Three for Thursday!

Epic

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided : who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
‘Here is the march along these iron stones’.

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important ? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said : I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Patrick Kavanagh

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A lovely thing to see:
through the paper window's hole,
the Galaxy.

Issa


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The summer river:
although there is a bridge, my horse
goes through the water.

Masaoka Shiki

The wednesday poem on friday

On the M104
(New York City Public Bus)

    The longing we know that does not have a name
    may be for our lost twins, our cellular siblings
    who flaked away from us
    only days after our conception.
    Like a singular petal tugged from its floribunda,
    most of us were left alone in our planet-wombs,
    gravity-less balloons, loose space suits. Galaxies of mother
    around us, we slept the way I still like to:
    my back nestled against someone else's chest,
    my knees bent and at rest on his
    as though I were sitting in a chair
    but my weight askew, pulled away to a 90-degree angle.
    No wonder, regardless of who it is,
    love is what I feel every time.
    He is my lost one, my lost twin,
    the dolphin, the underwater uterine-angel
    who loved me regardless, who continued
    to swim up against me, whether I pulled away or not.
    I miss him the way a soldier
    has a phantom itch on the elbow
    of his amputated arm. I look into mirrors
    and dress up as someone else.
    Our lost Gods are so hard to find
    though they are as many
    as the flakes of novelty confetti
    that snow from a bridal shower bell.
    Or the pastel dots
    that rise to the roof and multiply
    on this city bus
    as the sun hits a stone
    on some piece of jewelry a passenger is wearing.
    The magic blinks away as we turn the corner
    and a building's shadow takes over.
    We all check our watches
    and bracelets, wondering which one of us
    could have been the source
    of such beauty. The travelers who saw
    look at each other to confirm.
    Our lost Gods, so hard to find --
    their appearances so short, their bodies so small.

Denise Duhamel

"I like trees.  They seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."

Willa Cather
1876-1947


A Final Affection

    I love the accomplishments of trees,
    How they try to restrain great storms
    And pacify the very worms that eat them.
    Even their deaths seem to be considered.
    I fear for trees, loving them so much.
    I am nervous about each scar on bark,
    Each leaf that browns. I want to
    Lie in their crotches and sigh,
    Whisper of sun and rains to come.

    Sometimes on summer evenings I step
    Out of my house to look at trees
    Propping darkness up to the silence.

    When I die I want to slant up
    Through those trunks so slowly
    I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
    Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
    And lobes touching me with final affection;
    Then to hover above and look down
    One last time on the rich upliftings,
    The circle that loves the sun and moon,
    To see at last what held the darkness up.

    Paul Zimmer

Rain on Tin

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.
Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.
As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.

Rodney Jones