We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
And far too large for my feet to step by. I hoped that various buildings were brought low. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed. The guarded tourist makes the guide the test. Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No. Taxi for her and for me healthy rest. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
The language problem but you have to try. Some solid ground for lying could she show? The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
None of these deaths were her point at all. The thing was that being woken he would bawl And finding her not in earshot he would know. I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie. Till you have seen what a threat holds below, The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Tell me again about Europe and her pains, Who's tortured by the drought, who by the rains. Glut me with floods where only the swine can row Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky. Only the same war on a stronger toe. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Tell me more quickly what I lost by this, Or tell me with less drama what they miss Who call no die for a god for a throw, Who says after two aliens had one kiss It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and the strong reply. The heart of standing is we cannot fly.
The poem is partly about WW2, I think. An "aubade" is a lyric poem about lovers separating at dawn. Sir William Empson, a poet and great literary critic, wrote the fascinating and masterful 7 Types of Ambiguity (when he was 21), which I recommend to anyone who enjoys language and writing.
Here's a review of a new bio of the passionately religion-hating Empson, and here's a 1949 Time Magazine comment on the publication of his Collected Poems.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
The rest of the poem is below the fold. Dalrymple recently discussed Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey)
The evening comes, the fields are still The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, And from the elder-blossom white And pale dog-roses in the hedge, And from the mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night-air blows The perfume which the day forgoes. And on the pure horizon far, See, pulsing with the first-born star, The liquid sky above the hill! The evening comes, the fields are still. Loitering and leaping, With saunter, with bounds-- Flickering and circling In files and in rounds-- Gaily their pine-staff green Tossing in air, Loose o'er their shoulders white Showering their hair-- See! the wild Maenads Break from the wood, Youth and Iacchus Maddening their blood. See! through the quiet land Rioting they pass-- Fling the fresh heaps about Trample the grass. Tear from the rifled hedge Garlands, their prize; Fill with their sports the field, Fill with their cries. Shepherd, what ails thee, then? Shepherd, why mute? Forth with thy joyous song! Forth with thy flute! Tempts not the revel blithe? Lure not their cries? Glow not their shoulders smooth? Melt not their eyes? Is not, on cheeks like those, Lovely the flush? --Ah, so the quiet was! So was the hush!
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, then wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes there is more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, - My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
Hail to thee blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert -
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
That glass filled with mistrust, and then she makes
The gesture for her maid, but not before
She finds a candle at the mirror’s base,
An armoire, and the dregs of this late hour.
Krisak's translations often appear in The New English Review, with this:Len Krisak has published in The London Magazine, The Oxonian Review, PN Review, Standpoint, Agni, The Antioch Review, The Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Agenda, The Hopkins Review, Commonweal, Literary Imagination, The Oxford Book of Poems on Classical Mythology, and others. His latest book is Virgil’s Eclogues, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Forthcoming: The Carmina of Catullus, Carcanet Press, 2015, Afterimage, Measure Press, 2014, Rilke: New Poems, Boydell & Brewer, 2015 and Ovid: The Amores and The Ars Amatoria, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
What's your name? "Puddin Tain." What's your other? "Bread and Butter." Where do you live? "Down the lane." What's your number? "Cucumber." What do you eat? "Pork pie." Greedy pig you ought to die!
He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back. He thought they was old friends. He felt on the stair where her papa found them bare they became familiar. When the papers were lost rich with pals' secrets, he thought he had the knack of ruin. Their paths crossed
and once they crossed in jail; they crossed in bed; and over an unsigned letter their eyes met, and in an Asian city directionless & lurchy at two & three, or trembling to a telephone's fresh threat, and when some wired his head
to reach a wrong opinion, 'Epileptic'. But he noted now that: they were not old friends. He did not know this one. This one was a stranger, come to make amends for all the imposters, and to make it stick. Henry nodded, un-.
There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the place of their self-content; There are souls like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
I see from my house by the side of the road, By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, Both parts of an infinite plan Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And mountains of wearisome height; That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice, And weep with the strangers that moan, Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone.
Let me live in my house by the side of the road It's here the race of men go by. They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish so am I; Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911) wrote plain verse for the "common man". Homey, corny, comfortably instructive stuff. In fact, for many years Foss turned out a poem a day for his local Somerville, MA newspaper. We recently saw a graveyard monument (1936) with "Let me live by the side of the road and be a friend to man." inscribed upon it.
Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther--and we shall see." The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went down. The view was all in straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather-- The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled--and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was grey and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labour of his axe, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
December twenty-first we gather at the white Church festooned red and green, the tree flashing green-red lights beside the altar. After the children of Sunday School recite Scripture, sing songs, and scrape out solos, they retire to dress for the finale, to perform the pageant again: Mary and Joseph kneeling cradleside, Three Kings, shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments are bathrobes with mothholes, cut down from the Church's ancestors. Standing short and long, they stare in all directions for mothers, sisters and brothers, giggling and waving in recognition, and at the South Danbury Church, a moment before Santa arrives with her ho-hos and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark of whole silence, God enters the world as a newborn again.
The nation's Poet Laureate, Donald Hall, is a native of New Haven and lives in Danbury, NH. He knows both death and baseball, and he has written a heck of a lot of things. More of his poems here.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain. Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
He wrote lots of poetry. This is a piece he wrote about the travails of painting the Sistine chapel ceiling:
I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture, hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy (or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison). My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!
So shalt thou rest- and what if thou withdraw Unheeded by the living- and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man- Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. - So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, 'Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Read entire master work by the Massachusetts Berkshire poet below the fold.
Bryant is the man for whom NYC's Bryant Park was named, a lawyer-journalist-poet who turned the New York (Evening) Post into a Republican, abolitionist, pro-Lincoln and highly influential newspaper.
You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine
It is impossible to make English sing like Italian, but people try:
Reading together one day for delight Of Lancelot, caught up in love’s sweet snare, We were alone, with no thought of what might Occur to us, although we stopped to stare Sometimes at what we read, and even paled. But then the moment came we turned a page And all our powers of resistance failed: When we read of that great knight in a rage To kiss the smile he so desired, Paolo, This one so quiet now, made my mouth still— Which, loosened by those words, had trembled so— With his mouth. And right then we lost the will— For love can will will’s loss, as well you know— To read on. But let that man take a bow Who wrote the book we called our Galahad, The reason nothing can divide us now.
What is sexier than studying with a gal in your dorm room? That's pretty much what they were doing.
It's not because I knew you well or thought you faithful, Gellius, or thought you could keep your mind from vile sin, that I expected you to be true to me in this hopeless ruinous love of mine: but because I was aware that she, for whom a vast desire consumes me, was no mother or sister of yours. And though I was closely linked to you by friendship, I didn't think that was enough excuse for you. You considered it enough: there's so much pleasure in every game to you, in which there's any sin.
Did you ever have a longin’ to get out and buck the trail, And to face the crashin’ lightnin’ and the thunder and the gale? Not for no partic’lar reason but to give the world the laugh, And to show the roarin’ elyments you still can stand the gaff.
Don’t you ever feel a yearnin’ just to try your luck again Down the rippin’ plungin’ rapids with a bunch of reg’lar men? Don’t you ever sorta hanker for a rough and risky trip, Just to prove you’re still a livin’ and you haven’t lost your grip?
Can’t you hear the woods a-callin’ for to have another try Sleepin’ out beneath the spruces with a roof of moonlit sky, With the wind a sorta singin’ through the branches overhead And your fire a gaily crackin’ and your pipe a-glowin’ red?
Don’t you often get to feelin’ sorta cramped and useless there, Makin’ figgers and a-shinin’ your pants upon a chair? Don’t you yearn to get acquainted once again with Life and God? If you don’t, then Heaven help you, for you’re a dyin’ in yer pod.
In a dream I returned to the river of bees Five orange trees by the bridge and Beside two mills my house Into whose courtyard a blindman followed The goats and stood singing Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years
He was old he will have fallen into his eyes
I took my eyes A long way to the calendars Room after room asking how shall I live
One of the ends is made of streets One man processions carry through it Empty bottles their Image of hope It was offered to me by name
Once once and once In the same city I was born Asking what shall I say
He will have fallen into his mouth Men think they are better than grass
I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay
He was old he is not real nothing is real Nor the noise of death drawing water
We are the echo of the future
On the door it says what to do to survive But we were not born to survive Only to live
The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain, Of such as wand'ring near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care, No children run to lisp their Sire's return, Nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Aubade (1937)
On His Blindness
Green Grow the Rashes O!
Christmas Party at the South Danbury Church
Excerpted from Thanatopsis:
In a dream I returned to the river of bees 
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard