The Motion of the Earth

Neb

 

The Motion of the Earth

A day with sky so wide,

So stripped of cloud, so scrubbed, so vacuumed free

Of dust, that you can see

The earth-line as a curve, can watch the blue

Wrap over the edge, looping round and under,

Making you wonder

Whether the dark has anywhere left to hide.

But the world is slipping away; the polished sky

Gives nothing to grip on; clicked from the knuckle

The marble rolls along the gutter of time --

Earth, star and galaxy

Shifting their place in space.

Noon, sunset, clouds, the equably varying weather,

The diffused light, the illusion of blue,

Conceal each hour a different constellation.

All things are new

Over the sun, but we,

Our eyes on our shoes, go staring

At the asphalt, the gravel, the grass at the roadside, the door-

step, the doodles of snails, the crochet of mortar and lime,

Seeking the seeming familiar, though every stride

Takes us a thousand miles from where we were before.

Norman Nicholson

(A bit of wishful thinking. I haven't seen a day "stripped of cloud" for ages. And I do realize that the photo is anything but cloudless. But clouds are interesting.) This poem reminds me of the feeling I used to get when swinging on the big swing at the playground. I was fine until I looked up into the sky, and then the earth fell away, and the sky was so wide and deep, I felt as if I were falling into it instead of rising - and my stomach did a flip so that I would have to look at the ground quick in order to catch my breath. The poem too, disturbs my equilibrium. But I appreciate that phrase "the seeming familiar", it might not be the heart of the poem, but it seems like it to me.   

The Face in the Mirror

M.C. Escher

The Face in the Mirror

Grey haunted eyes, absent-mindedly glaring
From wide, uneven orbits; one brow drooping
Somewhere over the eye
Because of a missile fragment still inhering,
Skin deep, as a foolish record of old-world fighting.

Crookedly broken nose - low tackling caused it;
Cheeks furrowed; coarse grey hair, flying frenetic;
Forehead, wrinkled and high;
Jowls, prominent; ears, large' jaw, pugilistic;
Teeth, few; lips, full and ruddy; mouth, ascetic.

I pause with razor poised, scowling derision
At the mirrored man whose beard needs my attention,
And once more ask him why
He still stands ready, with a boy's presumption,
To court the queen in her high silk pavilion.

Robert Graves

Essentially, this is a poem-self-portrait. Like an artist, Graves is faithful to his subject. He describes each portion in detail, and each one tells a story. Eyes that are haunted and absent-minded, show a person who thinks deeply. One who is preoccupied with an inner world and not always aware of his surroundings. He bears the scars of war (I love the phrase he uses "still inhering" which seems to intimate more than physical injury), which he scorns, so he has changed views through life experience. His nose shows he has been in physical contest, he is not merely a thinker, he is also a man of action, of opinion and dispute, even. And his cheeks and hair show he has aged considerably. The way that he sees himself tells, too. He recognizes the humour of the fact that in spite of all these counts against him - sadness, scars, age - somewhere inside, he is still a boy who thinks he can win love and beauty by charm and audacity. I love this self-portrait. It shows such honesty and self-restraint. And I love the play between inner and outer vision. I haven't come across another poem quite like it.

A Chain of Haik

Frédéric Forest 

A Chain of Haik

Japanese people

think its quite boring to

finish their senten

I agree with them

we can guess anyway what

should come after the

We go to bed when

we are sleepy and not when

we finished what we

We die the same way

there are many unfinished

things to do when sud

Western reader, I

hope you will understand me,

and if not, you can

 Robert Zend

Let Love Go On

Antonia Rzhevskaya

              Let Love Go On

LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.
Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.
Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots.
Let love go on; the heartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon; let love go on. Carl Sandburg Dear to my heart, this poem. A reminder that there will not always be this opportunity to show love, to act in love, to live in attitudes of love. Time streamlines love, pares it down, gives it leanness and speed. I need to love now, in the most basic ways, without ornament or delay for lack of inspiration. Love like bread and water, love like a millionaire emptying my accounts. Here, now, love.

