THE OTHER TWO

All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos,
Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.

Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:
The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs
Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.

Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.

Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of tenderness dove through their purgatory
Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,
Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.
Nightly we left them in their desert place.
Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:

We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.
We might embrace, but those two never did,
Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,
Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter-
Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and blood;
As if, above love's ruinage, we were
The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.

Sylvia Plath, April 26, 2024

CRUMBS OR THE LOAF

​

If one should tell them what's clearly seen 
They'd not understand; if they understood they would not believe; 
If they understood and believed they'd say, 
"Hater of men, annihilating with a sterile enormous 
Splendor our lives: where are our lives?" 
A little chilled perhaps, but not hurt. But it's quite true 
The invulnerable love is not bought for nothing. 
It is better no doubt to give crumbs than the loaf: make fables again, 
Tell people not to fear death, toughen 
Their bones if possible with bitter fables not to fear life. 
— And one's own, not to have pity too much; 
For it seems compassion sticks longer than the other colors,

in this bleaching cloth.

​

Robinson Jeffers, April 22, 2024

​

WANTING TO DIE

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.

I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.   

Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.

I know well the grass blades you mention,   

the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,   

have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,   

have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,   

warmer than oil or water,

I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.

Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.   

Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don’t always die,

but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet   

that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue! —

that, all by itself, becomes a passion.   

Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,   

to so delicately undo an old wound,   

to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,   

raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,   

leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,

something unsaid, the phone off the hook

and the love whatever it was, an infection.

Anne Sexton, April 19, 2024

HYPOCRITE WOMEN

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak   

of our own doubts, while dubiously   

we mother man in his doubt!

And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees   

the sweet rain drifting through western air   

a white sweating bull of a poet told us

our cunts are ugly – why didn't we   

admit we have thought so too? (And   

what shame? They are not for the eye!)

No, they are dark and wrinkled and hairy,   

caves of the Moon... And when a   

dark humming fills us, a

coldness towards life,

we are too much women to   

own to such unwomanliness.

Whorishly with the psychopomp   

we play and plead – and say

nothing of this later. And our dreams,

with what frivolity we have pared them   

like toenails, clipped them like ends of   

split hair.

Denise Levertov, April 15, 2024

THIS BE THE VERSE

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, April 12, 2024

INSOMNIA

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

Elizabeth Bishop, April 8, 2024

SEPARATION

I unsubscribe from people! It’s more humane

to be a beast among beasts than to be a costume

among gray costumes, hovering, like over a game

of chess, over the pile of premature babies, who,

cast out of their incubators, flail like lobsters before

being put into a boiling pot.

Bomb, bomb, you monster, kill water fountains,

cemeteries and hospitals, I want no part in mankind

any more! I’m breaking up with you, too, my comrade

friend, a professor of freedom, whose language once

was sharp as a firing pin, yet, nowadays, in TV debates,

you let them sweep and polish around your word

like in front of the curling stone, guiding it into

the fold with the softest possible collision on ice.

I’m cutting ties with people! The times of rebellion

and resistance are over, and the dog will lie with

the cur once more.

Milorad Pejić (Translated by Esma Hadžiselimović), April 5, 2024

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS, CUT OFF THE TELEPHONE

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Wystan Hugh Auden, April 1, 2024

THE GREAT BLACK HERON

Since I stroll in the woods more often
than on this frequented path, it's usually
trees I observe; but among fellow humans
what I like best is to see an old woman
fishing alone at the end of a jetty,
hours on end, plainly content.
The Russians mushroom-hunting after a rain
trail after themselves a world of red sarafans,
nightingales, samovars, stoves to sleep on
(though without doubt those are not
what they can remember). Vietnamese families
fishing or simply sitting as close as they can
to the water, make me recall that lake in Hanoi
in the amber light, our first, jet-lagged evening,
peace in the war we had come to witness.
This woman engaged in her pleasure evokes
an entire culture, tenacious field-flower
growing itself among the rows of cotton
in red-earth country, under the feet
of mules and masters. I see her
a barefoot child by a muddy river
learning her skill with the pole. What battles
has she survived, what labors?
She's gathered up all the time in the world
– nothing else – and waits for scanty trophies,
complete in herself as a heron.

Denise Levertov, March 29, 2024

THE STARRY NIGHT

​

               That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word                 —religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.

