William Baer

Snowflake

Timing’s everything. The vapor rises
high in the sky, tossing to and fro,
then freezes, suddenly, and crystallizes
into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.
For countless miles, drifting east above
the world, whirling about in a swirling free-
for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,
but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.
Falling to where the two young skaters stand,
hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips
itself about to ever-so-gently land,
a miracle, across her unkissed lips:
as he blocks the wind raging from the south,
leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.

Robert Frost
(1874-1963)

Unharvested

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.
May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

Anonymous, Translated from Spanish
by Kenneth Rexroth, 1956 (above)

Letrilla-Cancionero

When the wind murmurs
Mother, in the leaves,
The drone puts me to sleep
Deep in the shade.

The calm wind blows
Lightly, softly,
And moves the ship
Of my mind.
I am so contented.
It seems to me
Heaven has given me
Too many blessings.
And the drone puts me to sleep
Deep in the shade.

If I happen to wake up
Covered with flowers
I cannot remember
Anything sorrowful.
All trace of my loss
Is hidden in dreams.
And new life comes
In the sound of the leaves.
And the drone puts me to sleep
Deep in the shade.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone Enough

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother’s face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

I’m Explaining a Few Things
By Pablo Neruda

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings –
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

]]> http://www.stewarttodd.com/2006/07/30/poem-of-the-month-august-2006/feed/ 1 http://www.stewarttodd.com/2006/06/30/poem-of-the-month-july-2006/ http://www.stewarttodd.com/2006/06/30/poem-of-the-month-july-2006/#comments Fri, 30 Jun 2006 15:22:36 +0000 Stewart http://stewarttodd.com/blog/?p=54

Giacomo Leopardi
(1798 – 1837)

The Infinite

This solitary hill has always been dear to me,
And this hedgerow, which closes in the view
So well that one need hardly look upon the west.
But sitting and reflecting, from out of the endless
Expanse of night sky, and the supernatural
Silences and stillness so profound,
My heart, for a moment, no longer fears.
And, like the wind I hear whisper among these leaves,
I hear within that infinite silence a voice:
It overwhelms me with the eternal,
And the seasons passed away, and the present
And living, and with its own sound. Thus within
This immensity my thoughts are drowned…
And it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea.

Faith Poem

I need no assurances—I am a man who is
pre-occupied of his own soul;

I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given
time, there waits for me more which I do not
know;

I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside
the hands and face I am cognizant of, are
now looking faces I am not cognizant of —
calm and actual faces;

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the
world is latent in any iota of the world;

I do not doubt there are realizations I have
no idea of, waiting for me through time
and through the universes—also upon this
earth;

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni-
verses are limitless—in vain I try to think
how limitless;

I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of
orbs, play their swift sports through the air
on purpose—and that I shall one day be
eligible to do as much as they, and more than
they;

I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities,
insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds,
rejected refuse, than I have supposed;

I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have
supposed—and more in all men and women
—and more in my poems than I have
supposed;

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and
on, millions of years;

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and
exteriors have their exteriors—and that the
eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hear-
ing another hearing, and the voice another
voice;

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths
of young men are provided for—and that the
deaths of young women, and the deaths of
little children, are provided for;

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter
what the horrors of them—no matter whose
wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone
down—are provided for, to the minutest
point;

I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malig-
nance, are provided for;

I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the
remainder of the earth, politics, freedom,
degradations, are carefully provided for;

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen,
any where, at any time, is provided for, in
the inherences of things.

Stewart Todd
(1971 -  )

[Untitled]

We sat for the last time on that beach,
watching as the sun began to slip
slowly beneath the horizon.

As the last sliver of light surrendered
to the darkening water,
there were no romantic interludes,
no collapsing into each others arms
with emotions boiling over like lava rushing into the sea.

The brilliant embers danced wildly, temporarily,
up from the fire until one by one
they disappeared against the star-filled sky.
We huddled closer and closer,
as if, in a world so frigid and cold,
this fire was the only thing that could sustain us.
The warmth soaked our faces and hearts
until, on the turning away, we were buffeted
by the bitter night air.

We sat in the dark silence and listened to
“Still Crazy After All These Years” on the portable radio
when all we really wanted to say was “I love you.”
But we didn’t know the words, so
we fell slept on the cold beach,
and in the morning shook the sand from our shoes
and began our journey home.

Pablo Neruda
(1904 – 1973)

I Do Not Love You

I do not love you as if you were salt rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Walt Whitman
(1819–1892)

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When the proofs, the figures, were ranges in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the 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.

Pablo Neruda
(1904 – 1973)

Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892 – 1950)

Love Is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.