Thanks, Robert Frost

--David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?

someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.

Yes, and even for the past, he replied,

that it will turn out to have been all right

for what it was, something we can accept,

mistakes made by the selves we had to be,

not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,

or what looking back half the time it seems

we could so easily have been, or ought...

The future, yes, and even for the past,

that it will become something we can bear.

And I too, and my children, so I hope,

will recall as not too heavy the tug

of those albatrosses I sadly placed

upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,

yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,

and it brings strange peace that itself passes

into past, easier to bear because

you said it, rather casually, as snow

went on falling in Vermont years ago.

 

Back Soon; Driving—

--Carl Phillips

The way the present cuts into history,

or how the future can look at first

like the past sweeping through, there

are blizzards, and there are blizzards.

Some contain us; some we carry

within us until they die, when we do.

The snow falls there, barely snowing,

into a long wooden trough where

the cattle feed on those apples we

used to call medieval, or I did,

for their smallish size, as if medieval

meant the world in miniature but

not so different otherwise from

our own, just smaller, a bit sweeter,

more prone therefore to rot quickly,

which is maybe not the worst thing.

Revelation is not disclosure. I love

how the snow, taking itself now more

seriously, makes the cattle look softer,

for a moment, than their hard bodies are.

 

The Magi

--Louise Glück

Toward world's end, through the bare

beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.

How many winters have we seen it happen,

watched the same sign, come forward as they pass

cities sprung around this route their gold

engraved on the desert, and yet

held our peace, these

being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour

nothing changed: roofs, the barn

blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.

 

[ Read to Me ; Deb Garlick ]

 

                        *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         * 

--from Ars Poetica; Archibald Maleish

 

Ancestral

--Archibald MacLeish

The star dissolved in evening—the one star

The silently

                   and night O soon now, soon

And still the light now

                                    and still now the large

Relinquishing

                     and through the pools of blue

Still, still the swallows

                                       and a wind now

                                                            and the tree

Gathering darkness:

                              I was small. I lay

Beside my mother on the grass, and sleep

Came—

          slow hooves and dripping with the dark

The velvet muzzles, the white feet that move

In a dream water

                        and O soon now soon

Sleep and the night.

                              And I was not afraid.

Her hand lay over mine. Her fingers knew

Darkness,—and sleep—the silent lands, the far

Far off of morning where I should awake.

 

Way-Station

--Archibald MacLeish

The incoherent rushing of the train

Dulls like a drugged pain

Numbs

To an ether throbbing of inaudible drums

Unfolds

Hush within hush until the night withholds

Only its darkness.

                            From the deep

Dark a voice calls like a voice in sleep

Slowly a strange name in a strange tongue.

Among

The sleeping listeners a sound

As leaves stir faintly on the ground

When snow falls from a windless sky—

A stir    A sigh

 

[ Dark Blue World ; Endre Balint (1947) ]

 

Haiku- Autumn 2024

early september,

dry cawing of a blue jay

scratched on a north wind

just a simple moth

and yellow in the gingko

slipping through boredom

peak autumn color-

old man sipping his coffee

out on the front porch

post election day,

again I'm finding a world

that's not what I thought

trying to hang on

to that something that's not meant

to be hung on to

 

When the Other Shoe Drops

Old house, new house, a few

token leaves that hang to the oak,

strung dried like a banjo tuned

to hard tones of falling acorns,

regular efforts, created patterns,

while others are elsewhere

mixed on an air of chance, fate,

fathoms off the smallest twig 

that holds until it won't, like

what gets kept alone and abides

up in the attic while weighing

on down to the slab basement

in creaks, cracks, of wood planks

worn off from a dule tree's hymnal,

sunset apples over the ground

with their vinegar of weariness,

that does pass, is only known

by a heart, a gasp, from what is

and has been a mere second-

meant by you, to last forever.

 

[ The witness (Clues and fragments cycle) ; Alberto Sughi ]

 

 

from City Without A Name

--Czeslaw Milosz

10

Unexpressed, untold.

But how?

The shortness of life,

the years quicker and quicker,

not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.

Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,

giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,

sittings on chamberpots upstairs

when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch

just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.

Female humanity,

children's snots, legs spread apart,

snarled hair, the milk boiling over,

stench, shit frozen into clods.

And those centuries,

conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night

instead of playing something like a game of chess

or dancing an intellectual ballet.

And palisades,

and pregnant sheep,

and   pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,

and cows cured by incantations.

 

Faith

--Czeslaw Milosz (trans. Robert Hass)

The word faith means when someone sees

A dew – drop or a floating leaf,

and know that they are, because they have to be.