Outlook

N. Ustinov

Outlook

Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,
What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.
Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience—there shall come
Many great voices from life's outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.

Archibald Lampman


I read that and almost have nothing to say, it seems so fully expressed. What I can say is that I love these kind of poems, these stand-still-take-a-breath-and-remember words. A poem like this would be worth memorizing, something to have ready for those times when I get bogged in my own miry clay. Words that help me stand up straight and notice the hopeful signs and the reasons to keep moving toward them.

 

Prometheus Unbound

Zhu Yi Yong

From Prometheus Unbound
Sixth Spirit

      Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
      It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
      But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent wing
      The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
      Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
      And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
      Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love,
      And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley


 This scrap of his much longer poem has been in my binder for so long, when I looked up the poem in entirety, I was surprised. It's lovely. I had forgotten how much I loved Shelley as a young teen. I much prefer short poems now, but perhaps Shelley deserves a revisit. This poem is for all of us who have days when the world seems to be closing down on us, when it is a struggle to face even everyday challenges. Tomorrow is a new day, yes, but today is a battle.

Poem In October

Matt Dawson

Poem In October

         

 

 It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Dylan Thomas

While not my favorite of his poems, its very close. It's that first line that sets the tone - "my thirtieth year to heaven". Year to heaven!  Is there anything more hopeful than that? And then the description of the scenery, and how he thinks of his birthday and his childhood summers in this place (the fishing village Laugharne), and he again sees the world with that holy joy of innocence ("summertime of the dead" refers to his childhood summer now gone - and "long dead child" himself as a child). This entire poem tugs at me. How he sees the natural world as holy, like a church, full of parables and mystery, and wishes he could experience it like that again. "O may my heart's truth still be sung" is so full of longing and beauty - for this, of all poets, Thomas is closest to my heart.

Chestnut

Jan Voerman Jr. 

Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground 
 

From bristly foliage

you fell

complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,

as perfect

as a violin newly

born of the treetops,

that falling

offers its sealed-in gifts,

the hidden sweetness

that grew in secret

amid birds and leaves,

a model of form,

kin to wood and flour,

an oval instrument

that holds within it

intact delight, an edible rose.

In the heights you abandoned

the sea-urchin burr

that parted its spines

in the light of the chestnut tree;

through that slit

you glimpsed the world,

birds

bursting with syllables,

starry

dew

below,

the heads of boys

and girls,

grasses stirring restlessly,

smoke rising, rising.

You made your decision,

chestnut, and leaped to earth,

burnished and ready,

firm and smooth

as the small breasts

of the islands of America.

You fell,

you struck

the ground,

but

nothing happened,

the grass

still stirred, the old

chestnut sighed with the mouths

of a forest of trees,

a red leaf of autumn fell,

resolutely, the hours marched on

across the earth.

Because you are

only

a seed,

chestnut tree, autumn, earth,

water, heights, silence

prepared the germ,

the floury density,

the maternal eyelids

that buried will again

open toward the heights

the simple majesty of foliage,

the dark damp plan

of new roots,

the ancient but new dimensions

of another chestnut tree in the earth.

Pablo Neruda

"As perfect as a violin newly born". The joy to be found in such a small thing. "The simple majesty of foliage", Neruda's tight focus still manages to carry us into space and time - both past and future.

The Discovery

William Orpen

The Discovery 

do not imagine that the exploration

ends, that she has yielded all her mystery

or that the map you hold

cancels further discovery

I tell you her uncovering takes years,

takes centuries, and when you find her naked

look again, 

admit there is something else you cannot name,

a veil, a coating just above the flesh

which you cannot remove by your mere wish

when you see the land naked, look again

(burn your maps, that is not what I mean),

I mean the moment when it seems most plain

is the moment when you must begin again.

