Poem a Day

Whatever you can do
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.

-Goethe

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.

-eskimo

Dance as though no one is watching you,
Love as though you have never been hurt before,
Sing as though no one can hear you,
Live as though heaven is on earth.

(unknown)

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

-William Stafford

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

-Richard Wilbur

Not because of his eyes,
    the eyes of a bird,
        but because he is beaked,

birdlike, to do an injury,
    has the turtle attracted you.
        He is your only pet.

When we are together
    you talk of nothing else
        ascribing all sorts

of murderous motives
    to his least action.
        You ask me

to write a poem,
    should I have a poem to write,
        about a turtle.

The turtle lives in the mud
    but is not mud-like,
        you can tell it by his eyes

which are clear.
    When he shall escape
        his present confinement

he will stride about the world
    destroying all
        with his sharp beak.

Whatever opposes him
    in the streets of the city
        shall go down.

Cars will be overturned.
    And upon his back
        shall ride,

to his conquests,
    my Lord,
        you!

You shall be master!
    In the beginning
        there was a great tortoise

who supported the world.
    Upon him
        All ultimately

rests.
    Without him
        nothing will stand.

He is all wise
    and can outrun the hare.
        In the night

his eyes carry him
    to unknown places.
        He is your friend.

-William Carlos Williams

How intelligent he looks!
        on his back
        both feet caught in my one hand
        his glance set sideways,
        on a giant poster of Geronimo
        with a Sharp’s repeating rifle by his knee.

I open, wipe, he doesn’t even notice
        nor do I.
Baby legs and knees
        toes like little peas
        little wrinkles, good-to-eat,
        eyes bright, shiny ears,
        chest swelling drawing air,

No trouble, friend,
        you and me and Geronimo
        are men.

-Gary Snyder

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

-A.E. Housman

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air–The edge
cuts without cutting
meets–nothing–renews
itself in metal or porcelain–

whither? It ends–

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry–

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica–
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses–

The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end–of roses

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness–fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal’s
edge and the

From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact–lifting
from it–neither hanging
nor pushing–

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space

-William Carlos Williams

A young spring-tender girl
combed her joyous hair
‘You are very ugly’ said the mirror.
But,
on her lips hung
a smile of dove-secret loveliness,
for only that morning had not
the blind boy said,
‘You are beautiful’?

-Spike Milligan