for seven days
we left him
on the lawn
near a flower
no english
in his spine
just asleep
like jesus
he is a cloud
admit it
Copyright © 2021 by Diana Marie Delgado. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 11, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
Midnight is come,
And thinly in the deepness of the gloom
Truth rises startle-eyed out of a tomb,
And we are dumb.
A death-bell tolls,
And we still shudder round the too smooth bed,
For truth makes pallid watch above the dead,
Freezing our souls.
But day returns,
Light and the garish life, and we are brave,
For Truth sinks wanly down into her grave.
Yet the heart yearns.
From Colors of life; poems and songs and sonnets (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1918) by Max Eastman. Copyright © Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. This poem is in the public domain.
I dreamed my Lady and I were dead
And dust was either heart;
Our bodies in one grave were laid,
Our souls went far apart,
Hers with the saints for aye to dwell
And mine to lie and pine in Hell.
But when my Lady looked for me
And found her quest in vain,
For all that blessed company
She knew nothing but pain.
She cried: “How feigned your praising is!
Your God is love, and love I miss.”
The hills whereon her tear-drops fell
Were white with lily-flowers.
They made the burning caves of Hell
As green as Eden-bowers,
Unloosed my tongue, my fetters broke,
“Praised be love,” I cried and woke.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 30, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
I carried it to the edge of the cement walk.
It deserved me, I thought,
for how tirelessly I’d chased,
for the way I cared about its inner light.
A last look through the keyhole
of my cupped palms
and I set it down, then
stomped flat, smearing long with my toe
so the neon green spatter and jagged streak
glowed, brighter than before, as though
a spirit glad to have finally escaped its body.
With a stick, I drew a crooked star.
A diamond. And like a sickly dusk,
its ink faded, slow at first, then all at once.
I went giddy, innocent as a god.
Night’s oncoming chill
collected along my collar. I had no idea yet,
bounding back out
across the sighing, blue lawn for another,
no idea the suffering it would really take
in a dark world to shine.
Copyright © 2024 by Colin Pope. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori
Let’s love each other,
let’s cherish each other, my friend,
before we lose each other.
You’ll long for me when I’m gone.
You’ll make a truce with me.
So why put me on trial while I’m alive?
Why adore the dead but battle the living?
You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.
Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse,
dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!
From Gold (NYRB Classics, 2022) by Rumi. Translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori. Copyright © 2022 by Haleh Liza Gafori. Used with the permission of the translator.