Category: Poetry

“Meadowlark Country” by Amy Clampitt:

Speaking of the skylark in a New England classroom—
nonbird, upward-twirler, Old World hyperbole—
I thought how the likewise ground-nesting
Western meadowlark, rather than soar unsupported
out over the cattle range at daybreak, takes up
its post on a fencepost. I heard them out there,
once, by the hundreds, one after another:
a liquid millennium arising from the still
eastward-looking venue of the dark—

like the still-evolving venue of the young, the faces
eastward-looking, bright with a mute,
estranged, ancestral puzzlement.

(From The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt © 1997 by the Estate of Amy Clampitt. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Photo by Flickr user Dominic Sherony)

“Final Notations” by Adrienne Rich:

it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple

it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives

it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will

(From Later Poems: Selected and New, 1971-2012 © 2013 by The Adrienne Rich Literary Trust, 1991 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Photo by Flickr user cogdogblog)

“Gus Speaks” by Maxine Kumin

I was the last of my line,
farm-raised, chesty, and bold.
Not one of your flawless show-world
forty-five pound Dalmatians.
I ran with the horses, my darlings.

I loped at their heels, mile
for mile, swam rivers they forded
wet to the belly. I guarded
them grazing, haloed in flies.
Their smell became my smell.

Joyous I ate their manure.
Its undigested oats
still sweet, kept me fit.
I slept curled at the flank
of the fiercest bloodmare.

We lay, a study in snores
ear flicks and farts in her stall
until she came to the brink,
the birth hour of her foal.
Then, she shunned me cruelly.

Spring and fall I erred over
and over. Skunks were my folly.
Then, I was nobody’s lover.
I rolled in dung and sand.
When my heart burst in the pond,

my body sank and then rose
like a birch log, a blaze
of white against spring green.
Now I lie under the grasses
they crop, my own swift horses

who start up and spook in the rain
without me, the warm summer rain

(From Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 by Maxine Kumin © Maxine Kumin. Used by permission of W.W.Norton & Company. Photo by Flickr user ferran pestaña)

“Year After Year” by Caroline Knox:

The mower releases a scent
of autumnal flat creeping thyme.
Not only thyme but salt, magical seasonings.
Among those present,
the fox’s bark, the sound of owl’s wings.

Hence this set piece in ode mode with end rhyme,
but not standing on ceremony
beside flora that hurricanes volunteer
and granite outcroppings, a natural history,
hand over hand and year after year.

(Reprinted from Flemish © 2013 by Caroline Knox. Reprinted with permission of Wave Books and the author. Photo by Flickr user dbaron)

“Artichoke Heart” by Ibn at-Talla´ (11th century):

Of earth and water, daughter
Yielding her abundance

Only if you wait
Finger-licking at her castle gate

Pale she seems, her haven
Hard of access, a Greek

Virgin, who lingers
Behind a curtain of lances

(Translated by Christopher Middleton and Letitia Garza-Falcón from Spanish versions of the original Arabic. Reprinted with permission from Andalusian Poems, David R. Godine, Publisher © 1993 by Christopher Middleton and Letitia Garza-Falcón. Photo by dospaz)

From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron (1788-1824):

He, who grown agéd in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him—nor below
Can Love or Sorrow, Fame, Ambition, Strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance—he can tell
Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul’s haunted cell.

’Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do know—
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings’ dearth.

(Portrait of Lord Byron, from the National Portrait Gallery in London, via Wikimedia Commons)

“The Boat” by Stevie Smith:

The boat that took my love away
He sent again to me
To tell me that he should not sleep
Alone beneath the sea.

The flower and fruit of love are mine
The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole,
But now a tiger prowls without
And claws upon my soul.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds
And bleeding sullies slow,
Come death within my hands and I
Unto my love will go.

(From Collected Poems of Stevie Smith © 1966 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Photo by Justin Ackerman)

“Marriage” by Wendell Berry:

How hard it is for me, who live
in the excitement of women
and have the desire for them
in my mouth like salt. Yet
you have taken me and quieted me.
You have been such light to me
that other women have been
your shadows. You come near me
with the nearness of sleep.
And yet I am not quiet.
It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you. I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

(From New Collected Poems © 2012 by Wendell Berry. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press. Find more of Wendell Berry’s work published by Counterpoint here. Image from the series The Sleep of the Beloved by Paul Schneggenburger at the Anzenberger Gallery until March 8.)

“A Renewal” by James Merrill:

Having used every subterfuge
To shake you, lies, fatigue, or even that of passion,
Now I see no way but a clean break.
I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.

You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,
A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.
We sit, watching. When I next speak
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.

(From Collected Poems by James Merrill, edited by J.D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser © 2001 by the Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf. Photo by AJ Batac)

“The Speed of Belief” by Tracy K. Smith:

In memoriam, Floyd William Smith 1935-2008

I didn’t want to wait on my knees
In a room made quiet by waiting.

A room where we’d listen for the rise
Of breath, the burble in his throat.

I didn’t want the orchids or the trays
Of food meant to fortify that silence,

Or to pray for him to stay or to go then
Finally toward that ecstatic light,

I didn’t want to believe
What we believe in those rooms:

That we are blessed, letting go,
Letting someone, anyone,

Drag open the drapes and heave us
Back into our blinding, bright lives.

(From the “The Speed of Belief,” a sequence of poems in Life on Mars © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press. Photo by Flickr user .reid)