The Sycamore

Andrew Wyeth

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry

Self-portrait by means of a tree. How many times this has been done, and yet it never tires. I love this poem. All of Berry's love for the land comes out in it. And there are so many layers. "Whose earth I am shaped in" - like Adam, made of the earth and responsible for it.  "There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it." What a line that is! And these too, "It bears the gnarls of its history healed over." "It has gathered all accidents into its purpose." Now that is hope. That is sheer wonder. That is how God works. I would be ruled by that principle too.

 

"Let there be light!"

Maurice Sapiro, "Red Sunset"

And God Said, "Let there be light!"

Earth heard the loud, the solemn sound, 

And started from her utmost bound, 

And Darkness, on his ebon car, 

Spread his black wings, and fled afar; 

The dun clouds opened with affright, 

And hailed the burst of life and light!

''Tis light! 'tis light!' the mountains rung, 

''Tis light! 'tis light!' the valleys sung! 

The stars beheld its dawning bright, 

The spheres confessed the Godhead's might, 

While Nature's universal voice 

Proclaimed aloud, 'Rejoice! rejoice!' 

Charles Mackay

If I'm going to be adding "Let" poems, for sure I have to include the biggest one. If I think about it, "let" was the first word ever recorded. The first word. No wonder it strikes me. Here, it is the word that brought about the birth of the universe, of being, of awareness, of life. The supremely beautiful word of creation. 

 

A January Morning

Boris Kustodiev

A January Morning

The glittering roofs are still with frost; each worn

Black chimney builds into the quiet sky

Its curling pile to crumble silently.

Far out to westward on the edge of morn,

The slender misty city towers up-borne

Glimmer faint rose against the pallid blue;

And yonder on those northern hills, the hue

Of amethyst, hang fleeces dull as horn.

And here behind me come the woodmen's sleighs

With shouts and clamorous squeakings; might and main

Up the steep slope the horses stamp and strain,

Urged on by hoarse-tongued drivers—cheeks ablaze,

Iced beards and frozen eyelids—team by team,

With frost-fringed flanks, and nostrils jetting steam.

Archibald Lampman

 This is as close to being transported into a scene as you get. For the length of time it takes to read the poem, I am  there. So I read it slowly.

 

The Thought Fox

Rien Poortvliet

The Thought Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

Ted Hughes


"Something else is alive" - I love that. "Something more near..is entering the loneliness." This poem is perfect - the image, the rhythm, the concept - they fit together seamlessly, it really is as if the poem were an already-formed animal that had its own purposes and simply entered the head of the poet as it was passing through.




 

Be Still My Soul

Michael Vincent Manalo

 Be Still My Soul

 

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

 Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Katharina von Schlegel

Possibly my favorite hymn. And a "Be"poem, quite as interesting as "Let" poems. Will write more when I have a moment.

The Layers

Władysław Podkowiński

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.

Stanley Kunitz


I'm not sure what "living in the layers" exactly means, but I like this looking back over abandoned campsites, and the feast of losses, and this wonderful line - "Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go". That idea of acknowledging loss and change and then deliberately turning to face more, speaks to me. "Every stone in the road is precious to me" reminds me of when God told the Israelites, "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you." (Joshua 1:3) Which just expands the sense of progress into one of ownership. Do the losses become a kind of gain?


 

Let it Be Forgotten

Edward le Bas, "The Tea Table"

Let it Be Forgotten

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, 

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold, 

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever, 

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. 

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten 

Long and long ago, 

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall 

In a long forgotten snow.

Sara Teasdale


I was going over this poetry collection the other day and noticed the poems "Let Love Go On" by Carl Sandburg, and "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon, and was thinking to myself what a strange word "let" is - at least in those poems. Partly acceptance, and partly an imperative. I thought I'd hunt down some more poems and see how "let" is used in them. This one again has that strange paradoxical sense of doing something purposefully and allowing it to happen. How do you deliberately forget something? Trying to forget usually imprints the memory even more firmly in our heads. And what is the poet trying to forget? She wouldn't want to forget something pleasant, and yet she akins the memory she wants to forget with beautiful things that easily slip from our minds. A strange poem in so many ways.


