I fear the vast dimensions of eternity. I fear the gap between the platform and the train. I fear the onset of a murderous campaign. I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea. I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee. I fear the books will not survive the acid rain. I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane. I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be. I fear the bad decisions of a referee. I fear the only recourse is to plead insane. I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee. I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain. I fear to read the small print of the guarantee. And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.
From Selected Poems by Ciaran Carson, published by Wake Forest University Press. Copyright © 2001 by Ciaran Carson. Reprinted with permission by Wake Forest University Press. All rights reserved.
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity. I fear the gap between the platform and the train. I fear the onset of a murderous campaign. I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea. I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee. I fear the books will not survive the acid rain. I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane. I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be. I fear the bad decisions of a referee. I fear the only recourse is to plead insane. I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee. I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain. I fear to read the small print of the guarantee. And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.
From Selected Poems by Ciaran Carson, published by Wake Forest University Press. Copyright © 2001 by Ciaran Carson. Reprinted with permission by Wake Forest University Press. All rights reserved.
In the end one simply withdraws From others and time, one's own time, Becoming an imaginary Everyman Inhabiting a few rooms, personifying The urge to tend one's garden, A character of no strong attachments Who made nothing happen, and to whom Nothing ever actually happened—a fictitious Man whose life was over from the start, Like a diary or a daybook whose poems And stories told the same story over And over again, or no story. The pictures And paintings hang crooked on the walls, The limbs beneath the sheets are frail and cold And morning is an exercise in memory Of a long failure, and of the years Mirrored in the face of the immaculate Child who can't believe he's old.
From Ninety-fifth Street. Copyright © 2009 by John Koethe. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly—doctor-like—controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
This poem is in the public domain.
A cry was heard among the trees, not a man’s, something deeper. The forest extended up one side the mountain and down the other. None wanted to ask what had made the cry. A bird, one wanted to say, although he knew it wasn’t a bird. The sun climbed to the mountaintop, and slid back down the other side. The black treetops against the sky were like teeth on a saw. They waited for it to come a second time. It’s lost, one said. Each thought of being lost and all the years that stretched behind. Where had wrong turns been made? Soon the cry came again. Closer now.
From Winter’s Journey by Stephen Dobyns. Copyright © 2010 by Stephen Dobyns. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All rights reserved.
I was there at the edge of Never,
of Once Been, bearing the night’s hide
stretched across the night sky,
awake with myself disappointing myself,
armed, legged & torsoed in the bed,
my head occupied by enemy forces,
mind not lost entire, but wandering
off the marked path ill-advisedly. This March
Lucie upped and died, and the funny show
of her smoky-throated world began to fade.
I didn’t know how much of me was made
by her, but now I know that this spooky art
in which we staple a thing
to our best sketch of a thing was done
under her direction, and here I am
at 4 AM, scratching a green pen over a notebook
bound in red leather in October.
It’s too warm for a fire. She’d hate that.
And the cats appear here only as apparitions
I glimpse sleeping in a chair, then
Wohin bist du entschwunden? I wise up,
know their likenesses are only inked
on my shoulder’s skin, their chipped ash poured
in twin cinerary jars downstairs. Gone
is gone, said the goose to the shrunken boy
in the mean-spirited Swedish children’s book
I love. I shouldn’t be writing this
at this age or any other. She mothered
a part of me that needed that, lit
a spirit-lantern to spin shapes inside
my obituary head, even though—
I’m nearly certain now—she’s dead.
Copyright © 2019 by Mark Wunderlich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
always the hopeless asked to give others hope
the ones pushed up against wall after wall
when you’re done unpinning yourself
from the wall, please give hope
those who work twice as hard to seem half as good
being asked to do one more thing
we need to be seen
because things are not going well
and the crows are up to no good
Copyright © 2017 by Ali Liebegott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
In the end,
I was like others.
A person.
Sometimes embarrassed,
sometimes afraid.
When “Fire!” was shouted,
some ran toward it,
some away—
I neck-deep among them.
—2017
from Ledger (Knopf, 2020); first appeared in American Poetry Review. Used by permission of the author, all rights reserved.
O! my heart now feels so cheerful as I go with footsteps light
In the daily toil of my dear home;
And I’ll tell to you the secret that now makes my life so bright—
There’s a flower at my window in full bloom.
It is radiant in the sunshine, and so cheerful after rain;
And it wafts upon the air its sweet perfume.
It is very, very lovely! May its beauties never wane—
This dear flower at my window in full bloom.
Nature has so clothed it in such glorious array,
And it does so cheer our home, and hearts illume;
Its dear mem’ry I will cherish though the flower fade away—
This dear flower at my window in full bloom.
Oft I gaze upon this flower with its blossoms pure and white.
And I think as I behold its gay costume,
While through life we all are passing may our lives be always bright
Like this flower at my window in full bloom.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 22, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.