We present this work in honor of the poet’s 185th birthday.
Rosalia de Castro Spanish 1837 – 1885
Good-bye rivers, good-bye fountains; Good-bye, little rills; Good-bye, sight of my eyes: Don’t know when we’ll see each other again. Sod of mine, sod of mine, Sod where I was raised, Small orchard I love so, Dear fig trees that I planted,
Meadows, streams, groves, Stands of pine waved by the wind, Little chirping birds, Darling cottage of my joy,
Mill in the chestnut wood, Clear nights of brilliant moonlight, Cherished ringing bells Of the tiny parish church,
Blackberries in the brambles That I used to give my love, Narrow footpaths through the cornfields, Good-bye, for ever good-bye! Good-bye, heaven! Good-bye, happiness! I leave the house of my birth, I leave the hamlet that I know For a world I haven’t seen! I leave friends for strangers, I leave the lowland for the sea, I leave, in short, what I well love… Would I didn’t have to go! But I’m poor and—base sin!— My sod is not my own For even the shoulder of the road Is loaned out to the wayfarer Who was born star-crossed. I must therefore leave you, Small orchard I loved so, Beloved fireplace of home, Dear trees that I planted, Favourite spring of the livestock. Good-bye, good-bye, I’m leaving, Hallowed blades of grass in the churchyard Where my father lies buried, Saintly blades of grass I kissed so much, Dear land that brought us up. Good-bye Virgin of the Assumption White as a seraph, I carry you in my heart: Plead with God on my behalf, Virgin of the Assumption mine, Far, very far away hear The church bells of Pomar; For hapless me—alas— They shall never ring again. Hear them still farther away Every peal deals out pain, I part alone without a friend… Good-bye land of mine, good-bye! Farewell to you too, little darling…! Farewell forever perhaps…! I send you this farewell crying From the precious coastline. Don’t forget me, little darling, If I should die of loneliness… So many leagues offshore… My dear house! My home!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.
John Shaw Neilson
Australian
1872 – 1942
Your voice was the rugged old voice that I knew; I gave the best grip of my greeting to you. I knew not of your lips— you knew not of mine; Of travel and travail we gave not a sign.
We drank and we chorused with quips in our eyes; But under our song was the meeting of sighs. I knew not of your lips— you knew not of mine; For lean years and lone years had watered the wine.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 115th birthday.
W.H. Auden
English
1907 – 1973
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.
A.M. Klein
Canadian
1909 – 1972
Bundled their bones, upon ninety-nine stairs – St. Joseph’s ladder – the knobs of penance come, the folded cripples counting up their prayers.
How rich, how plumped with blessing is that dome! The gourd of Brother André! His sweet days rounded! Fulfilled! Honeyed to honeycomb!
Whither the heads, upon the ninety-nine trays, the palsied, who double their aspen selves, the lame, the unsymmetrical, the dead-limbed, raise
their look, their hope, and the idée fixe of their maim, knowing their surgery’s in the heart. Are not the ransomed crutches worshipers? And the fame
of the brother sanatorial to this plot? God mindful of the sparrows on the stairs? Oh, to their faith this mountain of stairs, is not!
They know, they know, that suddenly their cares and orthopedics will fall from them, and they will stand whole again. Roll empty away, wheelchairs, and crutches, without armpits, hop away!
And I who in my own faith once had faith like this,
We present this work in honor of the 70th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Enrique Gonzalez Martinez Mexican 1871 – 1952
Its gaze filled my abyss, its gaze melted into my being, became so mine that I am doubtful if this breath of agony is life still or hallucinated death.
The archangel came, cast his sword upon the double laurel flourishing in the sealed garden….And that day brought back the shadow and I returned to my nothingness.
I thought the world, witnessing man’s appal, would crumble, overwhelmed beneath the ruins of the entire firmament crashing down.
But I saw the earth at peace, at peace the heavens, the fields serene, limpid the running stream, blue the mountain and the wind at rest.
When God in heaven brought light to earth and the true voice of wondrous men was accomplished, a life-producing radiance filled the whole world through the words of (other) prophets, the evangelists. For all robust men embraced one God, the Heavenly Father, Lord of all, and his Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit were washed with water from the many sins staining their bodies.
I heard a bird at dawn Singing sweetly on a tree, That the dew was on the lawn, And the wind was on the lea; But I didn’t listen to him, For he didn’t sing to me.
I didn’t listen to him, For he didn’t sing to me That the dew was on the lawn And the wind was on the lea; I was singing at the time Just as prettily as he.
I was singing all the time, Just a prettily as he, About the dew upon the lawn And the wind upon the lea; So I didn’t listen to him As he sang upon a tree.
I am a bourgeois lady and have a swollen belly. I try to write my thoughts despite my sore throat.
I behave the way some others want. In common ground, the standard lie. But, for human beings it is despicable to bear labels which say: “Dry clean only.” “Handle with care.”
I have been a prodigious child, a little brat, a bad student, a beauty queen, a fashion model, and one of those that advertise soups or sundries.
I got myself into this inevitable mess, by falling in love, then sacrificing a handsome man, turning him into a husband, a sad situation.
(Not to mention what kind of person I have become!)
I have committed an inconvenient social crime: adding five children to the crowd.
I have failed as a mother, and a wife, as a lover, as a reader of philosophy.
All I can do, with sad mediocrity, is to be a bourgeois wife, unforgivably inconsequential, deaf and blind: a useless kind of human mind.
And that is why I always have a swollen belly, and sometimes I want to scream with such anger, that my own raging words do irritate my throat.
Then I write poetry which has the sound of a bass cord inside my core. Because I know the truth: that there’s a war, and violence, and crime each single day, while I am at the same time sitting here with no fear… For dumb, so doomed. For deaf So damned.
Not knowing what to do I choose inertia. I look the other way. But inside myself, I cry. Because I remember the hunger, the children in tears watching us with open eyes… far away or near, the children as real as I.
At exactly the same hour we the ladies, the socialites keep sitting here blinded, surrounded by disposable happiness.
I do nothing to see if we can move the world against poverty and drugs, against violence and war!
Instead there’s this insanity, staying still, contented with being just ass holes.
Poets Corner 