        Gwendolyn MacEwan      

This poem enheartens me (is that a word?), No, I am not just what you see with the eye, or what I do, or even what I've lived, there are hidden things, mysteries, I have places to go and I will continue to change and adapt and grow, and new facets will shine out. An individual is not summed up or "known" so easily. And there is always that spark, that eternal part, which has yet to come into its own.    

Autumn Day

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

Autumn Day

Going out, those bold days,
O what a gallery-roar of trees and gale-wash
Of leaves abashed me, what a shudder and shore
Of bladdery shadows dashed on windows ablaze,
What hedge-shingle seething, what vast lime-splashes
Of light clouting the land. Never had I seen
Such a running over of clover, such tissue sheets
Of cloud poled asunder by sun, such plunges
And thunder-load of fun. Trees, grasses, wings - all
On a hone of wind sluiced and sleeked one way,
Smooth and close as the pile of a pony's coat,
But, in a moment, smoke-slewed, glared, squinted back
And up like sticking bones shockingly unkinned.
How my heart, like all these, was silk and thistle 
By turns, how it fitted and followed the stiff lifts
And easy falls of them, or, like that bird above me,
No longer crushing against cushions of air,
Hung in happy apathy, waiting for wind-rifts:
Who could not dance on, and be dandled by, such a day
Of loud expansion? when every flash and shout
Took the hook of the mind and reeled out the eye's line
Into whips and whirl-spools of light, when every ash-shoot shone
Like a weal and was gone in the gloom of the wind's lash.
Who could not feel it? the uplift and total subtraction 
Of breath as, now bellying, now in abeyance,
The gust poured up from the camp's throat below, bringing
Garbled reports of guns and bugle-notes,
But, gullible, then drank them back again.
And I, dryly shuffling through the scurf of leaves
Fleeing like scuffled toast, was host to all these things;
In me were the spoon-swoops of wind, in me too
The rooks dying and settling like tea-leaves over the trees;
And, rumbling on rims of rhyme, mine were the haycarts home-creeping
Leaving the rough hedge-cheeks long-strawed and streaked with their weeping.

W.R. Rodgers

"How my heart, like all these, was silk and thistle by turns.." I love that line. And all the hyphenated words. Gallery-roar, gale-wash,hedge-shingle, lime-splashes, thunder-load, smoke-slewed, wind-rifts, whirl-spools, ash-shoots, bugle-notes,spoon-swoops, tea-leaves, home-creeping, hedge-cheeks, long-strawed. So inventive and life-like - just like the wind tossing words together. The whole poem is full of onomatopoeic words - shuffling, scurf, scuffled, etc. Giving an auditory sense of the wind gusting and enlivening everything. A wonderful poem for a stormy Autumn day.  

These Are My Tears

 

Vilhelm Hammershoi

These Are My Tears

crying, the words

spill from my pen, my

eyes

these are my tears:

sentences

syllables

verbs

my alphabet is grief

every letter cries

you are gone

you are gone

you will never return

Neb

 The Anniversary of my son's death.

Psalm 104

James Naughton

Psalm 104

 

¹ Praise the Lord, my soul.

Lord my God, you are very great;
    you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

² The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
    he stretches out the heavens like a tent
³     and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
    and rides on the wings of the wind.
⁴ He makes winds his messengers,
    flames of fire his servants.

⁵ He set the earth on its foundations;
    it can never be moved.
⁶ You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷ But at your rebuke the waters fled,
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
⁸ they flowed over the mountains,
    they went down into the valleys,
    to the place you assigned for them.
⁹ You set a boundary they cannot cross;
    never again will they cover the earth.

¹⁰ He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
    it flows between the mountains.
¹¹ They give water to all the beasts of the field;
    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹² The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
    they sing among the branches.
¹³ He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
    the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
¹⁴ He makes grass grow for the cattle,
    and plants for people to cultivate—
    bringing forth food from the earth:
¹⁵ wine that gladdens human hearts,
    oil to make their faces shine,
    and bread that sustains their hearts.
¹⁶ The trees of the Lord are well watered,
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
¹⁷ There the birds make their nests;
    the stork has its home in the junipers.
¹⁸ The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
    the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

¹⁹ He made the moon to mark the seasons,
    and the sun knows when to go down.
²⁰ You bring darkness, it becomes night,
    and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
²¹ The lions roar for their prey
    and seek their food from God.
²² The sun rises, and they steal away;
    they return and lie down in their dens.
²³ Then people go out to their work,
    to their labor until evening.

