In the fall, I believe again in poetry
if nothing else it is
a movement of the mind.
Summers ball together
into sticky lumps,
spring evenings are glass beads from one mould
for standard-size youth,
winter a smooth heaviness, not even cold.
But the mind trembles
here, on the brink
the mind trembles
there is life, after all,
there is life, still
unbelief left.
-Jaakko A. Ahokas (translated from Finnish)
Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.
-Albert Camus
i like
to think that on
the flower you gave me when we
loved
the far-
departed mouth sweetly-saluted
lingers.
if one marvel
seeing the hunger of my
lips for a dead thing,
i shall instruct
him silently with becoming
steps to seek
your face and i
entreat,by certain foolish perfect
hours
dead too,
if that he come receive
him as your lover sumptuously
being
kind
because i trust him to
your grace,and for
in his own land
he is called death.
-E.E. Cummings
suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
young death sits in a cafe
smiling, a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger
(i say “will he buy flowers” to you
and “Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard” i
say to you who are silent. – “Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes – oh hear
, pas cheres”)
and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else
there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death, is slender;
likes flowers.
-E.E. Cummings
Among
these
red pieces of
day(against which and
quite silently hills
made of blueandgreen paper
scorchblend ingthem
-selves-U
pcurv E,into:
anguish (clim
b) ing
s-p-i-r-a
1
and,disappear)
Satanic and blasé
a black goat lookingly wanders
There is nothing left of the world but
into this noth
ing il treno per
Roma si-gnori ?
jerk.
ilyr,ushes
-E.E. Cummings
EDIT: I have received a request to remove this Robert Frost poem as it is still under copyright.
Someone dancing inside us
learned only a few steps:
the “Do-Your-Work” in 4/4 time,
the “What-Do-You-Expect” waltz.
He hasn’t noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp,
the one with black eyes
who knows the rhumba,
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains in Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen.
If they don’t, the next world
will be a lot like this one.
-Bill Holm
1
Where is a foot worthy to walk a garden,
or any eye that deserves to look at trees?
Show me a man willing to be
thrown in the fire.
2
In the shambles of love, they kill only the best,
none of the weak or deformed.
Don’t run away from this dying.
Whoever’s not klled for love is dead meat.
3
Tonight with wine being poured
and instruments singing among themselves,
one thing is forbidden,
one thing: Sleep.
4
Two strong impulses: One
to drink long and deep,
the other,
not to sober up too soon.
-Rumi
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
A black bear sits alone
in the twilight, nodding from side
to side, turning slowly around and around
on himself, scuffing the four-footed
circle into the earth. He sniffs the sweat
in the breeze, he understands
a creature, a death-creature
watches from the fringe of the trees,
finally he understands
I am no longer here, he himself
from the fringe of the trees watches
a black bear
get up, eat a few flowers,trudge away,
all his fur glistening
in the rain.
And what glistening! Sancho Fergus,
my boychild, had such great shoulders,
when he was born his head
came out, the rest of him stuck. And he opened
his eyes: his head out there all alone
in the room, he squinted with pained,
barely unglued eves at the ninth-month’s
blood splashing beneath him
on the floor. And almost
smiled, I thought, almost forgave it all in advance.
When he came wholly forth
I took him up in my hands and bent
over and smelled
the black, glistening fur
of his head, as empty space
must have bent
over the newborn planet
and smelled the grasslands and the ferns.
-Galway Kinnell