And even if you dreamed, or

closed your eyes and wished,

The world would still be what it was,

and the leaf would still be carried down the river.

It means that when someone’s foot is hurt

By a sharp rock,

He also knows that rocks are here so they can hurt our feet.

Look, see the long shadow cast by the tree;

And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

This World

--Czeslaw Milosz

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.
What was only a trial run was taken seriously

The rivers will return to their beginnings.

The wind will cease in its turning about.

Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.

Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror--

They are children again.

The dead will wake up, not comprehending.

Till everything that happened has unhappended.

What a relief! Breathe freely, you who suffered much.

 

[ American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans ; Thomas Hart Benton ]

Peabody Essex Museum discussion: Benton painting Native Americans

 

Living at the End of Time

--Robert Bly

There is so much sweetness in children’s voices,

And so much discontent at the end of day,

And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.

I don’t know why the rooster keeps crying,

Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,

Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.

A handsome child is a gift from God,

And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,

And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.

Some say we are living at the end of time,

But I believe a thousand pagan ministers

Will arrive tomorrow to baptize the wind.

There’s nothing we need to do about John. The Baptist

Has been laying his hands on earth for so long

That the well water is sweet for a hundred miles.

It’s all right if we don’t know what the rooster

Is saying in the middle of the night, nor why we feel

So much satisfaction when a train goes by.

 

The Cello

--Andrea Potos

Strings slide in

from somewhere

under,

carve out

the hollows

the deeper

sounds

of our bones.

Once they come—

no escaping

our quiet wounds

that just want to be music now.

 

Relic

--Jennifer Foerster

An atlas

on the underside of my dream.

My half-shut eyelid—

a black wing.

I dipped sharp quills

in the night’s mouth—

moths swarmed

from my throat.

I pulled a feather blanket

over my skeleton

and woke—

a map of America

flapping in the dark.

Once I dreamt

of inheriting this—

my mother

who still follows crows

through the field,

my sister’s small hand

tucked inside hers,

me on her breast

in a burial quilt.

 

[ Genesis #2 ; Lorser Feitelson ]

 

 

How to Disappear

--Rae Armantrout

1

You had been swinging restlessly

between the appearance of spontaneity

and the appearance of serious thought.

You had been changing lanes

after a glance

in a mirror honest about

its tendency to distort.

What choice did you have?

It was soothing to watch

wisps of smoke

from a nearby chimney

disappearing

one by one.

2

Do you like pulses,

ridges, ripples

stretching into obscurity?

Would you prefer a flicker

to a steady light source?

This one stutters

slightly,

hesitant,

as if it could hold something

in reserve

 

Exit Row

--Rae Armantrout

You will buy your life

as a series

of "experiences"

to which you

will belong.

Have a good flight.

 

            •

Do you believe

in reproduction?

Do you think this

upland of clouds,

white buttes cut

by shadow canyons,

shapely and boundless

as the body

you were promised,

will reappear

after you're gone?

            •

Boarding all zones at this time

 

 

Old Woman’s Lament in Autumn

--Rae Armantrout

for WCW

Sorrow is my corner store

where jack-o’-lantern balloons

get high on the last helium.

The endcap is gold today

with numbered bags

of Werther’s Original.

No one is Werther.

Last night a newscaster

mentioned an “elderly victim.”

Don’t call me that.

I’m old

and obdurate.

 

 

[ November ; Jacek Yerka ]

Star Man

--Maitreyabandhu

He saw a blue light entering his heart

coming from a man he couldn’t see

but knew was standing in the stars above

the playing field behind his house. The light

came like a curl of candle smoke and lit

a cooking-apple tree inside his head

where he’d built a den and brought flowers

in a broken mug without its handle.

He could see the usual things – the laurel hedge,

the path that marked the border of his world –

but no river murmured powerful thoughts,

no wind of meaning blew among the stars,

no nature’s heart beat full against his own,

just apple branches lit up in the dark.

 

 

Visitation

--Maitreyabandhu

Strange that you should come

like that, without any form at all,

carrying no symbolic implements,

without smile or frown

or any commotion,

as if you had been there all the time,

like a pair of gloves left in a pocket.

As if I had been looking that way,

into the wide blue yonder, and you were

beside me, enduring my hard luck stories

with infinite patience. Not even waiting –

the tree outside my window

doesn’t wait, nor the ocean-wedge

with its new, precise horizon – just there

like the shadow of a church

or a quiet brother.