 

A Forest Path in Winter

Gustaf Fjaestad

A Forest Path in Winter

Along this secret and forgotten road

All depths and forest forms, above, below,

Are plumed and draped and hillocked with the snow

A branch cracks now and then, and its soft load

Drifts by me in a thin prismatic shower;

Else not a sound, but vistas bound and crossed

With sheeted gleams and sharp blue shadows, frost,

And utter silence. In his glittering power

The master of mid-winter reveries 

Holds all things buried soft and strong and deep.

The busy squirrel has his hidden lair;

And even the spirits of the stalwart trees

Have crept into their utmost roots, and there,

Upcoiled in the close earth, lie fast asleep.

Archibald Lampman

Lampman has a gift for writing nature poems, especially poems about snow. There are so many to choose from. And Gustaf Fjaestad has a gift for snow paintings - again, we're spoiled for choice. This poem and painting both invoke that sense of the world being muted and insulated by snow. Lovely. (I like that word "upcoiled" as well.)

 

When You Are Not Surprised

Brian Wildsmith

When You Are Not Surprised

When you are not surprised, not surprised,

nor leap in imagination from sunlight into shadow   

or from shadow into sunlight   

suiting the color of fright or delight   

to the bewildering circumstance   

when you are no longer surprised   

by the quiet or fury of daybreak   

the stormy uprush of the sun’s rage   

over the edges of torn trees

torrents of living and dying flung

upward and outward inward and downward to space

or else

peace peace peace peace

the wood-thrush speaking his holy holy

far hidden in the forest of the mind   

while slowly

the limbs of light unwind

and the world’s surface dreams again of night

as the center dreams of light   

when you are not surprised

by breath and breath and breath

the first unconscious morning breath

the tap of the bird’s beak on the pane

and do not cry out come again   

blest blest that you are come again   

o light o sound o voice of bird o light   

and memory too o memory blest   

and curst with the debts of yesterday   

that would not stay, or stay

when you are not surprised

by death and death and death

death of the bee in the daffodil

death of color in the child’s cheek

on the young mother’s breast

death of sense of touch of sight

death of delight

and the inward death the inward turning night

when the heart hardens itself with hate and indifference   

for hated self and beloved not-self

when you are not surprised

by wheel’s turn or turn of season

the winged and orbed chariot tilt of time   

the halcyon pause, the blue caesura of spring   

and solar rhyme

woven into the divinely remembered nest   

by the dark-eyed love in the oriole’s breast   

and the tides of space that ring the heart

while still, while still, the wave of the invisible world   

breaks into consciousness in the mind of god

then welcome death and be by death benignly welcomed   

and join again in the ceaseless know-nothing   

from which you awoke to the first surprise.

Conrad Aiken

What is it about this poem?! I have a hard time putting my finger on it. One thing is the repetition of words and phrases - and opposing images. I love that "slowly the limbs of light unwind", and "the woodthrush singing his holy holy far hidden in the forest of the mind". So beautiful. Yes, I think that's part of it too, this poem has a Sound, a Weight, a rocking sort of rhythm, and these seem to make the meaning bloom ( I know what I'm saying seems like gibberish, it's so hard to say what I think). And what he's saying seems true. It's indifference to wonder and pain that is our lowest point. When we no longer feel or care.

What We Need is Here

Charlotte Matthews, "Over the Cuckmere"

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds 

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

Still pondering on this. Abandon. Is that another way to say surrender? And yet "abandon" seems more like letting the weights go, as in a sense of freedom (rather than defeat). Abandon to trust, to an ancient faith - this will hold us to our way? I have to do some more thinking.

There are Years

Katherine Stone "The Shadow of My Hand"

There are years that ask questions

 and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurtson