I sit alone on an empty step, the crystal dew is chill;
As night grows deep a certain shadow falls upon my robe.
From whence that sound of pestles pounding, hurrying the moon,
Gazing down on a forlorn figure—heart about to break?
Full of grief, the low winds sweep
O’er the sorrow-haunted ground;
Dark the woods where night rains weep,
Dark the hills that watch around.
Tell me, can the joys of spring
Ever make this sadness flee,
Make the woods with music ring,
And the streamlet laugh for glee?
When the summer moor is lit
With the pale fire of the broom,
And through green the shadows flit,
Still shall mirth give place to gloom?
Sad shall it be, though sun be shed
Golden bright on field and flood;
E’en the heather’s crimson red
Holds the memory of blood.
Here that broken, weary band
Met the ruthless foe’s array,
Where those moss-grown boulders stand,
On that dark and fatal day.
Like a phantom hope had fled,
Love to death was all in vain,
Vain, though heroes’ blood was shed,
And though hearts were broke in twain.
Many a voice has cursed the name
Time has into darkness thrust,
Cruelty his only fame
In forgetfulness and dust.
Noble dead that sleep below,
We your valour ne’er forget;
Soft the heroes’ rest who know
Hearts like theirs are beating yet.
We present this work in honor of the Canadian holiday, Civic Day.
O Ye, who with your blood and sweat
Watered the furrows of this land,—
See where upon a nation’s brow
In honour’s front, ye proudly stand!
Who for her pride abased your own,
And gladly on her altar laid
All bounty of the older world,
All memories that your glory made.
And to her service bowed your strength,
Took labour for your shield and crest;
See where upon a nation’s brow
Her diadem, ye proudly test!
When I woke up
this morning
I knew you were
mortally wounded
that I was too
that our days were numbered
our nights
that someone had counted them
without letting us know
that more than ever
I had to love you
you had to love me.
I inhaled your fragrance
I watched you sleeping
I ran the tips of my fingers
over your skin
remembered the friends
whose quota was filled
and are on the other side:
the one who died
a natural death
the one who fell in combat
the one they tortured
in jail
who kicked aside his death.
I brushed your warmth
with my lips:
mortally wounded
my love
perhaps tomorrow
and I loved you more than ever
and you loved me as well.
Before she pressed her wild dusky eyes
the heightened sliced dust inside got out
stroked her brows unadorned, unarmed naked face
stripped to living ecstasy, her wisdoms open again and again
wakening and awakening, penetrating the ears
like gentle very fresh, cool sea water
before she hugged the light of the unreal
displayed like a freshly sharpened knife,
piercing, loud
truly, then the deep like a blade tore open her eyes,
wild, yawning monsters:
came out, raw, below hell, from the cluttered
further down debility of the decay
the first time, replanting her eyes
she saw a little ornament between her limbs, ripening
here the gentle unblemished shelter sat fresh
faraway,
deep at the open, new and green
folding back her quiet door, wakes the
relaxed tree, sparkling with eternal warmth
passing on worlds,
Passing on worlds on the world
where worlds breathe
not perishing self, not worldly worth
not dry leaves,
painted with mud
Low down
Unbending, engendered soundless berry
flood with fog.
Ha, the gentlest that there ever was made!
The pleasantest that any woman knew!
Most perfect to receive a high acclaim!
The best beloved of any woman too!
Of my true heart ever the sweetest food!
My only love on earth, my paradise,
All that I love, my sweetest desire,
And the most perfect joy of my eyes!
Your sweetness in me fierce war does inspire.
Your sweetness has truly forced its way
Into a heart, that never thought to rue
Such a state, yet has been so inflamed,
By ardent desire, life would leave it too,
If Sweet Thought did not comfort it anew:
But Memory comes to lie with it, and I
Hold and embrace you in my thought the while,
Yet when your sweet kisses are denied,
Your sweetness in me fierce war does inspire.
My sweet love, loved with all my heart, I say,
The thought does not exist that could remove
That sweet glance from my heart, that your gaze
Enclosed within it: Nothing could so do –
Nor your voice, nor gentle touch of those two
Dear hands, that barely causing me to sigh,
Wish everywhere to search and to enquire:
Yet when I cannot see you with my eyes,
Your sweetness in me fierce war does inspire.
Fairest and best to capture my heart, I
Pray you, remember me: this I require,
For when I cannot see you as I desire
Your sweetness in me fierce war does inspire.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 215th birthday.
The stars shine menacingly above her,
The night is infinite, the valley barely visible;
She is alone… perhaps it is too late,
Perhaps the time of encounter has passed.
The midnight bird has taken wing…
The earth is silent like the grave;
From time to time the angry summer lightning
Flashes in the dusky distance.
And suddenly he stands beside her,
Lowering his gloomy brow,
Unmoving, with a hopeless look,
In heavy, silent meditation.
“You have come again!… and are we not in a dream?…
Why was our path so separate?…
Why are your lips so silent?…
Why is terror descending on my heart?…”
And he bent over, pale and grieving,
And he offered words of sadness:
“Let us say farewell today, my poor friend:
Let life claim its rights!
