Monday 25 December 2017

Christmas Poem: "Christmas Trees (A Christmas Circular Letter)" by Robert Frost

 
The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

 
                                                     “You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”
“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

 
He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

 
Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.
 
by Robert Frost
 
 
For more information about poet, Robert Frost, see:
 
 
 

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden



When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,  

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,  

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,  

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more  

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:  

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro  

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world  

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,  

this man, superb in love and logic, this man  

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,  

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives  

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.



by Robert Hayden




For more information about poet, Robert Hayden, see:


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hayden

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Tuesday Poem: "America Doubts Itself" by Andrew M. Bell

(Photo Credit: Andrew M. Bell)


America,
the land of fat people is
now casting a thin shadow.
It is worried that it is not “great” any more.

It is afraid of China,
growing capitalist power out of
a communist socket.
Mao wouldn't have approved
of the American dollars bulging
in the people's pocket.

It has waged one too many
interventions”, got too much
egg on its face.
It has been nine-eleven-ed and it has
lost its swagger.
It is tentative like a
teenager with its first bloom of acne.

And now it is banking on a saviour,
a man who epitomises The American Dream
when the myth has been stripped away,
a self-made man whose father left him a huge sum,
a swaggering, shouting misogynist
whose ego squeezes the air out of
every room.

He is a man who has never known
hardship, never slept under a copy
of The New York Times on a park bench
in a windswept, dangerous park,
never pushed his meagre belongings around
in a supermarket trolley,
never wandered the streets talking to himself
because no one else will,
never known the escape of the crack pipe or
the bottle and never
searched through a trash can for his next meal.

An older man is trying valiantly to resuscitate
the vision of your founding fathers,
but he will be bought off with party favours because
Big Money has you by the balls, America,
and is squeezing ever tighter.

Ave, America, morituri te salutant.
Hail, America, those who are about to die salute you.

Tuesday 5 December 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Happy first anniversary (in anticipation of your thirty ninth)" by Bob Hicok



I don’t have much time. I’m an important person
to chickadees and mourning doves, whose feeder

was smashed last night by a raccoon. Soon

I’ll be wielding duct tape, noticing the dew,

wanting to bathe in it, hoping the awkwardness

of yesterday (three instances of people talking

with bear traps for mouths) never repeats itself

and we all go forward as if to a party

for a five year old who refuses to smash candy

out of a burro. It’s too cute, the burro, too real

for him not to ask his mother, can I keep it,

and when the other children cry, they’re given

lake front property, it works out, this

is what I see for you, the working out. Think of the year

behind you as a root or think of going to Spain

and feeling sorry for bulls or don’t think,

this isn’t the SATs, don’t think but stay.

Stay happy, honest, stay as tall as you are

as long as you can using giraffes if you need to

to see each other above the crowd. I have these moments

when I realize I’m not breathing, my wife

is never why I’m not breathing and always why

I want to lick a human heart, remember that each of you

is half of why your bed will sag toward the middle

of being a boat and that you both will sag

if you’re lucky together, be lucky together

and acquire in sagging more square footage

to kiss and to hold. And always remember

that I hate you for being so much closer

than I am to where none of us ever get to go

again - first look, first touch, first

inadvertent brush of breath or hair, first time

you turned over and looked at who was surprising

you by how fully she was there.



by Bob Hicok



For more information about the poet, Bob Hicok, see:



Tuesday 28 November 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Advertisement" by Wisława Szymborska



I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.

I work in the office.

I can take exams

on the witness stand.

I mend broken cups with care.

All you have to do is take me,

let me melt beneath your tongue,

just gulp me

with a glass of water.


I know how to handle misfortune,

how to take bad news.

I can minimize injustice,

lighten up God’s absence,

or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.

What are you waiting for—

have faith in my chemical compassion.


You’re still a young man/woman.

It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.

Who said

you have to take it on the chin?


Let me have your abyss.

I’ll cushion it with sleep.

You’ll thank me for giving you

four paws to fall on.


Sell me your soul.

There are no other takers.


There is no other devil anymore.



by Wisława Szymborska (translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak)



For more information on poet, Wisława Szymborska, see:



Tuesday 21 November 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children" by John Updike



They will not be the same next time. The sayings  
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.  

Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in  

the more securely to the worldly buzz  

of television, alphabet, and street talk,  

culture polluting their gazes' pure blue.  

It makes you see at last the value of  

those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells  

of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces                        

like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)  

who knew you from the start, when you were zero,  

cooing their nothings before you could be bored  

or knew a name, not even your own, or how  

this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.



by John Updike



For more information about poet, John Updike, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike

Tuesday 14 November 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Hard-Wired" by Jenny Xie



A misfortune can swell
for a long, long time in the mind.


While goodness shrinks

down to a hard shell.


I reach for the hammer,

but it doesn't crack.


Evolutionarily, it makes sense.


