As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.
‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.
‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.
‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
This poem is in the public domain.
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
From Collected Poems of Stevie Smith by Stevie Smith, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.
Desire is never one way. Black
snakes crawl through your throat. The divine longs
for human proximity to divinity. The divine longs
for touch. You have not wanted
a body. And you have
wanted. A careless
tongue can make chatter
but unrequited love
can make an avalanche.
Your teeth chatter and you know
somewhere a funeral parade is moving, one ant
after another marching. Your snake shed its skins as the curve of a pilgrimage
awaiting dawn. Heaven is too much a metaphor
to be of use to a lover weeping for
a false love. Every shaman needs a healer
and every God a devotee they can admire.
When God comes back from the pilgrimage, you are more
plump. Everyone can see your wisdoms
sprouting. This time — dangerous. Even women
will cast stones. Watch the people’s hands: they carry
shards of their half-spoken dreams. But you have
invented an embrace. In the first worship,
you make the one devoted to devotion devoted to you.
You bring the mountain
into your lips. Without
prayer, your mouth blooms.
Copyright © 2019 by Purvi Shah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
The dining hall for instance: open roof beams,
open screens, and yard upon yard
of clean swept hardwood flooring, it
might almost be a family camp.
And likewise in the sleeping room: expanse
of window, paneled wall, and the
warmth implied by sunwash, only softened
here by half-drawn shades. You know
the kind?—dark canvas on a roller, in my
memory the canvas is always green. What I
couldn’t have guessed, except for the caption:
the logic behind the double row of well-
made beds. I’d like just once to have seen
his face, the keeper of order who
thought of it first: a prostitute on either side
of each of those women demanding
the vote. And “Negro,” to make the point perfectly
clear: You thought
your manners and your decent shoes would
keep you safe? He couldn’t have known
how much we’d take the lesson to heart.
At the workhouse in Virginia they’d started
the feedings with rubber tubes. Not here.
Or not that we’ve been told. The men
all dying in trenches in France. A
single system, just as we’ve been
learning for these hundred years. Empty
of people, the space looks almost benign.
Copyright © 2020 by Linda Gregerson. This poem was co-commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and the New York Philharmonic as part of the Project 19 initiative and published in Poem-a-Day on March 14, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
My Father’s Frontal Lobe—died
unpeacefully of a stroke on June 24,
2009 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in
San Diego, California. Born January 20,
1940, the frontal lobe enjoyed a good
life. The frontal lobe loved being the
boss. It tried to talk again but someone
put a bag over it. When the frontal
lobe died, it sucked in its lips like a
window pulled shut. At the funeral for
his words, my father wouldn’t stop
talking and his love passed through me,
fell onto the ground that wasn’t there.
I could hear someone stomping their
feet. The body is as confusing as
language—was his frontal lobe having a
tantrum or dancing? When I took my
father’s phone away, his words died in
the plastic coffin. At the funeral for his
words, we argued about my
miscarriage. It’s not really a baby, he
said. I ran out of words, stomped out
to shake the dead baby awake. I
thought of the tech who put the wand
down, quietly left the room when she
couldn’t find the heartbeat. I
understood then that darkness is falling
without an end. That darkness is not
the absorption of color but the
absorption of language.
Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 3, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
to the memory of Denis Johnson
The stranger bites into an orange
and places the rind between us
on the park bench.
It becomes a small raft of fire.
I came here to admire
the iron-lit indifference
of the geese on the pond.
The summers here
are a circuit in parallel
with everything I cannot say,
wrote the inventor
before he was hanged
from the bridge
this park is named after.
His entire life devoted
to capturing inextinguishable light
in a teardrop of enamel.
He was hanged for touching
the forehead of another man
in the wrong century.
The only thing invented
by the man I lost yesterday
was his last step into a final
set of parenthesis.
I came here to watch the geese
and think of him.
The stranger and I
share the orange rind
as an ashtray.
He lights my cigarette
and the shadows of our hands
touch on the ground.
His left leg is amputated
below the knee
and the bell tower rings
above the town.
I tell him my name
and he says nothing.
With the charred end of a stick
something shaped like a child
on the other side of the pond
draws a door on a concrete wall
and I wonder where the dead
wait in line to be born.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael McGriff. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 21, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
I awake to you. A burning building.
The alarm is my own. Internal alarm, clock alarm,
then coming through your very walls. The alarm
is of you. I call first with my mouth. Then with my phone.
No one. Then maybe someone. Then yes, a fire fighter, or two, is coming.
Outside, the children gather and gawk. Cover their ears from the blare.
They are clothed in their footed pajamas. We are all awake now. Even you,
the burning building.
I’m leaving, I say. I look them each in the eyes, the mouths, the chests.
I look at their footed feet.
I’m leaving you burning. The children can walk. The children can follow.
The building burns now behind me. You burn,
behind me. The alarm
Screams. No. No.
Not screaming.
There is a field between us.
Now you are calling.
And now beseeching.
Behind me the children are a trail of children. Some following. Some clinging.
And now you, my home, my building, burn and burn.
There is a mountain between us.
And now you are ringing.
And now you are singing.
I look back. Back to you, burning building.
You are a glowing dancer, you are a façade on sparkling display.
Now a child. Or two. Or three. Pilgrim children. Between me
And you.
Copyright © 2020 by Tiphanie Yanique. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 12, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.