as close as we're ever likely to get

        Somewhere between what it feels like, to be at 

one with the sea, and to understand the sea as 

mere context for the boat whose engine refuses 

finally to turn over: yeah, I know the place—

stumbled into it myself, once; twice, almost. All 

around and in between the two trees that 

grow there, tree of compassion and—much taller—

tree of pity, its bark more bronze, the snow 

        settled as if an openness of any kind meant, as well, 

a woundedness that, by filling it, the snow 

might heal.... You know what I think? I think if we're 

lost, you should know exactly where, by now; I've 

watched you stare long and hard enough at the map 

already... I'm beginning to think I may never 

not be undecided, about all sorts of things: whether 

snow really does resemble the broken laughter 

        of the long abandoned when what left comes back 

big-time; whether gratitude's just a haunted 

space like any other. This place sounds daily 

more like a theater of war, each time I listen to it—

loss, surprise, victory, being only three of the countless 

fates, if you want to call them that, that we don't 

so much live with, it seems, as live for now among. If as 

close as we're ever likely to get, you and I, is this—this close—  

 

[Carl Phillips {1959- } 'The Way One Animal Trusts Another', from Wild is the Wind]

excuse me

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall—

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do. 

 

[Mary Oliver {1935-2019}, 'I Go Down to the Shore', from A Thousand Mornings]

we brighten in a blaze of rhymes

Such figures if they succeed are beautiful 

because for a moment we brighten in a blaze of rhymes 

and yet they always fail and must fail 

and give way to other poems 

in the endless approximations of what we feel 

Hopeless it is hopeless     Only the wheel 

endures     It spins and spins winding 

the was the is the willbe out of nothing 

and thus we are     Thus on the wheel we touch 

each to each a part 

of the great determining reality     How much 

we give to one another     Perhaps our art 

succeeds after all our small song done in the faith 

of lovers who endlessly change heart for heart. 

as the gift of being     Come let us sing against death. 

 

 [Hayden Carruth {1921-2008}, 'The Wheel of Being II', from Last Poems]

the buttoning of shirts

    "He managed a genuine smile then. They broke her 

heart freshly every time, his smiles. And then he flung 

open his wardrobe and found another shirt, one with-

out any bloodstains, slid his arms into it, and deftly

buttoned it up. She watched with regret as all of that

masculine gloriousness disappeared under linen.

    "It occurred to her that if she'd been able to spend

her life with him she would see this sort of thing all

the time. The buttoning of shirts. Shaving. All the less

erotic things, nonetheless cherished. The acts of inti-

macy that knit lives together. She wanted to soothe his

wounds and share his burdens and make his life easier,

more spontaneous, more passionate.

    "It hurt." 

 

[from How the Marquess was Won, by Julie Anne Long]

I do not know how to hide it

When I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the 

wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand 

silent. 

It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed. 

 

    When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do 

not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river like the 

sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep. 

    It is my own heart that beats wildly—I do not know how to 

quiet it. 

 

    When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles 

and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the 

lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars. 

 

    It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do 

not know how to hide it. 

 

[Rabindranath Tagore {1861-1941} 'IX' {When I go alone at night} from ‘The Gardener’, in Collected Poems and Prose of Rabindranath Tagore]

it went historically well

A man lies down in my mind. 

We have just made love. 

It went historically well, the kind 

of hand-in-glove 

expertise team workouts can evoke. 

Now we lie still and smoke, 

the ashtray on my belly blue 

as chicory in the dixie cup 

on the deal bureau. True, 

it's a borrowed room. Third-floor walk-up 

as a matter of fact, 

foreign enough to enhance the act. 

Say it's Grand Forks, where I've never been. 

All this takes place in the head, 

you understand. I play to win 

back wicked afternoons in bed, 

old afternoons that were 

shadows on the grass longer 

than home runs lofted out of the park. 

We smoke. The chicory blue goes dark, 

the ashtray deepens 

and the sun drops 

under the rim the way it happens 

like a used-up lollipop 

and the room goes blind 

and a man 

a man lies down in my mind. 

 

[Maxine Kumin {1925-2014} 'This Day Will Self-Destruct', from Our Ground time Here will be Brief]

the ability not to care—at times—as our society erupts and struggles

they're right: maybe it's been too easy just writing about myself and 

horses and drinking, but then I'm not trying to prove anything, taking 

long walks lately has been pleasant and although my desire for the female 

remains, I find that I needn't always be on the lookout for new conquests. 

riding the same mare need not be boring. let the wild young fillies be a 

problem for other men. I am often satisfied just being alone. I now find 

people more amusing than disgusting (am I weakening?) and although 

I still have nights and days of depression the typewriter does not fail me. 

readers expect continual growth from their poets but at this time just 

holding (the fort, haha) seems miraculous. long walks, yes. and the ability 

not to care—at times—as our society erupts and struggles does not mean 

that I am the victim of artistic loss. solitary evenings behind drawn blinds, 

being neither rich nor poor, can be satisfying. will madness arrive on 

schedule? I don't know and I don't seek an answer-just a small quiet 

space between not knowing, not wanting to know and finally finding out. 

 

 [Charles Bukowski, {1920-1994} 'some personal thoughts', from Come On In!]

the muse (in other words)

Poor talker     mouthperson 

    alone 

waiting for bravery 

 

the muse (in 

    other words) 

        Oh language 

 

circumvent my tongue 

    tell pen 

        Move! 

 

Make text 

 

[Grace Paley {1922-2007} 'In France', from Begin Again: The Collected Poems]

strayed from my own nature and my fierce hold on life

The word I spoke in anger 

weighs less than a parsley seed, 

but a road runs through it 

that leads to my grave, 

that bought-and-paid-for lot 

on a salt-sprayed hill in Truro 

where the scrub pines 

overlook the bay. 

Half-way I'm dead enough, 

strayed from my own nature 

and my fierce hold on life. 

If I could cry, I'd cry, 

but I'm too old to be 

anybody's child. 

Liebchen, 

with whom should I quarrel 

except in the hiss of love, 

that harsh, irregular flame? 

 

[Stanley Kunitz {1905-2006} 'The Quarrel', from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected]

always between

between the lip 

and the kiss 

between the hand 

and the fist 

between rumor 

and prayer 

between dungeon 

and tower 

between fear 

and liberty 

always 

between 

 

[Rita Dove {1952- } ‘Third Juror’, from American Smooth]

the pool of dreams in which I drown in freedom

You are the company to whom I speak 

suddenly, all alone. 

The words that start 

from silence form you 

and the pool of dreams 

in which I drown in freedom 

till I wake. 

 

Your metallic hand 

strengthens the swift prise of my own, 

directs the pen 

that draws its littoral across the page. 

 

Your voice, sickle of the echo, 

is the reverberation of my voice against the wall, 

and in your mirrored flesh 

I see myself look thru a thousand Arguses, 

thru me, extended seconds. 

 

But the slightest sound drives you to flight, 

and I see you leave 

thru the door of the book 

or thru the atlas of the ceiling, 

thru the chessboard of the floor, 

or the page of the mirror, 

and you leave me 

heart stopped, wordless and faceless, 

stripped like a naked man of all my masks 

in the middle of the staring street. 

 

[Xavier Villaurrutia {1903-1950} 'Poetry', from Homesick for Death: Dead nocturnes—The complete poems of Xavier Villaurrutia]

calamity has already been and gone, its arrows still clean

I do not wake up buzzing with happiness. 

In fact my bed is full of wasps. I have been stung 

 

everywhere tender. I have not had fun 

in a long time, maybe in ever. 

 

My blessings do not run over and also 

I have none. My sink is leaking. 

 

My sink is running over with wasps. 

They have carried off all my sugar. 

 

See how poor I am, how luckless, how unshapely 

my head from which no hair falls in waves. 

 

I have no children to speak of, 

no robes sewn with threads of gold, 

 

no robes. I am a patch of dirt, a glass 

of vinegar, a bony goose among fat others. 

 

I am an unworthy enemy, small and mean. 

In fact calamity has already been and gone, 

 

its arrows still clean. I do not need to play dead. 

Not even death would want to play with me. 

