c8



Holy Fragments

Silver water, still or pouring

A whole wide world in each head

A ribbon of sparrows rising

No reason for a skunk’s white stripe

Our dog weeps in his dreams

How the earth sounded before there were ears

The wind.



JWB Rogers

m1


Dawn came softly, with gray indefinite clouds and warm moist air. Rain had fallen during the night, and the path down the hill had become a small river, with the deer bouncing away in every direction, as if on springs. Then they couldn’t resist looking back: who is this strange creature with only two legs? How much more satisfying to be able to bounce along on four. At the bottom of the hill, the creek had become a lake, and the boards for crossing it were now washed away. If Celine were to come and haul down the kayak, she could cross to the other side.

s26


The Tent


Creamy light shines strongly sideways on the tent,

glowing white in the evening sun.

A muted blue shadow stretches from the tent along dark grass,

and off into the trees.

Inside the tent, sitting peacefully in lavender-blue shade,

two figures.

No need to speak.

r3


Our revels now are ended.
These our actors, as I foretold you,
were all spirits
and are melted into air, into thin air:
and, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
the solemn temples, the great globe itself,
yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and,
like this insubstantial pageant faded,
leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.


W. Shakespeare

ja17

Der Schwan by RM Rilke

Diese Muhsal, durch noch Ungetanes
schwer und wir bebunden hinzugehn,
gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes.

Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen
jenes Grunds, auf dem wir taglich stehn,
seinem angstlichen Sich-Niederlassen---:

in die Wasser, die ihn sanft empfangen
und die sich, wie glucklich und vergangen,
unter ihm zuruckziehn, Flut um flut,
wahrend er unendlich still und sicher
immer mundiger und koniglicher
und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.

The Swan

This drudgery of trudging through tasks
yet undone, heavily, as if bound,
is like the swan's not fully created walking.

And dying, this no longer being able
to hold to the ground we stand on every day,
like the swan's anxious letting himself down--:

into the waters, which gently accept him
and, as if happy and already in the past,
draw away under him, ripple upon ripple,
while he, now utterly quiet and sure
and ever more mature and regal
and composed, is pleased to glide.

L11





Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is racked with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.



A. Tennyson

r4



Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.



A.Tennyson

y2

c27




On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.


John O’Donahue

f21


When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thoughts of him I love.

O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.


W. Whitman

L6


Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?



from Ode to the West Wind, by PBShelley

j56


Hand-Me-Downs, by Grace Paley


My love rests on the couch
in the sweater and bones of old age

I have stopped reading to look at him I take
his hand I am shawled in my own somewhat
wrinkled still serviceable skin

No one knows what to do with these
hand-me-downs Love them I suppose

weren’t they worn in and out of
dignity by our mothers and
fathers even our children in
the grip of merciless genes will
wear these garments

may their old lovers greet and
touch them then in the bare light
of that last beauty

d5



Could have.................. by W. Szymborska


It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened earlier. Later.

Nearer. Farther off.

It happened, but not to you.


You were saved because you were the first.

You were saved because you were the last.

Alone. With others.

On the right. The left.

Because it was raining. Because of the shade.

Because the day was sunny.



You were in luck--there was a forest.

You were in luck--there were no trees.

You were in luck--a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,

a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.

You were in luck--just then a straw went floating by.


As a result, because, although, despite.

What would have happened if a hand, a foot,

within an inch, a hairsbreadth from

an unfortunate coincidence.


So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge,

close shave, reprieve?

One hole in the net and you slipped through?

I couldn't be more shocked and speechless.

Listen,

how your heart pounds inside me.

D30


After great pain a formal feeling comes—
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The still Heart questions—was it He that bore?
And yesterday—or centuries before?

The feet mechanical
Go round a wooden way
Of ground or air or aught, regardless grown,
A quartz contentment like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow—
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.


E. Dickinson

F13


Ein Gleiches by JWvGoethe


Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.


A Similarity translated by JCWarren

Above all the hilltops
Is calm,
In all the treetops you sense
Scarcely a breath;
The birds are quiet in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

C28




Thinking about the Past

Certain moments will never change nor stop being—
My mother’s face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-hired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years--her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery’s, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs…


Donald Justice

J64




Oh swimmers
come back to us,
oh salmon people
altered by purity
of purpose, altered
by love and by lust
your flanks burning
red with desire
and with divinity,
your noses oh men
of the sea hooked
like the hawk’s beak,
scrambling in a drought year
through shallows, wriggling
walking almost, running legless
over the stones, waiting
for rain in the shadow
of tree shaded pools.

Oh swimmers
oh lovers
of the long way.


From COHO by Michael Whitt

S35

Just between you and me, Sister,
Will you marry me?
Most of it’s already done:
I know your nipples and that spot on your thigh,
You know my scar.
We own each other’s surfaces and holes,
Possess the mossy smell of baby teeth,
The place we store our secret words,
The sight of Daddy’s parts,
Mum’s breasts floating flatly in her bath
And the teardrops she washed from the chandelier.

Now I love our skin,
It’s texture of mirrors with a fading glaze,
Blue streams on the backs of our hands,
And I love our genetic compulsions
For earliness, lists, silence and scorn.
And I love our disputes, a rush of ire,
A skip of the heart and a quick peace.

We could let the brothers in once in a while,
And the life we’ve left might be worth discussing.
But we’ve plighted our troth.
Let’s elope.


JWBRogers

O6



Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.


T.S.Eliot

JA18


Our hands:
Grandmother’s, mother’s, and mine.
The same topography:
Brown backs, blue veins, gold bands.
The same work:
Turn the hem, turn the page, turn the earth.
The same motion:
To arrange, to direct, to align.
The same language:
Refusal, dismissal, farewell.

Hold hands a little longer, she yours and you mine,
I hers for a circle: thus we intertwine,
Until our strength falters, we loosen our grasp,
And I, empty-handed and idle, am last.


JWB Rogers