"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

--Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, ed. by Frederick Glaysher, Liveright, 1985. Accessed at: Poetry Foundation.

A haiku by Yosa Buson

The evening breezes--
The water splashes against
A blue heron's shins.



-- Yosa Buson (1716-1783), from The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology, ed. Faubion Bowers, this haiku trans. Donald Keene, Dover Thrift Editions, 1996, p. 54.

"Audible and Inaudible" by Yannis Ritsos

Audible and Inaudible

A sudden, unexpected movement; his hand
clutched the wound to stop the bleeding,
though we had not heard the gunburst at all
or the whistling of a bullet. A short time later
he lowered his hand and smiled;
but again slowly he placed his palm
on that same spot, pulled out his wallet,
paid the waiter politely, and went out.
Just then the small coffee cup cracked by itself.
That at last we heard clearly.


-- Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), "Audible and Inaudible," trans. from the Greek by Minas Savvas, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, p. 169.

"None of the books have time" by Philip Larkin

None of the books have time
To say how selfless feels,
They make it sound a superior way
Of getting what you want. It isn't at all.

Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.


-- Philip Larkin, "None of the books have time," 1960. Recommended by a friend.

Philip Levine, "What Work Is"

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.


-- Philip Levine, “What Work Is,” from What Work Is: Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Accessed at Poetry Foundation.

"Since Nine O’Clock" by C.P. Cavafy

Since Nine O’Clock

Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
whom could I talk to?

Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has come to haunt me, to remind me
of shut scented rooms,
of past sensual pleasure—what daring pleasure.
And it’s also brought back to me
streets now unrecognizable,
bustling night clubs now closed,
theatres and cafés no longer there.

The shade of my young body
also brought back the things that make us sad:
family grief, separations,
the feelings of my own people, feelings
of the dead so little acknowledged.

Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years have gone by.



-- "Since Nine O'Clock" by C.P. Cavafy, from Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992. Accessed via the Cavafy Archive.

Three poems by Mark Strand (1934–2014)

The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.


The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter

It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I
lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my
name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my
father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that
maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter.
“Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.


Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.



Mark Strand, "The End," from The Continuous Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Mark Strand, "The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter," Poetry, January 2011.
Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole," from Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979, 1980, 2002.
All poems accessed at The Poetry Foundation.

"Vespers" by Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me 
use of earth, anticipating 
some return on investment. I must report 
failure in my assignment, principally 
regarding the tomato plants. 
I think I should not be encouraged to grow 
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold 
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come 
so often here, while other regions get 
twelve weeks of summer. All this 
belongs to you: on the other hand, 
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots 
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart 
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly 
multiplying in the rows. I doubt 
you have a heart, in our understanding of 
that term. You who do not discriminate 
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, 
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know 
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, 
the red leaves of the maple falling 
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible 
for these vines.


-- Louise Glück, "Vespers" ["In your extended absence, you permit me"], The Wild Iris, The Ecco Press, 1992.

I Take Back Everything I've Said by Nicanor Parra

Before I go 
I'm supposed to get a last wish: 
Generous reader 
                        burn this book 
It's not at all what I wanted to say 
Though it was written in blood 
It's not what I wanted to say.

No lot could be sadder than mine 
I was defeated by my own shadow: 
My words took vengeance on me.

Forgive me, reader, good reader 
If I cannot leave you
With a warm embrace, I leave you 
With a forced and sad smile.

Maybe that's all I am 
But listen to my last word: 
I take back everything I've said. 
With the greatest bitterness in the world 
I take back everything I've said.


-- Nicanor Parra, "I Take Back Everything I've Said," trans. Miller Williams, from The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, pp. 210-11.

"Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper" by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
 
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper," trans. Robert Bly, collected in The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words without Borders/HarperCollins, 2010, p. 12.

"The Snowfall Is So Silent" by Miguel de Unamuno

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless;
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls,
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.


-- Miguel de Unamuno, "The Snowfall is So Silent," from Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, trans. Robert Bly, ed. Hardie St. Martin, pub. Harper and Row, 1976. Accessed at Poets.org.

From Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, translated by Robert Bly, edited by Hardie St. Martin, and published by Harper & Row. © 1976 by Hardie St. Martin. Used with permission. All rights reserved. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.nrDWzsOB.dpuf

From Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, translated by Robert Bly, edited by Hardie St. Martin, and published by Harper & Row. © 1976 by Hardie St. Martin. Used with permission. All rights reserved. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.nrDWzsOB.dpuf

The snowfall is so silent, so slow, bit by bit, with delicacy it settles down on the earth and covers over the fields. The silent snow comes down white and weightless; snowfall makes no noise, falls as forgetting falls, flake after flake. It covers the fields gently while frost attacks them with its sudden flashes of white; covers everything with its pure and silent covering; not one thing on the ground anywhere escapes it. And wherever it falls it stays, content and gay, for snow does not slip off as rain does, but it stays and sinks in. The flakes are skyflowers, pale lilies from the clouds, that wither on earth. They come down blossoming but then so quickly they are gone; they bloom only on the peak, above the mountains, and make the earth feel heavier when they die inside. Snow, delicate snow, that falls with such lightness on the head, on the feelings, come and cover over the sadness that lies always in my reason. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

The Snowfall Is So Silent

  by Miguel de Unamuno
translated by Robert Bly

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless; 
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls, 
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off 
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness 
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

The Snowfall Is So Silent

  by Miguel de Unamuno
translated by Robert Bly

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless; 
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls, 
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off 
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness 
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

"District and Circle" by Seamus Heaney

Tunes from a tin whistle underground

Curled up a corridor I’d be walking down

To where I knew I was always going to find

My watcher on the tiles, cap by his side,

His fingers perked, his two eyes eyeing me

In an unaccusing look I’d not avoid,

Or not just yet, since both were out to see

For ourselves.

                     As the music larked and capered

I’d trigger and untrigger a hot coin

Held at the ready, but now my gaze was lowered

For was our traffic not in recognition?

Accorded passage, I would re-pocket and nod,

And he, still eyeing me, would also nod.

***

Posted, eyes front, along the dreamy ramparts

Of escalators ascending and descending

To a monotonous slight rocking in the works,

We were moved along, upstanding,

Elsewhere, underneath, an engine powered,

Rumbled, quickened, evened, quieted.

The white tiles gleamed. In passages that flowed

With draughts from cooler tunnels, I missed the light

Of all-overing, long since mysterious day,

Parks at lunchtime where the sunners lay

On body-heated mown grass regardless,

A resurrection scene minutes before

The resurrection, habitués

Of their garden of delights, of staggered summer.

***

Another level down, the platform thronged.

I re-entered the safety of numbers,

A crowd half straggle-ravelled and half strung

Like a human chain, the pushy newcomers

Jostling and purling underneath the vault,

On their marks to be first through the doors,

Street-loud, then succumbing to herd-quiet...

Had I betrayed or not, myself or him?

Always new to me, always familiar,

This unrepentant, now repentant turn

As I stood waiting, glad of a first tremor,

Then caught up in the now-or-never whelm

Of one and all the full length of the train.

***

Stepping on to it across the gap,

On to the carriage metal, I reached to grab

The stubbly black roof-wort and take my stand

From planted ball of heel to heel of hand

As sweet traction and heavy down-slump stayed me.

I was on my way, well girded yet on edge,

Spot-rooted, buoyed, aloof,

Listening to the dwindling noises off,

My back to the unclosed door, the platform empty;

And wished it could have lasted,

The long between-times pause before the budge

And glaze-over, when any forwardness

Was unwelcome, and bodies readjusted,

Blindsided to themselves and other bodies.

***

So deeper into it, crowd-swept, strap-hanging,

My lofted arm a-swivel like a flail,

My father’s glazed face in my own waning

And craning...

                     Again the growl

Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble

Of iron on iron, then a long centrifugal

Haulage of speed through every dragging socket.

And so by night and by day to be transported

Through galleried earth with them, the only relict

Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,

Reflecting in a window mirror-backed

By blasted weeping rock-walls.

                                              Flicker-lit.

--Seamus Heaney, "District and Circle," District and Circle, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2006, pp. 17-21.

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb   
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
Bends low, comes up twenty years away   
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.


-- Seamus Heaney, "Digging," from Death of a Naturalist, 1966.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


--Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry.

"When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer" - Walt Whitman

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and 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.

-- Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," Leaves of Grass, p. 214.

Ted Kooser, "Flying at Night"

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.


-- Ted Kooser, "Flying at Night," Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.

"Pigeons at Dawn" by Charles Simic

Pigeons at Dawn

Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.

The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.

Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.

We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.


-- Charles Simic, "Pigeons at Dawn," My Noiseless Entourage, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.

"Hidden Things" by C.P. Cavafy

Hidden Things

Let them not seek to discover who I was

from all that I have done and said.

An obstacle was there that transformed

the deeds and the manner of my life.

An obstacle was there that stopped me

many times when I was about to speak.

Only from my most imperceptible deeds

and my most covert writings --

from these alone will they understand me.

But perhaps it isn't worth exerting

such care and such effort for them to know me.

Later, in the more perfect society,

surely some other person created like me

will appear and act freely.

-- C.P. Cavafy, "Hidden Things," The Complete Poems of Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalven, Harcourt, Inc., 1989, p. 268.

"Far from kingdoms" by Patrizia Cavalli

Far from kingdoms
how steady is the room!
Come, breathe close with me
so I may discover the sweetness
of many imperfections, some missing
tooth, some extra wrinkle, and your body
worn out slightly by carelessness.



– Patrizia Cavalli, "Far from kingdoms," My poems will not change the world, Exile Editions, Toronto, 1998.

from "Stray Birds" by Rabindranath Tagore

Stray Birds [excerpts]

44

The world rushes on over the strings of the lingering heart making the music of sadness.

46

God finds himself by creating.

48

The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

49

I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power but I am one with the living creatures that are crushed by it.

67

God grows weary of great kingdoms, but never of little flowers.

68

Wrong cannot afford defeat but Right can.

86

"How far are you from me, O Fruit?"
"I am hidden in your heart, O Flower."

134

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

154

By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.


-- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.