Poemunity — your poem community

(¡Pura vida! —Costa Rican phrase for "O.K." or "Great!") Such heat! It brings the brain back to its basic blank. Small, recurrent events become the daily news— the white-nosed coati treading the cecropia's bending thin branches like sidewalks in the sky, the scarlet-rumped tanager flitting like a spark in the tinder of dank green, the nodding palm leaves perforated like Jacquard cards in a code of wormholes, the black hawk skimming nothingness over and over. What does the world's wide brimming mean, with hunger the unstated secret, dying the proximate reality? Con mucho gusto —the muchness extends to the stars, as wet and numerous as larvae underground where the ants in their preset patterns scurry and nurture, and the queen, immobilized, pours forth her eggs in the dark. We are far from oaks and stoplights, from England's chill classrooms and Tuscany's paved hills. For thought is a stridulation, an insect sizzling, knit of the moment's headlines and temperate-zone quips, viable in the debris of our rotting educations, that thatch where peer-groups call each to each in semes ecosystematically. Great God Himself wilts with a rise in temperature, a drop in soil acidity, a new language in its grimacing opacity. The brain's dry buzz revives, a bit, as evening falls.

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain Bring round the heart an undescribable feud; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old time—with a billowy main— A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.

Whether or not shadows are of the substance such is the expectation I can wait to surprise my vision as a wind enters the valley: sudden and silent in its arrival, drawing to full cry the whorled invisibilities, glassen towers freighted with sky-chaff; that, as barnstorming powers, rammack the small orchard; that well-steaded oaks ride stolidly, that rake the light-leafed ash, that glowing yew trees, cumbrous, heave aside. Amidst and abroad tumultuous lumina, regents, reagents, cloud-fêted, sun-ordained, fly tally over hedgerows, across fields.

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme, When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream, But when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

I find myself in the deep corridor that would have been dark if my right hand wasn’t shining like a torch. — Tomas Tranströmer One of those idle hours I did not want To participate in “group,” when it seemed Impossible I’d know a word to haunt Again, or make me laugh, or spur that dream To roam myself the ranges of the tongue; When on that ward I thought not one aspect Of anything, no matter how strong, strange, Or keen, could sharpen the “blunted affect” Even electric shock had no effect on    ... During one such despondent interval I read these lines from his New Directions New collected poems, and the verbal Sequence somehow composed the correct code To unlock feeling:corridor, right hand, Dark

Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, Who, when you’ve burnt yourselves down to the snuff, Stink and are thrown away. End fair enough.

Stella this Day is thirty four, (We won't dispute a Year or more) However Stella, be not troubled, Although thy Size and Years are doubled, Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen The brightest Virgin of the Green, So little is thy Form declin'd Made up so largely in thy Mind. Oh, would it please the Gods to split Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit, No Age could furnish out a Pair Of Nymphs so gracefull, Wise and fair With half the Lustre of Your Eyes, With half thy Wit, thy Years and Size: And then before it grew too late, How should I beg of gentle Fate, (That either Nymph might have her Swain,) To split my Worship too in twain.

Esteville begins to burn; The auburn fields of harvest rise; The torrid flames again return, And thunders roll along the skies. Perspiring Cancer lifts his head, And roars terrific from on high; Whose voice the timid creatures dread; From which they strive with awe to fly. The night-hawk ventures from his cell, And starts his note in evening air; He feels the heat his bosom swell, Which drives away the gloom of fear. Thou noisy insect, start thy drum; Rise lamp-like bugs to light the train; And bid sweet Philomela come, And sound in front the nightly strain. The bee begins her ceaseless hum, And doth with sweet exertions rise; And with delight she stores her comb, And well her rising stock supplies. Let sportive children well beware, While sprightly frisking o’er the green; And carefully avoid the snare, Which lurks beneath the smiling scene. The mistress bird assumes her nest, And broods in silence on the tree, Her note to cease, her wings at rest, She patient waits her young to see.

In Normandy, at Point Du Hoc, where some Rangers died, Dad pointed to an old man 20 feet closer to the edge than us, asking if I could see the medal the man held like a rosary. As we approached the cliff the man’s swearing, each bulleted syllable, sifted back toward us in the ocean wind. I turned away, but my shoulder was held still by my father’s hand, and I looked up at him as he looked at the man.