Days What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields. 3 August, 1953 Philip Larkin, from […]
Tag Archives: Mary Oliver
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 44 in a series – Joy, Not Meant To Be a Crumb
February 28, 2019 – 5:27 pm
No Mere Visitor to this Earth! R.I.P. Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
January 17, 2019 – 6:39 pm
When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door […]
In Honour of the 92nd Anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Death Yesterday Three Marvellous Rilkean Knockoffs by Vuong, Oliver and Hayes
December 30, 2018 – 11:42 pm
Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile […]
When Death Came She Was Ready – A Deathbed Poem by Anna Swir
July 16, 2018 – 11:23 pm
Tomorrow They Will Carve Me Death came and stood by me. I said: I am ready. I am lying in the surgery clinic in Krakow. Tomorrow they will carve me. There is much strength in me. I can live, can run, dance, and sing. All that is in me, but if necessary I will go. […]
To Soul or Not to Soul – Poems on Soul!
January 16, 2016 – 8:18 pm
Oh, I Said My subject is the soul Difficult to talk about, Since it is invisible, Silent and often absent. Even when it shows itself In the eyes of a child Or a dog without a home, I’m at a loss for words. Charles Simic (1938 – ) from THE LUNATIC, HarperCollins Publishers, 2015 Earlier […]
Poetry-As-Prayer – Calgary Nov. 27th and 28th, 2015
November 6, 2015 – 10:46 pm
Dedication I sing for you. I am made for song. It is my purpose, to invent new music, as a kind of prayer that everything is, a cane tapping, a child running, the […]
Enough or Not? – Part One of Three – First, A Poem by Charles Wright
September 12, 2015 – 2:27 pm
U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright WITH EDDIE AND NANCY IN AREZZO AT THE CAFÉ GRANDE Piero in wraps, the True Cross sotto restauro, Piazza desolate edge Where sunlight breaks it, desolate edge Where sunlight pries it apart A child kicks a soccer ball. Another heads it back. The Fleeting World, Po Chu-I says, short-hops […]
Pinned Against Time – The Show-and-Tell Poetry of Ellen Bass
December 27, 2013 – 7:09 pm
If You Knew What if you knew you’d be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theatre, tearing them giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch that palm or press your fingertips into the life line’s crease. When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too […]
Grief-struck Remedies – Poems on Sorrow and Grief
June 14, 2013 – 3:23 pm
A merganser is clucking in front of me in a little bay near our cabin on Cortes Island, B.C. I call it clucking but it sounds also like little honks. So much my ear and mouth cannot translate. Oh! This untranslatable world. Even a wing. A prayer. These mysteries that take flight- impossible the realities […]
An Alphabet of Poets – Z is for Zagajewski
June 3, 2012 – 10:45 pm
Try to Praise the Mutilated World Try to praise the mutilated world Remember June’s long days And wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow The abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world – You watched the stylish yachts and ships; One of them had a long trip […]