Czesław Miłosz (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004) Of those at the table in the caféwhere on winter noons a garden of frost glittered on windowpanesI alone survived.I could go in there if I wanted toand drumming my fingers in a chilly voidconvoke shadows. With disbelief I touch the cold marble,with disbelief I touch …
Walt Whitman – On The Beach Alone At Night
Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) On the beach at night alone,As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.A vast similitude interlocks all,All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, …
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Octavio Paz – Letter of Testimony Cantata
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) 1There is an uncertain territorybetween night and day.It is neither light nor shadow: it is time.An hour, a precarious pause,a darkening page,a page …
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WH Auden – After Reading A Child’s Guide To Modern Physics
Wystan Hugh Auden aka WH Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) If all a top physicist knowsAbout the Truth be true,Then, for all the so-and-so’s,Futility and grime,Our common world contains,We have a better timeThan the Greater Nebulae do,Or the atoms in our brains.Marriage is rarely blissBut, surely it would be worseAs particles to …
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Sarah Browning – The Fifth Fact
Sarah Browning For Ben’s project he must research five factsabout his African-American hero and write themon poster board. He chooses Harriet Tubman,whose five facts are: Her father’s name was Ben.Her mother’s name was Old Rit. She was bornin 1820 and died in 1913. She was born in Marylandand died in New York.Ben asks for adviceabout …
Alex Dimitrov – More
Alex Dimitrov (November 30, 1984 -) How again after months there is awe.The most personal moment of the dayappears unannounced. People wear leather.People refuse to die. There are strangerswho look like they could know your name.And the smell of a bar on a cold night,or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.Sirens. Parties. …
T.S. Eliot – Burnt Norton
T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one …
William Blake – The Schoolboy
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) I love to rise in a summer morn,When the birds sing on every tree;The distant huntsman winds his horn,And the skylark sings with me:Oh, what sweet company! But to go to school in a summer morn, —O it drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The …
Alison Luterman – Some Girls
Alison Luterman Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of theirfury.I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteorshowers.And shadowed their secret rendezvous,walking and flying all night over paths traced like veinsthrough the deep body of the forestwhere they are trying …
Neil Gaiman – After Silence
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (November 10, 1960 -) for Rachel Carson Seasons on seasons. The spring is signaled by birdsongcoyotes screech and yammer in the moonlightand the first flowers open. I saw two owls todayin the daylight, on silent wings.They landed as one and watched me sleepily.Oh who? they called. Or how, or how who?Then …
Naomi Long Madgett – Anniversary Song
Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 2020) How good it is to let our memory wanderand travel back across the fruitful yearsto count how many miles we’ve walked together!On pinnacles of dreams, through vales of tears,along the level ground of every daywe’ve made our way.In sickness and in health, in joy and …
WS Merwin – Elegy for a Walnut Tree
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) Old friend now there is no one alivewho remembers when you were youngit was high summer when I first saw youin the blaze of day most of my life agowith the dry grass whispering in your shadeand already you had lived through warsand echoes of …
Mark Jarman – Interesting Times
Mark Jarman (1952 -) Everything’s happening on the cusp of tragedy, the tip of comedy, the pivot of event.You want a placid life, find another planet. This one is occupied with the story’s arc:About to happen, on the verge, horizontal. You want another planet, try the moon.Try any of the eight, try Planet X. It’s out there somewhere, …
Emily Brontë – Remembrance
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hoverOver the mountains, on that northern shore,Resting …
Tadeusz Dąbrowski – Sentence
Tadeusz Dąbrowski It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and foundin your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentencein a language you don’t know.And you’d be sure this sentence was the key to yourlife. Also to this cell.And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence,until finally you’d understand …
Melissa Andres – Arrival
Melissa Andres The corners of the Terracotta tilescut my mother’s feet when she walkedto the kitchen to eat the most exotic fruitshe had ever imagined—tree-ripe peaches packedwith juices in a can—and not the guavashe always melted for the pastries.My mother then placed the empty canon the stove, added water and beganto cook the rice we …
Dorianne Laux – Antilamentation
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you readto the end just to find out who killed the cook, notthe insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, notthe lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,the one you beat to the …
Adam Clay – A Joke About How Old We’ve Become
Adam Clay I take a break from the morning’s workto pay a credit card bill,to take the dog out, to waterthe plants in the hanging baskets,but why not instead take a walkthrough the early August morningbefore the heat wave hits? The body’sstill stretching itself out. The music goesfrom minor to major when you flipthe album, …
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Jane Hirshfield – Washing Doorknobs
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The glass doorknobs turn no differently.But every DecemberI polish them with vinegar water and cotton.Another year ends.This one, I ate Kyoto picklesand touched, in Xi’an, a stone turtle’s face,cold as stone, as turtle.I could not read the fortune carved into its shellor hear what it had raised its headto …
David St. John – Without Mercy, The Rains Continued
David St. John (July 24, 1949 -) There had beenA microphone hiddenBeneath the bedOf course I didn’t realize itAt the time & in factDidn’t know for yearsUntil one day a standardKhaki book mailerArrived & within itAn oldStained cassette tapeSimply labelled in black marker“Him / Me / September, 1975”& as I listened I knew somethingHad been …
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Cat Richardson – Northeast Corridor
Cat Richardson I’m on the horizon of a seven hour trip and it’s quiet.A man walks across the early highway, the sun is almost up.You’re far away and swimming. How many bodies of waterwill I cross before I solve myself. I’m going to a wedding. Being single is expensive,especially at weddings. I try not to …
Clive James – Season To Season
Clive James (October 07, 1939 – November 24, 2019) I have been fooled before, and just becauseThis summer seems so long, it might not beMy last. Winter could come again, and pauseThe sky like a taped tactical descentOf pocket paratroopers. Things to seeCould happen yet, and life prove not quite spentBut still abundant, still the …
Charles Simic – The Week
Charles Simic (May 09, 1938 -) Monday comes around with a new tattooIt won't show us and here's TuesdayWalking its latest nightmare on a leashAnd Wednesday blind as the rain tappingOn a windowpane and Thursday sippingBad coffee served by a pretty waitressAnd Friday lost in a confusion of sadAnd happy faces and Saturday flashingLike a …
Billy Collins – Table Talk
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Not long after we had sat down to dinner at a long table in a restaurant in Chicago and were deeply engrossed in the heavy menus, one of us—a bearded man with a colorful tie— asked if any one of us had ever considered applying the paradoxes of Zeno …
William Evans – I Will Love You Most When I Can Barely Remember Anything
William Evans My first two crushes are fifty yards apart in the same Ohio cemetery. They never knew each other but now I connect them like a bowstring. I keep memories like a modeled city, the tallest buildings erecting themselves between my shoulders. I have good neighborhoods and blocks that marked me. I have fires …
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