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Robert Frost:
ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
Ted Hughes:
CROW BLACKER THAN EVER
When God, disgusted with man, Turned towards heaven. And man, disgusted with God, Turned towards Eve, Things looked like falling apart.
But Crow Crow Crow nailed them together, Nailing Heaven and earth together—
So man cried, but with God's voice. And God bled, but with man's blood.
Then heaven and earth creaked at the joint Which became gangrenous and stank— A horror beyond redemption.
The agony did not diminish.
Man could not be man nor God God.
The agony
Grew.
Crow
Grinned
Crying: 'This is my Creation,"
Flying the black flag of himself.
Joseph Brodsky:
BELFAST TUNE
Here's a girl from a dangerous town She crops her dark hair short so that less of her has to frown when someone gets hurt.
She folds her memories like a parachute. Dropped, she collects the peat and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot here where they eat.
Ah, there's more sky in these parts than, say, ground. Hence her voice's pitch, and her stare stains your retina like a gray bulb when you switch
hemispheres, and her knee-length quilt skirt's cut to catch the squall, I dream of her either loved or killed because the town's too small.
translated by the author
Joseph Brodsky:
BOSNIA TUNE
As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or check your watch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die.
In the towns with funny names, hit by bullets, caught in flames, by and large not knowing why, people die.
In small places you don't know of, yet big for having no chance to scream or say good-bye, people die_._
People die as you elect new apostles of neglect, self-restraint, etc. - whereby people die.
Too far off to practice love for thy neighbor/brother Slav, where your cherubs dread to fly, people die.
While the statues disagree, Cain's version, history for its fuel tends to buy those who die.
As you watch the athletes score, check your latest statement, or sing your child a lullaby, people die.
Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill parts the killed from those who kill, will pronounce the latter tribe as your tribe.
1995?
Alexander Pushkin:
THE PROPHET
Parched with the spirit's thirst, I crossed An endless desert sunk in gloom, And a six-winged seraph came Where the tracks met and I stood lost. Fingers light as dream he laid Upon my lids; I opened wide My eagle eyes, and gazed around. He laid his fingers on my ears And they were filled with roaring sound: I heard the music of the spheres, The flight of angels through the skies, The beasts that crept beneath the sea, The heady uprush of the vine; And, like a lover kissing me, He rooted out this tongue of mine Fluent in lies and vanity; He tore my fainting lips apart And, with his right hand steeped in blood, He armed me, with a serpent's dart; With his bright sword he split my breast; My heart leapt to him with a bound; A glowing livid coal he pressed Into the hollow of the wound. There in the desert I lay dead, And God called out to me and said: 'Rise, prophet, rise, and hear, and see, And let my works be seen and heard By all who turn aside from me, And burn them with my fiery word. '
1826
Richard Eberhart:
THE GROUNDHOG
In June, amid the golden fields, I saw a groundhog lying dead. Dead lay he; my senses shook, And mind out-shot our naked frailty. There lowly in the vigorous summer His form began its senseless change, And made my senses waver dim Seeing nature ferocious in him. Inspecting close his maggots ' might And seething cauldron of his being, Half with loathing, half with a strange love, I poke'd him with an angry stick. The fever rose, became a flame And Vigour circumscribed the skies, Immense energy in the sun, And through my frame a sunless trembling. My stick had done nor good nor harm. Then stood I silent in the day Watching the object, as before; And kept my reverence for knowledge Trying for control, to be still, To quell the passion of the blood: Until I had bent down on my knees Praying for joy in the sight of decay. And so I left; and I returned In Autumn strict of eve, to see The sap gone out of the groundhog, But the bony sodden hulk remained. But the year had lost its meaning, And in intellectual chains I lost both love and loathing, Mured up in the wall of wisdom. Another summer took the fields again Massive and burning, full of life, But when I chanced upon the spot There was only a little hair left, And bones bleaching in the sunlight Beautiful as architecture; I watched them like a geometer, And cut a walking stick from a birch. It has been three years, now. There is no sign of the groundhog. I stood there in the whirling summer, My hand capped a withered heart, And thought of China and of Greece, Of Alexander in his tent; Of Montaigne in his tower, Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
Collected Poems 1930-
Arthur Rimbaud:
THE TEASE
In the dark brown dining room, whose heavy air Had a comfortable smell of fruit and varnish, I got a plate full of some local Belgian dish Or other, and stretched out long in my lazy chair.
Content and still, I ate and listened to the clock. Just then the kitchen door flew open wide And the servant-girl came in, I don't know why- The top of her dress undone, her hair pulled back.
And while she put a finger to her cheek, All rosy-white and velvet, like a peach, And made a face just like a five-year-old,
To make things easier she shifted the dishes; And then she said-and I knew she wanted kisses! - Real low: "Feel that : my cheek has got so cold.. .”
Leonard Cohen:
SAINT CATHERINE STREET
Towering black nuns frighten us as they come lumbering down the tramway aisle amulets and talismans caught in careful fingers promising plagues for an imprudent glance So we bow our places away the price of an indulgence
How may we be saints and live in golden coffins Who will leave on our stone shelves pathetic notes for intervention How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars Who will murder us for some high reason
There are no ordeals Fire and water have passed from the wizards' hands We cannot torture or be tortured Our eyes are worthless to an inquisitor's heel No prince will waste hot lead or build a spiked casket for us
Once with a flaming belly she danced upon a green road Move your hand slowly through a cobweb and make drifting strings for puppets Now the tambourines are dull at her lifted skirt boys study cigarette stubs no one is jealous of her body
We would bathe in a free river but the lepers in some spiteful gesture have suicided in the water and all the swollen quiet bodies crowd the other prey for a fearless thief or beggar
How can we love and pray when at our lovers' arms we hear the damp bells of them who once took bitter alms but now float quietly away
Will no one carve from our bodies a while cross for a wind-torn mountain or was that forsaken man's pain enough to end all passion
Are those dry faccs and hands we see all the flesh there is of nuns Are they really clever non-excreting tapestries prepared by skillful eunuchs for our trembling friends
Joseph Brodsky:
TORNFALLET
There is a meadow in Sweden where I lie smitten, eyes stained with clouds' white ins and outs.
And about that meadow roams my widow plaiting a clover wreath for her lover.
I took her in marriage in a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, a pine was a witness.
She'd swim in the oval lake whose opal mirror, framed by bracken, felt happy, broken.
And at night the stubborn sun of her auburn hair shone from my pillow at post and pillar.
Now in the distance I hear her descant. She sings "Blue Swallow," but I can't follow.
The evening shadow robs the meadow of width and color. It's getting colder.
As I lie dying here, I'm eyeing stars. Here's Venus; no one between us.
1994
Joseph Brodsky:
GALATEA ENCORE
As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter, immobile, by a leaf-coated pond a statue stands white like a blight of winter. After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins and outs of centuries, pestered heather. That's what coming full circle means - when your countenance starts to resemble weather, when Pygmalion's vanished. And you are free to cloud your folds, to bare the navel. Future at last! That is, bleached debris of a glacier amid the five-lettered "never." Hence the routine of a goddess, nee alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on the heart of color and the temperature of the knee. That's what it looks like inside a virgin.
1983, translated by the author.
W. B. Yeats:
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
1865-
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892).
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
PART I
On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veil'd, Slide the heavy barges trail'd By slow horses; and unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly, Down to tower'd Camelot: And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott."
PART II
There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.
As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, "Tirra lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro' the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse Like some bold seër in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance-- With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right-- The leaves upon her falling light-- Thro' the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darken'd wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony, By garden-wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott."
