Primary Wonder (Denise Levertov)

Primary Wonder

 

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng's clamor

recedes: the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed One, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.

 

~ Denise Levertov ~

 

(Selected Poems)

Singapore (Mary Oliver)

Singapore

 

In Singapore, in the airport,

A darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

 

Disgust argued in my stomach

and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

 

A poem should always have birds in it.

Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.

A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain

rising and falling.

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

 

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win.

She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?

Everybody needs a job.

 

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,

which is dull enough.

She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as

hubcaps, with a blue rag.

Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.

She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

 

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.

And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won’t happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

 

Of course, it isn’t.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life.  I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(House of Light)

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass (Mary Oliver)

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

(for National Poetry Month)

                                1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat

     of the sweet grass? 

Will the owl bite off its own wings? 

Will the lark forget to lift its body into the air or

    forget to sing? 

Will the rivers run upstream?

                              ~

Behold, I say--behold 

the reliability and the finery and the teachings

   of this gritty earth gift.

                               ~

                               2. 

Eat bread and understand comfort. 

Drink water and understand delight. 

Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets

    are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds 

who are drinking the sweetness, who are 

    thrillingly gluttonous.

                               ~

For one thing leads to another. 

Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot. 

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

                                            ~

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star 

both intimate and ultimate, 

and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

                                       ~

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper: 

oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two

beautiful bodies of your lungs.

                                ~

                                3. 

The witchery of living 

is my whole conversation 

with you, my darlings. 

All I can tell you is what I know.

                               ~

Look, and look again. 

This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. 

                              ~

It's more than bones. 

It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. 

It's more than the beating of a single heart. 

It's praising. 

It's giving until the giving feels like receiving. 

You have a life--just imagine that! 

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

  still another.

                               ~

                               4.

Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus, 

the dancer, the potter, 

to make me a begging bowl 

which I believe 

my soul needs.

                      ~

And if I come to you, 

to the door of your comfortable house 

with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails, 

will you put something into it?

                          ~

I would like to take this chance. 

I would like to give you this chance.

                               ~

                               5.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we

  change. 

Congratulations, if

  you have changed.

                               ~

                               6.

Let me ask you this. 

Do you also think that beauty exists for some

  fabulous reason?

                               ~

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure--

  your life-- 

what would do for you?

                               ~

                               7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself. 

Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to. 

That was many years ago. 

Since then I have gone out from my confinements,

  though with difficulty. 

                               ~ 

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart. 

I cast them out; I put them on the mush pile. 

They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment

  somehow or another).

                                ~~

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. 

I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is. 

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, 

I have become younger.

                                      ~

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? 

Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

                                            ~

by Mary Oliver

Earth Your Dancing Place (May Swenson)

Earth Your Dancing Place

by May Swenson

Beneath heaven's vault

remember always walking

through halls of cloud

down aisles of sunlight

or through high hedges

of the green rain

walk in the world

highheeled with swirl of cape

hand at the swordhilt

of your pride

Keep a tall throat

Remain aghast at life

Enter each day

as upon a stage

lighted and waiting

for your step

Crave upward as flame

have keenness in the nostril

Give your eyes

to agony or rapture

Train your hands

as birds to be

brooding or nimble

Move your body

as the horses

sweeping on slender hooves

over crag and prairie

with fleeing manes

and aloofness of their limbs

Take earth for your own large room

and the floor of the earth

carpeted with sunlight

and hung round with silver wind

for your dancing place

From Collected Poems by May Swenson. Copyright © 2013 by The Literary Estate of May Swenson. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of The Library of America

Blue Hanuman (Joan Larkin)

Blue Hanuman by Joan Larkin A four-armed flutist took me  to the blue avatar: stone-blue monkey, whiskers silver,  broken beads silver-- paint dashed by the artist on cheap paper. Bought for a few annas, God kneels, looks left. Intense concentration. His ink hands rip open his chest,  pull skin aside like a velvet curtain-- Rama and Sita alive at his core. And what devotion shall  my flesh show, and my broken-open breast. His blueblack tail flicks upward, its dark  tip a paintbrush loaded blue.

Look And See (Mary Oliver)

Look and See

 

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew

to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back

of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.

The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was

laughing.

 

This afternoon a gull sailing over

our house was casually scratching

its stomach of white feathers with one

pink foot as it flew.

 

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we

only look, and see.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Why I Wake Early)

Nothing Twice (Wislawa Szymborska)

Nothing Twice

 

Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is

that we arrive here improvised

and leave without the chance to practice.

 

Even if there is no one dumber,

if you're the planet's biggest dunce,

you can't repeat the class in summer:

this course is only offered once.

 

No day copies yesterday,

no two nights will teach what bliss is

in precisely the same way,

with precisely the same kisses.

 

One day, perhaps some idle tongue

mentions your name by accident:

I feel as if a rose were flung

into the room, all hue and scent.

 

The next day, though you're here with me,

I can't help looking at the clock:

A rose? A rose? What could that be?

Is that a flower of a rock?

 

Why do we treat the fleeting day

with so much needless fear and sorrow?

It's in its nature not to say

Today is always gone tomorrow

 

With smiles and kisses, we prefer

to seek accord beneath our star,

although we're different (we concur)

just as two drops of water are.

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

 

(Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh