Down the driveway, standing on the Russell Farm Road,
nothing but stars over my neighbor’s field
and over my neighbor’s house which crouches
under them with its lit windows,
cozy and distant as a research station.
Between the bare branches left hanging
like threads on cut shirt sleeves, stars tingle,
whole galaxies for the leaves that now fill ditches.
And down the road towards the impoundment lot
stars fill the river that cuts the trees’ black banks.
I stand in my work coat, dizzy with nicotine,
straining my head back like a boy drinking rain
to see more of them, star behind star,
rich milk of stars, ripe fruit of stars,
cast jewels, lit snowflakes, cityscapes of stars
through every window the night has thrown open,
through every perforation in the woods,
and step on the cigarette I’ve dropped in the road,
nothing but stars, stars falling away forever
beneath the veneer of dark that supports my feet.
From In Someone Else’s House (BkMK Press, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by Christian Barter. Used with the permission of the author.
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky; He climbed for it, And eventually he achieved it— It was clay. Now this is the strange part: When the man went to the earth And looked again, Lo, there was the ball of gold. Now this is the strange part: It was a ball of gold. Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
This poem is in the public domain.
’Tis the witching time of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the Stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen.
For what listen they?
For a song and for a charm,
See they glisten in alarm,
And the Moon is waxing warm
To hear what I shall say.
Moon! keep wide thy golden ears—
Hearken, Stars! and hearken, Spheres!—
Hearken, thou eternal Sky!
I sing an infant’s Lullaby,
O pretty lullaby!
Listen, listen, listen, listen,
Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten,
And hear my Lullaby!
Though the Rushes, that will make
Its cradle, still are in the lake—
Though the linen that will be
Its swathe, is on the cotton tree—
Though the woollen that will keep
It warm, is on the silly sheep—
Listen, Starlight, listen, listen,
Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten,
And hear my lullaby!
Child, I see thee! Child, I’ve found thee
Midst of the quiet all around thee!
Child, I see thee! Child, I spy thee
And thy mother sweet is nigh thee!
Child, I know thee! Child no more,
But a Poet evermore!
See, see the Lyre, the Lyre,
In a flame of fire,
Upon the little cradle’s top
Flaring, flaring, flaring,
Past the eyesight’s bearing.
Awake it from its sleep,
And see if it can keep
Its eyes upon the blaze—
Amaze, amaze!
It stares, it stares, it stares,
It dares what no one dares!
It lifts its little hand into the flame
Unharm’d, and on the strings
Paddles a little tune, and sings,
With dumb endeavor sweetly—
Bard art thou completely!
Little child
O’ th’ western wild,
Bard art thou completely!
Sweetly with dumb endeavor.
A poet now or never,
Little child
O’ th’ western wild,
A Poet now or never!
This poem is in the public domain.
Folks would talk about it, and even after I lived in that mountain town months, a year, even after getting close with the girl from the pharmacy, guys from the woods, I did not know. I waited to somehow divine what it was. Be invited. Still I imagine a great expanse, a meadow, high above the town, of tiny flowers, like lovers on their backs, looking up.
Copyright © 2017 Jill Osier. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review (Summer 2017).
Copyright © 2017 Catherine Pierce. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Spring 2017.
If there was ever a chance to go to outer space,
it wasn’t here & it wasn’t for me, as off balance
on this distant planet as a buster getting a mouthful
of knuckles. If there was a possibility of making it
out of this heliosphere, there never really was.
Four eyes giggling at me like a laugh track. Black
skin, you can’t win in the space race no matter
what Sun Ra says. Everyone except him agreeing
on these facts like a laugh track. Looking up through
the round circumstance of a basketball hoop from
a suburb of amateur astronauts. Looking up from this
corner of black constriction & wind knocked out
of words. This cricket-ticking suburb of fanciful
neighbors & their distant, but unrelenting chatter.
From Map to the Stars by Adrian Matejka, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2017 by Adrian Matejka.
A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.
This poem is in the public domain.
Count o’er the million leagues from here to yonder star.
On then. On to the next count of a million more.
Sum up the myriad gleams that light the night;
Add too, the orbit where the cold bright moon doth soar.
That done, return to earth and with thy mind outline
That huge expanse called space; and then out from our Hearse
Of changing dust dream out the words—The Universe.
This poem is in the public domain.
the moon might rise and it might not
and if it brings a ghost light we will read beneath it
and if it returns to earth
we will listen for its phrases
and if I’m alone at the bedside table
I will have a ghost book to refer to
and when I lie back I’ll see its imprint
beneath my blood-red lids:
not lettered ink
but the clean page
not sugar
but the empty bowl
not flowers
but the dirt
*
blame the egg blame the fractured stones
at the bottom of the mind
blame his darkblue glare and craggy mug
the bulky king of trudge and stein
how I love a masculine in my parlor
his grizzly shout and weight one hundred drums
in this everywhere of blunt and soft sinking
I am the heavy hollow snared
the days are spring the days are summer
the days are nothing and not dead yet
*
worry the river over its banks
the train into flames
worry the black rain into the city
the troops into times square
worry the windows cracked acidblack
and the children feverblistered
worry never another summer
never again to live here gentle
with the other inhabitants
then leave too quickly
leave the pills and band-aids
the bathroom scale the Christmas lights the dog
go walking on our legs
dense and bare and useless
worry our throats and lungs
into taking the air
leave books on the shelves
leave keys dustpan
telephones don’t work where you were
in the chaos
*
and I couldn’t bear it
the children nearing the place
where the waves wet the shore
vaporous force
rising imperceptibly behind
we were talking about circumstance
horizon-gates swinging open
beneath the cherry blooms
wave rising in the background
impalpable and final
a girl in a white dress barefoot
wasn’t I right to ask her to move in from the shore
*
this is the last usable hour
bird lured
through the window
a little sweet fruit
I could die here
and the hearsedriver
would take me out of this city
I’d say my name to him
as we crossed the Triboro
I’d say it softly the way he likes it
it would be the last time
I’d introduce myself that way
Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Landau. Reprinted from The Last Usable Hour with the permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
From Otherwise: New & Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon, published by Graywolf Press. Copyright © 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved.
That night the comet could still be seen, wound in its wild mane. Earlier, an egret had stopped by the stream to clean itself of something, red bill dipping again and again into the white feathers. And before that, walking along, we became aware of a tiny, fragile skeleton at the side of the road, paws drawn up over its empty chest.
"The Anniversary" from Not To: New & Selected Poems, published by The Sheep Meadow Press. Copyright © 2006 by Elaine Terranova. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
And the robin flew Into the air, the air, The white mist through; And small and rare The night-frost fell Into the calm and misty dell. And the dusk gathered low, And the silver moon and stars On the frozen snow Drew taper bars, Kindled winking fires In the hooded briers. And the sprawling Bear Growled deep in the sky; And Orion's hair Streamed sparkling by: But the North sighed low, "Snow, snow, more snow!"
from Poems (1906) Hazell, Watson and Viney, LD. This poem is in the public domain.
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
About "A Clear Midnight"
This final poem in the section "From Noon to Starry Night" in the seventh edition of Leaves of Grass (1881), is, in the words of Edward Hirsch, "about releasing the soul back into the universe." Hirsch, who has defined a poem as "a soul in action through words," connects Whitman's poem with the essay "The Poet" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a mentor of Whitman's: "Here we find ourselves suddenly, not in a critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently."