“Love forgive me all I’ve given
has been a form of taking
talking over a table of scarred wood
talking always about the table
I’ve held out my hand and drawn it back
in case you took it always afraid
to take the table away forever.”
Craig Arnold, from “A Place of First Permission” in his collection, Made Flesh
I like to imagine that forgiveness is being asked not of a specific lover, but of Love
“And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth”
T. S. Eliot, from part VI of “Ash-Wednesday”
“Where have they gone, the lordly makers,
Torchlight and fire-folk of our skies,
Those grand authorial earthshakers
Who brought such gladness to the eyes
Of the knowing and unworldly-wise
In damasked language long ago?
Call them and nobody replies.
Et nunc in pulvere dormio.”
Anthony Hecht, from “Death the Poet: A Ballade-Lament For the Makers”
“And still the poetry of ancient Sumeria
will be understood with ease -
humiliation,
ambition,
slaughter,
the cutting down of the tallest cedar -
and Beowulf’s verdict yet hold:
Technologies alter.
Heaven swallows the smoke.”
Jane Hirshfield, from her poem, “Haofon Rece Swealg,” in her collection, Come, Thief
One of my favorite lines in Beowulf
“Sometimes when girls get together, they vow
to just put their dreams away forever
because boys are creeps, sleazes, troglodytes
and toads. They’re poisoned apples, and spikes
in the heart. Bulldozers with bad breath,
gangplanks to walk off of, horny, grabby,
promise-breaking bastards.”
Ron Koertge, from “The Frog Prince,” in his collection Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses
“Go beyond what’s reliable
in all that keeps pleading and pleading,
these eyes and puddles and stones,
and recollect how bold you were
when I visited you first
with departures you cannot go back on.”
Seamus Heaney, from “Making Strange”
“Such meetings never occur in märchen
Where love-met groundhogs love one in return,
Where straight talk is the the rule, whether warm or hostile,
Which no gruff animal misinterprets.
From what grace am I fallen. Tongues are strange,
Signs say nothing. The falcon who spoke clear
To Canacee cries gibberish to coarsened ears.”
Sylvia Plath, from “Incommunicado.”
From what grace am I fallen.
“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes its self; myself is speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
Hopkins is a poet best read aloud. No one else takes such obvious joy in the play of language.
Chorus: “Will I
throw my bared
throat
back, to the cool
night back, the
way,
oh, in the green joys
of the meadow, the
way
a fawn
frisks, leaps,
throws itself”
Euripides, The Bacchae, as translated by C. K. Williams
It’s in the trees. It’s coming.
“”What will happen next?” -
the question hinged in your knees, your ankles,
in the in-breaths even of weeping.
Strongest of magnets, the future impartial drew you in.
Whatever direction you turned was face to face.
No back of the world existed,
no unseen corner, no test. No other earth to prepare for.”
Jane Hirshfield, from “When Your Life Looks Back,” in her collection Come, Thief