²⁴ How many are your works, Lord!
    In wisdom you made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
²⁵ There is the sea, vast and spacious,
    teeming with creatures beyond number—
    living things both large and small.
²⁶ There the ships go to and fro,
    and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

²⁷ All creatures look to you
    to give them their food at the proper time.
²⁸ When you give it to them,
    they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
    they are satisfied with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face,
    they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
    they die and return to the dust.
³⁰ When you send your Spirit,
    they are created,
    and you renew the face of the ground.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
    may the Lord rejoice in his works—
³² he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
    who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

³³ I will sing to the Lord all my life;
    I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    as I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ But may sinners vanish from the earth
    and the wicked be no more.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

Praise the Lord.

^{As an example of biblical nature poetry, this has got to be prime. It's different from most nature poetry in that its focus is praise of the God of nature rather than nature itself. I appreciate this difference because it provides a frame. Its the big picture, the whole panorama of life, in all of its expansiveness. For me, this is one of the biggest poems out there. Earth, sky, sea, he describes the function and majesty of all these elements, how every facet of nature is useful and purposeful. I  love the metaphors he uses  -  nature as a garment, a tent, or a chariot for God. On one hand this humanizes him, on another, it gives a fuller sense of where God is when I look at the natural world. He is not the water, but the water covers him (as in, shows the outline of his form, his character), and he both creates and sustains it with all its variations, and uses it to carry events forward. The poet is transported by his vision of God as it is revealed in the natural world, overwhelmed by his power and energy and care, and the vastness of his imagination and scope, and overflows with praise. An epic poem in only 35 stanzas.}

Thanksgiving Day

Cofleidior Bryniau (Embrace the Hills) - Bob Guy

i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

E.E. Cummings

 I love how Cummings turns words and phrases inside out and backwards, everything unfurls and uncurls for me, its like going the wrong way down a one-way street - everything is the same but looks and feels so different (I'm not talking about the fear the oncoming cars put in you). That phrase "lifted from the no of all nothing - human merely being" - yes, I want so much to be awake, to see "everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes"! In Cummings poems, God seems to be the great Yes. (As opposed to the "no of all nothing".) I love that. One of my very favorite poems ever is about Yes (coming soon, don't you worry). Anyway, this is the poem/prayer I hold to this Thanksgiving and every other day as well.

Montague Dawson

The Conflict

I sang as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep their courage up, though the wave hangs
That shall cut off their sun.

As storm-cocks sing,
Flinging their natural answer in the wind’s teeth,
And care not if it is waste of breath
Or birth-carol of spring.

As ocean-flyer clings
To height, to the last drop of spirit driving on
While yet ahead is land to be won
And work for wings.

Singing I was at peace,
Above the clouds, outside the ring:
For sorrow finds a swift release in song
And pride in poise.

Yet living here,
As one between two massive powers I live
Whom neutrality cannot save
Nor occupation cheer.

None such shall be left alive:
The innocent wing is soon shot down,
And private stars fade in the blood-red dawn
Where two worlds strive.

The red advance of life
Contracts pride, calls out the common blood,
Beats song into a single-blade,
Makes a depth-charge of grief.

Move then with new desires,
For where we used to build and love
Is no man’s land, and only ghosts can live
Between two fires.


Cecil Day-Lewis

That resolve to sing, even if it's "a waste of breath", and "sorrow finds a sweet release in song" is compelling. Singing and working forward rather than sorrowing and looking back. "Singing I was at peace" - that line comforts me.

Raymond Booth

                                                                

Mushrooms 

 

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Sylvia Plath 

Obviously we need a poem about mushrooms. You remember this one, I'm sure.