Rider, rider hurrying
Ever since the world was born,
Halt a moment at my spring
With the sunset and the morn.
Loiter where my river flows
Sliding like a speckled snake,
And the wizard zephyr blows
Weird enchantments for your sake.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 285th birthday.
Daughter of Liberty! whose knife
So busy chops the threads of life,
And frees from cumbrous clay the spirit;
Ah! why alone shall Gallia feel
The beauties of thy pond’rous steel?
Why must not Britain mark thy merit?
Hark! ‘tis the dungeon’s groan I hear;
And lo, a squalid band appear,
With sallow cheek, and hollow eye!
Unwilling, lo, the neck they bend;
Yet, through thy pow’r, their terrors end,
And with their heads the sorrows fly.
O let us view thy lofty grace;
To Britons shew thy blushing face,
And bless Rebellion’s life—tir’d train!
Joy to my soul! she’s on her way,
Led by her dearest friends, Dismay,
Death, and the Devil, and Tom Paine!
Pompey, often led, with me, by Brutus,
the head of our army, into great danger,
who’s sent you back, as a citizen,
to your country’s gods and Italy’s sky,
Pompey, the very dearest of my comrades,
with whom I’ve often drawn out the lingering
day in wine, my hair wreathed, and glistening
with perfumed balsam, of Syrian nard?
I was there at Philippi, with you, in that
headlong flight, sadly leaving my shield behind,
when shattered Virtue, and what threatened
from an ignoble purpose, fell to earth.
While in my fear Mercury dragged me, swiftly,
through the hostile ranks in a thickening cloud:
the wave was drawing you back to war,
carried once more by the troubled waters.
So grant Jupiter the feast he’s owed, and stretch
your limbs, wearied by long campaigning, under
my laurel boughs, and don’t spare the jars
that were destined to be opened by you.
Fill the smooth cups with Massic oblivion,
pour out the perfume from generous dishes,
Who’ll hurry to weave the wreathes for us
of dew-wet parsley or pliant myrtle?
Who’ll throw high Venus at dice and so become
the master of drink? I’ll rage as insanely
as any Thracian: It’s sweet to me
to revel when a friend is home again.
In honor of Cinco de Mayo, we present this work by one of the city of Puebla’s finest poets.
In hot career or ranging far and wide,
gentle huntress, you speed your onward way,
abandoning upon the gusty air
the tossing feather of your gallant hat.
Over brake and barrier, without pause,
panting, your impetuous courser bounds,
and across the arid torrents storms,
beating the boulders with his thudding hooves.
And before you, chaser of the wild,
the peopled mountain yields, and in its glass
the tarn exhibits you victorious.
The mob breaks forth in turbulent applause,
and to the sudden clamour of your name
the mighty forest, sonorous, made reply.
We present this work in honor of the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Whenever I am melancholy I go out to watch the sea
Heading home from a used bookstore I go out to watch the sea
Whenever you are sick in bed I go out to watch the sea
On mornings my soul is wearing thin I go out to watch the sea
Oh, the sea!
Large shoulders and broad chest!
However cruel the morning, however brutal the night
It will come to an end
All life will someday end
Only the sea will remain
Whenever I am melancholy I go out to watch the sea
On the loneliest of nights I go out to watch the sea
We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Had thought of going somewhere
But I didn’t.
The closed windows suddenly shake
In an abrupt wind.
Let them shake, at least I am at home
Sifting through thoughts for signs of rot.
When it gets to be too much
I swat at flies.
One thing I know,
One wants no more. if one shuts their eyes,
I have learnt to follow the sun
And grow in that direction,
Reaching for any dreams within hooking distance,
Or let them go, blaming their substance.
Who cares what I do, so long as I feed my soul?
For what was never to be, I no longer cry!
Come, let’s talk of what ifs and how I wonder why.
We present this work in honor of the 20th anniversary of the poet’s death.
go on into the flames
with a clamor of insects
an indiscernible dust
a shape through blazing
with an enigma that makes you
gesture beneath the barren voice
and going on catch fire
immobile on a ridge
take your place for the vigil
and leave at night in a flood
or in blood like an outcry
beyond the reach of words
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 220th birthday.
Long they pine in weary woe — the nobles of our land —
Long they wander to and fro, proscribed, alas! and banned;
Feastless, houseless, altarless, they bear the exie’s brand,
But their hope is in the coming-to of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Think not her a ghastly hag, too hideous to be seen;
Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathaleen;
Young she is, and fair she is, and would be crowned a qeeen,
Were the king’s son at home here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Sweet and mild would look her face — Oh! none so sweet and mild —
Could she crush the foes by whom her beauty is reviled;
Woolen plaids would grace herself and robes of silk her child,
If the king’s son were living here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones
Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and hapless bones!
Bitter anguish wrings our souls — with heavy sighs and groans
We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Let us pray to Him who holds life’s issues in His hands,
Him who formed the mighty globe, with all his thousand lands;
Girding them with sea and mountains, rivers deep, and strands,
To cast a look of pity upon Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
He, who over sands and waves led Israel along —
He who fed, with heavenly bread, that chosen tribe and throng;
He who stood by Moses when his foes were fierce and strong,
May He show forth His might in saving Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
What I do not want
is to give you the words of day dreams.
Not to spread the image with my lips
on your face, nor with my kiss.
I take the tip of your finger
with pink nail, for my gesture,
and, in this manner of airs,
I give it back to you.
From the grace and the lightsomeness of your pillow.
And the heat of your exotic eyes.
And the light of your secret
breasts.
Like the moon in the spring
a window
gives us yellow light, and a heart
beat
seems to flow back from you to me.
It’s not that. Nor will it be. Your true sense
has already given me the peace,
the beautiful secret,
the charming dimple,
the lovely corner of your mouth
and the weary
morning.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.
“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:–
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Poets Corner 