Apology
by Amy Lowell

Be not angry with me that I bear
    Your colors everywhere,
    All through each crowded street,
        And meet
    The wonder-light in every eye,
        As I go by.

Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
    Blinded by rainbow-haze,
    The stuff of happiness,
        No less,
    Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds
        Of peacock golds. 

Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
    Flushes beneath its gray.
    My steps fall ringed with light,
        So bright
    It seems a myriad suns are strown
        About the town. 

Around me is the sound of steepled bells, 
    And rich perfumed smells 
    Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,
        And shroud
    Me from close contact with the world.
        I dwell, impearled. 

You blazon me with jewelled insignia.
    A flaming nebula
    Rims in my life.    And yet
        You set
    The word upon me, unconfessed,
        To go unguessed.

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First published in Poetry (July 1913).

Hawks
by James Stephens

And as we walked the grass was faintly stirred;
        We did not speak—there was no need to speak.
Above our heads there flew a little bird,
        A silent one who feared that we might seek
Her hard-hid nest.

Poor little frightened one!
        If we had found your nest that sunny day
We would have passed it by; we would have gone
        And never looked or frightened you away.

O little bird! there's many have a nest,
        A hard-found, open place, with many a foe;
And hunger and despair and little rest,
        And more to fear than you can know.

            Shield the nests where'er they be,
            On the ground or on the tree;
            Guard the poor from treachery.

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First published in Poetry (August 1914).

Afterimages
by Audre Lorde

      I
However the image enters
its force remains within
my eyes
rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve   
wild for life, relentless and acquisitive   
learning to survive
where there is no food
my eyes are always hungry
and remembering
however the image enters
its force remains.
A white woman stands bereft and empty
a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson   
recalled in me forever
like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep   
etched into my visions
food for dragonfish that learn
to live upon whatever they must eat
fused images beneath my pain.

      II
The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson   
A Mississippi summer televised.
Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain
a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat   
her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney   
now awash
tearless and no longer young, she holds   
a tattered baby's blanket in her arms.
In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain   
a microphone
thrust up against her flat bewildered words
          “we jest come from the bank yestiddy   
                   borrowing money to pay the income tax   
                   now everything's gone. I never knew   
                   it could be so hard.”
Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud   
caked around the edges
her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation
unanswered
she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed   
                   “hard, but not this hard.”
Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her   
hanging upon her coat like mirrors
until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside   
snarling “She ain't got nothing more to say!”
and that lie hangs in his mouth
like a shred of rotting meat.

      III
I inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till   
his 15 years puffed out like bruises   
on plump boy-cheeks
his only Mississippi summer
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
as a white girl passed him in the street   
and he was baptized my son forever   
in the midnight waters of the Pearl.

His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year
when I walked through a northern summer
my eyes averted
from each corner's photographies   
newspapers protest posters magazines   
Police Story, Confidential, True   
the avid insistence of detail
pretending insight or information
the length of gash across the dead boy's loins
his grieving mother's lamentation   
the severed lips, how many burns   
his gouged out eyes
sewed shut upon the screaming covers   
louder than life
all over
the veiled warning, the secret relish   
of a black child's mutilated body   
fingered by street-corner eyes   
bruise upon livid bruise
and wherever I looked that summer
I learned to be at home with children's blood
with savored violence
with pictures of black broken flesh   
used, crumpled, and discarded   
lying amid the sidewalk refuse   
like a raped woman's face.

A black boy from Chicago
whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi
testing what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do
his teachers
ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue
and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone
in the name of white womanhood
they took their aroused honor
back to Jackson
and celebrated in a whorehouse
the double ritual of white manhood
confirmed.

      IV
    “If earth and air and water do not judge them who are
      we to refuse a crust of bread?”
      
Emmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling
24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a raped woman   
and a white girl has grown older in costly honor   
(what did she pay to never know its price?)
now the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment   
and I can withhold my pity and my bread.

            “Hard, but not this hard.”
Her face is flat with resignation and despair   
with ancient and familiar sorrows
a woman surveying her crumpled future
as the white girl besmirched by Emmett's whistle   
never allowed her own tongue
without power or conclusion
unvoiced
she stands adrift in the ruins of her honor   
and a man with an executioner's face
pulls her away.

Within my eyes
the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain
a woman wrings her hands
beneath the weight of agonies remembered
I wade through summer ghosts   
betrayed by vision
hers and my own
becoming dragonfish to survive   
the horrors we are living
with tortured lungs
adapting to breathe blood.

A woman measures her life's damage
my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock
tied to the ghost of a black boy   
whistling
crying and frightened
her tow-headed children cluster   
like little mirrors of despair   
their father's hands upon them   
and soundlessly
a woman begins to weep.

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First published in The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997).

How to Be a Poet
by Wendell Berry

        (to remind myself)

i   

Make a place to sit down.   
Sit down. Be quiet.   
You must depend upon   
affection, reading, knowledge,   
skill—more of each   
than you have—inspiration,   
work, growing older, patience,   
for patience joins time   
to eternity. Any readers   
who like your poems,   
doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   
the unconditioned air.   
Shun electric wire.   
Communicate slowly. Live   
a three-dimensioned life;   
stay away from screens.   
Stay away from anything   
that obscures the place it is in.   
There are no unsacred places;   
there are only sacred places   
and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   
Make the best you can of it.   
Of the little words that come   
out of the silence, like prayers   
prayed back to the one who prays,   
make a poem that does not disturb   
the silence from which it came.

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First published in Poetry (January 2001).

To the Light of September
by W.S. Merwin

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

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First published in Poetry (September 2003).

The Bee
by Emily Dickinson

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry
 
Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.
 
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.
 
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!

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From Poems, ed. by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson (Roberts Brothers, 1890).

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky
by Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

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New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
by Allen Ginsberg

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone
 

April 2, 1994

Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amazing
Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church
in-the-Bouwerie

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First published in Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997 (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1999).

Ocean of Earth
by Guillaume Apollinaire
translated by Ron Padgett

      To G. de Chirico

I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes

                        House of dampness
                        House of burning
                        Season’s fastness
                        Season singing
                  The airplanes are laying eggs
                  Watch out for the dropping of the anchor

Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
         And is never still

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First published in Poetry (October 2015). Translated by Ron Padgett.

The Applicant
by Sylvia Plath

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.

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First published in Ariel by Sylvia Plath (Faber and Faber, 1965).

The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey
by Seán Ó Coileáin
translated by Tony Hoagland and Martin Shaw

I am gut sad.

I am flirting
with the green waves,
wandering the sand,
feeding reflection
into the seaweed foam.

That Shaker’s moon
is up.
Crested by corn-colored stars
and traced by those witchy scribblers
who read the bone-smoke.

No wind at all — 
no flutter
for foxglove or elm.

There is a church door.

In the time
when the people
of  my hut lived,

there was eating and thinking
dished out to the poor
and the soul-sick in this place.

I am in my remembering.

By the frame of  the door
is a crooked black bench.

It is oily with history
of the rumps of sages,
and the foot-sore
who lingered in the storm.

I am bent with weeping.
This blue dream
chucks the salt
from me.

I remember
the walls god-bright
with the king’s theology,

the slow chorus
of  the low bell,
the full hymn
of  the byre and field.

Pathetic hut.
Rain-cracked and wind-straddled.
Your walls bare-nubbed
by chill flagons
of ocean spit.

The saints are scattered.
The high gable
is an ivy tangle.
The stink of fox
is the only swinging incense.

There is no stew
for this arriving prodigal,
no candled bed.

My kin
lie under the ground
of this place.

My shape
is sloughed with grief.
No more red tree
between my thighs.
My eyes are milk.
Rage my pony.

My face has earnt
the grim mask.
My heart a husky gore.

But my hand. My hand
reaches through this sour air
and touches
the splendid darkness
of my deliverer.

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First published in Poetry (November 2014). Translated by Tony Hoagland and Martin Shaw.

Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall
by Anne Sexton

    Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?

                   I only said
how there is a pewter urn
pinned to the tavern wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be there still.
I said, the poets are there
I hear them singing and lying
around their round table
and around me still.
Across the room is a wreath
made of a corpse’s hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be remembered still.
Did you hear what it said?

                  I only said
how I want to be there and I
would sing my songs with the liars
and my lies with all the singers.
And I would, and I would but
it’s my hair in the hair wreath,
my cup pinned to the tavern wall,
my dusty face they sing beneath.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said?

                  I only said
how I want to be there,
Oh, down at the tavern
where the prophets are singing
around their round table
until they are still.

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Published in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Houghton Mifflin, 1981).

Final Curve
by Langston Hughes

When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.

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Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (1990, Vintage Books)

I am, O Anxious One
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

I am, O Anxious One. Don't you hear my voice
surging forth with all my earthly feelings?
They yearn so high, that they have sprouted wings
and whitely fly in circles round your face.
My soul, dressed in silence, rises up
and stands alone before you: can't you see?
don't you know that my prayer is growing ripe
upon your vision as upon a tree?
If you are the dreamer, I am what you dream.
But when you want to wake, I am your wish,
and I grow strong with all magnificence
and turn myself into a star's vast silence
above the strange and distant city, Time.

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Book of Hours (1905), translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Loneliest Job in the World
by Tony Hoagland

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?

and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving

in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why.

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Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (2010)

i’m a depressed poem
by David Ignatow

You are reading me now and thanks. I know I feel a bit better and if you will stay with me a little longer, perhaps take me home with you and introduce me to your friends, I could be delighted and change my tone. I lie in a desk drawer, hardly ever getting out to see the light and be held. It makes me feel so futile for having given birth to myself in anticipation. I miss a social life. I know I made myself for that. It was the start of me.

I’m grateful that you let me talk as much as this. You probably understand, from experience; gone through something like it yourself which may be why you hold me this long. I’ve made you thoughtful and sad and now there are two of us. I think it’s fun.

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Poetrying.wordpress.com

Goodtime Jesus
by James Tate

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

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Riven Doggeries (1979, Ecco)

FRANZ WRIGHT
Promise

Long nights, short years. Forgiving
silence

When morning comes, and pain--

no one is a stranger, this whole world is your home.

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God’s Silence (2008, Knopf)

MARK STRAND
The Night, the Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

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Rattle (2002)

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

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COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 (1986, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)