Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

By William Carlos Williams

Of asphodel, that greeny flower, 
          like a buttercup 
                    upon its branching stem - 
 save that it’s green and wooden - 
          I come, my sweet, 
                    to sing to you.
We lived long together 
          a life filled, 
                    if you will, 
with flowers. 
          So that I was cheered 
                    when I came first to know 
that there were flowers also 
           in hell. 
                    Today 
I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers 
          that we both loved, 
                    even to this poor 
colorless thing - 
          I saw it 
                    when I was a child - 
little prized among the living 
          but the dead see, 
                    asking among themselves: 
What do I remember 
          that was shaped 
                     as this thing is shaped? 
while our eyes fill 
          with tears. 
                    Of love, abiding love 
it will be telling 
          though too weak a wash of crimson 
                    colors it 
to make it wholly credible. 
          There is something 
                     something urgent 
I have to say to you 
          and you alone 
                    but it must wait 
while I drink in 
           the joy of your approach, 
                    perhaps for the last time. 
And so 
          with fear in my heart 
                    I drag it out 
and keep on talking 
          for I dare not stop. 
                    Listen while I talk on 
against time. 
          It will not be 
                     for long. 
I have forgot 
          and yet I see clearly enough 
                    something 
central to the sky 
          which ranges round it. 
                    An odor 
springs from it! 
           A sweetest odor! 
                    Honeysuckle! And now 
there comes the buzzing of a bee! 
          and a whole flood 
                    of sister memories! 
Only give me time, 
          time to recall them 
                    before I shall speak out. 
Give me time, 
                   time. 
When I was a boy 
          I kept a book 
                    to which, from time 
to time, 
          I added pressed flowers 
                    until, after a time, 
I had a good collection. 
          The asphodel, 
                    forebodingly, 
among them. 
          I bring you, 
                    reawakened, 
a memory of those flowers. 
          They were sweet 
                    when I pressed them 
and retained 
          something of their sweetness 
                     a long time. 
It is a curious odor, 
          a moral odor, 
                    that brings me 
near to you. 
          The color 
                    was the first to go. 
There had come to me 
          a challenge, 
                    your dear self, 
mortal as I was, 
          the lily’s throat 
                    to the hummingbird! 
Endless wealth, 
          I thought, 
                    held out its arms to me. 
A thousand tropics 
          in an apple blossom. 
                    The generous earth itself 
gave us lief. 
          The whole world 
                    became my garden! 
But the sea 
          which no one tends 
                    is also a garden 
when the sun strikes it 
          and the waves 
                    are wakened. 
I have seen it 
          and so have you 
                    when it puts all flowers 
to shame. 
          Too, there are the starfish 
                    stiffened by the sun 
and other sea wrack 
          and weeds. We knew that 
                    along with the rest of it 
for we were born by the sea, 
          knew its rose hedges 
                     to the very water’s brink. 
There the pink mallow grows 
          and in their season 
                     strawberries 
and there, later, 
          we went to gather 
                     the wild plum. 
I cannot say 
           that I have gone to hell 
                    for your love 
but often 
           found myself there 
                    in your pursuit. 
I do not like it 
          and wanted to be 
                    in heaven. Hear me out. 
Do not turn away. 
I have learned much in my life 
          from books 
                    and out of them 
about love. 
          Death 
                    is not the end of it. 
There is a hierarchy 
          which can be attained, 
                    I think, 
in its service. 
          Its guerdon 
                    is a fairy flower; 
a cat of twenty lives. 
          If no one came to try it 
                    the world 
would be the loser. 
          It has been 
                    for you and me 
as one who watches a storm 
          come in over the water. 
                    We have stood 
from year to year 
          before the spectacle of our lives 
                    with joined hands. 
The storm unfolds. 
          Lightning 
                    plays about the edges of the clouds. 
The sky to the north 
          is placid, 
                    blue in the afterglow 
as the storm piles up. 
          It is a flower 
                    that will soon reach 
the apex of its bloom. 
          We danced, 
                    in our minds, 
and read a book together. 
          You remember? 
                    It was a serious book. 
And so books 
          entered our lives. 
The sea! The sea! 
          Always 
                   when I think of the sea 
 there comes to mind 
          the Iliad 
                    and Helen’s public fault 
that bred it. 
          Were it not for that 
                    there would have been 
no poem but the world 
          if we had remembered, 
                    those crimson petals 
spilled among the stones, 
          would have called it simply 
                    murder. 
The sexual orchid that bloomed then 
          sending so many 
                    disinterested 
men to their graves 
          has left its memory 
                     to a race of fools 
or heroes 
           if silence is a virtue. 
                    The sea alone 
with its multiplicity 
           holds any hope. 
                    The storm 
has proven abortive 
           but we remain 
                    after the thoughts it roused 
to 
          re-cement our lives. 
                    It is the mind 
the mind 
          that must be cured 
                    short of death’s 
intervention, 
          and the willhttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=785321166412290694#editor/target=post;postID=83081912703592879 becomes again 
                    a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made 
           in our lives 
                     for the poem. 
Silence can be complex too, 
          but you do not get far 
                    with silence. 
Begin again. 
          It is like Homer’s 
                    catalogue of ships: 
it fills up the time. 
          I speak in figures, 
                    well enough, the dresses 
you wear are figures 
          also, we could not meet 
                    otherwise. When I speak 
of flowers 
          it is to recall
                     that at one time
 we were young. 
          All women are not Helen,
                     I know that, 
but have Helen in their hearts. 
          My sweet, 
                    you have it also, therefore 
I love you 
           and could not love you otherwise. 
                    Imagine you saw 
a field made up of women 
          all silver-white. 
                    What should you do 
but love them? 
          The storm bursts 
                    or fades! it is not 
the end of the world. 
           Love is something else, 
                    or so I thought it, 
a garden which expands, 
           though I knew you as a woman 
                    and never thought otherwise, 
until the whole sea 
          has been taken up 
                    and all its gardens. 
It was the love of love, 
          the love that swallows up all else, 
                    a grateful love, 
a love of nature, of people, 
          of animals, 
                    a love engendering 
gentleness and goodness 
           that moved me 
                    and that I saw in you. 
I should have known, 
          though I did not, 
                    that the lily-of-the-valley 
is a flower makes many ill 
          who whiff it. 
                    We had our children, 
rivals in the general onslaught
           put them aside 
                     though I cared for them. 
as well as any man 
          could care for his children 
                     according to my lights. 
You understand 
          I had to meet you 
                    after the event 
and have still to meet you. 
          Love 
                     to which you too shall bow 
along with me - 
           a flower 
                    a weakest flower 
shall be our trust 
          and not because 
                    we are too feeble 
to do otherwise 
          but because 
                    at the height of my power 
I risked what I had to do, 
          therefore to prove
                     that we love each other 
while my very bones sweated 
           that I could not cry to you 
                     in the act. 
Of asphodel, that greeny flower, 
           I come, my sweet, 
                    to sing to you! 
My heart rouses 
          thinking to bring you news 
                    of something 
that concerns you 
          and concerns many men. Look at 
                    what passes for the new. 
You will not find it there but in 
          despised poems. 
                    It is difficult 
to get the news from poems 
          yet men die miserably every day 
                     for lack 
of what is found there. 
          Hear me out 
                    for I too am concerned 
and every man 
          who wants to die at peace in his bed 
                    besides.

