Poem a Day

I want to look back and see you in the branches.
Little by little you turned into fruit.
It was easy for you to rise from the roots,
singing your syllable of sap.

Here you will be a fragrant flower first,
changed to the statuesque form of a kiss,
till the sun and the earth, blood and the sky, fulfill
their promises of sweetness and pleasure, in you.

There in the branches I will recognize your hair,
your image ripening in the leaves,
bringing the petals nearer my thirst,

and my mouth will fill with the taste of you,
the kiss that rose from the earth
with your blood, the blood of a lover’s fruit.

-Pablo Neruda

Memories of the sun fade as my heart grows numb—
The grass is yellower, too.
The wind toys with what snowflakes have already come—
So few, so few.

In narrow canals, there’s already nothing that flows—
Water stands still.
Nothing ever happens here, nothing grows—
It never will!

Against the sky, the willow lifts its skeletal life.
Its see-through shawl.
Maybe it’s better that I’m not your wife,
After all.

Memories of the sun fade as my heart grows numb.
What’s this? Darkness in town?
Maybe! And during the night, winter may come—
And settle down.

-Anne Akhmatova

Riddle

Where far in forest I am laid,
In a place ringed around by stones,
Look for no melancholy shade,
And have no thoughts of buried bones;
For I am bodiless and bright,
And fill this glade with sudden glow;
The leaves are washed in under-light;
Shade lies upon the boughs like snow.

-Richard Wilbur

A Blessing

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

-James Wright

Sow a thought,  reap an act.
Sow an act,  reap a habit.
Sow a habit,  reap a character.
Sow a character,  reap a destiny.

-English Proverb

I’m so conscious of your being,
total rose,
my assent’s confusing
you with my celebrating heart.

Rose, I breathe you in as if
you were all of life,
and I feel I am the perfect
friend of such a friend.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

A single rose is every rose
and this one: irreplaceable,
perfect, a supple vocable
by the text of things enclosed.

Without her, how can we ever
talk about what our hopes were,
about the tender intervals
in this perpetual departure.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Miracle Ice Cream

Miracle’s truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what’s still given: in a room’s rich shadow
a woman’s breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.

-Adrienne Rich

Blue Hydrangea

Just like the last green in a colour pot
So are these leaves, withered and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, which reflect
A hue of blue only, more they do not.

Reflections are tear-stained, inaccurate,
As if they were about to cease,
And like old blue notepaper sheets
They wear some yellow, grey and violet,

Washed-out like on a children’s apron,
Outworn and now no more in use:
We contemplate a small life’s short duration.

But suddenly some new blue seemingly is seen
In just one umbel, and we muse
Over a moving blue delighting in the green.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

-Anonymous