A Meditation

I was annoyed with myself for
Saying I loved her, because
What I wanted, then, was
Less, or more.

And it was no fun
Putting her head in a whirl;
She was such a quiet girl;
It’s not done.

Anyhow, I didn’t do it;
I just kissed her, and then
Tried not to see her again,
Feeling rather a brute.

Perhaps I should have gone
Through with it; she’d have had
One sin, when she was old and sad,
To congratulate herself on.

But I remember, I thought at the time:
You’d better not;
They hang on to what they’ve got
Like birdlime.

You eat the fruit and sing;
When you’ve had enough,
They talk all about love,
And you’re caught there, twittering;

Afraid to look her in the face,
Afraid of what people may say,
Afraid of her relations all day,
And at night, of an imagined disgrace;

Or you have her tagged on to you
For the term of your natural life,
And have to say, “This is my wife;
This is the best I could do”;

And somehow in the end you find
She sits like an over-ripe tomato,
Or walks like a scarecrow,
Because of her beautiful mind:

Like something or other; like a red crystal
Dropped into the pellucid cup
Of a man’s life; time melts it up,
And the lying purple permeates all.

I have seen how many a match
Has gone this way; how an honest man
With a clear mind, can
Turn slowly to a lovely purple patch.

Sometimes I wish I could myself; but
I should not easily come to heel,
I feel, and I feel
I should feel I was getting into a rut.

So perhaps it’s all in the best. interest
Of girls in general; for their part
They take heart;
Indeed, they seem singularly unimpressed

While I sit wearily in my sitting room
And watch the virtuous hands of the clock
Turning the afternoon into a lock
On shadows coinciding with my gloom.

It’s the way I’m made,
Probably. God knows.
As the twig’s bent, it grows,
I’m afraid.

The Snowman

I built a snowman
At your front door
To stand in my stead, waiting there
In all its stupidity

Then you buried your lollipop
Deep into its snowy heart
Saying this little sweetness
Would perk it up

The snowman did not smile
Did not make a sound
And then the bright spring sun
Melted him away…

Where is he now?
Where is that candied heart?
A bee buzzes
Beside the small puddle of tears

When the Milonga Cries

In honor of Malvinas Day, we present this work by one of the finest poets of 20th century Argentina.

Maria Luisa Carnelli
Argentine
1898 – 1987

The bandoneón wept
sorrows that the fall of night
takes away.
And just like a heart,
the hollow hallway
picks up a sad, faithful
woman’s prayer.

The milonga cried
over its old passion,
it seems to be begging
comfort and forgiveness.
The shadow went
through the arrabal
of he, whose dagger
played with death.

Two old people
together in an alley
raise their hands
to their salvation.
And all the suburb,
with grief,
evokes a deep
love drama.

The military call
with its prolongued tremble
shook the arrabal.
With great sorrow and feeling,
sentimental pain
overcomes the woman
as the bandoneon
prays of a love.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Have a Nice Day

‘Help, help,’ said a man. ‘I’m drowning.’
‘Hang on,’ said a man from the shore.
‘Help, help,’ said the man. ‘I’m not clowning.’
‘Yes, I know, I heard you before.
Be patient dear man who is drowning,
You, see I’ve got a disease.
I’m waiting for a Doctor J. Browning.
So do be patient please.’
‘How long,’ said the man who was drowning. ‘Will it take for the Doc to arrive?’
‘Not very long,’ said the man with the disease. ‘Till then try staying alive.’
‘Very well,’ said the man who was drowning. ‘I’ll try and stay afloat.
By reciting the poems of Browning
And other things he wrote.’
‘Help, help,’ said the man with the disease, ‘I suddenly feel quite ill.’
‘Keep calm.’ said the man who was drowning,’ Breathe deeply and lie quite still.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the man with the awful disease. ‘I think I’m going to die.’
‘Farewell,’ said the man who was drowning.
Said the man with the disease, ‘goodbye.’
So the man who was drowning, drownded
And the man with the disease past away.
But apart from that,
And a fire in my flat,
It’s been a very nice day.

The Capital 1980

In honor of Greek Independence Day, we present this work by one of modern Greece’s finest poets.

