Let others pray for the passenger pigeon
the dodo, the whooping crane, the eskimo:
everybody must specialize
I will confine myself to a meditation
upon the giant tortoises
withering finally on a remote island.
I concentrate in subway stations,
in parks, I can't quite see them,
they move to the peripheries of my eyes
but on the last day they will be there:
already the event
like a wave traveling shapes vision:
on the road where I stand they will materialize,
plodding past me in a straggling line
awkward without water
their small heads pondering
from side to side, their useless armour
sadder than tanks and history,
in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralyzed,
lumbering up the steps, under the archways
toward the square glass altars
where the brittle gods are kept,
the relics of what we have destroyed,
our holy and obsolete symbols.
-- Margaret Atwood (1939- ), Canadian author, essayist, critic, inventor, teacher, environmental activist, and poet
Oh, you little home-on-your-back!
Weren't you afraid that my huge foot
Would sweep you away?
Last night, under the rain,
You slid into my sneaker
For shelter.
Today,
You return to your green birthplace
Leaving me covetous, longing for mine.
--Majid Naficy (1952- ) Persian poet, teacher, activist, and exile, translated by Nilofar Talebi
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.
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
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
--Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) (1904-1973), Chilean poet, politician, and diplomat
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
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| from Tweetapedia |
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
--Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), American poet, from Harmonium, 1923
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
--Raymond Carver (1938-1988), American author and poet, from Poems of Gratitude (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series), 2017
The Hubster dislikes
our Rose of Sharon trees—
he likens them to weeds.
Yet I am convinced
that it is always the “weeds”
who provide the most refuge
without asking anything in return.
In five minutes,
I watched six hummingbirds
zoom around the blossoms
as they jockeyed for a chance
at the waning late-summer blooms.
I watched cardinals
and Carolina wrens fight
over the ripening grape clusters
from the vine
that is supported by not one but two trees
along our fence—
trees that also give us privacy in our yard.
I watched butterflies—
humble little skippers,
but also hairstreaks, fritillaries,
swallowtails,
and oh my God, even a monarch,
once so ubiquitous
but now almost as surprising to see
as a Bengal tiger.
Even on my deck I could hear
the thrum of probably thirty bumble bees
hovering like tugboats from blossom to bloom,
staying aloft
only God knows how.
We owe our lives
to the “weeds” of this world,
to their humble welcome
and hospitality.
The least we can do is call them beautiful.
-- L. K. S.
Photo taken this morning of a bumblebee on a Rose of Sharon and then using the Angel filter on Prisma.
Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
--Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo-American poet, from Poems 1972-1982.
