To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies: Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God Reduced to a hostage among hostages.
The gift is torment. Not alone the still Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh. That may come also. But the accepting wish, The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee For every human freedom, suffering to be free, Daring to live for the impossible.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 75th birthday.
Yusef Komunyakaa
American
b. 1947
On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams’ ‘Polka Dots & Moonbeams’ Never made the swelling go down. His carpenter’s apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences… The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but he’d look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Jack Kerouac
American
1922 – 1969
Wonder if my poem title will be acceptable. (The Absence of Courage)
I.
Courage is an interesting virtue. The only difference between courage and unrealistic hopefulness is success. Courage to me means standing up against injustice, or atleast finding the strength to do something your character or the outside world would rather you didn’t do. It’s that noble buck with big horns we admire and have the deepest of respect for, it’s that noble buck with big horns we like to shoot down and hang on our walls.
Like the tobacco in a cigarette, the only way to draw it out from the depths of your character is to embrace it and set it on fire. But don’t take more than you can handle, or you might find yourself coughing up the illogical notion, the practicality of your subconscious triumphing. Bite off just enough, enough to sustain hope, but not enough to defeat the cowardice in your soul to the point where you altogether snuff restraint and self doubt.
II.
I have seen courage in a number of places, in the sun for it’s miraculous overpowering of darkness every morning, in a woman who decides to have a child despite life threatening consequences. I’ve seen it mainly in action movies, where it exists without the natural predators of insecurity and sensibility found in the real world. I’ve seen it in the insurrection of children who decide to just say yes, I’ve seen it in the cynical gaze of withered old addicts who are trying to say no.
Courage, it’s a wonderful thing. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Embrace it and harness it, but do it in moderation, or it might get the better of your self-doubt and sensibility.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Robert Lowell
American
1917 – 1977
My old flame, my wife! Remember our lists of birds? One morning last summer, I drove by our house in Maine. It was still on top of its hill –
Now a red ear of Indian maize was splashed on the door. Old Glory with thirteen stripes hung on a pole. The clapboard was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord, a new wife, a new broom! Atlantic seaboard antique shop pewter and plunder shone in each room.
A new frontier! No running next door now to phone the sheriff for his taxi to Bath and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly imaginary lover stare through the window and tighten the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people, health to their flag, to their old restored house on the hill! Everything had been swept bare, furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything’s changed for the best – how quivering and fierce we were, there snowbound together, simmering like wasps in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak with your old voice of flaming insight that kept us awake all night. In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow groaning up hill – a red light, then a blue, as it tossed off the snow to the side of the road.
We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Marianne Moore
American
1887 – 1972
The illustration is nothing to you without the application. You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.
Sparkling chips of rock are crushed down to the level of the parent block. Were not ‘impersonal judgment in aesthetic matters, a metaphysical impossibility,’ you
might fairly achieve It. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one’s attending upon you, but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
Robinson Jeffers
American
1887 – 1962
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught-they say-God, when he walked on earth.
A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter. And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
Oh, I who so wanted to own some earth, Am consumed by the earth instead: Blood into river Bone into land The grave restores what finds its bed. Oh, I who did drink of Spring’s fragrant clay, Give back its wine for other men: Breath into air Heart into grass My heart bereft — I might rest then.