We present this work in honor of the 150th anniversary of the poet’s death.
The face of the sun may darken forever;
The oceans may run dry in an instant;
The axis spinning our planet may shatter;
Like a brittle crystal.
Yes, all of that may happen! At the end, Death
May cover my flesh with his funeral shroud;
But none of it will reach within my soul and extinguish
The bright flame of your love.
They sat in a hall lit
As brightly as candles can make
An indoor room. And as
They chatted of this and that,
A servant entered the hall,
Carrying — his hand at its center —
A white lance. He came out
Of a room, then walked between
The fire and those seated
On the bed, and everyone saw
The white wood, and the white
Spearhead, and the drop of blood
That rolled slowly down
From the iron point until
It reached the servant’s hand.
The boy saw that wondrous
Sight, the night he arrived there,
But kept himself from asking
What it might mean, for he’d never
Forgotten — as his master at arms
Had warned him, over and over —
He was not to talk too much.
To question his host or his servants
Might well be vulgar or rude,
And so he held his tongue.
And then two other servants
Entered, carrying golden
Candleholders worked
With enamel. They were wonderfully handsome
Boys, and the candleholders
They each clasped in their hands
Bore at least ten
Burning candles. A girl
Entered with them, holding
A grail-dish in both her hands —
A beautiful girl, elegant,
Extremely well dressed. And as
She walked into the hall,
Holding this grail, it glowed
With so great a light that the candles
Suddenly seemed to grow dim,
Like the moon and stars when the sun
Appears in the sky. Then another
Girl followed the first one,
Bearing a silver platter.
The grail that led the procession
Was made of the purest gold,
Studded with jewels of every
Kind, the richest and most costly
Found on land or sea.
No one could doubt that here
Were the loveliest jewels on earth.
Just as they’d done before,
When carrying the lance, the servants
Passed in front of the knight,
Then went to another room.
And the boy watched them, not daring
To ask why or to whom
This grail was meant to be served,
For his heart was always aware
Of his wise old master’s warnings.
But I fear his silence may hurt him,
For I’ve often heard it said
That talking too little can do
As much damage as talking too much.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 200th birthday.
Bravo! thou nation of a noble line!
Thou mean’st to fashion after beasts thy men.
How well thy mission thou dost now divine,
Escaping from the Latin Church’s shrine
To intrench thyself around the fighters’ pen!
New Plazas for the bull-figlit let there be;
Build them, Country! pour thy treasures free!
Ah! stranger lands are wiser far than we, —
For here we are but cowherds, we are fools:
Which do we value most, the laws or bulls?
Who cares for liberty, while he doth roar,
The hunted bull, along the spacious plain.
Or tear the arena, and his victim gore?
When swells his passion with the pricking pain,
Who sees the vision of our mournful Spain?
And when he draws his breath with hoarsest sigh,
And from his pierced heart come out the groans,
And men fall down to earth, and horses die,
How sweet to hear the rosy children nigh
Break out in merry laughter’s silvery tones!
But hark! I see before my vision rise,
Brave to uphold the war of beasts and men,
Some spirited hidalgo, listening wise.
“I glory in the speetaele,” he cries;
“The thing is Spanish, — it has always been!”
O patriotie ardor! Lot them bind
A starry crown upon the learned brow
Of every noble knight, who thinks to find
Our highest strength within the bull enshrined,
Our Spanish glory in the Picador’s bow!
With all the fairest ladies of repute
The love of country so refined has grown
They look with rapture even on this brute;
For tenderness is here a foreign shoot,
And cruelty is Spanish-born alone!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 110th birthday.
An obscure meadow lures me,
her fast, close-fitting lawns
revolve in me, sleep on my balcony.
They rule her beaches, her indefinite
alabaster dome re-creates itself.
On the waters of a mirror,
the voice cut short crossing a hundred paths,
my memory prepares surprise:
fallow dew in the sky, dew, sudden flash.
Without hearing I’m called:
I slowly enter the meadow,
proudly consumed in a new labyrinth.
Illustrious remains:
a hundred heads, bugles, a thousand shows
baring their sky, their silent sunflower.
Strange the surprise in that sky
where unwilling footfalls turn
and voices swell in its pregnant center.
An obscure meadow goes by.
Between the two, wind or thin paper,
the wind, the wounded wind of this death,
this magic death, one and dismissed.
A bird, another bird, no longer trembles.
The watchdogs arrived in number
To seize everything from us
And even the prison walls
Which belong to them
Were even more grim
The women wept
Secretly
We kept our smiles
We kept steadfast
And faced pain
As we knw
That to be in prison was not the problem
It was about going forward.
