Old Poems Unearthed
Jun. 5th, 2007 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormTonight I'm wandering through other people's words trying to pin down something so elusive that I'm not sure I can feel it, beyond knowing that it's there and keeping me restless about midnight. I don't know. This is the pattern, I suppose, of love in my life. It takes awhile to wear in a groove, and until it does the whole thing skips and jitters.
Love? God only knows. Words are words. I only live the thing itself.
My head is muddy now because I am so tired. I haven't been sleeping well. This is the pattern... groove... skips... jitters, etc.
Did you know I'm in love with Vancouver? In love with the ocean, with downtown, with the wet air and the huge green growth and the shapes of the buildings in a skyline and the way people walk down the street? This land is generous land, and gives so much.
I open when touched. It's like sunlight on a flower, or warm water in a vase for buds.
I'm too tired to write, really, so maybe someone else has come up with something serene and beautiful, about complexity and simplicity, old and new, uncovering and nostalgia. desire and fulfillment. It's all the tension of matched pairs, after all, that keeps things going. Let's look through and see:
Look at the birds. Even flying
is born
out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, Friend, open
at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
Li-Young Lee
IX
Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It's not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever's lost there is needed by both of us—
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key . . . . Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.
Adrienne Rich
On The Table
I would like to make it clear that I have bought
this tablecloth with its simple repeating pattern
of dark purple blooms not named by any botanist
because it reminds me of that printed dress you had
the summer we met - a dress you have always said
I never told you I liked. Well I did, you know. I did.
I liked it a lot, whether you were inside it or not.
How did it slip so quietly out of our life?
I hate - I really hate - to think of some other bum
swinging those heavy flower-heads left to right.
I hate even more to think of it mouldering on a tip
or torn to shreds - a piece here wiping a dipstick,
a piece there tied round a crack in a lead pipe.
It's all a long time ago now, darling, a long time,
but tonight just like our first night here I am
with my head light in my hands and my glass full,
staring at the big drowsy petals until they start to swim,
loving them but wishing to lift them aside, unbutton them,
tear them, even, if that's what it takes to get through
to the beautiful, moon-white, warm wanting skin of you.
Andrew Motion
Morning Poem
Listen. It's morning. Soon I'll see your hand reach
for my watch, the water will aggitate in the kettle,
but listen. Traffic. I want your dreams first. And
to slide my leg beneath yours before the day opens.
Wait. We slept late. You'll be moody, the phone
will ring, someone wanting something. Let me put
my hands in your hair. Who I was last night I would
be again. This is how the future holds me, how depression
wakes with us; my body shelters it. Let me
put my head on your breast. I know nothing lasts.
I would try to hold you back, not out of meanness
but fear. Oh my practical, my worldly-wise. You
know how the body falters, falls in on itself. Tell me
that we will never want from each other what we
cannot have. Lie. It's morning.
Robin Becker
This one needs to be out from behind the cut, though.
To Drink
I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek –
it is the same –
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against the cold glass,
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.
Jane Hirshfield
That's it, I think. I've been having experiences with darkness lately; not mine, but others'. It's an integral part of people, but not something I've given much notice or attention or tolerance or love to. You know, we always try to make it go away in people we love, but if it IS them, then what? Where is the close examination, the gradual comprehension of overlapping shadings, the wonder at complexity, the joy in difference?
Love? God only knows. Words are words. I only live the thing itself.
My head is muddy now because I am so tired. I haven't been sleeping well. This is the pattern... groove... skips... jitters, etc.
Did you know I'm in love with Vancouver? In love with the ocean, with downtown, with the wet air and the huge green growth and the shapes of the buildings in a skyline and the way people walk down the street? This land is generous land, and gives so much.
I open when touched. It's like sunlight on a flower, or warm water in a vase for buds.
I'm too tired to write, really, so maybe someone else has come up with something serene and beautiful, about complexity and simplicity, old and new, uncovering and nostalgia. desire and fulfillment. It's all the tension of matched pairs, after all, that keeps things going. Let's look through and see:
Look at the birds. Even flying
is born
out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, Friend, open
at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
Li-Young Lee
IX
Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It's not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever's lost there is needed by both of us—
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key . . . . Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.
Adrienne Rich
On The Table
I would like to make it clear that I have bought
this tablecloth with its simple repeating pattern
of dark purple blooms not named by any botanist
because it reminds me of that printed dress you had
the summer we met - a dress you have always said
I never told you I liked. Well I did, you know. I did.
I liked it a lot, whether you were inside it or not.
How did it slip so quietly out of our life?
I hate - I really hate - to think of some other bum
swinging those heavy flower-heads left to right.
I hate even more to think of it mouldering on a tip
or torn to shreds - a piece here wiping a dipstick,
a piece there tied round a crack in a lead pipe.
It's all a long time ago now, darling, a long time,
but tonight just like our first night here I am
with my head light in my hands and my glass full,
staring at the big drowsy petals until they start to swim,
loving them but wishing to lift them aside, unbutton them,
tear them, even, if that's what it takes to get through
to the beautiful, moon-white, warm wanting skin of you.
Andrew Motion
Morning Poem
Listen. It's morning. Soon I'll see your hand reach
for my watch, the water will aggitate in the kettle,
but listen. Traffic. I want your dreams first. And
to slide my leg beneath yours before the day opens.
Wait. We slept late. You'll be moody, the phone
will ring, someone wanting something. Let me put
my hands in your hair. Who I was last night I would
be again. This is how the future holds me, how depression
wakes with us; my body shelters it. Let me
put my head on your breast. I know nothing lasts.
I would try to hold you back, not out of meanness
but fear. Oh my practical, my worldly-wise. You
know how the body falters, falls in on itself. Tell me
that we will never want from each other what we
cannot have. Lie. It's morning.
Robin Becker
This one needs to be out from behind the cut, though.
To Drink
I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek –
it is the same –
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against the cold glass,
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.
Jane Hirshfield
That's it, I think. I've been having experiences with darkness lately; not mine, but others'. It's an integral part of people, but not something I've given much notice or attention or tolerance or love to. You know, we always try to make it go away in people we love, but if it IS them, then what? Where is the close examination, the gradual comprehension of overlapping shadings, the wonder at complexity, the joy in difference?
