Verses from August
"Scraps from that great silence up on high"
THE NAMING OF A CHILD Togara Muzanenhamo It began with a leisured cycle of turning strokes, every breath drawing on syllables, her name dug from each jab stirring the brown muddy water. An upward glance took in bare skies, corncrakes weak on the wing, the slow light of dusk - slug -silver. Stroke after stroke, warm turns of water rippled back to quiet mud banks where plover struck short banded wings to taste the inverted sky. The sun fell bald with thoughts of our daughter swimming deep in your womb, arms turning over with mine till depth drew me to stop and look up and hear nothing but starlight crowning the sky. There, in the music, she was named, deep in the cup of the burnt valley where sound worships water and flows into the cradle of every villager's arm, the sweet consistency of life, expectant and warm.
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry Howard Nemerov Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white and slow. There came a moment that you couldn't tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
Boy and Egg Naomi Shihab Nye Every few minutes, he wants to march the trail of flattened rye grass back to the house of muttering hens. He too could make a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it to his ear while the other children laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him, so little yet, too forgetful in games, ready to cry if the ball brushed him, riveted to the secret of birds caught up inside his fist, not ready to give it over to the refrigerator or the rest of the day.
Two-Headed Calf Laura Gilpin Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.
Angels Russell Edson They have little use. They are the best as objects of torment. No government cares what you do with them. Like birds, and yet so human . . . They mate by briefly looking at the other. Their eggs are like white jellybeans. Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have. But what is there for a man to do with his life? . . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame. When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . .
darlings Bukowski a world full of successful people's sons on bicycles on the Hollywood Riviera at 3:11 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. this is what some of the armies died to save this is what many of the ladies desire: these stuffed fractions non-beings pedaling along or stopping to chat while still seated upon their bikes gentle breezes touching undisturbed faces. I understand very little of this except maybe the armies killed the wrong people but they usually do: they think the enemy are those they are directed against instead of those who direct them: the fathers of the darlings.
Mnemonic Jenny George I forgot the prairie because it stood so still. I forgot the clouds because they were always moving. I forgot the taste of water because it lay quietly inside the taste of everything. I forgot a childhood when it disappeared through a hole in itself. Later, mushrooms emerged from the damp soil. The way to keep something is to forget it. Then it goes to an enormous place. Grass grows to the horizon like hair. In the sky a cloud goes on naming and unnaming itself.
To the rain Ursula K. Le Guin Mother rain, manifold, measureless, falling on fallow, on field and forest, on house-roof, low hovel, high tower, downwelling waters all-washing, wider than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster than countrysides, calming, recalling: return to us, teaching our troubled souls in your ceaseless descent to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root, to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.
The Lamb Linda Gregg It was a picture I had after the war. A bombed English church. I was too young to know the word English or war, but I knew the picture. The ruined city still seemed noble. The cathedral with its roof blown off was not less godly. The church was the same plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out of the holes God's fist made in the walls. All our desire for love or children is treated like rags by the enemy. I knew so much and sang anyway. Like a bird who will sing until it is brought down. When they take away the trees, the child picks up a stick and says, this is a tree, this the house and the family. As we might. Through a door of what had been a house, into the field of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.
POET BECOMING
Antjie Krog
to awake one morning into sound
with the antennae of vowel and consonant and diphthong
to calibrate with delicate care the subtlelest
movement of light and loss in sound
to find yourself suddenly kneeling at the audible
palpable outline of a word - searching
for that precise moment in which
a poetic line lights up in sound
when the meaning of a word yields, slips
and then surrenders into tone - from then on
the blood yearns for that infinite pitch of a word
because: the only truth stands skinned in sound
the poet writes poetry with her tongue
yes, she breathes deeply with her ear
Harlem Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
In the Desert Stephen Crane In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter, - bitter," he answered; "But I like it "Because it is bitter, "And because it is my heart."