 

 [Claire Wahmanholm, ‘If Anyone Asks’, from Meltwater: Poems]

love and fear, grief and joy

Within the circles of our lives 

we dance the circles of the years, 

the circles of the seasons 

within the circles of the years, 

the cycles of the moon 

within the circles of the seasons, 

the circles of our reasons 

within the cycles of the moon. 

 

Again, again we come and go 

changed, changing. Hands 

join, unjoin in love and fear, 

grief and joy. The circles turn, 

each giving into each, into all. 

Only music keeps us here, 

 

each by all the others held. 

In the hold of hands and eyes 

we turn in pairs, that joining 

joining each to all again. 

 

And then we turn aside, alone, 

out of the sunlight gone 

 

into the darker circles of return. 

 

[Wendell Berry {1934- } 'Song (4)', from New Collected Poems]

the name of a faraway city

Why make? I used to wonder. 

Is it something you have to keep on 

making, like beds or dinner, stir it up 

 

or smooth it down? Sex, I understood, 

an easy creaking on the upholstered 

springs of a man you meet in passing. 

 

You have sex, you don't have to make it, 

it makes you—rise and fall and rise again, 

each time, each man, new. But love? 

 

It could be the name of a faraway 

city, end of a tired journey you take 

with some husband, your bodies chugging 

 

their way up the mountain, glimpsing 

the city lights and thinking, If we can 

keep it up, we'll make Love by morning. 

 

I guess it was fun for somebody, 

my grandmother once said. By then I

was safely married and had earned 

 

the right to ask, there in the kitchen 

beside the nodding aunts. Her answer 

made me sad. In her time, love meant making 

 

babies, and if I had borne twelve 

and buried three, I might see my husband 

as a gun shooting off inside me, each bullet 

 

another year gone. But sex wasn't my question. 

Love was the ghost whose shape kept 

shifting. For us, it did not mean babies, 

 

those plump incarnations the minister 

had promised—flesh of our flesh, 

our increase. Without them, and twenty years 

 

gone, what have we to show 

for the planing and hammering, bone 

against bone, chisel and wedge, 

 

the tedious sanding of night 

into morning—when we rise, stretch, 

shake out the years, lean back, 

 

and see what we've made: no ghost, 

it's a house. Sunlight through the window 

glazing our faces, patina of dust 

 

on our arms. At every axis, mortise 

and tenon couple and hold. Doors 

swing heavy on their hinges. 

 

 [Rebecca McClanahan 'Making Love', from The Best American Poetry 1998; John Hollander, ed.]

swear, my heart, that you will never give them up

Sing, my heart, the gardens you never walked, 

like gardens sealed in glass balls, unreachable. 

Sing the waters and roses of Isfahan and Shiraz; 

praise them, lush beyond compare. 

 

Swear, my heart, that you will never give them up. 

That the figs they ripened ripened for you. 

That you could tell by its fragrance 

each blossoming branch. 

 

Don't imagine you could ever let them go 

once they made the daring choice: to be! 

Like a silken thread, you entered the weaving. 

 

Whatever image you take within you deeply, 

even for a moment in a lifetime of pain, 

see how it reveals the whole—the great tapestry. 

 

Singe die Gärten, mein Herz, die du nicht kennst; wie in Glas 

eingegossene Gärten, klar, unerreichbar. 

Wasser und Rosen von Ispahan oder Schiras, 

singe sie selig, preise sie, keinem vergleichbar. 

 

Zeige, mein Herz, daß du sie niemals entbehrst. 

Daß sie dich meinen, ihre reifenden Feigen. 

Daß du mit ihren, zwischen den blühenden Zweigen 

wie zum Gesicht gesteigerten Lüften verkehrst. 

 

Meide den Irrtum, daß es Entbehrungen gebe 

für den geschehnen Entschluß, diesen: zu sein! 

Seidener Faden, kamst du hinein ins Gewebe. 

 

Welchem der Bilder du auch im Innern geeint bist 

(sei es selbst ein Moment aus dem Leben der Pein), 

fühl, daß der ganze, der rühmliche Teppich gemeint ist. 

 

 [Zweiter Teil, XXI] 

 

 [Rainer Maria Rilke {1875-1926} "Part Two, XXI" from 'Sonnets to Orpheus', in In Praise of Morality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. and ed. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy]

a fair game

when all the cards are in

when all the chips are counted

the smiles smiled

the pictures taken

i wonder

if they'll say

you played a fair

game 

of game? 

