Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly——

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.


by Sylvia Plath

How The Winters Once Were

That cold green streak
that was morning
had nothing in common
with us.

And the proud plumes of chimney smoke
rose straight up.
To some god who liked
such vertical movements.

And the scrunching underfoot!
Oh that indescribable scrunching:

no one could approach unheard
that was for sure.

And the suspicion that life
perhaps really was meaningless

and not just in Schopenhauer
and the other daring old guys.

But here, too
under the sky’s white plumes of smoke.


by Lars Gustafsson

A Small Motor

The easiest sadness is a boy
Watching another boy
Walk with a barefooted girl, clean

Perfect feet, that kind of nose,
Eyes like those he’s dreamed
In the dream that comes back.

A boy watching another boy lucky
Gets an ache
That is a small motor.

In me there is an animal
And in that animal
There is a hunger.

I remember the boy
Watching a boy.
It was me.

Watching, I was a little bit
The boy walking.
I was both of us.

That’s how it felt.
What I could not have,
That’s what I was

Inside, an ache
Coming as I stood
Too many places.


by Alberto Alvaro Rios

Meeting at Night

I.

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

by Robert Browning

Manners

Prig offered Pig the first chance at dessert,
So Pig reached out and speared the bigger part.

"Now that," cried Prig, "is extremely rude of you!"
Pig, with his mouth full, said, "Wha, wha' wou' 'ou do?"

"I would have taken the littler bit," said Prig.
"Stop kvetching, then, it's what you've got," said Pig .

So virtue is its own reward, you see.
And that is all it's ever going to be.


by Howard Nemerov

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

by Philip Larkin

Waiting

Is part of something: a blue door opens,
Portuguese fishermen walk from a coffee shop

In Providence, Rhode Island—or Lisbon—
And head for the pier with buckets.

Part of something, they ride the sea:
The Atlantic, part of something.

Mornings on the coast, houses
In fog on the hills, the paint

Like carnival pastels . . . People believe
The whole world is part of something.

The phone rings . . . they give it away.
I spoke last night with a friend . . . He might

One day become your friend, or sometime,
Far off, a friend to your children—

Part of something. I told him
About the English poet

Who, deserting God, still loved
With clean irony the churches

On country roads . . . He’d lean his bike
And go inside—not certain of motive

But to wait, because others had waited
In just that place, sitting through the sunset

Beneath the slender windows.


by Stephen Kuusisto

Slow Dance

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained

Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like

children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.


by Matthew Dickman

An Impasse

Jacques writes from Paris,
"What are the latest news?"

I have told him, time
and time again, "What are"

is not English, "news"
is not plural, "news"

is a singular term,
as in "The news is good."

He replies, "Though 'The news'
may be singular in America,

it is not so in France.
Les nouvelles is a plural term.

To say, 'The news is good'
in France would be bad grammar,

and absurd, which is worse.
On the other hand, 'What are

the news?' makes perfect sense."


by Louis Simpson