                                                  Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist

except where one black-haired tree slips

up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.

Even the moon bulges in its orange irons   

to push children, like a god, from its eye.

The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how   

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,   

sucked up by that great dragon, to split   

from my life with no flag,

no belly,

no cry.

Anne Sexton, March 25, 2024

MORNING SONG

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry   

Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Sylvia Plath, March 22, 2024

WILD OATS

About twenty years ago

Two girls came in where I worked —

A bosomy English rose

And her friend in specs I could talk to.   

Faces in those days sparked

The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt   

If ever one had like hers:

But it was the friend I took out,

And in seven years after that   

Wrote over four hundred letters,   

Gave a ten-guinea ring

I got back in the end, and met   

At numerous cathedral cities   

Unknown to the clergy. I believe

I met beautiful twice. She was trying   

Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

Parting, after about five

Rehearsals, was an agreement   

That I was too selfish, withdrawn,   

And easily bored to love.

Well, useful to get that learnt.   

In my wallet are still two snaps

Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.   

Unlucky charms, perhaps.

​

Philip Larkin, March 18, 2024

​

THIS IS THE FIRST THING

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

Philip Larkin, March 15, 2024

EX VOTO

​

               Джонатану Аарону

​

Нечто как поле в Венгрии, кажется только без

невинности такового. Нечто долгое, как река,

но без мостов последней. Взгляд прищуренных глаз - разрез,

даже в пейзаже боль вызывающий. Наверняка

посмертная перспектива там, где слову дано

эхо, что в общем больше, чем названный им предмет.

Здесь даже ангел чем-то блондинку напомнит, но

ту, что Освенцим сэйлов давно разменял на нет.

Здесь отмечают камнем место, где воробей

сиживал прежде. Пальмы в аквариумах витрин

предскажут москиту будущее, его боевой судьбе -

новую плоскость - из-за потребности быть внутри

виллы, а лучше - отеля. Чем дальше уводит след,

тем больше в руках пространства напоминаешь воск.

Айсберг плывёт бесцельно. И, подходя к земле,

тает мучительно, формой напоминая мозг.

Joseph Brodsky, March 11, 2024

INVITATION TO MISS MARIANNE MOORE

​

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
    please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
    please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
    please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
    Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
    please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
    please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
    so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
    please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
    please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
    please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
    please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
    please come flying.

Elizabeth Bishop, March 8, 2024

WHO’S WHO

A shilling life will give you all the facts: 
How Father beat him, how he ran away, 
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts 
Made him the greatest figure of his day; 
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night, 
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:
Some of the last researchers even write 
Love made him weep his pints like you and me. 

With all his honours on, he sighed for one 
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home; 
Did little jobs about the house with skill 
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still 
Or potter round the garden; answered some 
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

Wystan Hugh Auden, March 4, 2024

TO MY DAUGHTER

Give me another life, and I'll be singing
in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting
there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,
in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

Yet partly because no century from now on will ever manage
without caffeine or jazz. I'll sustain this damage,
and through my cracks and pores, varnish and dust all over,
observe you, in twenty years, in your full flower.

On the whole, bear in mind that I'll be around. Or rather,
that an inanimate object might be your father,
especially if the objects are older than you, or larger.
So keep an eye on them always, for they no doubt will judge you.

Love those things anyway, encounter or no encounter.
Besides, you may still remember a silhouette, a contour,
while I'll lose even that, along with the other luggage.
Hence, these somewhat wooden lines in our common language.

Joseph Brodsky, March 1, 2024

WHEN I BEHOLD THE GREATEST

When I behold the greatest and most wise

Fall out of heaven, wings not by pride struck numb

Like Satan's, but to gain some humbler crumb

Of pittance from penurious granaries;

And when I see under each new disguise

The same cowardice of custom, the same dumb

Devil that drove our Wordsworth to become

Apologist of kings and priests and lies;

And how a man may find in all he loathes

Contentment after all, and so endear it

By cowardly craft it grows his inmost own; –

Then I renew my faith with firmer oaths,

And bind with more tremendous vows a spirit

That, often fallen, never has lain prone.

Robinson Jeffers, February 26, 2024

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well.
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
See the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Anne Sexton, February 23, 2024

LAST WORDS

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already — the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.
I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!
My mirror is clouding over —
A few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all.
The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet.

I do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam
In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can't stop it.
One day it won't come back. Things aren't like that.
They stay, their little particular lusters
Warmed by much handling. They almost purr.
When the soles of my feet grow cold,
The blue eye of my tortoise will comfort me.
Let me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots
Bloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell.
They will roll me up in bandages, they will store my heart
Under my feet in a neat parcel.
I shall hardly know myself. It will be dark,
And the shine of these small things sweeter than the face of Ishtar.

Sylvia Plath, February 19, 2024

DIVINELY SUPERFLUOUS BEAUTY

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game
of seals,
Over and under the ocean …
Divinely superfluous beauty
Rules the games, presides over destinies,
makes trees grow
And hills tower, waves fall.
The incredible beauty of joy
Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our
loves too
Be joined, there is not a maiden
Burns and thirsts for love
More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals
while the wings
Weave like a web in the air
Divinely superfluous beauty.

Robinson Jeffers, February 16, 2024

THE WINGS

Something hangs in back of me,
I can’t see it, can’t move it.

​

I know it’s black,
a hump on my back.

​

It’s heavy. You
can’t see it.

​

What’s in it? Don’t tell me
you don’t know. It’s

​

what you told me about –
black

​

inimical power, cold
whirling out of it and

​

around me and
sweeping you flat.

​

But what if,
like a camel, it’s

​

pure energy I store,
and carry humped and heavy?

​

Not black, not
that terror, stupidity

​

of cold rage; or black
only for being pent there?

​

What if released in air
it became a white

​

source of light, a fountain
of light? Could all that weight

​

be the power of flight?
Look inward: see me

​

with embryo wings, one
feathered in soot, the other

​

blazing ciliations of ember, pale
flare-pinions. Well–

​

could I go
on one wing,

​

the white one?

​

Denise Levertov, February 12, 2024

THE FIRST GRASS

​

It rained three autumn days; then close to frost

Under clear starlight the night shivering was.

The dawn rose cold and colorless as glass,

And when we wakened rains and clouds were lost.

The ocean surged and shouted stormy-tossed.

I went down to companion him. Alas,

What faint voice by the way? The sudden grass

Cried with thin lips as I the valley crossed,

Saying blade by blade, “Although the warm sweet rain

Awakened us, this world is all too cold.

We never dreamed it thus.”—”Your champion bold

Is risen,” I said; “he in an hour or twain

Will comfort you.” I passed. Above the dune

Stood the wan splendorless daylight-waning moon.

Robinson Jeffers, February 9, 2024

​

THE APPLICANT

​

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit - -

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Sylvia Plath, February 5, 2024

MERRITT PARKWAY

​

As if it were

forever that they move, that we

keep moving –

Under a wan sky where

as the lights went on a star

pierced the haze & now

follows steadily

a constant

above our six lanes

the dreamlike continuum…

And the people—ourselves!

the humans from inside the

cars apparent

only at gasoline stops

unsure,

eying each other

drink coffee hastily at the

slot machines & hurry

back to the cars

vanish

into them forever, to

keep moving —

Houses now & then beyond the

sealed road, the trees/tress, bushes

passing by, passing

the cars that

keep moving ahead of

us, past us, pressing behind us

and

over left, those that come

toward us shining too brightly

moving relentlessly

in six lanes, gliding

north & south, speeding with

a slurred sound —

Denise Levertov, February 2, 2024

AND THE STARS

Perhaps you did not know how bright last night,

Especially above your seaside door,

Was all the marvelous starlit sky, and wore

White harmonies of very shining light.

Perhaps you did not want to seek the sight

Of that remembered rapture any more. –

But then at least you must have heard the shore

Roar with reverberant voices thro’ the night.

Those stars were lit with longing of my own,

And the ocean’s moan was full of my own pain.

Yet doubtless it was well for both of us

You did not come, but left me there alone.

I hardly ought to see you much again;

And stars, we know, are often dangerous.

Robinson Jeffers, January 29, 2024

GALATEA ENCORE

As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't

talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter,

immobile, by a leaf-coated pond

a statue stands white like a blight of winter.

After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins

and outs of centuries, pestered heather.

That's what coming full circle means -

when your countenance starts to resemble weather,

when Pygmalion's vanished. And you are free

to cloud your folds, to bare the navel.

Future at last! That is, bleached debris

of a glacier amid the five-lettered "never."

Hence the routine of a goddess, nee

alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on

the heart of color and the temperature of the knee.

That's what it looks like inside a virgin.

Joseph Brodsky, January 26, 2024

XLVII

De döda ett namn

de levande ett ansikte och tio fingrar

Pentti Saarikoski, January 22, 2024

ARIEL

Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue   

Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,   

How one we grow,

Pivot of heels and knees! — The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to   

The brown arc

Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye   

Berries cast dark   

Hooks —

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   

Shadows.

Something else

Hauls me through air —

Thighs, hair;

Flakes from my heels.

White

Godiva, I unpeel —

Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I

Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.   

The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.   

And I

Am the arrow,

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with the drive   

Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Sylvia Plath, January 19, 2024

THE SPRINGTIME

The red eyes of rabbits   

aren't sad. No one passes

the sad golden village in a barge

any more. The sunset   

will leave it alone. If the   

curtains hang askew   

it is no one's fault.

Around and around and around

everywhere the same sound   

of wheels going, and things   

growing older, growing   

silent. If the dogs

bark to each other

all night, and their eyes   

flash red, that's

nobody's business. They have   

a great space of dark to   

bark across. The rabbits   

will bare their teeth at   

the spring moon.

Denise Levertov, January 15, 2024

THE LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT

When I throw my head back and howl   

People (women mostly) say                                                               

But you’ve always done what you want, 

You always get your own way                                                            

— A perfectly vile and foul                                                               

Inversion of all that’s been.                                                                

What the old ratbags mean                                           

Is I’ve never done what I don’t.                                    

So the shit in the shuttered chateau                               

Who does his five hundred words                                

Then parts out the rest of the day                                 

Between bathing and booze and birds    

Is far off as ever, but so                                                

Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod                           

(Six kids, and the wife in pod,                                      

And her parents coming to stay)…                               

Life is an immobile, locked,                                                               

Three-handed struggle between                                    

Your wants, the world’s for you, and (worse)

The unbeatable slow machine                                                             

That brings what you’ll get. Blocked,                          

They strain round a hollow stasis                                 

Of havings-to, fear, faces,                                             

Days sift down it constantly. Years.

Philip Larkin, January 12, 2024

THE LOW SKY

No vulture is here, hardly a hawk,

Could long wings or great eyes fly

Under this low-lidded soft sky?

On the wide heather the curlew's whistle

Dies of its echo, it has no room

Under the lid of this tomb.

But one to whom mind and imagination

Sometimes used to seem burdensome

Is glad to lie down awhile in the tomb.

Among stones and quietness

The mind dissolves without a sound,

The flesh drops into the ground.

Robinson Jeffers, January 8, 2024

MIRROR

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath, January 5, 2024

OLD

I'm afraid of needles. 
I'm tired of rubber sheets and tubes. 
I'm tired of faces that I don't know 
and now I think that death is starting. 
Death starts like a dream, 
full of objects and my sister's laughter. 
We are young and we are walking 
and picking wild blueberries. 
all the way to Damariscotta. 
Oh Susan, she cried. 
you've stained your new waist. 
Sweet taste — 
my mouth so full 
and the sweet blue running out 
all the way to Damariscotta. 
What are you doing? Leave me alone! 
Can't you see I'm dreaming? 
In a dream you are never eighty.

Anne Sexton, December 31, 2023

THE POEM UNWRITTEN

For weeks the poem of your body, 
of my hands upon your body
stroking, sweeping, in the rite of
worship, going
their way of wonder down
from neck-pulse to breast-hair to level
belly to cock – 
for weeks that poem, that prayer
unwritten.
That poem unwritten, the act
left to the mind, undone. The years
a forest of giant stones, of fossil stumps,
blocking the altar.

Denise Levertov, December 29, 2023

280

​

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through – 

​

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum – 
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb – 

​

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

​

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here – 

​

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down – 
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then – 

Emily Dickinson, December 25, 2023

HELL

“Circles of Dante – and in that dirt-roofed cave,

each family had marked off its yard of space;

no light except their coal fires laid in buckets,

no draft of air except their smoke, no water,

no hole to hide the excrement. I walked on,

afraid of stumbling on the helpless bodies,

afraid of circling. I soon forgot the Fascist

or German deserters I was hunting—

screaming children, old men, old women, coughing and groaning.

Then hit my head on the low dirt, and reached out

to keep from falling or hurting anyone;

and what I touched was not the filthy floor:

a woman’s hand returning my quick grasp,

her finger tracing the lifeline on my palm.”

​

Robert Lowell, December 22, 2023

CONVERSATION

The tumult in the heart 
keeps asking questions. 
And then it stops and undertakes to answer 
in the same tone of voice. 
No one could tell the difference. 

Uninnocent, these conversations start, 
and then engage the senses, 
only half-meaning to. 
And then there is no choice, 
and then there is no sense; 

until a name 
and all its connotation are the same.

Elizabeth Bishop, December 18, 2023

SMALL WIRE

My faith 

is a great weight 

hung on a small wire, 

as doth the spider 

hang her baby on a thin web, 

as doth the vine, 

twiggy and wooden, 

hold up grapes 

like eyeballs, 

as many angels 

dance on the head of a pin. 

God does not need 

too much wire to keep Him there, 

just a thin vein, 

with blood pushing back and forth in it, 

and some love. 

As it has been said: 

Love and a cough 

cannot be concealed. 

Even a small cough. 

Even a small love. 

So if you have only a thin wire, 

God does not mind. 

He will enter your hands 

as easily as ten cents used to 

bring forth a Coke.

Anne Sexton, December 15, 2023

THE RAINWALKERS

An old man whose black face
shines golden-brown as wet pebbles
under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis-
proportionate size, in the rain,
in the relaxed early-evening avenue.

The small sleek one wants to stop,
docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket,
but the young tall curly one
wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalkentices

him to arcane happenings.

Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man
smiles and grumbles to himself.
The lights change: the avenue's
endless nave echoes notes of
liturgical red. He drifts

between his dogs' desires.
The three of them are enveloped -
turning now to go crosstown - in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.

Denise Levertov, December 11, 2023

SVARTA VYKORT

I

Almanackan fullskriven, framtid okänd.
Kabeln nynnar folkvisan utan hemland.
Snöfall i det blystilla havet. Skuggor
brottas på kajen.

II

Mitt i livet händer att döden kommer
och tar mått på människan. Det besöket
glöms och livet fortsätter. Men kostymen
sys i det tysta.

​

Tomas Tranströmer, December 8, 2023 

​

CHEMINE DE FER

Alone on the railroad track 
I walked with pounding heart. 
The ties were too close together 
or maybe too far apart. 

The scenery was impoverished: 
scrub-pine and oak; beyond 
its mingled gray-green foliage 
I saw the little pond 

where the dirty old hermit lives, 
lie like an old tear 
holding onto its injuries 
lucidly year after year. 

The hermit shot off his shot-gun 
and the tree by his cabin shook. 
Over the pond went a ripple 
The pet hen went chook-chook. 

"Love should be put into action!" 
screamed the old hermit. 
Across the pond an echo 
tried and tried to confirm it.

Elizabeth Bishop, December 4, 2023

BLACKBERRYING

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks —

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.   

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,   

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me   

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock   

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space   

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths   

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Sylvia Plath, December 1, 2023

PEOPLE AT NIGHT

A night that cuts between you and you
and you   and you   and you
and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing
through a crowd. We won't
    look for each other, either-
wander off, each alone, not looking
in the slow crowd. Among sideshows
    under movie signs,
    pictures made of a million lights,
    giants that move and again move
    again, above a cloud of thick smells,
    franks, roasted nutmeats-

Or going up to some apartment, yours
    or yours, finding
someone sitting in the dark:
who is it really? So you switch the 
light on to see: you know the name but
who is it?
     But you won't see.

The fluorescent light flickers sullenly, a
pause. But you command. It grabs
each face and holds it up
by the hair for you, mask after mask.
      You   and   you and I   repeat
      gestures that make do when speech
      has failed and talk
      and talk, laughing, saying
      'I', and 'I',
meaning 'Anybody'.
       No one.

Denise Levertov, November 27, 2023

WORDS

Be careful of words, 
even the miraculous ones. 
For the miraculous we do our best, 
sometimes they swarm like insects 
and leave not a sting but a kiss. 
They can be as good as fingers. 
They can be as trusty as the rock 
you stick your bottom on. 
But they can be both daisies and bruises. 
Yet I am in love with words. 
They are doves falling out of the ceiling. 
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap. 
They are the trees, the legs of summer, 
and the sun, its passionate face. 
Yet often they fail me. 
I have so much I want to say, 
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc. 
But the words aren't good enough, 
the wrong ones kiss me. 
Sometimes I fly like an eagle 
but with the wings of a wren. 
But I try to take care 
and be gentle to them. 
Words and eggs must be handled with care. 
Once broken they are impossible 
things to repair.

Anne Sexton, November 24, 2023

VULTURE

​

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you."
But how beautiful he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering
away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten
by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes–
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment;
What a life after death.  

Robinson Jeffers, November 20, 2023

I AM VERTICAL

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf, 
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, 
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, 
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, 
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping 
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation, 
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Sylvia Plath, November 17, 2023

HER KIND

I have gone out, a possessed witch, 
haunting the black air, braver at night; 
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch 
over the plain houses, light by light: 
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. 
A woman like that is not a woman, quite. 
I have been her kind. 

I have found the warm caves in the woods, 
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, 
closets, silks, innumerable goods; 
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: 
whining, rearranging the disaligned. 
A woman like that is misunderstood. 
I have been her kind. 

I have ridden in your cart, driver, 
waved my nude arms at villages going by, 
learning the last bright routes, survivor 
where your flames still bite my thigh 
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. 
A woman like that is not ashamed to die. 
I have been her kind.

Anne Sexton, November 13, 2023

MIDLE AGE

Now the midwinter grind

is on me, New York

drills through my nerves,

as I walk

the chewed-up streets.

​

At forty-five,

what next, what next?

At every corner,

I meet my Father,

my age, still alive.

​

Father, forgive me

my injuries,

as I forgive

those I

have injured!

You never climbed

Mount Sion, yet left

dinosaur

death-steps on the crust,

where I must walk.

Robert Lowell, November 10, 2023

LETTER TO N. Y.

For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch, 
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so teribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

— Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing, 
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

Elizabeth Bishop, November 6, 2023

SOILED DOVE

Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she 
married a corporation lawyer who picked her from 
a Ziegfeld chorus. 
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid 
for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing 
and dancing. 
She loved one man and he loved six women and the 
game was changing her looks, calling for more and 
more massage money and high coin for the beauty 
doctors. 
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, 
reads in the day's papers what her husband is 
doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires 
a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders 
sometimes how one man is coming along with 
six women.

Carl Sandburg, November 3, 2023

WHAT WERE THEY LIKE?

​

Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled 
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.

Denise Levertov, October 30, 2023

JESUS AND ME BEFORE THE TOWN ROOSTER

His call is no longer very important.
The beating of his wings not any more.
A high chimney through the roof pierced
by its scream wakes us long before.

​

Lo how his wings are cropped away,
and his spurs blunt, quite blunt now.
Dawns of the siren-woken day
to him are all unknown anyhow.

​

His voice used to have the pride of a prince,
Daybreak used to shiver on crops the dew.
It gave armies at midnight the creeps
Before the battle, signaling his wrath true.

​

And now, with this urban soot
he tends to grow blacker every day.
In a little while no one will know
Whether he’s a rooster or a crow.

​

Therefore let him for once grow
wings for a journey distant and high,
let him flock with swallows swift
and to a kind of south with them fly.

Nikola Šop (Translated by Zvonimir Radeljković, Omer Hadžiselimović and Keith Doubt), October 27, 2023

408

Unit, like Death, for Whom?
True, like the Tomb,
Who tells no secret
Told to Him —
The Grave is strict —
Tickets admit
Just two — the Bearer —
And the Borne —
And seat — just One —
The Living — tell —
The Dying — but a Syllable —
The Coy Dead — None —
No Chatter — here — no tea —
So Babbler, and Bohea — stay there —
But Gravity — and Expectation — and Fear —
A tremor just, that All's not sure.

Emily Dickinson, October 23, 2023

SONNET 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

William Shakespeare, October 20, 2023

THE EVIL SEEKERS

We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean —
we are born and that ought to be enough,
we ought to be able to carry on from that
but one must learn about evil,
learn what is subhuman,
learn how the blood pops out like a scream,
one must see the night
before one can realize the day,
one must listen hard to the animal within,
one must walk like a sleepwalker
on the edge of a roof,
one must throw some part of her body
into the devil's mouth.
Odd stuff, you'd say.
But I'd say
you must die a little,
have a book of matches go off in your hand,
see your best friend copying your exam,
visit an Indian reservation and see
their plastic feathers,
the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear
the lock twist into his gut.
After all that
one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones,
the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it with a mattress,
and then tear it from its roots
and bury it,
bury it.

Anne Sexton, October 16, 2023

LILIES

​

In both field and mountain the white lilies have bloomed

​

So in field and mountain the lily seems to speak
In mount and dale every lily
Seems to blaze

​

And when so pensive among the blooming flowers
You silently
Pass

​

Maybe like me you think of those

Who passed silently by here
Before you

​

Among the blooming white flowers

​

Wondering just as you do
What are these white
Lilies

​

Are they someone’s rejoicings
Or
Wailings

​

The signs of those who once passed
In these pathless regions and
Hopelessly
Trod

​

In search of white flowers

Mak Dizdar (Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović), October 13, 2023

​

CLIMBING THE HILL WITHIN THE DEAFENING WIND

​

Climbing the hill within the deafening wind

The blood unfurled itself, was proudly borne

High over meadows where white horses stood;

Up the steep woods it echoed like a horn

Till at the summit under shining trees

It cried: Submission is the only good;

Let me become an instrument sharply stringed

For all things to strike music as they please.

How to recall such music, when the street

Darkens? Among the rain and stone places

I find only an ancient sadness falling,

Only hurrying and troubled faces,

The walking of girls' vulnerable feet,

The heart in its own endless silence kneeling. 

Philip Larkin, October 9, 2023

FÄNGELSE 

Pojken dricker mjölk

och somnar trygg i sin cell,

en moder av sten.

Tomas Tranströmer, October 6, 2023

HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 1914

1914. Nineteen-fourteen! Oh, nineteen-fourteen!
Ah, some years shouldn't be let out of quarantine!
Well, this is one of them. Things get raw:
In Paris, the editor of Figaro
is shot dead by the wife of the French finance
minister, for printing this lady's - sans
merci, should we add? - steamy letters to
- ah, who cares!.. And apparently it's c'est tout
also for a socialist and pacifist
of all times, Jean Jaures. He who shook his fist
at the Parliament urging hot heads to cool it,
dies, as he dines, by some bigot's bullet
in a cafe. Ah, those early, single
shots of Nineteen-fourteen! ah, the index finger
of an assassin! ah, white puffs in the blue acrylic!..
There is something pastoral, nay! idyllic
about these murders. About that Irish enema
the Brits suffer in Dublin again. And about Panama
Canal's grand opening. Or about that doc
and his open heart surgery on his dog...
Well, to make these things disappear forever,
the Archduke is arriving at Sarajevo;
and there is in the crowd that unshaven, timid
youth, with his handgun.... (To be continued).

​

Joseph Brodsky, October 2, 2023

DEMON

A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand

over the demon's mouth sometimes... – D. H. Lawrence

I mentioned my demon to a friend

and the friend swam in oil and came forth to me

greasy and cryptic

and said,

"I'm thinking of taking him out of hock.

I pawned him years ago."

Who would buy?

The pawned demon,

Yellowing with forgetfulness

and hand at his throat?

Take him out of hock, my friend,

but beware of the grief

that will fly into your mouth like a bird.

My demon,

too often undressed,

too often a crucifix I bring forth,

too often a dead daisy I give water to

too often the child I give birth to

and then abort, nameless, nameless...

earthless.

Oh demon within,

I am afraid and seldom put my hand up

to my mouth and stitch it up

covering you, smothering you

from the public voyeury eyes

of my typewriter keys.

If I should pawn you,

what bullion would they give for you,

what pennies, swimming in their copper kisses

what bird on its way to perishing?

No.

No.

I accept you,

you come with the dead who people my dreams,

who walk all over my desk

(as in Mother, cancer blossoming on her

Best & Co. tits--

waltzing with her tissue paper ghost)

the dead, who give sweets to the diabetic in me,

who give bolts to the seizure of roses

that sometimes fly in and out of me.

Yes.

Yes.

I accept you, demon.

I will not cover your mouth.

If it be man I love, apple laden and foul

or if it be woman I love, sick unto her blood

and its sugary gasses and tumbling branches.

Demon come forth,

even if it be God I call forth

standing like a carrion,

wanting to eat me,

starting at the lips and tongue.

And me wanting to glide into His spoils,

I take bread and wine,

and the demon farts and giggles,

at my letting God out of my mouth

anonymous woman

at the anonymous altar.

Anne Sexton, September 29, 2023

DIVINE CIRCUS

Today I ache for harlequins
and sad and dumb clowns.
on my wounded heart, Jesus,
apply please some cotton balms.

​

Today I would like to be very ugly,
to hear throbbing taunts of the mob,
to be hunch-backed and limpy,
to have a long nose, very long.

​

The ache of clowns and harlequins,
my Jesus, afflicts me so.
With the monkey, who calmly preens
in sight of everybody, to them let us go.

​

Let us go also with the bear in pants
dancing with the stick cleverly,
and later, his old cap offering
humbly asking for donations paltry.

​

Let us also follow the drum, whose grey skin
is so holy and so dear.
Since the drum is a dead donkey,
its implacable beat we still hear.

​

Thus let us go to clowns and harlequins.
My Jesus holy, on this very day.
We shall for them of severe pain die,
And they for us of laughter pass away.

Nikola Šop (Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović), September 25, 2023

EMINE

Last night, returning from the warm hamam,
I passed by the garden of the old imam,
And lo, in the garden, in the shade of a jasmine,
There with a pitcher in her hand stood Emina.
 

What beauty! By my Muslim faith I could swear,
She wouldn’t be ashamed if she were at the sultan’s!
And the way she walks and her shoulders move...
– Not even a hodja’s amulet could help me!
 

I offered her salaam, but by my faith,
Beautiful Emina wouldn’t even hear it.
Instead, scooping water in her silver pitcher,
Around the garden she went to water the roses.
 

A wind blew from the branches down her lovely shoulders
Unraveling those thick braids of hers.
Her hair gave off a scent of blue hyacinths,
Making me giddy and confused!
 

I nearly stumbled, I swear by my faith,
But beautiful Emina didn’t come to me.
She only gave me a frowning look,
Not caring, the naughty one, that I’m crazy for her!

Aleksa Šantić (Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović), September 22, 2023

IN MEMORY OF SIGMUND FREUD

When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,

of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.

Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished
to think of our life from whose unruliness
so many plausible young futures
with threats or flattery ask obedience,

but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes
upon that last picture, common to us all,
of problems like relatives gathered
puzzled and jealous about our dying.

For about him till the very end were still
those he had studied, the fauna of the night,
and shades that still waited to enter
the bright circle of his recognition

turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he
was taken away from his life interest
to go back to the earth in London,
an important Jew who died in exile.

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
who think they can be cured by killing
and covering the garden with ashes.

They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets;
all he did was to remember l
ike the old and be honest like children.

He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
like a poetry lesson till sooner
or later it faltered at the line where

long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
how rich life had been and how silly,
and was life-forgiven and more humble,

able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
the fall of princes, the collapse of
their lucrative patterns of frustration:

if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
of State be broken and prevented
the co-operation of avengers.

Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.

If some traces of the autocratic pose,
the paternal strictness he distrusted,
still clung to his utterance and features,
it was a protective coloration

for one who'd lived among enemies so long:
if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion

under whom we conduct our different lives:
Like weather he can only hinder or help,
the proud can still be proud but find it
a little harder, the tyrant tries to

make do with him but doesn't care for him much:
he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth
and extends, till the tired in even
the remotest miserable duchy

have felt the change in their bones and are cheered
till the child, unlucky in his little State,
some hearth where freedom is excluded,
a hive whose honey is fear and worry,

feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,
while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
so many long-forgotten objects
revealed by his undiscouraged shining

are returned to us and made precious again;
games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,
little noises we dared not laugh at,
faces we made when no one was looking.

But he wishes us more than this. To be free
is often to be lonely. He would unite
the unequal moieties fractured
by our own well-meaning sense of justice,

would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother's richness of feeling:

but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also

because it needs our love. With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future

that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of 'Judas',
as he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

Wystan Hugh Auden, September 18, 2023