 

[Nikki Giovanni {1943-2024} 'The Game of Game', from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, 1968-1998]

would it not be difficult

'I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's 

Version of Three Blind Mice' 

 

And I start wondering how they came to be blind. 

If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, 

and I think of the poor mother 

brooding over her sightless young triplets. 

 

Or was it a common accident, all three caught 

in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? 

If not, 

if each came to his or her blindness separately, 

 

how did they ever manage to find one another? 

Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse 

to locate even one fellow mouse with vision 

let alone two other blind ones? 

 

And how, in their tiny darkness, 

could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife 

or anyone else's wife for that matter? 

Not to mention why. 

 

Just so she could cut off their tails 

with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer, 

but the thought of them without eyes 

and now without tails to trail through the moist grass 

 

or slip around the corner of a baseboard 

has the cynic who always lounges within me 

up off his couch and at the window 

trying to hide the rising softness that he feels. 

 

By now I am on to dicing an onion 

which might account for the wet stinging 

in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's 

mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon," 

 

which happens to be the next cut, 

cannot be said to be making matters any better. 

 

 [Billy Collins {1941- } 'I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of Three Blind Mice' from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and selected poems] 

if I did say that you were hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way

    Farewell, years of the zoth century. Goodbye 

collectively and individually. I will miss you. 

 

    Goodbye 1991, year of the palindrome. There will never 

be another year like you until 2002. 

 

    Oh 1968, you and your friends 1967 & 1969 were a riot. 

 

    I'll never forget you, 1978. You were the year in 

which I first had sex. I bid you farewell in French, the 

language of intercourse: 

    Baisse-moi, prends-moi ici, dans ce poème, 

    sur cette page. Oh, mais tu es si sensuel, 

    année provacant! Au revoir. 

 

    I wish I had known you better: 1904, 1905, 1906. I 

always think of you guys together, sitting at the back of 

the 20th century. I wish we could have hung out!      

     

    1992. The year I graduated from law school. What have 

you been up to? Let's have lunch. 

 

    1955. I wasn't born yet, but don't think for a minute 

I don't lie awake, nostalgic for you. 

 

    I would like to apologize to the 1980s. I never said 

you were hollow and heartless. If I did say that you were 

hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way. We only 

hurt the years we love. 

 

[Pam Quinlan, 'Yearbook', from American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century, ed. and with an introduction by Andrei Codrescu and Laura Rosenthal]

no heart or saving grace

We have done what we wanted. 

We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry 

of each other, and we have welcomed grief 

and called ruin the impossible habit to break. 

 

And now we are here. 

The dinner is ready and we cannot eat. 

The meat sits in the white lake of its dish. 

The wine waits. 

 

Coming to this 

has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away. 

We have no heart or saving grace, 

no place to go, no reason to remain. 

 

[Mark Strand {1934-2014}, 'Coming to This', from Selected Poems]

it gave me bravery and my anger back, walked me to the tossing water and proclaimed the water mine

When my Sorrow was born, I held it, a dark pearl spit from its shell, 

and I remembered the salt that had rounded it before, centuries ago, 

before I even had a mouth. 

 

And my Sorrow was unafraid and it gave me bravery and my anger 

back, walked me to the tossing water and proclaimed the water mine. 

 

My Sorrow held me and did not tell me not to cry, and the girls about 

me watched our sweet days together with longing, for they too wanted 

to be held by something with fingers as slender and delicate as my 

Sorrow's, fingers that tapped their temples and had them see how they 

had been wronged. 

 

And those who longed for my Sorrow would never have a Sorrow like 

mine. I knew that, for my Sorrow had a forest black mane like mine. 

 

And my Sorrow let me say I, I, mine. 

 

And my Sorrow sat with me on the fire escape all that breathing 

winter, and my Sorrow would not let me into the water. 

 

And my Sorrow deveined shrimp and patterned them on my plate, 

brought me a wide bowl brimming with broth. 

 

And we ate fried eggs with chopsticks. We waited for my Joy to come. 

 

[Emily Lee Luan 'When My Sorrow Was Born', from The Best American Poetry 2021]