Poem of the day #29

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
William Wordsworth

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Poem of the Day #28

Elegy for Jane
Theodore Roethke

My Student, Thrown by a Horse

I remember the neck curls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidling pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing;
And the hold sand in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure
          depth,
Eve a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw;
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not there,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiny shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in their matter,
Neither father nor lover.

Poem of the day #27

Planetarium
Adrienne Rich

Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)

astronemer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman    'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces      of the mind

An eye,

          'virile, precise and absolutely certain'
   from the mad webs of Uranusborg

                                                     encountering the NOVA

every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us

          Tycho whispering at last
          'Let me not seem to have lived in vain'

What we see, we see
and seeing is chaining

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

          I am bombarded yet      I stand

I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep     so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me     And has
taken     I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images     for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

from The Facts Of A Doorframe

Poem of the day #26

A Kite is a Victim
Leonard Cohen

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

Poem of the day #25

The secretary chant
Marge Piercy

My hips are a desk
From my ears hang
chains of paper clips.
Rubber bands form my hair
My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink.
My feet bear casters.
Buzz. Click.
My head is a badly organized file.
My head is a switchboard
where crossed lines crackle.
Press my fingers
and in my eyes appear credit and debit.
Zing. Tinkle.
My navel is a reject button.
From my mouth issue canceled reams.
Swollen, heavy, rectangular
I am about to be delivered
of a baby
Zerox machine.
File me under W
because I wonce
was
a woman.

From Circles On The Water.

Poem of the Day #24

HYPOTHESESM
John Terpstra

The location and number of stars in the sky is determined by
the trajectory of individual branch tips, each of which bears
responsibility for a single pinprick of light.
     As well, the individual bent of each branch is the result of its
having scanned the black dome for an unlit location.
     These are, of course, preposterous hypotheses, and it is
likely that only those who are willing to admit to an uncommon
empathy with trees would ever entertain them.
     In any case let it follow that when a tree falls the lights dim.

Poem of the day #23

Holy Sonnet X
John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou are not soe,
For, those, who thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but they pictures bee,
Much pleasre, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe got,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie
Though art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, though shalt die.

Poem of the day #22

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
    Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
    And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
    Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
    Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could known
    When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
    The difference to me!

Poem of the day #21

The cat's song
Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breast.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty time the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees. Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

from Mars and her Children

Poem of the Day #20

Love a child is ever criing
Lady Mary Wroth

Love a child is ever criing
   Please him, and hee straite is flying,
   Give him hee the more is craving
   Never satisfi'd with having;

His desires have noe measure,
   Endles folly is his treasure
   What hee promiseth hee breaketh
   Trust nott one word that he speaketh;

He vowes nothing butt faulce matter,
   And to cousen you hee'l flatter,
   Lett him gaine the hand hee'l leave you,
   And still glory to deseave you;

Hee will triumph in your wayling,
   And yett cause bee of your fayling
   Thes his vertus ar, and slighter
   Ar his guiftes, his favours lighter,

Feathers ar as firme in staying
   Woulves noe fiercer in theyr praying.
   As a child then leave him crying
   Nor seek him soe giv'n to flying.

Lady Mary Wroth-- 1587-1652

Poem of the Day # 19

The Art of Response
Audre Lorde

The first answer was incorrect
the second was
sorry      the third trimmed its toenails
on the Vatican steps
the fourth went mad
the fifth
nursed a grudge until it bore twins
that drank poisoned grape joyce in Jonestown
the sixth    wrote a book about it
the seventh
argued a case before the Supreme Court
against taxation on Girl Scout Cookies
the eighth held a news conference
while four Black babies
and one other      picketed New York City
for a hospital bed to die in
the ninth and tenth swore
Revenge on the Opposition
and the eleventh dug their graves
next to Eternal Truth
the twelfth
processed funds from a Third World country
the provides doctors for Central Harlem
the thirteenth
refused
the fourteenth sold cocaine and shamrocks
near a toilet in the Big Apple circus
the fifteenth
changed the question.

from Our Dead Behind Us

Poem of the day #18

Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true mindes
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed marke
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandring barke,
Whose worths unknowne, although his higth be taken.
Lov's not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks
within his bending sickles compasse come,
Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes
But bears it out even to the edge of doome:
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Poem of the day #17

Night of the Scorpion
Nissim Ezekiel

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison--flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room--
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the Name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the sun-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made
his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said.
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your sufferings decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing.
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a math to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rite
to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting
My mother only said:
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children.

from Nissim Ezekiel: Collected Poems 1952-1988

Poem of the Day #16

The Flea
John Donne

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee;
Though know's that this cannot be said
A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead,
     Yet this enjoyed before it wooe,
     And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two
     And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

Oh stay, three lives in one flee spare,
Where wee almost, yea more than maryed are.
This flee is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloyserd in these living walls of Jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill met,
    Let not to that, self murder added bee,
    And sacriledge, three sinnes in killing three.

Cruell and sondaine, hast thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thy selfe, nor mee the weaker now;
     'Tis true, then learne how false, fears bee;
     Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.

Poem of the day #15

Ode on Melancholy
John Keats

1

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
       Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wing;
  Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
       By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
  Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
       Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
           Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
  A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
       For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
           And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul

2

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
   Sudden from heaven like a weepy cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
   And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut they sorrows on a poring rose,
   Or on the rainbow of the sale sand-wave,
      Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if they mistress some rich anger shows,
   Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
       And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

3

She dwells with Beaty-- Beauty that must die;
   And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure night
   Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
   Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of non save him whose strenuous tongue
   Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
       And be amoung her cloudy trophies hung.

Poem of the Day #14

A Late Aubade
Richard Wilbur

You could be sitting now in a carrel
Turning some liver-spotted page,
Or rising in an elevator-cage
Towards Ladies' Apparel.

You could be planting a raucous bed
Of salvia, in rubber gloves,
Or lunching through a screed of someone's loves
With pitying head,

Or making some unhappy setter
Heel, or listening to a bleak
Lecture on Schonenbuerg's serial technique.
Isn't this better?

Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste,
Such things, thank God, not being to your taste.
Think what a lot

Of time, by woman's reckoning,
You've saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss
Than anything.

Its's almost noon, you say? If so,
Time flies, and I need not rehearse
The rosebuds-theme of centres of verse.
If you must go,

Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.

Poem of the Day #13

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way;
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your friend tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Poem of the Day #12

Prayer (I)
George Herbert

Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age
    God's breath in man returning to his birth,
    The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

Engine against th' Alimightie, sinners towre,
    Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
    The six-daise world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and feare;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
    Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
    Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the starred heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices; something understood.

Poem of the Day #11

IS/NOT
Margaret Atwood

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveler.

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which need instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.

I am not a saint or a cripple,
I am not a wound; now I will see
whether I am a coward.

I dispose of my good manners,
you don't have to kiss my wrists.

This is a journey, not a war,
there is no outcome,
I renounce predictions

and asprins, I resign the future
as I would resign an expired passport:
picture and signature are gone
along with holidays and safe returns.

We're stuck here
on this side of the border
in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings

where there is nothing spectacular
to see and the weather is ordinary

where love occurs in its pure form only
ont hé cheaper of the souvenirs

where we must walk slowly,
where we may not get anywhere

or anything, where we keep going,
fighting our ways, our way
not out but through.

from Selected Poems 1965-1975

Poem Of The Day #10

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing father, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.



I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.