.’ 
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills, 
And far and near the quiet fills 
With its tiny voice, and then 
Hush falls again. 

Mute shadows creeping slow 
Mark how the hours go. 
Every stone is mouldering slow. 
And the least winds that blow 
Some minutest atom shake, 
Some fretting ruin make 
In roof and walls. How black it is 
Beneath these thick boughed trees! 

You can find this poem in The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare.

Evening Poetry, October 17

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To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease, 
      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 
   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? 
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

You can find this poem in The Complete Poems of John Keats.