Some days it isn’t pretty or inspirational. Some days it takes more than books, more than quotes, more than walks and fresh air. Some days take more than friends, phone calls, texts.
Some days you just want to make it to the end – to sleep. Some days, I don’t know why, you just show up with the whitest knuckles in the room. Some days it’s enough to breathe.
Listen to the words – be not afraid. And be.
When your father dies, say the Irish
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Welsh
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians
When your father dies, say the Canadians
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Indians
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the British,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever
and you walk in his light.
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
– William Stafford
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot – air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That’s the world, and we all live there.
August
Lizette Woodworth Reese
No wind, no bird. The river flames like brass.
On either side, smitten as with a spell
Of silence, brood the fields. In the deep grass,
Edging the dusty roads, lie as they fell
Handfuls of shriveled leaves from tree and bush.
But ’long the orchard fence and at the gate,
Thrusting their saffron torches through the hush,
Wild lilies blaze, and bees hum soon and late.
Rust-colored the tall straggling briar, not one
Rose left. The spider sets its loom up there
Close to the roots, and spins out in the sun
A silken web from twig to twig. The air
Is full of hot rank scents. Upon the hill
Drifts the noon’s single cloud, white, glaring, still.
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How did I live this long without reading this wonderful poet – Wislawa Szymborska? What follows is an excerpt from her Nobel Lecture given December 7, 1996 and one poem, “On Death, without Exaggeration”
I’ve mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It’s not that they’ve never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It’s just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don’t understand yourself.
When I’m asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”
Read the full Nobel Lecture here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1996/szymborska/lecture/
It can’t take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.
In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.
It can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.
Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.
Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!
Sometimes it isn’t strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.
All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.
Ill will won’t help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d’etat
is so far not enough.
Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies’ skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.
Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not.
There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From “The People on the Bridge”, 1986
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From “Nothing Twice”, 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
“…in a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.” – Novalis
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This morning I give thanks
for breath
for breathing
I give thanks for
open windows and
French doors half-opened
and half-shut
This morning I give thanks
for clear glass tumblers
of cold Sebago water
and the crickets
of course and the crows
thanks for the cool
wash cloth
The comfort of hands
thanks for the taste of lemon
and the hair brush
this morning
I give thanks
for the shadow
that lingers a moment
In those trees then
leaves the world
Thunder and Wine
“I answered you in the secret place of thunder.”
Psalm 81:7
thick fog clearing
as thunder echoes
across Casco Bay
on Cushing Island
lights go dark
then Cliff and here
in this dim sanctuary
the cathedral bells
won’t stop ringing
no one sees
the stained-glass smeared
by the blood moon light
once again wine
turns to water bread
back to grain
Of God
Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
so that a flood of waters may cover you?
– Job 38:34
what are my chances
when your words
linger and scratch
like wool uniforms
quietly removed
when the orphan
and widow flinch
at your whispered
good night
I’ll promise to lie still
if your light but touches
the water’s edge
there an egret
white as the moon
hunts in the reeds
Creating Myth
Notes on Jack Spicer – 1978
A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.
– Jack Spicer
make myth by
destroying myth
then explain
what came before
one final embrace
before departing
into meaning
or a hell of meanings
everything slipping
or sliding
haunted by the poetic
and the laughter
the duplicity
of words
and how they replace
the historical
with an empty
vessel
and though we struggle
to pull them back
our hushed shadows
will not be closed
simply by stating
their closure
My Final Thought of You
It happens often now, forgetting
the words but not the thing
itself.
This week alone the words cilantro,
Curtis Mayfield, actuary seemed
lost, erased.
You, too, are there in a slight daydream,
a glimpse of a waning moon
on a sunny day.
A thunderstorm rises from Mount Blue
not 20 miles away. The birds and I
find shelter.
The stream is silent, hopeful. My breathing
slows as I count to measure the first
strike of lightning.
Three Halves
(in which the seeker discovers
he is that which is sought)
I am on a motorcycle
say a Triumph yes
a Triumph tearing
out of town on a moonlit
night Friday or early
Saturday morning and say
I am passed by a truck
an electrician’s truck
that has no business
passing a man like me
all in black leather
you’d understand
when I pass again
looking back to threaten
the driver flipping
the bird say or sneer
my surprise
that the driver is me
and all those cables
spooled on poles
by the breakdown lane
are mine to connect
or repair or destroy in this
the third half of my life
Edge of Atlantic 