I Went Into The Maverick Bar

I went into the Maverick Bar
In Farmington, New Mexico,
And drank double shots of bourbon
                                  backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I'd left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay
                                   by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
                                   where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
"We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskokie"
And with the next song,
                                   a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances
                                    in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
                                    and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness--
                                   America--your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.

We left--onto the freeway shoulders--
                                    under the tough old stars--
In the shadow of bluffs
                                     I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
                                      "What is to be done."

~Gary Snyder

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon; 
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot; 
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 
Though lovers be lost love shall not; 
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily; 
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; 
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through; 
Split all ends up they shan't crack; 
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores; 
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain; 
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; 
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion. 

- Dylan Thomas

Alone [He] Stare[s] Into the Frost's White Face

Alone [he] stare[s] into the frost’s white face.   
It’s going nowhere, and [he]—from nowhere.   
Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle:   
Miraculous, the breathing plain.   

Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—
The squint itself consoled, at ease . . .   
The ten-fold forest almost the same . . .   
And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread.  

Osip Mandelstam
January 16, 1937

For an Absence

When I cannot be with you
I will send my love (so much
is allowed to human lovers)
to watch over you in the dark --
a winged small presence
who never sleeps, however long
the night. Perhaps it cannot
protect or help, I do not know,
but it watches always, and so
you will sleep within my love
within the room within the dark.
And when, restless, you wake
and see the room palely lit
by that watching, you will think,
"It is only dawn," and go
quiet to sleep again.

- Wendell Berry

Whispered Sighing

Sitting over words 
very late I have heard a kind of 
  whispered sighing 
not far 
like a night wind in pines or like 
  the sea in the dark 
the echo of everything that has ever 
been spoken 
still spinning its one syllable 
between the earth and silence 

- W. S. Merwin, 1927
written in a NYC subway

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-William Yeats

Dead and Dying

least you are not dee eee aye dee

is what I said 

off the top of my head

to those sharing an l-shaped bench with me

not that they heard a single unspoken word

but it is important that they do see 

there is no string from which we are connected

that does not explain the dee why eye in gee

-jsn

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

-WH Davies

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-William Carlos Williams

A Total Stranger

a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me--

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was

--but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each

- E.E.Cummings

We Wear The Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Important Act is Dreaming

the important act is dreaming
so let dreams flood over you endlessly
along with the intense desire to make some of them come true
and let's love what should be loved
and forget what should be forgotten
let's wish for passions
as well as silences
and bird song upon awakening
and the laughter of children. 

let us resist being swallowed up
and resist indifference
resist the negative virtues of our age.

above all, let us all just be, and be ourselves. 

or try to - for as long as we can, as hard as we can.


-rewritten by Bernard Moitessier from Jacques Brel quotation in A Sea Vagabond's World

In my craft or sullen art

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

-Dylan Thomas

Persephone's Bees

Take, from my palms, for joy, for ease,

A little honey, a little sun,

That we may obey Persephone's bees.

You can't untie a boat unmoored.

Fur-shod shadows can't be heard, 

Nor terror, in this life, mastered.

Love, what's left for us, and of us, is this

Living remnant, loving revenant, brief kiss

Like a bee flying completed dying hiveless

To find in the forest's heart a home,

Night's never-ending hum,

Thriving on meadowsweet, mint, and time.

Take, for all that is good, for all that is gone,

That it may lie rough and real against your collarbone,

This string of bees, that once turned honey into sun.

-Osip Mandelstam (translated from Russian by Christian Wiman)

In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio. 

- James Arlington Wright

If Once You Have Slept on an Island

If once you have slept on an island
You'll never be quite the same;
You may look as you looked the day before
And go by the same old name, 
You may bustle about in street and shop
You may sit at home and sew,
But you'll see blue water and wheeling gulls
Wherever your feet may go. 
You may chat with the neighbors of this and that
And close to your fire keep,
But you'll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell
And tides beat through your sleep. 
Oh! you won't know why and you can't say how
Such a change upon you came,
But once you have slept on an island,
You'll never be quite the same. 

- Rachel Lyman Field

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gather, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

- Dylan Thomas

This being human is a guest house.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond

- Rumi

I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,

Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.

It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power,

And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?

What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,

All hover and hammer,

Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

It is now. It is not.

 - Osip Mandelstam, “And I Was Alive”

Facing the Stars - for David Ignatow

I face the stars
in an empty tundra flat, no one
for miles near, no one knowing
I am here

so that I do not exist other
than in memory and expectation;

except to the dogs that pull me,
the snow, the tussocks
that bear our weight, air
sucked and blown in our breathing,
ravens flying over,
lemmings burrowing under,
the wolves, fox, lynx, marten…
that wonder
what I am up to
with my bundled sled;

and except for my own mind
that is not frightened of itself
in the silent space, facing the stars
the sisters of my mother
winking.

-Mary Kancewick