The Poetic Fool

May

Poem of the Day: I Dreamed That I Was Old

I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension

Fallen from my prime, when company

Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention,

Before time took my leafy hours away.

My wisdom, ripe with body’s ruin, found

Itself tart recompense for what was lost

In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground

Has no apocalypse or pentecost.

I wept for my youth, sweet passionate young thought,

And cozy women dead that by my side

Once lay: I wept with bitter longing, not

Remembering how in my youth I cried.

Stanley Kunitz, “I Dreamed That I Was Old” from The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978. Copyright © 1930, 1944, 1958, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1979 by Stanley Kunitz. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: Selected Poems 1928-1958 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1958)

Stanley Kunitz

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May

Poem of the Day: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Compiling this landmark anthology of poetry in English

about dogs and musical instruments is like swimming through bricks.

To date, I have only, “On the Death of Mrs. McTuesday’s Pug,

Killed by a Falling Piano,” a somewhat obvious choice.

True, an Aeolian harp whispers alluringly

in the background of the anonymous sonnet, “The Huntsman’s

Hound,”

but beyond that — silence.

I should resist this degrading donkey-work in favor of my own

writing,

wherein contentment surely lies.

But A. Smith stares smugly from the reverse of the twenty pound

note,

and when my bank manager guffaws,

small particles of saliva stream like a meteor shower

through the infinity of dark space

between his world and mine.

Source: Poetry (May 2013).

Simon Armitage

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May

Poem of the Day: The Reason

My life is vile

I hate it so

I’ll wait awhile

And then I’ll go.

Why wait at all?

Hope springs alive,

Good may befall

I yet may thrive.

It is because I can’t make up my mind

If God is good, impotent or unkind.

Stevie Smith, “The Reason” from New Selected Poems. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: The New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)

Stevie Smith

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May

Poem of the Day: Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet’s poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver—what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe—

Just a little white with the dust.

Source: Poetry (December 1916).

Isaac Rosenberg

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May

Picky Poetry Readers

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May

Poem of the Day: Ave Maria

Mothers of America

let your kids go to the movies!

get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to

it’s true that fresh air is good for the body

but what about the soul

that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images

and when you grow old as grow old you must

they won’t hate you

they won’t criticize you they won’t know

they’ll be in some glamorous country

they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you

for their first sexual experience

which only cost you a quarter

and didn’t upset the peaceful home

they will know where candy bars come from

and gratuitous bags of popcorn

as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over

with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg

near the Williamsburg Bridge

oh mothers you will have made the little tykes

so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies

they won’t know the difference

and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy

and they’ll have been truly entertained either way

instead of hanging around the yard

or up in their room

hating you

prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet

except keeping them from the darker joys

it’s unforgivable the latter

so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice

and the family breaks up

and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set

seeing

movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

Frank O’Hara, “Ave Maria” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books, www.citylights.com/CLpub.html.

Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995)

Frank O'Hara

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May

Poem of the Day: When I Am Asked

When I am asked

how I began writing poems,

I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,

a brilliant June day,

everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench

in a lovingly planted garden,

but the day lilies were as deaf

as the ears of drunken sleepers

and the roses curved inward.

Nothing was black or broken

and not a leaf fell

and the sun blared endless commercials

for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench

ringed with the ingenue faces

of pink and white impatiens

and placed my grief

in the mouth of language,

the only thing that would grieve with me.

Lisel Mueller, "When I am Asked" from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

Source: Poetry (October 1987).

Lisel Mueller

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May

Poem of the Day: Waterwings

The mornings are his,

blue and white

like the tablecloth at breakfast.

He’s happy in the house,

a sweep of the spoon

brings the birds under his chair.

He sings and the dishes disappear.

Or holding a crayon like a candle,

he draws a circle.

It is his hundredth dragonfly.

Calling for more paper,

this one is red-winged

and like the others,

he wills it to fly, simply

by the unformed curve of his signature.

Waterwings he calls them,

the floats I strap to his arms.

I wear an apron of concern,

sweep the morning of birds.

To the water he returns,

plunging where it’s cold,

moving and squealing into sunlight.

The water from here seems flecked with gold.

I watch the circles

his small body makes

fan and ripple,

disperse like an echo

into the sum of water, light and air.

His imprint on the water

has but a brief lifespan,

the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing.

This is sadness, I tell myself,

the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,

because he will not remember

that he and beauty were aligned,

skimming across the water, nearly airborne,

on his first solo flight.

I’ll write “how he could not

contain his delight.”

At the other end,

in another time frame,

he waits for me—

having already outdistanced this body,

the one that slipped from me like a fish,

floating, free of itself.

Cathy Song, “Waterwings” from Frameless Windows, Squares of Light. Copyright © 1988 by Cathy Song. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1988)

Cathy Song

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May

Poem of the Day: What I Learned From My Mother

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Reprinted from Sleeping Preacher, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, by permission of the publisher. First printed in West Branch, Vol. 30, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Julia Kasdorf.

Source: Sleeping Preacher (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)