MIRACLES.
WHY, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the
sky,
or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge
of the water,
or stand under trees in the woods,
or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed
at night with any one I love,
or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
forenoon,
or animals feeding in the fields,
or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining
so quiet and bright,
or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in
spring;
these with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
the whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread
with the same,
every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
the fishes that swim—the rocks— the motion of the
waves—the ships with men in them,
what stranger miracles are there?
Walt Whitman
-----
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
Pablo Neruda
-----
The Garden
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
she walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
and she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
and is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
Ezra Pound
-----
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
to regard the frost and the boughs
of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
and have been cold a long time
to behold the junipers shagged with ice,
the spruces rough in the distant glitter
of the January sun; and not to think
of any misery in the sound of the wind,
in the sound of a few leaves,
which is the sound of the land
full of the same wind
that is blowing in the same bare place
for the listener, who listens in the snow,
and, nothing himself, beholds
nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
-----
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
a child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
and pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
to the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
and hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
with the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
D. H. Lawrence
-----
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
-----
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
because their words had forked no lightning they
do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Posts
-----
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
Pablo Neruda
-----
The Garden
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
she walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
and she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
and is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
Ezra Pound
-----
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
to regard the frost and the boughs
of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
and have been cold a long time
to behold the junipers shagged with ice,
the spruces rough in the distant glitter
of the January sun; and not to think
of any misery in the sound of the wind,
in the sound of a few leaves,
which is the sound of the land
full of the same wind
that is blowing in the same bare place
for the listener, who listens in the snow,
and, nothing himself, beholds
nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
-----
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
a child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
and pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
to the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
and hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
with the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
D. H. Lawrence
-----
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
-----
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
because their words had forked no lightning they
do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
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