Winter Love

I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.


by Linda Gregg

Tea Drinking

The first cup moistens my lips and throat.
The second cup breaks my loneliness.
The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration – all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores.
At the fifth cup I am purified.
The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals.
The seventh cup – ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves.
Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.


by Lu Ting

Invocation

Spirit,
in me accomplish your work--
the ineradicable work
that even as my strength begins to fail
you still build
as beautiful in the approaching ruin.

by Tom Sleigh

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

by Mary Oliver

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written,
I am not done with my changes.

By Stanley Kunitz

Good Intentions Paving Company (these are song lyrics)

Twenty miles left to the shore
Hello my old country hello
Stars are just beginning to appear
And I have never in my life before been here

And it's my heart, not me, who cannot ply
That base conclusion you may write
Watching me sit here bolt upright and cry
For no good reason at the Eastern sky

And the tilt of this strange nation
And the will to remain for the duration
Waving the flag, feeling it drag

Like a bump on a bump on a log, baby
Like I'm in a fist fight with a fog, baby
Step-ball-change and a pirouette
And .. and I regret, I regret

How I said to you, honey, just open your heart
When I've got trouble even opening a honey jar
And that right there is where we are

And I been 'fessing double fast
Addressing questions nobody asks
I'll get this joy off of my chest at last
And I will love you 'til the noise has long since passed

And I did not mean to shout, just drive
Just get us out, get home ..
A road too long to mention holds us up ..
Laid down by the good intentions paving company

All the weight of the thing we've been playing at, darlin'
I can see that you're wearing your staying hat, darlin'
For the time being all is well
Won't you love me a spell?

This is blindness beyond all conceiving
Well, behind us the road is leaving, yeah, leaving
And falling back
Like a rope gone slack

And the sauce strayed away but the ladle will stay
But I fell for you, honey, as easy as falling asleep
And that right there is the course I keep...

And no amount of talking
Is going to soften the fall
But, like after the rain, step out
Of the overhang, that's all

It had a nice a ring to it
When the old opera house
rang
So with a song I'm all ran
"Signed, sealed, delivered" I sang

And there is hesitation
And it always remains
Concerning you, me,
And the rest of the gang

And in a quiet hour
I feel I see everything

And am in love with the hook
Upon which everyone hangs

And I know you meant to show the extent
To which you gave a god dang
It rings real hot and real cold but I'm sold
I am home on that range

And I do hate to fold
Right here at the top of my game
When I've been trying with my whole heart and soul
To stay right here in the right lane

But it can make you feel over and old
Lord, you know it's a shame
When I only want for you to pull over and hold me
'Til I can't remember my own name


by Joanna Newsom

First They Came...

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.


by Martin Niemöller (regarding the inactivity of the German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power)