From the Long Sad Party
By Mark Strand
 
Someone was saying

something about shadows covering the field, about

how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning

and the morning goes.
 


Someone was saying

how the wind dies down but comes back,

how shells are the coffins of wind

but the weather continues.



It was a long night

and someone said something about the moon shedding its white

on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead

but more of the same.



Someone mentioned

a city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles

against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching. 

We began to believe



the night would not end.

Someone was saying the music was over and no one had noticed.

Then someone said something about the planets, about the stars,

how small they were, how far away.

From The Late Hour by Mark Strand

Keeping Things Whole

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

this is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body's been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Mark Strand

Introduction to Poetry Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means. 

from The Apple that Astonished Parris, 1996

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

by Billy Collins

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.
 
Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.
 
I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,
 
a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.
 
There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,
 
rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.
 
But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia
 
when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend
 
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna
 
sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.
 
That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.
 
Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
 
even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

First Things to Hand

by Robert Pinsky

In the skull kept on the desk.

In the spider-pod in the dust.

Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves,

Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves

His house in the morning,

When he returns in the evening

He will find Socrates waiting

On the doorstep. Buddha the stick

You use to clear the path,

And Buddha the dog-doo you flick

Away with it, nowhere or in each

Several thing you touch:

The dollar bill, the button

That works the television.

Even in the joke, the three

Words American men say

After making love. Where’s

The remote? In the tears

In things, proximate, intimate.

In the wired stem with root

And leaf nowhere of this lamp:

Brass base, aura of illumination,

Enlightenment, shade of grief.

Odor of the lamp, brazen.

The mind waiting in the mind

As in the first thing to hand.

A Love Song

by William Carlos Williams

What have I to say to you

When we shall meet?

Yet—

I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love

Is upon the world.

Yellow, yellow, yellow,

It eats into the leaves,

Smears with saffron

The horned branches that lean

Heavily

Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—

Only a honey-thick stain

That drips from leaf to leaf

And limb to limb

Spoiling the colours

Of the whole world.

I am alone.

The weight of love

Has buoyed me up

Till my head

Knocks against the sky.

See me!

My hair is dripping with nectar—

Starlings carry it

On their black wings.

See, at last

My arms and my hands

Are lying idle.

How can I tell

If I shall ever love you again

As I do now?

The Cross of Snow

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

A gentle face--the face of one long dead--

Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died, and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wife died tragically when an ember from the fireplace caught her dress on fire and burnt her so badly that she died a few days later. Longfellow tried to put out the fire, and it is said that his face was so badly disfigured that he grew the familiar long beard to hide the scars.

Eighteen years later he was looking at a book with pictures of the far west and the mountains.The poem that resulted is "The Cross of Snow," one of his most poignant and touching sonnets.)

Compare images with:

Divina Commedia IV

Written May 5, 1867.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,

She stands before thee, who so long ago

Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe

From which thy song and all its splendors came;

And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,

The ice about thy heart melts as the snow

On mountain heights, and in swift overflow

Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,

As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,

Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;

Lethe and Eunoë -- the remembered dream

And the forgotten sorrow -- bring at last

That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.