And how I saw you, in the mess of things,

was as a slant of grey,

the perfect grey of house dust,

an absolute neutral, with no weaving,

no shimmer of cobalt

and light-years away from Byzantium.

Grey. And I want to add, like light,

as if a skylight opened in my skull,

and into the darkness fell

a diagonal of pure Bodmin Moor.

But even that’s too bright,

too world-we’re-busy-in.

Call it ‘dust’ then, or the bloom

of leaf-smoke from an autumn fire.

 

The Man

--Maitreyabandhu

The man was sitting by the kitchen window.

Outside, the trees were full of nervous birds,

nodding their heads or flicking up their tails

in gestures of defiance. A pheasant walked

along a hedge, his copper coat restrained,

even the sun held back behind the trees.

The man was watching ladybirds climb up

the windowpane: so many on the walls,

so many huddled near the lights! They fell

down on their backs as if they'd taken ether.

The house stood in the corner of a field

with woodpigeons, always woodpigeons, in twos

or squadrons in the trees; and a robin singing

from a post, his song as bright as teaspoons.

The sun rose in pale and broken stripes,

then set in a perfect orange ball. Nothing

happened inside the house. The man took off

his glasses when he slept, drank two strong cups

of coffee every day, and walked around

the garden with his scarf around his neck.

He wanted signs of life: the sound of someone

closing a drawer or slipping on a jacket;

but no-one pressed the gravel drive or opened

the kitchen door. A patch of sunlight swivelled

round the room, brightening the kettle's spout.

The man lay down and wrote inspiring things

on little scraps of card. He thought he heard

a hare snuffling in the grass, an owl

hooting in the night. But then the taps

ran dry and the blue pilot light went out.

 

[ Wood with Beech Trees ; Piet Mondrian (1899) ]

 

Violets in the Fall

--Maurice Manning

A gang of crows was chasing off

a hawk. The little stream was laughing

and shushing itself. The hawk's reflection

briefly blurred a pool of water

and then the pool went back to waiting

for nothing or the next reflection.

The maple trees were yellow and red,

but redder farther up the stream.

I wanted especially to share

the cloud of redder leaves upstream

with the little girl I had with me,

but she was sleeping. Walking home,

I thought the willow trees around

the pond were standing up like brooms

to sweep the sky. That was the voice

in my head describing the willow trees

as brooms, a thought to stop the world

for a moment's moment. She might have thought

the willows looked like lashes winking

around a deep-green eye,

but as I say, she was asleep

for this excursion in the world.

And she hasn't told me yet about

the voice inside her head. For the moment

that voice is learning how to listen

to its own mysterious silence. I expect

it's like a sanctuary in there

with a candle glowing at the back of the room

and violets dotting the grass outside.

 

A Blasphemy

--Maurice Manning

You wouldn't have believed it, how

the man, a little touched perhaps,

set his hands together and prayed

for happiness, yet not his own;

he meant his people, by which he meant

not people really, but trees and cows,

the dirty horses, dogs, the fox

who lived at the back of his place with her kits,

and the very night who settled down

to rock his place to sleep, the place

he tried so hard to tend he found

he mended fences in his sleep.

He said to the you above, who, let's

be honest, doesn't say too much,

I need you now up there to give

my people happiness, you let

them smile and know the reason; hear

my prayer, Old Yam. The you who's you

might laugh at that, and I agree,

it's funny to make a prayer like that,

the down-home words and yonder reach

of what he said; and calling God

the Elder Sweet Potato, shucks,

that's pretty funny, and kind of sad.

 

Sad and Alone

--Maurice Manning

Well, this is nothing new, nothing

to rattle the rafters in the noggin,

this moment of remembering

and its kissing cousin the waking dream.

I wonder if I'll remember it?

I've had a vision of a woman

reclining underneath a tree:

she's about half naked and little by little

I'm sprinkling her burial mounds

with grass. This is the kind of work

I like. It lets me remember, and so

I do. I remember the time I laid

my homemade banjo in the fire

and let it burn. There was nothing else

to burn and the house was cold;

the cigar box curled inside the flames.

But the burst of heat was over soon,

and once the little roar was done,

I could hear the raindrops plopping up

the buckets and kettles, scattered out

like little ponds around the room.

It was night and I was a boy, alone

and left to listen to that old music.

I liked it. I've liked it ever since.

I loved the helpless people I loved.

That's what a little boy will do,

but a grown man will turn it all

to sadness and let it soak his heart

until he wrings it out and dreams

about another kind of love,

some afternoon beneath a tree.

Burial mounds—that's hilarious.