New Favorite...

September Twilight

I gathered you together,
I can dispense with you -

I'm tired of you, chaos
of the living world -
I can only extend myself
for so long to a living thing.

I summoned you into existence
by opening my mouth, by lifting
my little finger, shimmering

blues of the wild
aster, blossom
of the lily, immense,
gold-veined -

you come and go; eventually
I forget your names.

You come and go, every one of you
flawed in some way,
in some way compromised: you are worth
one life, no more than that.

I gathered you together;
I can erase you
as though you were a draft to be thrown away,

an exercise

because I've finished you, vision
of deepest mourning.

Louise Glück, from The Wild Iris

The Eternal Moment

"To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force - the imagination." - William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

Today, I think I understood the eternal moment. To be entirely content in one moment, entirely at peace with whatever has led me here, and whatever is ahead of me... "All times contemporaneous in the mind." (Ezra Pound) Not just living in the moment, but living in all moments, letting the imagination "refine, clarify, and intensify that eternal moment"... Sorry if this makes no sense. If you take a class on Pound and Williams, you may understand what I'm saying. Or not. I don't understand half the things I said in that class...

Anyway, something about this poem seems relevant, but I haven't spent enough time with it to really know why... (PS I love the last line)

Anytime - W.S. Merwin

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light

Rain Stick

My sister and I were reminiscing today about the good old days when we danced around in our Pocahontas dresses, listening to Peruvian panflute music, and playing the rain stick. So here's a Seamus Heaney poem about a rain stick:

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

Emily Bronte

 Apparently, I have yet to post Emily Bronte on here. So, here it is:

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The stedfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou--THOU art Being and Breath,
And what THOU art may never be destroyed

Chicago

So.... I'm in Chicago. Here's a Creeley poem, aptly named "Chicago":

Say that you're
       lonely - and want
something to
       place you -

going around groping
       either by mind
or hand - but behind
       the pun is a

door you keep open,
       one way,
so they won't touch you
       and still let you stay.

I can't see in
       this place more
than the walls
       and door -
a light flat
       and air hot,
and drab, drab, drab
       and locked.

Would dying be here?
Never go anywhere you
       can't live.

Concrete blocks painted an "off white" yellow tone - institu-
tional - very noisy, senses of people next side of wall, etc.
Get used to shrinking space - They'll let you out when
there's reason.

Just Now

Thanks, poetry buddies, for making me read Merwin... (PS we need a better name than poetry buddies!)

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever
believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

- W.S. Merwin

Like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on...

Sorry, I didn't post yesterday... I was busy finishing up what has probably been my best quarter of college to date! (100% thumbs up on fire!) Only three people will get that....
Anyway, this song is in my head today, and it's so beautiful, I have to share:

Like the Wheel - Tallest Man on Earth

Oh I wish I was the sparrow in your kid's eye
that could fly above this summer all day long
on an island in the heart he has to carry
past the many you have let into your song

And I said Oh, my Lord, why I am I not strong
like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on
like the wheel that will take you home

And in the forest someone's whispering to a tree now
this is all I am so please don't follow me
and it's your brother in the shaft that I'm a-swinging
please let the kindness of forgetting set me free

And on this Sunday someone's sitting down to wonder
where the hell among these mountains will I be?
there's a cloud behind the cloud to which I'm yelling
oh, I could hear you sneak around so easily

And I said oh, my Lord, why I am I not strong
like the branch that keeps hangman hanging on
like the branch that will take me home

PS this is a recording of three different songs, none of which are this one, but it's so good! His finger picking is unreal...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLRTleMY_mc&feature=related