Tu Fu: Standing Alone

Empty skies. And beyond, one hawk.
Between river banks, two white gulls
Drift and flutter. Fit for an easy kill,
To and fro, they follow contentment.

Dew shrouds grasses. Spiderwebs are still
Not gathered in. The purpose driving
Heaven become human now, I stand where
Uncounted sorrows begin beginning alone.

          --Tu Fu, trans. David Hinton

Ralph Waldo Emerson: I Am Not Alone

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unaknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. 

         --Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Nature"

Amy Fleury: When at Last I Join

(Amy Fleury)

A few weeks ago I read a poem in Ted Kooser's column. I liked the poem so much I looked up the poet, Amy Fleury, and bought her latest book, Sympathetic Magic. Every single poem is incredibly good. Seriously. I don't remember the last time I read a collection of poetry that didn't have even one weak poem. Here is one of my favorites:

When at Last I Join

When at last I join the democracy of dirt,
            a tussock earthed over and grass healed,
I'll gladly conspire in my own diminishment.

            Let a pink peony bloom from my chest
and may it be visited by a charm of bees,
            who will then carry the talcum of pollen

and nectar of clover to the grove where they hive.
            Let the honey they make be broken
from comb, and release from its golden hold,

            onto some animal tongue, my soul.

                                 --Amy Fleury

Maurice Manning: A Contemplation of the Celestial World

(Image from The Poetry Foundation)

A Contemplation of the Celestial World

Whoever had the thought to render bear fat
and burn it in a lamp was touched a bit,
or bored, or left alone to ponder light
too long in some dank cabin: bear fat pops
and stinks and brings no cheer to our condition.
My brother Squire would burn such lamps to read
the Scriptures: eyelids smudged, his head immersed
in smoke; his Bible, like a gutted beast,
spread open to Leviticus; his lips:
for prayer. Then I would go outside to muse
upon the many things which need no light,
the chiefest being tears and copulation,
then others, like remembering glad days
or moments which occur without regard
for stars or lamps—my thought: what matters most
is borne of darkness then makes its own pure light.

              --Maurice Manning

Wendell Berry: Landscape

(Fishing Alone. Wu Zhen, from here)

Landscape

Winding out of the hills,
the small stream enters the river.
It began coming down
long before these trees arrived.
In his boat the fisherman waits
like the hills along the stream
for what will be brought to him
and what will be taken away.

After the painting by Wu Chen

--Wendell Berry, from An Eastward Look

Wendell Berry: Tu Fu

(Tu Fu, Tang Dynasty Chinese poet)

Tu Fu 

As I sit here
in my little boat
tied to the shore
of the passing river
in a time of ruin,
I think of you,
old ancestor,
and wish you well. 

      --Wendell Berry, from Leavings

Ted Kooser: A Glimpse of the Eternal

(Image credit: loc.gov)

Just now,
a sparrow lighted
on a pine bough
right outside
my bedroom window
and a puff
of yellow pollen
flew away.

--Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows

Vachel Lindsay: The Golden Orchids

(Vachel Lindsay: Nov. 10, 1879-Dec. 5, 1931)

Anniversary of Vachel Lindsay's birth. The "Singing Poet." American Troubadour. Realized the potential of poetry as performance. His Nature poetry, like the golden orchids in the following poem, sits in the mind "delicate, serene and golden."

The Golden Orchids

In the snow-bound waterfalls we found the golden orchids
Nodding in the moss beneath the thunder.
Though many a snowstorm there had come and gone,
Though many a wind had deeply snowed them under,
They nodded there, and slept in spite of thunder,
In delicate, serene and golden wonder.

                 --Vachel Lindsay

John Milton: The Temptation and Fall of Eve

Today is the anniversary of John Milton's death. What's there to say about Milton? An incredible mind--after he became blind he composed his verse in his head and dictated it later to his amanuensis. I also recall hearing or reading somewhere that there is good evidence that he had learned all of the accumulated human knowledge up to his time (at least knowledge in the Western tradition). The following is an excerpt from his most famous work, Paradise Lost. The illustration is from William Blake, whose thoughts on Milton are most interesting.

. . . her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat.
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. 

           --John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX.780-784

Amy Lowell: Wind and Silver

(Image credit: Harvard Gazette)

Amy Lowell, an extraordinary writer of Imagist poetry, once wrote that poetry should be "hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite." The following poem shows how well she could attain her ideal.

Wind and Silver 

Greatly shining,
The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky;
And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales
As she passes over them.
              --Amy Lowell

William Cullen Bryant: from Thanatopsis

(Nov. 3, 1794-June 12, 1878)

Not a huge fan of Bryant, but he does have his moments. This is the opening few lines of perhaps his most famous poem, "Thanatopsis." A good example of American Romanticism. Besides, you've got to love a guy with a beard like his.

        To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.

                           --William Cullen Bryant, from "Thanatopsis"

James Thurber: It takes away from the beauty of the flowers anyway

Humorist and cartoonist James Thurber, Dec. 8, 1894-Nov. 2, 1961. Very funny man. Famously bad eyesight. I appreciate the several levels of meaning in this bit of humor:

(Credit: Wiki Commons)

I passed all the other courses that I took at my University, but I could never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. “I can’t see anything,” I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury, claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended that I couldn’t. “It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway,” I used to tell him. “We are not concerned with beauty in this course,” he would say. “We are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flars.” “Well,” I’d say, “I can’t see anything.” “Try it just once again,” he’d say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again a nebulous milky substance—a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. “I see what looks like a lot of milk,” I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or rather, for himself. And I would look again and see milk.

                                         --James Thurber, from My Life and Hard Times

Wendell Berry: Lysimachia Nummularia

Lysimachia Nummularia

It is called moneywort
for its "coinlike" leaves
and perhaps its golden flowers.
I love it because it is
a naturalized exotic
that does no harm,
and for its lowly thriving,
and for its actual
unlikeness to money.

          --Wendell Berry, from Given

Denise Levertov: Passage

(Oct. 24, 1923-Dec. 20, 1997)

Passage

The spirit that walked upon the face of the waters
walks the meadow of long grass;
green shines to silver where the spirit passes.

Wind from the compass points, sun at meridian,
these are forms the spirit enters,
breath, ruach, light that is witness and by which we witness.

The grasses numberless, bowing and rising, silently
cry hosanna as the spirit
moves them and moves burnishing

over and again upon mountain pastures
a day of spring, a needle's eye
space and time are passing through like a swathe of silk.

                                            --Denise Levertov

W. S. Merwin: Witness

(Image credit: Princeton Alumni Weekly)

Witness 

I want to tell what the forests
were like 

I will have to speak
in a forgotten language

                           --W. S. Merwin

Running

Running

I return today to Shingle Creek,

walking in the fine fall afternoon

alone. Wading through the shallows

to the east bank, right where the creek

cuts close to the old Bronson place,

I feel like the last ancient Israelite

crossing the Red Sea, barely ahead

of Pharaoh’s chariots.

                                     Crouching low

under the barb-wire fence I swish

through the shin-high grass, the humming

dragonflies hunting insects, shining

their blues and greens

in the lowering sun.

                                 I hear

a tractor in the distance, the rumble

carrying far in the clear air,

and I think about that day

we ran, you and I, making paths

through the field, pretending we were

dirt bike champions, shifting gears

by the rising tone of our growls.

For hours we ran, stopping just to catch

a lazy red corn snake sunning

on a sweetgum stump.

                                     I know

that with these old knees

I couldn’t run like that now, not by

any luck or necessity; and you,

old friend, only in memory

will ever run here again.

--------------------------------------------

For dVerse MeetingTheBar. We are writing about friends, friendship, loss, in honor of Dave King. Dave was a regular contributor to the online poetry world (at least until his health limited his participation), and his kindness and craft will be missed.

Wendell Berry: The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my

inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

                                          --Wendell Berry

----------------------------------------------------------

Sometime today a discussion between Bill Moyers and Wendell Berry is supposed to be posted on Mr. Moyers' site. I am impatiently waiting. Here is a clip of the show, wherein Mr. Berry reads the above poem.

Relics

Relics

The mountains that in ages

past were level plateaus;

the shoreline that has

not kept its place;

the bones of extinction layered

like words in a holy book,

telling the story

of what once was;

the changing sky,

a glimpse of the universe

passing, rolled together

as a scroll.

Everything

everywhere

always

never

            the same,

yesterday’s relics,

like the boarded-up shops

in any small town.

---------------------------------------------

For dVerse OpenLinkNight. Claudia's post had me thinking about culture, history, place, and this is what came out. 

when my time comes

when my time comes

these days I rarely

have a prayer to say

but one in my

stumbling way

to whatever

listening gods

when my time comes

let me be as the trees

releasing browning leaves

letting them tumble

gently down

------------------------------------------

Goodness. It's been a while. Tonight for dVerse Meeting the Bar, Victoria Slotto has tempted us to write a spicy, erotic, or touchy-subject poem (death, religion, politics, hot-button issues) using metaphor and image to elaborate the point. Of course I chose to write about death, a touchy subject for some people, with a little religion thrown in for good measure.

Senryu and Haiku

Senryu

this delicate skin

housing organ blood bone soul

a wilderness tent

Haiku

the snow falls in piles

floating on the frozen ground

like little white ghosts

Tuesday night means dVerse OpenLinkNight. It's actually Wed. morning, but there's still some time to write a poem, send it in, and join in the friendship of fellow poets.