“Heredity” by Thomas Hardy:
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance—that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
(Photo by Flickr user Bitterjug)
“the history of my body” by Wanda Coleman:
a crushed rose
the workings seem obtuse
indigenous harmonies, all glittery
rubble & love blazing white teeth
the portrait of a sunburnt face
dayblooming pickaninnies
exploding hips/ encantados de la luna
pavement by night
from ashy to bone dry
flying houses and thunder palms
penny-candy memories
violent eruptions of beauty
wailing sirens into the deep pink
just a dream of cities
ample-voiced harbinger
mouth made for sloppy kisses
(goodness gracious she’s bodacious)
question mark, forever haunted
tenderly fiercely fleshed
(From Ostinato Vamps: Poems by Wanda Coleman © 2003 by Wanda Coleman. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Photo by Flickr user quinn.anya)
“Karma” by Edwin Arlington Robinson:
Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God’s images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fullness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.
(From Dionysus in Doubt: Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York, Macmillan, 1925. Photo by Flickr user JoshSemans)
“My Young Mother” by Jane Cooper:
My young mother, her face narrow
and dark with unresolved wishes
under a hatbrim of the twenties,
stood by my middleaged bed.Still as a child pretending sleep
to a grownup watchful or calling,
I lay in a corner of my dream
staring at the mole above her lip.Familiar mole! but that girlish look
as if I had nothing to give her—
Eyes blue—brim dark—
Calling me from sleep after decades.
(From The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed by Jane Cooper. Copyright © 2000 Jane Cooper. Used by permission of W.W.Norton & Company. Photo by Flickr user mrsdkrebs)
"December 7" by Yannis Ritsos:
The cook left his pots
and is feeding a sparrow.But the song doesn’t last long,
the dead take it underground.*
On packs of cigarettes
we scribble hurried numbers
that correspond to nothing.Addition—subtraction, addition—subtraction.
And yet, calculating, calculating
you manage in the end not to cry.
(From Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley. Reprinted courtesy of Archipelago Books © 2012. Photo by Flickr user sludgegulper)
"Alone" by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967):
"When I’m alone"—the words tripped off his tongue
As though to be alone were nothing strange.
"When I was young,” he said; “when I was young. . . ."I thought of age, and loneliness, and change,
I thought how strange we grow when we’re alone,
And how unlike the selves that meet and talk,
And blow the candles out, and say goodnight.
Alone. . . . The word is life endured and known.
It is the stillness where our spirits walk
And all but inmost faith is overthrown.
(Photo by Flickr user The Ewan)
“Puppet Maker” by Charles Simic:
In his fear of solitude, he made us.
Fearing eternity, he gave us time.
I hear his white cane thumping
Up and down the hall.I expect neighbors to complain, but no.
The little girl who sobbed
When her daddy crawled into her bed
Is quiet now.It’s quarter to two.
On this street of darkened pawnshops,
Welfare hotels and tenements,
One or two ragged puppets are awake.
(From Master of Disguises: Poems by Charles Simic © Charles Simic 2010. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Photo by Flickr user boklm)
"Hope says" by Antonio Machado:
Hope says: One day
you will see her, if you really wait.
Despair says:
She is only your bitterness.
Beat, heart. Not everything
Is swallowed by the earth.
(Translated by Willis Barnstone. From Border of a Dream: Selected Poems © 2004 by the heirs of Antonio Machado. Reprinted by kind permission of Copper Canyon Press. Photo by Flickr user brenmna)
"At Night" by Jimmy Santiago Baca:
I lie in bed
and hear the soft throb of water
surging through the ditch,
from extreme to extreme water bounds,
clumsy country boy,
stumbling over fallen water logs and rubber tires
to meet a lover
who awaits in her parents’ house, window open.As I used to for love.
Now gray-black hair,
vigorous cheeks, weathered brow, chapped lips,
dismal thoughtful eyes,
I float in brown melancholy on the lazy currents
of memory, studying my reflection
on the water this night,
with distant devotion,
a swimmer who has forgotten how to swim.
(From Black Mesa Poems © 1989 by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Photo by Flickr user Sweet Chi)
"Married" by Jack Gilbert:
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
Repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a long black hair in the dirt.
More Gilbert poems featured on the Dish here and here.
(Reprinted from Collected Poems © 2012 by Jack Gilbert. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. Photo by Flickr user ndanger)
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