The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), pre-eminent Anglo-Irish lyric poet, playwright, and politician, one of the 20th century's greatest poets.

Ruby Throated Moses

          When my eye caught the green surprise
of a hummingbird inside the dim garage,
          like a brooch pinned against the sheetrock wall, 

I canted open the creaking garage door 

          and tossed him back to blinding summer life. 

He spiraled into brilliance, out of sight. 

          When Michelangelo struck Moses’ knee 

and shouted at him, “Speak!,” the chisel made 

          a dent. But Moses kept his glaring silence. 

And yet, through the statue’s marble hair, a wildness 

          stuck out two ridged horns and spoke.

“Let this be light,” it said. “Let this be light.”

--Mark Jarman (1952- ), multiple award-winning New Formalist American poet, and emeritus Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, from The Heronry: Poems, 2017.

St. Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish poet, professor, winner of the 1995 Novel prize in Literature.

St. Kevin of Glendalough's feast day is June 3.

Seamus Heaney reads the poem and explicates it below:

Sparrows

Little birds sit on the telegraph wires,
   And chitter, and flitter, and fold their wings;
Maybe they think that, for them and their sires,
   Stretched always, on purpose, those wonderful strings:
And, perhaps, the Thought that the world inspires,
   Did plan for the birds, among other things.

Little birds sit on the slender lines,
   And the news of the world runs under their feet,--
How value rises, and how declines,
   How kings with their armies in battle meet,--
And, all the while, ‘mid the soundless signs,
   They chirp their small gossipings, foolish sweet.

Little things light on the lines of our lives,--
   Hopes, and joys, and acts of to-day,--
And we think that for these the Lord contrives,
   Nor catch what the hidden lightnings say.
Yet, from end to end, His meaning arrives,
   And His word runs underneath, all the way.

Is life only wires and lightning, then,
   Apart from that which about it clings?
Are the thoughts, and the works, and the prayers of men
   Only sparrows that light on God's telegraph strings,
Holding a moment, and gone again?
   Nay; He planned for the birds, with the larger things.


--Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824-1906) American author and poet

Immanence

Morning visitors in St. Lucia

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flower:
About your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood—
There doth My Godhead rest.

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
My starry wings I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit My stature to your need.
In beggar’s part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead—
As man, to speak with man—
Till by such art I shall achieve
My Immemorial Plan,
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

-- Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) English Anglo-Catholic writer, teacher, mystic and pacifist.

The Owl

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken our long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cute of merriment,
But one telling me what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.


--Edward Thomas (1878-1917), English biographer, critic, poet and soldier, killed in the Battle of Arras, Easter Monday, 1917.

A Blackbird Singing

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes’
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With histories overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

--R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest from Collected Poems, 1945-1990.

Beyond the Headlines

Then I saw the wild geese flying
in fair formation to their bases in Inchicore
and I knew that these wings would outwear the wings of war
and a man's simple thoughts outlive the day's loud lying.
Don't fear, don't fear, I said to my soul.
The bedlam of time is an empty bucket rattled,
‘Tis you who will say in the end who best battles.
only they who fly home to God have flown at all. 

--Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967), Irish poet, written in Dublin in 1943, from Collected Poems, 1964

Image: Pale Bellied Brent Geese migrate back to Dublin Bay (Inchicore is a suburb of Dublin)

Bird (watching

Yesterday in the chill
I unspooled the hose, stiffening already,
Resisting like a toddler,
Knotted like a fist
Rather than stretching sinuously.

Filled all the birdbaths,
Tilting out the leaves
And the sludge that will send
Clouds of mosquitos no matter the season
If left unchecked.

Offered my gifts
Of seed, suet, and seed cake.
Threw away the latest and greatest
Feeder that claimed to be squirrel-proof,
Bent like a bow tie on a tipsy groom.
Useless, and
Missing the lid the thieves had unscrewed
And thrown down the hill
Into the neighbors’ yard
With a war cry of triumph

from blue-painted Picts

howling down upon hapless Saxons.

But now all was quiet.
As soon as I returned inside
The rejoicing would begin.
Felt the eyes of someone on me.
Turned and saw
A bird (watching me,
The bird-watcher).

This hawk, still,

paused in mid-motion,

as if scared it would startle me into flight.

Pretending to survey

the collection of mourning doves

offered up as in a grocery aisle

while his yellow-lamped eye

remained steadily on me.

--LKS

Prayer: Sustained by God's Love

The One who calls each tiny wren beloved
has called us to rise and rejoice:
come, let us adore our Living God.
Governor of the Worlds,
Ground of All Being,
your love sustains us and nourishes us,
bringing our hearts to full flower:
shape us and guide us this day.

May we journey this day
with Jesus as our companion and teacher;
and embody his healing presence
with integrity, honor, and beauty.

Fount of All Wisdom,
may we ever serve you with boldness,
proclaiming your saving power within our lives
as we turn our shoulders to the wheel of compassion
and serve each other with grace and truth.
May we link arms and wills
against the surging power of injustice and oppression,
knit together in love and faithfulness
to bear testimony to your glory, Lord Christ.

Blessed Savior, pour out your grace
upon those who turn to you in prayer and hope,
and grant your blessing to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

The Wren From Carolina

Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed
through the neighbor’s hedge
a line of grace notes I couldn’t even write down
much less sing. 

Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat
and delivers such a cantering praise—
for what?
For the early morning, the taste of the spider, 

for his small cup of life
that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill.
All things are inventions of holiness.
Some more rascally than others. 

I’m on that list too,
though I don’t know exactly where.

But, every morning, there’s my own cup of gladness,
and there’s that wren in the hedge, above me, with his

blazing song.

-- Mary Oliver (1935- ), whose birthday is today, from Why I Wake Early: New Poems

The First of May

Now the smallest creatures, who do not know they have names, 
In fields of pure sunshine open themselves and sing.
All over the marshes and in the wet meadows,
Wherever there is water, the companies of peepers
Who cannot count their numbers, gather with sweet shouting.
And the flowers of the woods who cannot see each other
Appear in perfect likeness of one another
Among the weak new shadows on the mossy places.

Now the smallest creatures, who know themselves by heart,
With all their tender might and roundness of delight
Spending their colors, their myriads and their voices
Praise the moist ground and every winking leaf,
And the new sun that smells of the new streams.

--Anne Porter (1911-2011), American Catholic poet, from Living Things: Collected Poems

Easter Morning

 I have a life that did not become, 
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished: 
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or 
as on my lap a child 
not to grow old but dwell on 

it is to his grave I most 
frequently return and return 
to ask what is wrong, what was 
wrong, to see it all by 
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say, 
look how he’s shooting up, and the 
trinket aunts who always had a little 
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark 
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who 
were the rumored fathers of cousins 
who whispered of them as of great, if 
troubled, presences, and school

teachers, just about everybody older 
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not for 
me, mother and father there, too, and others 
close, close as burrowing 
under skin, all in the graveyard 
assembled, done for, the world they 
used to wield, have trouble and joy 
in, gone 

the child in me that could not become 
was not ready for others to go, 
to go on into change, blessings and 
horrors, but stands there by the road 
where the mishap occurred, crying out for 
help, come and fix this or we 
can’t get by, but the great ones who 
were to return, they could not or did 
not hear and went on in a flurry and 
now, I say in the graveyard, here 
lies the flurry, now it can’t come 
back with help or helpful asides, now 
we all buy the bitter 
incompletions, pick up the knots of 
horror, silently raving, and go on 
crashing into empty ends not 
completions, not rondures the fullness 
has come into and spent itself from 

I stand on the stump 
of a child, whether myself 
or my little brother who died, and 
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for 
for me it is the dearest and the worst, 
it is life nearest to life which is 
life lost: it is my place where 
I must stand and fail, 
calling attention with tears 
to the branches not lofting 
boughs into space, to the barren 
air that holds the world that was my world

though the incompletions
(& completions) burn out 
standing in the flash high-burn 
momentary structure of ash, still it 
is a picture-book, letter-perfect 
Easter morning: I have been for a 
walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook 
works without flashing in an abundant 
tranquility: the birds are lively with 
voice: I saw something I had 
never seen before: two great birds, 
maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked 
and –headed, came from the south oaring 
the great wings steadily; they went 
directly over me, high up, and kept on 
due north: but then one bird, 
the one behind, veered a little to the 
left and the other bird kept on seeming 
not to notice for a minute: the first 
began to circle as if looking for 
something, coasting, resting its wings 
on the down side of some of the circles: 
the other bird came back and they both 
circled, looking perhaps for a draft; 
they turned a few more times, possibly 
rising—at least, clearly resting— 
then flew on falling into distance till 
they broke across the local bush and 
trees: it was a sight of bountiful 
majesty and integrity: the having 
patterns and routes, breaking 
from them to explore other patterns or 
better ways to routes, and then the 
return: a dance sacred as the sap in 
the trees, permanent in its descriptions 
as the ripples round the brook’s 
ripplestone: fresh as this particular 
flood of burn breaking across us now 
from the sun.

--A R Ammons (1926-2001), American poet, National Book Award winner in 1973 and 1993

(not shutting up)

not shutting up

New Year morning's late riser...

the crow

--Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1828), Japanese poet, haiku master, and lay Zen priest, translated by Daniel Lanoue, written in 1811

.だまつても行ぬやけさの遅烏
damatte mo yukanu ya kesa no oso karasu

White-Eyes

In winter 
   all the singing 
      is in the tops of the trees 
         where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes 
      among the branches.
         Like any of us 

he wants to go to sleep,
   but he's restless—
      he has an idea,
         and slowly it unfolds 

from under his beating wings
   as long as he stays awake.
      But his big, round music, after all,
         is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
   In the pine-crown
      he makes his nest,
         he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
   I only imagine his glittering beak
      tucked in a white wing
         while the clouds—

which he has summoned
   from the north— 
     which he has taught
         to be mild, and silent— 

thicken, and begin to fall
   into the world below
      like stars, or the feathers
         of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
   that is asleep now, and silent— 
      that has turned itself
         into snow.

--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, and writer

A Little Miracle

Two black and brown puffs of duckling
Little bits of thistledown
That could have blown away in a breeze
Bobbing beneath the bank of the river.

As I approached they bobbed out into the current
Were washed away like flotsam
Making high peeps of sound
Till a bend snatched them out of sight.

All night I worried for them
Went out into the raining darkness
To the lion roar of the river
Listened in hope for their peeping.

And I wondered that such little things survived at all,
Winter and spring, the angry traffic of this world,
To grow safe and strong into wings
To learn to fly.

--Kenneth C. Steven (1968- ) Scottish poet and author, from Iona: Poems, 2000.

A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away, 
And not sing by my house all day; 

Have clapped my hands at him from the door 
When it seemed as if I could bear no more. 

The fault must partly have been in me. 
The bird was not to blame for his key. 

And of course there must be something wrong 
In wanting to silence any song.

--Robert Frost (1875-1963), American poet



Photo: Picture of a cuckoo singing from Pinterest

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard, 
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, 
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. 
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers 
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. 
He says the early petal-fall is past 
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers 
On sunny days a moment overcast; 
And comes that other fall we name the fall. 
He says the highway dust is over all. 
The bird would cease and be as other birds 
But that he knows in singing not to sing. 
The question that he frames in all but words 
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-- Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; 
Close to the sun in lonely lands, 
Ringed with the azure world, he stands. 

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; 
He watches from his mountain walls, 
 And like a thunderbolt he falls.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) British poet, poet laureate of Great Britain during Queen Victoria's reign



Photo of a Golden Eagle in its habitat from the San Diego Zoo.

Pastoral

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
        Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
        These things
astonish me beyond words.

--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), from Poems of Gratitude (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series), 2017