Manhattan at Twilight, Seen from the Palisades
Who would believe the city could be so lovely?
The streets gashes of golden fire,
the towers glowing like blocks of radium,
filled with a rich, cool burning,
and the endless stream of the traffic
that flows by the glittering river
like a necklace strung with beads of light
and draped on the shoulders of the city; ~
an island of electric magic to fill with awe
the mind and heart of some far voyager.
(June, 1965 ~ Hoboken)
Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey
With original artwork by Michael McCurdy
To see more of this book or to purchase it:
For my friends in the city for the fair.
J*
William Carlos Williams
It is not commonly known that William Carlos Williams was a physician as well as poet. This poem reminds me of my time as a home care nurse.
Complaint
They call me and I go.
It is a frozen road
past midnight, a dust
of snow caught
in the rigid wheeltracks.
The door opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the cold.
Here is a great woman
on her side in the bed.
She is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one gold needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes
and watch the misery
with compassion.
Selected Poems, William Carlos Williams
Introduction by Randall Jarrell. [1991] $10.00
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The Wish To Be Believed
The brick in your hand, dampened but solid, crumbles,
and a boundary being built, in the midst of building,
stops. (Why shouldn’t one say what it is like?
How would they ever know, otherwise?)
You find in your pocket a key, two keys,
one with a curlicued stem, heavy, absurd,
the other perfectly blank, anonymous.
Who know what they open; you glance at keyholes.
It is like - you can’t, after all, say exactly.
And the rooms, supposing you enter them calmly,
are different from your own; one is bare,
with a gilt-framed mirror facing the door.
Suppose you are tempted to insert your face~
you see a face, and the door closing.
And you go on the half-built boundary,
clicking the keys together, entering.
And you reach, finally, a vivid, absolute place,
and stand in the center, saying to someone,
“Believe. Believe this is what I see.”
Poetry, November 1965, Volume 107, Number 2
Henry Rago, editor. Chicago, Illinois.
Distich
(From the Persian Of Oumara, 10th Century)
Ah, would that I could hide within my songs
And, every time you sang them, kiss your lips.
Black Marigolds & Coloured Stars.
Translated by E. Powys Mathers, Introduction by Tony Harrison.
Anvil Press, 2004. Softcover. $10.00
Skin
This skin is leather black with time,
this skin is tough like old rooster flesh,
this skin won’t give like poulet,
you bite this skin you likely to eat crow,
this skin has wailed its own symphony
of blue black sorrow, tough like this,
this skin tasted the salt crystals,
licked them up and recorded the pain,
this skin’s been turned inside out, left to dry,
this skin’s swallowed the blast of sun,
collected the bite of January air
and still there, still there,
this skin has smelt the acrid smoke
of burning flesh, hanging there against
a new day, sniffed it, felt its layering
of old skin, soot carrying centuries
of suffering, this skin is washed with flow
of menstrual blood, love juice, old semen,
bitter spit, loose shit, every ugliness
dumped into the earth been through this skin,
this is no tenderloin, prime cut skin,
you bite me, you likely to eat crow,
this skin is a walking museum,
when you see me coming read me
when you see me coming read me.
One day I will come to the river.
Oh, love will touch this skin,
and I will rise, ebony glow and tender
crossing that river to the other side.
White, White Collars
We work in this building and we are hideous
in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes
woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels
and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us,
turning and returning like the spray of light that goes
around dance-halls among the dancing fools.
My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps
to see the goodness of the world laid bare
and rising with the government on its lips,
the alphabet congealing in the air
around our heads. But in my belly’s flames
someone is dancing, calling me by many names
that are secret and filled with light and rise
and break, and I see my previous lives.
Poems Collected and New: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations
Millenium General Assembly, Denis Johnson. HarperCollins, 1995.
First Edition. $50.00
The Journey
I think of the journey women make when they begin to emerge from the daily duties of motherhood into new ventures. And, as children mature, they begin their own journey away (thereby allowing mothers a bit of space and time to emerge)…that doesn’t mean the transition is not painful. J*
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Mary Oliver.
Beacon Press, Boston. Later softcover printing. (New) $11.00
lowest price cialis