I take my diving suit and drift around
in the aquarium of the city.
Its streets all teem with divers of murky waters:
bodies of the drowned that sway,
hooked onto fishing lines
hinder the traffic.

Avid eyes lie in wait,
lie in ambush at ev’ry step:
merchandise cheap, sordid bait,
and the prey is trapped with ease.

At the central crossings
the concentration of plankton
is pushed towards the gaping entrances
of supermarkets.
The gaping mouths of voracious cetaceans
washed up in crucial areas of the capital:
enormous mammals which regurgitate
the incoming and outgoing shoal.

In the rush hour the tidal wave is swelling
the continuous perpetual tumult
from the insatiable appetite
of the crowd:
The menace which grows,
the cracked and empty jar,
the invisible black hole
which gulps down the galaxy

I Am Waiting

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

The Housewife

In honor of the Indian holiday, Bihar Diwas, we present this work by one of India’s greatest modern poets.

When I hasten homewards after the morning bath in the river, my path resounds with the song of them that soar in the sky;
There flutter before me the green flags unfurled by those who people the nether regions;
And around me dance the butterflies, swinging their multicoloured robes.
This world, richly adorned, invites me to a glimpse of its magnificent carnival.
But mine eyes are drunk with the beauty of my home, laburnum-garlanded by the all-beholding sun.

When I hurry to my beloved, having quickly gone through the housework, the sun shines more and more in the unclouded heart of sky;
The hidden emotions of darkest depths emerge as burning sighs;
And gold-mohar shrubs, their faces marked with the auspicious saffron beaming with joy, stand by in silence.
The world transforms into a mirror held before me, but I am charmed into gazing at my own feelings reflected in the eyes of my beloved.

When I rush to my children playing in the courtyard, the sky becomes suffused by their milky smile changed into moonlight.
The ripples in the river echo their pattering footsteps;
And all the neighbouring homes are lit up by their untainted grace.
The world turns into a fairyland, wafted out of their enchanting selves.
And my soul is merged in their flower-like forms.

Anguish Longer Than Sorrow

In honor of the South African Holiday, Human Rights Day, we present work by one of the great Poets Laureate of South Africa.

Keorapetse Kgositsile
South African
1938 – 2018

If destroying all the maps known
would erase all the boundaries
from the face of this earth
I would say let us
make a bonfire
to reclaim and sing
the human person

Refugee is an ominous load
even for a child to carry
for some children
words like home
could not carry any possible meaning
but
displaced
border
refugee must carry dimensions of brutality and terror
past the most hideous nightmare
anyone could experience or imagine

Empty their young eyes
deprived of a vision of any future
they should have been entitled to
since they did not choose to be born
where and when they were
Empty their young bellies
extended and rounded by malnutrition
and growling like the well-fed dogs of some
with pretensions to concerns about human rights
violations

Can you see them now
stumble from nowhere
to no
where
between
nothing
and
nothing

Consider
the premature daily death of their young dreams
what staggering memories frighten and abort
the hope that should have been
an indelible inscription in their young eyes

Perhaps
I should just borrow
the rememberer’s voice again
while I can and say:
to have a home is not a favour

The Laughing Boy

We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.

T’was on an August morning, all in the dawning hours,
I went to take the warming air, all in the Mouth of Flowers,
And there I saw a maiden, and mournful was her cry,
‘Ah what will mend my broken heart, I’ve lost my Laughing Boy.
So strong, so wild, and brave he was, I’ll mourn his loss too sore,
When thinking that I’ll hear the laugh or springing step no more.
Ah, curse the times and sad the loss my heart to crucify,
That an Irish son with a rebel gun shot down my Laughing Boy.
Oh had he died by Pearse’s side or in the GPO,
Killed by an English bullet from the rifle of the foe,
Or forcibly fed with Ashe lay dead in the dungeons of Mountjoy,
I’d have cried with pride for the way he died, my own dear Laughing Boy.
My princely love, can ageless love do more than tell to you,
Go raibh mile maith agat for all you tried to do,
For all you did, and would have done, my enemies to destroy,
I’ll mourn your name and praise your fame, forever, my Laughing Boy.

Poets Corner

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20th Century Poems