I Carried With Me Poems

Leonid Osipovich Pasternak

I Carried With Me Poems

I carried with me poems, poems which spewed out of

  everything; I saw poems hanging from the clotheslines,

  hanging from the streetlamps: I saw poems glowing in

  the bushes, pushing out of the earth as tulips do;

I felt poems breathe in the dark March night like ghosts

  which squared and breathed through the air;

I felt poems brushing the tops of chimneys, brushing by in

  the dark; I felt poems being born in the city, Venuses

  breaking through a shattered sea of mirrors; I felt all the poets of the city straining,

  isolated poets, knowing none of the others, straining;

I felt that some gazed into the March night, looking, and

  finding; 

and others were running down steep streets, seeking,

  and seeking to embrace;

and others stood in empty bookstores turning over pages

  of fellow poets whom they loved but didn't know;

and some pondered over coffee growing cold, in harshly lit

  cafeterias, and gazed at the reflections of the eaters in the

  wall-to-wall mirrors;

some dwelt on what it was to grow old;

some dwelt on love;

some had gone out of time;

some, going out of time, looked back into time, and started;

I felt all of their lives and existences, all with poems at

  their center;

I knew none of these poets;

but I felt these intimations augured well, for me, and for

  poetry;

and my steps grew big, giant steps, I bounded down Parker

  Street;

a tall, taciturn, fast-walking poet's accomplice.

Gail Dusenbery 

I like that line - " I carried with me poems." I have, I do. And yes, there is this line of connection with the poets themselves as well, Are there poems being written and sweated over right now? Poems that I will read and love and carry with me?