The Poemarium

Wallace Stevens - Infanta Marina

Her terrace was the sand
And the palms and the twilight.

She made of the motions of her wrist
The grandiose gestures
Of her thought.

The rumpling of the plumes
Of this creature of the evening
Came to be sleights of sails
Over the sea.

And thus she roamed
In the roamings of her fan,
Partaking of the sea,
And of the evening,
As they flowed around
And uttered their subsiding sound.


(Wallace Stevens,  Reading, Pennsylvania, 2 October 1879 – 2 August 1955)

W.S. Merwin - Dusk in Winter

The sun sets in the cold without friends
Without reproaches after all it has done for us
It goes down believing in nothing
When it is gone I hear the stream running after it
It has brought its fllute it is a long way.

(W.S. Merwin - New York, 30 September 1927)

Charles Simic - Talk Radio

"I was lucky to have a Bible with me.
When the space aliens abducted me...".

America, I shouted at the radio,
Even at 2 A.M. you are a loony bin!

No, I take it back!
You are a stone angel in the cemetery

Listening to the geese in the sky
Your eyes blinded by the snow.

(Charles Simic, Belgrade, 9 May 1938)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - From a Coney Island of the Mind - Section 20

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

(Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Yonkers, New York, 24 March 1919)

Walt Whitman - Two Rivulets

Two Rivulets side by side, 
Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, 
Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. 
 
For the Eternal Ocean bound, 
These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life,
Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, 
The Real and Ideal, 
 
Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, 
(Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, Past.) 
 
In You, whoe’er you are, my book perusing,
In I myself—in all the World—these ripples flow, 
All, all, toward the mystic Ocean tending. 
  
(O yearnful waves! the kisses of your lips! 
Your breast so broad, with open arms, O firm, expanded shore!)

(Walt Whitman, West Hills, New York 31 May 1819 - Camden, New Jersey 26 March 1892)

Louis MacNeice - Conversation

Ordinary people are peculiar too:
Watch the vagrant in their eyes
Who sneaks away while they are talking with you
Into some black wood behind the skull,
Following un-, or other, realities,
Fishing for shadows in a pool.

But sometimes the vagrant comes the other way
Out of their eyes and into yours
Having mistaken you perhaps for yesterday
Or for tomorrow night, a wood in which
He may pick up among the pine-needles and burrs
The lost purse, the dropped stitch.

Vagrancy however is forbidden; ordinary men
Soon come back to normal, look you straight
In the eyes as if to say 'It will not happen again',
Put up a barrage of common sense to baulk
Intimacy but by mistake interpolate
Swear-words like roses in their talk.

(Louis MacNeice, Belfast, 12 September 1907 - 3 September 1963)

Gary Snyder - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children;

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

(Gary Snyder, San Francisco, 8 May 1930)

Louise Glück - Castile

Orange blossoms blowing over Castile
children begging for coins

I met my love under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?

I read this, then I dreamed this:
can waking take back what happened to me?
Bells of San Miguel
ringing in the distance
his hair in the shadows blond-white

I dreamed this,
does that mean it didn't happen?
Does it have to happen in the world to be real?

I dreamed everything, the story
became my story:

he lay beside me,
my hand grazed the skin of his shoulder

Mid-day, then early evening:
in the distance, the sound of a train

But it was not the world:
in the world, a thing happens finally, absolutely,
the mind cannot reverse it.

Castile: nuns walking in pairs through the dark garden.
Outside the walls of the Holy Angels
children begging for coins

When I woke I was crying,
has that no reality?

I met my love under an orange tree:
I have forgotten
only the facts, not the inference—
there were children, somewhere, crying, begging for coins

I dreamed everything, I gave myself
completely and for all time

And the train returned us
first to Madrid
then to the Basque country

(Louise Glück, New York City, 22 April 1943)

Mark Strand - Sorrow

In the hotels of sorrow the guests weep continually
In the shops of sorrow nothing is right and everything costs too much
On the streets of sorrow even the children wear black
In the airports of sorrow all flights are cancelled
In the houses of sorrow no one admits to sorrow
The pastures of sorrow are filled with discarded appliances
The days of sorrow are shadowy and deep
The graveyards of sorrow are happy but empty places
Oh where is the sorrow of sorrows
Say there never will be sorrow greater than this
Parties are such sweet sorrow
Sorrow is the soul's candy
Sorrow can be bought, but it's usually free
The mole and the bat are companions of sorrow
There's the mysterious sorrow of ants with nothing to do
The lovers of sorrow will settle for more of a bad thing
The good old days of sorrow were even worse
A perfect sorrow is almost sorrow
The snows of sorrow just keep falling
The Sorrows are a dance team from Tintern Abbey
The Sorrows hate dancing, which is why they dance
Many sorrows begin with an Easter egg hunt
Other sorrows begin with a swimming pool incident
A song begins when sorrow comes aknockin'

(Mark Strand, Summerside, Prince Edward Island, 11 April 1934)

W.H. Auden - Law like Love

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I've told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,
Like love we can't compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.

(W.H. Auden – York, 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973)