poems

Evening Poetry, September 25

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Before The Beginning

by John O’ Donohue

Unknown to us, there are moments

When crevices we cannot see open

For time to come alive with beginning.

As in autumn a field of corn knows

When enough green has been inhaled

From the clay and under the skill

Of an artist breeze becomes gold in a day,

When the ocean still as a mirror

Of a sudden takes a sinister curve

To rise in a mountain of wave

That would swallow a village.

How to a flock of starlings

Scattered, at work on grass,

From somewhere, a signal comes

And suddenly as one, they describe

A geometric shape in the air.

When the audience becomes still

And the soprano lets the silence deepen,

In that slowed holding, the whole aria

Hovers nearer, then alights

On the wings of breath

Poised to soar into song.

These inklings were first prescribed

The morning we met in Westport

And I was left with such sweet time

Wondering if between us something

Was deciding to begin or not.

You can find this poem in Conamara Blues.

Evening Poetry, September 23

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The Fist

by Mary Oliver

There are days

when the sun goes down

like a fist,

though of course

if you see anything

in the heavens

in this way

you had better get

your eyes checked

or, better still,

your diminished spirit.

The heavens

have no fist,

or wouldn’t they have been

shaking it

for a thousand years now,

and even

longer than that,

at the dull, brutish

ways of mankind–

heaven’s own

creation?

Instead: such patience!

Such willingness

to let us continue!

To hear,

little by little,

the voices–

only, so far, in

pockets of the world–

suggesting

the possibilities

of peace?

Keep looking.

Behold, how the fist opens

with invitation.

You can find this poem in Thirst.

Evening Poetry, September 22

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I, 62

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(from The Book of a Monastic Life)

Only as a child am I awake

and able to trust

that after every fear and every night

I will behold you again.

However often I get lost,

however far my thinking strays,

I know you will be here, right here,

time trembling around you.

To me it is as if I were at once

infant, boy, man, and more.

I feel that only as it circles

is abundance found.

I thank you, deep power

that works me ever more lightly

in ways I can’t make out.

The day’s labor grows simple now,

and like a holy face

held in my hands.

You can find this poem in Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

Evening Poetry, September 20

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Three Songs at the End of Summer

By Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut   
and turned. Five gleaming crows   
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,   
and like midwives and undertakers   
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,   
parting before me like the Red Sea.   
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned   
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.   
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone   
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,   
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.   
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod   
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;   
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks   
over me. The days are bright   
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today   
for an hour, with my whole   
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,   
and a crow, hectoring from its nest   
high in the hemlock, a nest as big   
as a laundry basket …
                                    In my childhood   
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,   
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off   
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,   
and operations with numbers I did not   
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled   
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien   
I stood at the side of the road.   
It was the only life I had.

You can find this in Collected Poems.

Evening Poetry, September 19

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September Midnight

By Sara Teasdale

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, 
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, 
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, 
Ceaseless, insistent.  

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, 
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence 
Under a moon waning and worn, broken, 
Tired with summer.  

Let me remember you, voices of little insects, 
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, 
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, 
Snow-hushed and heavy.  

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, 
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, 
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, 
Lest they forget them.

You can find this poem in The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale.

Evening Poetry, September 18

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My kids enjoyed Ogden Nash’s silly poetry when they were small. Here are two for the kids in your life or the kid in you.

The Lama

by Ogden Nash

The one-l lama,

He’s a priest.

The two-l llama,

He’s a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn’t any

Three-l lllama.

The Fly

The Lord in His wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why.

You can find these poems in Favorite Poems Old and New.

Evening Poetry, September 17

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The Solitary

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Like one who’s voyaged over foreign oceans

am I among these eternally at home;

the full days stand dumbly on their tables,

but to me the far-off is full of dream.

Deep inside my face a world reaches,

which perhaps is uninhabited like a moon;

but they leave no feeling to itself,

and all their words have long been lived in.

The things I brought with me from far away

appear outlandish, compared with theirs–:

in their great homeland they were wild animals,

here they hold their breath out of shame.

You can find this poem in The Book of Images.

Evening Poetry, September 14

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Granadilla

By Amy Lowell

I cut myself upon the thought of you
And yet I come back to it again and again,
A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out
From the dimness of the present
And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.
Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,
I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,
And only when the blood runs out across my fingers
Am I at all satisfied.

You can find this poem in The Complete Poetical Works by Amy Lowell.

Evening Poetry, September 13

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A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

by Amy Lowell

They have watered the streets,

It shines in the glare of the lamps,

Cold, white lamps,

And lies

Like a slow moving river,

Barred with silver and black.

Cabs go down it,

One,

And then another,

Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.

Tramps doze on the window-ledges,

Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.

The city is squalid and sinister,

With the silver-barred street in the midst,

Slow-moving,

A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,

The moon cuts,

Clear and round,

Through the plum-colored night.

She cannot light the city:

It is too bright.

It has white lamps,

And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the

moon.

She is thin and lustreless.

But I love her.

I know the moon,

And this is an alien city.

You can find this poem in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell.