Taking Down the Tree

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother 
drew it together again with thread 
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten. 

With something more than caution 
I handle them, and the lights, with their 
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along 
from house to house, their pasteboard 
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy. 
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.

--Jane Kenyon  (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from Collected Poems (2005)

Christmas Away from Home

Her sickness brought me to Connecticut.
Mornings I walk the dog: that part of life
is intact. Who's painted, who's insulated
or put siding on, who's burned the lawn
with lime—that's the news on Ardmore Street.

The leaves of the neighbor's respectable
rhododendrons curl under in the cold.
He has backed the car
through the white nimbus of its exhaust
and disappeared for the day.

In the hiatus between mayors
the city has left leaves in the gutters,
and passing cars lift them in maelstroms.

We pass the house two doors down, the one
with the wildest lights in the neighborhood,
an establishment without irony.
All summer their putto empties a water jar,
their St. Francis feeds the birds.
Now it's angels, festoons, waist-high
candles, and swans pulling sleighs.

Two hundred miles north I'd let the dog
run among birches and the black shade of pines.
I miss the hills, the woods and stony
streams, where the swish of jacket sleeves
against my sides seems loud, and a crow
caws sleepily at dawn.

By now the streams must run under a skin
of ice, white air-bubbles passing erratically,
like blood cells through a vein. Soon the mail,
forwarded, will begin to reach me here.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from Collected Poems (2005)

The Clearing

The dog and I push through the ring 
of dripping junipers 
to enter the open space high on the hill 
where I let him off the leash. 

 He vaults, snuffling, between tufts of moss; 
twigs snap beneath his weight; he rolls 
and rubs his jowls on the aromatic earth; 
his pink tongue lolls. 

 I look for sticks of proper heft 
to throw for him, while he sits, prim 
and earnest in his love, if it is love. 

All night a soaking rain, and now the hill 
exhales relief, and the fragrance 
of warm earth. . . . The sedges 
have grown an inch since yesterday, 
and ferns unfurled, and even if they try 
the lilacs by the barn can't 
keep from opening today. 

I longed for spring's thousand tender greens, 
and the white-throated sparrow's call 
that borders on rudeness. Do you know— 
since you went away 
all I can do 
is wait for you to come back to me.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from Collected Poems, 2005

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful hours
of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
      It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens
 to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.


-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices From the Robert Frost Place

Related Scripture: Matthew 5:1-2, Beatitudes, Psalm 1

Notes From the Other Side

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) from Constance (1993)

Photo: Crypt in a Barcelona Cathedral

Heavy Summer Rain

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) American poet, from Collected Poems (2205)

Inertia

My head was heavy, heavy;
so was the atmosphere.
I had to ask two times
before my hand would scratch my ear.
I thought I should be out
and doing! The grass, for one thing,
needed mowing.

Just then a centipede
reared from the spine
of my open dictionary. It tried
the air with enterprising feelers,
then made its way along the gorge
between 202 and 203. The valley
of the shadow of death came to mind
inexorably.

It can't be easy for the left hand
to know what the right is doing.
And how, on such a day, when the sky
is hazy and perfunctory, how does it
get itself started without feeling
muddled and heavy-hearted?

Well, it had its fill of etymology.
I watched it pull its tail
over the edge of the page, and vanish
in a pile of mail.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from Collected Poems, 2005

Scripture references: Psalm 23:3; Matthew 6:3

Alone for a Week

I washed a load of clothes
and hung them out to dry.
Then I went up to town
and busied myself all day.
The sleeve of your best shirt
rose ceremonious
when I drove in; our night-
clothes twined and untwined in
a little gust of wind.

For me it was getting late;
for you, where you were, not.
The harvest moon was full
but sparse clouds made its light
not quite reliable.
The bed on your side seemed
as wide and flat as Kansas;
your pillow plump, cool,
and allegorical. . . .

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from Collected Poems, 2005



Photo: Laundry drying on a balcony in Cuba, 2017

Killing the Plants

That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions they don't
argue, they don't ask for much,
they don't stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they've been...

I can't summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, or this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water-- that's all
they get. I wonder if they suspect

that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves...
The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) American poet and translator, from Collected Poems (2005)

The Bat

I was reading about rationalism,
the kind of thing we do up north
in early winter, when the sun
leaves work for the day at 4:15.

Maybe the world is intelligible
to the rational mind;
and

maybe we light the lamps at dusk
for nothing...

Then I heard wings overhead.

The cats and I chased the bat
in circles-- living room, kitchen,
pantry, kitchen, living room...
At every turn it evaded us

like the identity of the third person
of the Trinity: the one
who spoke through the prophets,
the one who astounded Mary
by suddenly coming near.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from Collected Poems, 2005

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . 

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . . 

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . 

I am water rushing to the wellhead, 
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . 

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .


I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . . 

I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . . 

I am there in the basket of fruit 
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening 
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . . 

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . 


-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from The Iowa Review, 12:2 (1981)

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles 
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995). from Let Evening Come (1990)

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise. 

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996)