Car Talk: A Love Poem

By Jack McCarthy

The cars I drive
don't look like much I will admit,
but mostly they've got engines that won't quit
this side of a nuclear explosion.
The Shitbox Mystique: when new friends
point at dents, concerned, and ask,
"What happened to your car?" I answer,
"It was like that when I bought it."
When I met Carol she was driving
a pretty good car,
except for the air-conditioner,
which used to make the engine overheat.
Carol also brought into my life
her son Seth and her mechanic, Peter ---
that's another feature
of the Mystique,
your mechanic
becomes part of your family,
we see more of Peter than we do of Seth,
we invited him to our wedding ---
though I'll admit, Peter wasn't actually
in the wedding and Seth was.
Now Carol likes nice things,
but what with college bills and all,
a couple years with me
and her blue Subaru
went downhill fast
and I got to see a new
side of her, that her idea of a good day
is breaking down outside a gas
station. Eventually her engine started
overheating even without
the air-conditioner; in fact
the only way to keep the temperature
out of the red zone on a hot day
was to turn the heat on.
I don't think Carol's mother
ever really bought
the unlikely physics of that
I think she thought we were
trying to make her and Ed
go home to California.
When you've got
two people driving shitboxes
you get to make some interesting decisions ---
like which one to take to Connecticut.
One has no windshield fluid
because the plastic thing leaks
and Peter hasn't been able to find
a used one that fits;
the other has something really scary
going on with steering...
but we take it anyway,
because on the map
the road to Connecticut
looks pretty straight.
Sometimes I get home from work
and Carol's ecstatic.
"Jack, I met the most wonderful
towtruck driver today. We towed
the car to Peter's,
and he brought me back
all the way to the door.
We had the most incredible conversation!
He's a very unusual person."
Right, Carol; like you're not.
A couple years with me she's on
a firstname basis with every
towtruck driver in Middlesex County.
Triple-A has us on speed-dial.
One time we were driving
somewhere together and she reflected,
"You know, if your first marriage
had worked out better, you
wouldn't have been available
for me. And vice versa."
I thought what a classic she is,
the miles look good on her.
But both of us came as is,
with dented fenders, and random
detritus in the trunk, and I said,
"It's as if we both broke down
outside the some gas station
at the same time."
And she smiled
and then she laughed,
and then we both laughed,
a long soft asynchronous laugh
like the ticking of an engine it will take
a nuclear blast
to stop.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

By Galway Kinnell

 

For I can snore like a bullhorn

or play loud music

or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

and Fergus will only sink deeper

into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,   

but let there be that heavy breathing

or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house

and he will wrench himself awake

and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,

after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,   

familiar touch of the long-married,

and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,

the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,

his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other

and smile

and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,

this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Family Phone Circle

By Adam Stone

My mother calls my father
to let him know she will be visiting his mother

My father hangs up
as soon as she identifies herself

My mother calls me to tell me
my father hung up on her

My father calls me to tell me
he hung up on my mother

My grandmother calls me
complaining because no one visits her anymore.

I turn off my phone.


This poem was previously published in Drunk in a Midnight Choir.

Evolution

By Sherman Alexie

Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

and the Indians come running in with jewelry
television sets, a VCR, a full-length beaded buckskin outfit
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill

takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it
all catalogued and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn

their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin
and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks

closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.

Nothing’s A Gift

By Wisława Szymborska

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.
Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.
I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.
Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.
The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless too.
I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.
We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.

The Common Cold

By Laurie Kasischke


To me she arrives this morning
dressed in some
man’s homely, soft, cast-off
lover’s shawl, and some
woman’s memory of a third-
grade teacher
who loved her students a little too much.
(Those warm hugs that went
on and on and on.)
She puts her hand to my head and says,
“Laura, you should go back to bed.”
But I have lunches to pack, socks
on the floor, while
the dust settles on
the I’ve got to clean this pigsty up.
(Rain at a bus stop.
Laundry in a closet.)
And tonight, I’m
the Athletic Booster mother
whether I feel like it or not, weakly
taking your dollar
from inside my concession stand:
I offer you your caramel corn. ( Birdsong
in a terrarium. Some wavering distant
planet reflected in a puddle.)
And, as your dollar
passes between us, perhaps
you will recall
how, years ago, we
flirted over some impossible
Cub Scout project.
Hammers
and saws, and seven
small boys tossing
humid marshmallows
at one another. And now
those sons, taller
and faster than we are, see
how they are poised on a line, ready
to run at the firing of a gun?
But here we are again, you and I, the
two of us tangled up
and biological: I’ve
forgotten your name, and
you never knew mine, but
in the morning
you’ll find
my damp kisses all over your pillows,
my clammy flowers
blooming in you cellar,
my spring grass
dewed with mucus-
and you’ll remember me
and how, tonight, wearing my
Go Dawgs T-shirt, I
stood at the center
of this sweet clinging heat
of a concession stand
with my flushed cheeks, and
how, before we touched, I
coughed into my hand.
Look:
here we are together
in bed all day again.

Don't Worry Son, You're in the Care of Mental Health Professionals

By Martin Espada 

I am the man

who spends all day

searching 

with a flashlight 

under the bed

for the shoes

he's already 

wearing. 

Ode to Kath

By Bob Lowe

I am alone, now I know it’s true

There was a time when we were two

Those were the days when we would chat

Doing little jobs of this and that

We’d go to the shops and select our meals

But now I’m one I know how it feels

To try and cook or have meals on wheels

The rooms are empty there’s not a sound

Sometimes I’m lost and wander round

To look for jobs that I can do

To bring back the days when we were two

When darkness falls and curtains drawn

That’s when I feel most forlorn

But I must be honest and tell the truth

I’m not quite alone and here’s the proof

Because beside me in her chair

She quietly waits our time to share

Kath said to me some time ago

Darling when the time comes for us to go

Let’s mix our ashes and be together

So we can snuggle up for ever and ever.

Compassion

By Miller Williams

Have compassion for everyone you meet
even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down where the spirit meets the bone.

Permeable

By Rachel Barenblat

Today I'll finish our sukkah
stacking old wildflowers
to hint at roof, twining tinsel
around the slats

all year we imagine
our houses are our houses
stable and comfortable
waterproof and familiar

but these seven days
remind us that permanence
is overrated, that our true home
is under the stars

change is always underway
nine short weeks remain
until you'll leave the home
you probably think is forever

and enter our world
airy and unpredictable
where we won't know what you need
even sometimes when you tell us

your first big leap of faith, kid:
into nothing you've ever known
into the fragile sukkah
we've decorated just for you,

Yom Kippur

By Linda Pastan

A tree beside the synagogue atones
of all its leaves. Within the ram’s horn blows
and sins come tumbling down to rest among
old cigarettes and handkerchiefs. My sins
are dried and brittle now as any leaves
and barely keep me warm. I have atoned
for them before, burned clean by October,
lulled by the song of a fasting belly.
But sins come creeping back like wayward girls,
and leaves return to willing trees for spring.

2

Image via shutterstock.com

A tree beside the synagogue atones
of all its leaves. Within the ram’s horn blows
and sins come tumbling down to rest among
old cigarettes and handkerchiefs. My sins
are dried and brittle now as any leaves
and barely keep me warm. I have atoned
for them before, burned clean by October,
lulled by the song of a fasting belly.
But sins come creeping back like wayward girls,
and leaves return to willing trees for spring.

- See more at: http://www.jewishjournal.com/poetry/article/poem_yom_kippur#sthash.VoqycL3G.dpuf

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

By Edward Lear

 

I.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

   And sang to a small guitar,

"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

    What a beautiful Pussy you are,

         You are,

         You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II.

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

   But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

   With a ring at the end of his nose,

             His nose,

             His nose,

   With a ring at the end of his nose.

III.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;   

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

             The moon,

             The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.