Go back to the realm of Earth,
Go to your earthly triumph—
I yield you over to the world,
With an anxious prayer to the Creator.
Sorrow has He given to all of us equally,
To all a measure of sad days;
Submit to His laws
The murmur of your pride.
Learn to live in outward agitation,
Forgetting the Eden of youthful dreams,
Share no more with anyone
The secret of inconsolable meditation.
Not in vain did your heart’s fantasies
Strive so eagerly toward existence,
Life will mercilessly fulfill
Your passionate request.
And the bright glow
Of enchanted mist will dissipate;
Too late, too soon,
You will know the gift you have awaited.
And fate will more than carry out
Its sentence over you:
But you will not lie down in cruel torment,
You will not fall in battle.
You will find amid the struggles
Of years illusionless and hard,
Many pure distractions,
Many joyful victories.
You will bear the insults of your friends,
The evil lies of angry words—
And you will raise the veil
From the mysterious goddess Isis.
You will understand earthly reality
With a maturing soul:
You will buy a dear blessing
At a dear price.
You will calm your heart’s hostility,
You will not avert your eyes from misfortune,
Neither moments of deception nor of hope
Will trouble you.
All that is today unconscious
Alien to all, will flower in you—
The burning agony of life
Will turn into rich fruit.
So, go as you’ve been sentenced,
Strong in faith only,
Not hoping for support,
Defenseless and alone.
Don’t disturb the heavens, transgressing,
Silence your own dreams.
And dare to ask of God
Only your daily bread.”
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
I
I have not come to say goodbye, sister,
Although surroundings affirm your death.
One evidence of you has been cancelled,
One only: your body,
That indication that united and contained you
—dark net of time—
Like the closed womb of the flower imprisons
Its immortal family and in a precise dream
Prepares its face of constant splendors.
A certain morning, a finger of air
Touches the arranged wall,
Penetrates the heanvenly armor,
Mocks mirrors.
Alone, naked now,
Lacking a foundation
For its house of aromas,
The tiny fist enlarges
Its secret energies,
Tears up its mystery
And gives the wind everything it has:
A laughing border of earth’s gown,
A certainty of beauty.
There it will have for the eye only a long silence.
And beyond, working in the spring,
Green living memories, May vocations.
So I’m thinking of you now,
Thus I explain your passage,
That’s how I know you have left
One of your appearances,
Left your summer hair,
Left your smile and your flashing openness,
Left your eyes
Where the sea, in morning dress,
Laughed wave by wave and tossed off
Gentle flashes of foam.
Now you multiply in warm hollows
In gardens of sweet humidities,
In places of tenderness,
In fields ringing with clover and bees,
In time-lapses of blood,
In circles of shadow softening the midday,
In stones warmed by afternoon sun.
You shall return voices of child, cheek of girl,
Tree of double kingdom—roots
In hidden tasks,
Music in the happy madness of the breezes—.
By fruit and grasses you shall make your way
And you shall draw near in their fragrance.
You shall be the company the recluse meets
Passing through the midnight of his soul
And through one of these walls rising in the field
And upon which moss installs its long softnesses.
You shall be that born by groan and happiness
And shall be in the joy of violated bone.
You shall come in each spiraling trill,
In each thing morning returns to us,
In the shy mirror of the poplar leaf,
In the dry and happy whisper of wings,
In the child who leaves with a kiss on its brow:
You knew beforehand the dawn’s occupation.
II
Goodbye to the sad ones, the obscure.
Not to you, sister.
To live as you did was to deny death,
To see a plant thrive on bare rock.
Goodbye to the closed one, to the dried.
Never goodbye to the rain.
Till soon. Till soon.
Until a child’s radiance.
Until a rose.
We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Marine Day.
like a fish
in the sea, this body of mine
cool in the moonlight
Sauntering home from church we lingered
looking away northwards over the white gates.
I see our visitors in go-to-meeting dress.
I do not see my parents. Perhaps that day they chose
to ‘stay behind’ – mysterious phrase of those times,
meaning reserved from children, I must think.
Above that gate the downs. I see them now,
I see them gentle brown and amethyst.
Our grown-up guests the landscape viewed
and commented – Lovely! perhaps a sketch?
My eager praises added met with prompt rebuff.
Too young, too young to notice lovely views.
Wrong, Madam, wrong – dear Wordsworth was more reasonable.
Too late! the great African bishop rhetorician
cried out upon himself, too late have I sought thee,
Beauty! – His vision abides. Let us begin here
upon the downs… A few years gone
I passed them by in autumn and their fields
a basket of ripe fruit, of purple plums
and yellow apricots, ruddy pears –
but to my memory of earlier day, soft pasture.
The guardian Mt Grey still casts a spell
of greatness, majesty that does not go with measurement,
a mien of kinship with all renowned heights,
a look of having kept inviolable for a thousand years
a secret of great comfort. Who has not traced,
looking from southward hills, its noble outline?
Who has not watched the pencilled shadows deepen
upon its flanks? I do not see you there,
Mt Grey, looking down at the end of our village streets,
but I was conscious. I have found you, since,
something familiar, and I salute you now, for your significance.
Poets Corner 