Across North Wales
The snowflakes wander,
A swarm of white bees.
Over the woods
A cold veil lies.
A load of chalk
Bows down the trees.
No undergrowth
Without its wool,
No field unsheeted;
No path is left
Through any field;
On every stump
White flour is milled.
Will someone tell me
What angels lift
Planks in the flour-loft
Floor of heaven
Shaking down dust?
An angel’s cloak
Is cold quicksilver.
And here below
The big drifts blow,
Blow and billow
Across the heather
Like swollen bellies.
The frozen foam
Falls in fleeces.
Out of my house
I will not stir
For any girl
To have my coat
Look like a miller’s
Or stuck with feathers
Of eider down.
What a great fall
Lies on my country!
A wide wall, stretching
One sea to the other,
Greater and graver
Than the sea’s graveyard.
When will rain come?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 245th birthday.
‘I’ve a pain in my head’
Said the suffering Beckford;
To her Doctor so dread.
‘Oh! what shall I take for’t?’
Said this Doctor so dread
Whose name it was Newnham.
‘For this pain in your head
Ah! What can you do Ma’am?’
Said Miss Beckford, ‘Suppose
If you think there’s no risk,
I take a good Dose
Of calomel brisk.’—
‘What a praise worthy Notion.’
Replied Mr. Newnham.
‘You shall have such a potion
And so will I too Ma’am.’
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
I knew in fact the old home house was gone.
No longer did good oak and stone make sky
Seem bluer blue against its brown and gray,
No longer were the tall rooms stacked two high;
Even the chimney bricks were haled away—
Yet coming through the pasture firs just now,
My heart filled up with all that used to be.
For one rare moment time reversed the years,
And home was there in all simplicity,
So living real it choked my throat with tears.
It’s there, I thought, awaiting my return;
Any moment I will see the door
Swing wide! Just then my seeing heart went blind,
And eyes saw lonely space, and nothing more.
Lot’s wife and I should not have looked behind.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair
She has the color of my eye
She has the body of my hand
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky
She will never close her eyes
And she does not let me sleep
And her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate
And me laugh cry and laugh
Speak when I have nothing to say
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
I am type of singleness…
Dazzling breasts that never bless
With their bared surrendering
Amorous strengths that man may bring
To their conquest. They are free
As two wild white mares may be—
Two young mares that scream and rear
Should a stallion trample near—
Fierce as panthers, fair as doves,
Spurning yoke and curb of loves…
Loins and thighs and knees of snow
Never stress of love may know.
As far mountain-snows that lie
In a pallid, holy sky,
By a fainting wanderer seen
From a midnight-dark ravine,
Spur his thirst and hurt his soul,
So I stand—the hopeless goal
Of the finite world’s desire…
All the flowers of noonday’s fire
Fade before my sovereign white
(Hueless hue of death’s delight).
Tallest lilies round my knees
In their pallor seem to freeze.
‘Neath my huntress-sandalled feet
Bruised roses yield their sweet,
Like crushed hearts that redly wet
Love’s bare feet upon them set.
Am I crueller than Love—
I, the god no prayer can move,
I, the buried fountain sealed,
I, the beauty unrevealed,
I, the vase of unlipped wine,
I, the never-entered shrine,
I, the smooth, unridden steed,
I, the untrodden mountain-mead
Thick with starry, virgin flowers
Where the footless cliff uptowers?…
Love’s keen feet are bloody-red:
Round the fervent marriage-bed
Taloned roses, vine on vine,
Like fanged and lovely serpents twine—
A bed of tears and fever-drouth,
Striving limbs and sobbing mouth,
Famished flame and slain desire,
And the muted Orphic lyre…
Have I offered bitter bread?—
Though your hungers are unfed,
Though my feet you still pursue
Over glimmering leagues of dew,
Wonder is the wood before you,
Beauty is the planet o’er you…
Only to Endymion dead
Did I bow my long-tressed head—
Sealed his eye-lids with the kiss
Of inviolate Artemis.
I, th’immortal dream that flies
Ever from life-dazzled eyes;
I, the joy forever sought,
I, the quarry never caught
(Silver bird or pallid fawn
Fleeing through the dews of dawn)
I, the snow-white heart of heat
Where all colours ruse and meet,
I, the death wherein is life,
I, the unshaken core of strife—
When you grasp me, Hunter-soul,
God-like you have grasped the Whole!
Poets Corner 