These fishbone days, this fatty grief.



by Jenny Xie



For more information about poet, Jenny Xie, see:


https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jenny-xie-0

Tuesday 7 November 2017

Tuesday Poem: "They'll say: "She must be from another country" by Imtiaz Dharker



When I can’t comprehend
why they’re burning books

or slashing paintings,

when they can’t bear to look

at god’s own nakedness,

when they ban the film

and gut the seats to stop the play

and I ask why

they just smile and say,

‘She must be

from another country.’


When I speak on the phone

and the vowel sounds are off

when the consonants are hard

and they should be soft,

they’ll catch on at once

they’ll pin it down

they’ll explain it right away

to their own satisfaction,

they’ll cluck their tongues

and say,

‘She must be

from another country.’


When my mouth goes up

instead of down,

when I wear a tablecloth

to go to town,

when they suspect I’m black

or hear I’m gay

they won’t be surprised,

they’ll purse their lips

and say,

‘She must be

from another country.’


When I eat up the olives

and spit out the pits

when I yawn at the opera

in the tragic bits

when I pee in the vineyard

as if it were Bombay,

flaunting my bare ass

covering my face

laughing through my hands

they’ll turn away,

shake their heads quite sadly,

‘She doesn’t know any better,’

they’ll say,

‘She must be

from another country.’


Maybe there is a country

where all of us live,

all of us freaks

who aren’t able to give

our loyalty to fat old fools,

the crooks and thugs

who wear the uniform

that gives them the right

to wave a flag,

puff out their chests,

put their feet on our necks,

and break their own rules.


But from where we are

it doesn’t look like a country,    

it’s more like the cracks

that grow between borders

behind their backs.

That’s where I live.

And I’ll be happy to say,

‘I never learned your customs.

I don’t remember your language

or know your ways.

I must be

from another country.’



by Imtiaz Dharker



For more information on poet, Imtiaz Dharker, see:



Tuesday 31 October 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Crawfordsville Confidential" by G.E. Murray

     
 
1.
 
In the land of milk and cream delivered early
and daily, and always in glass bottles, we care
about good grooming and, of course, news
of slurs and curs ... Can it really be that home
 
becomes a place to be stranded?
“I don’t see a single storm cloud
anywhere in the sky, but I can sure smell rain,”
out on the edge of Crawfordsville, Indiana,
where the answers and questions become identical
as evil twins.
 
 
2.
 
Basketball ghosts bounce and sweat again
in that second-floor gym in the middle of July—
that never-to-be-forgotten home
of the first-ever Boys State Championship.
Rusty jump shots and long-ago corner hooks
rim out in a stream of dusted sunlight.
“Just to play the game, don’t you know,
you know, no matter how much the sacrifice ... ”
How searing afternoon’s vagueness now,
dreamed in a daylong haze of headache pills
downed at the General Lew Wallace Motor Lodge:
how the arc of the ball rises
to echoes of split-jump cheers
in lubricated air, when phantom bodies
strive and leap and go prostrate
to that squeak of rubber on polished wood—
in a game of shirts and skins.
 
 
3.
 
You can only wonder how Ezra Pound dissected his time here,
among tractors and proctors and temples of antebellum style,
as he cooed sweet Greek in the ear
of his secular Madonna ... Just now, two pigeons
greet first daylight on the Green of Wabash College.
 
Something to be said for being scandalized silly,
and in more than one language
when life becomes holier than the Crusades.
And what’s more—didactic passions
eventually drive you insane, thinks young EP, so what?
Sew buttons, ha!
 
And make it new always ... and always
leave the door cracked open, a light on,
and one foot on the floor.
 
 
4.
 
“The meatloaf here’s not very good,”
warns waitress Lucy, a pretty girl
with a tooth missing. Indifferently,
day proceeds utterly.
Off Country Road X-10, out by Carcus Creek,
driving past Minnie Betts’s florist shop
and what’s left of the old city jail,
you figure each small detail adds
glory to any story.
                            “Relax,” says Elton Bidwell,
the county’s dead-buzzard collector,
“I’ll take care of us all
when we com’ on home.”
 
 
5.
 
The town goes dark in a killer storm.
Collective forgetting and forgiving
occurs. But safety comes in many forms.
In this vast black you get to thinking
about giddy joys and little sorrows,
the curse of full employment at minimum wage,
and those conspicuous professors—
their bowties and braces speaking to the ages
and marking moments of learned unworthiness.
Maybe, it’s vacuum-packed fear
in a stage-managed town. Time to guess
what’s behind each tiny crime and local leer,
at once rancorous and baffling. Strangers
need not apply. A few lights click on
at the Shortstop Grille. These cruel weathers
turn asphalt slick. The old intramurals begin again.
 
 
6.
 
Early Sunday morning and a drunken Elton Bidwell
is strung like a scarecrow on his front porch swing,
deposited by Grand Wizards from the Odd Fellows Lodge bar
late last night—reminder to those devoted folks
heading up Church Street with songbooks in hand,
that home sure proves just another place to be stranded. 
 
by G. E. Murray
 
 
For more information about poet, G.E. Murray, see: