Scarsdale

Siren Song

Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone 
would like to learn: the song 
that is irresistible: 
 
the song that forces men 
to leap overboard in squadrons 
even though they see beached skulls 
 
the song nobody knows 
because anyone who had heard it 
is dead, and the others can’t remember. 
Shall I tell you the secret 
and if I do, will you get me 
out of this bird suit? 
I don’t enjoy it here 
squatting on this island 
looking picturesque and mythical 
with these two feathery maniacs, 
I don’t enjoy singing 
this trio, fatal and valuable. 
 
I will tell the secret to you, 
to you, only to you. 
Come closer. This song 
 
is a cry for help: Help me! 
Only you, only you can, 
you are unique 
 
at last. Alas 
it is a boring song 
but it works every time.

Digging                                                       Seamus Heaney                                       

Between my finger and my thumb 
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun. 
 
Under my window a clean rasping sound 
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: 
My father, digging. I look down 
 
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds 
Bends low, comes up twenty years away 
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills 
Where he was digging. 
 
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft 
Against the inside knee was levered firmly. 
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep 
To scatter new potatoes that we picked 
Loving their cool hardness in our hands. 
 
By God, the old man could handle a spade, 
Just like his old man. 
 
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day 
Than any other man on Toner's bog. 
Once I carried him milk in a bottle 
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up 
To drink it, then fell to right away 
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods 
Over his shoulder, digging down and down 
For the good turf. Digging. 
 
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap 
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge 
Through living roots awaken in my head. 
But I've no spade to follow men like them. 
 
Between my finger and my thumb 
The squat pen rests. 
I'll dig with it.

Success Is Counted Sweetest                       Emily Dickinson

Success is counted sweetest 
By those who ne'er succeed. 
To comprehend a nectar 
Requires sorest need. 
 
Not one of all the purple host 
Who took the flag today 
Can tell the definition, 
So clear, of victory 
 
As he, defeated, dying, 
On whose forbidden ear 
The distant strains of triumph 
Break agonized and clear! 

Danse Russe                                            William Carlos Williams  

 If I when my wife is sleeping 
and the baby and Kathleen 
are sleeping 
and the sun is a flame-white disc 
in silken mists 
above shining trees,— 
if I in my north room 
dance naked, grotesquely 
before my mirror 
waving my shirt round my head 
and singing softly to myself: 
"I am lonely, lonely. 
I was born to be lonely, 
I am best so!" 
If I admire my arms, my face, 
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks 
against the yellow drawn shades,— 
Who shall say I am not 
the happy genius of my household?

Not Waving but Drowning                           Stevie Smith                   

    Nobody heard him, the dead man, 
But still he lay moaning: 
I was much further out than you thought                                                                                                      And not waving but drowning. 
 
Poor chap, he always loved larking 
And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way 
They said.

     Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

    (Still the dead one lay moaning)   

    I was much too far out all my life   

    And not waving but drowning.

Of Mere Being                                           Wallace Stevens 
 
The palm at the end of the mind, 
Beyond the last thought, rises 
In the bronze distance.  
 
A gold-feathered bird 
Sings in the palm, without human meaning, 
Without human feeling, a foreign song.  
 
You know then that it is not the reason 
That makes us happy or unhappy. 
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.  
 
The palm stands on the edge of space. 
The wind moves slowly in the branches. 
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

A Study of Reading Habits                          

Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book

Cured most things short of school,

It was worth ruining my eyes

To know I could still keep cool,

And deal out the old right hook

To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,

Evil was just my lark:

Me and my cloak and fangs

Had ripping times in the dark

The women I clubbed with sex!

I broke them up like meringues.

Don’t read much now: the dude

Who lets the girl down before

The hero arrives, the chap

Who’s yellow and keeps the store,

Seem far too familiar.  Get stewed:

Books are a load of crap.

i thank you god                                                     e e cummings

i thank YOU God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Acquainted with the Night                         Robert Frost 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. 

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Funeral Blues                                                     W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,  
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,  
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum  
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.  
 
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead  
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.  
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,  
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.  
 
He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
My working week and my Sunday rest,  
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;  
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.  

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,  
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,  
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;  
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The Secret                                                    Denise Levertov                                               

Two girls discover

the secret of life

in a sudden line of

poetry.

I who don’t know the

secret wrote

the line.  They

told me

(through a third person)

they had found it

but not what it was,

not even

what line it was.  No doubt

by now, more than a week

later, they have forgotten

the secret,

the line, the name of

the poem.  I love them

for finding what

I can’t find,

and for loving me

for the line I wrote,

and for forgetting it

so that

a thousand times, till death

finds them, they may

discover it again, in other lines,

in other

happenings.  And for

wanting to know it,

for

assuming there is

such a secret, yes,

for that

most of all.                                                        

The Cat                                                     Miroslav Holub

Outside it was night

like a book without letters.

And the eternal dark

dripped to the stars through the sieve of the

city.

I said to her

do not go

you’ll only be trapped

and bewitched

and will suffer in vain.

I said to her

do not go

why want

nothing?

But a window was opened

and she went,

a black cat into the black night,

she dissolved,

a black cat in the black night,

she just dissolved

and no one ever saw her again.

Not even she herself.

But you can hear her

sometimes,

when it’s quiet

and there’s a northerly wind

and you listen intently

to your own self.

.

 A Work of Artifice                                              Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot

could have grown eighty feet tall

on the side of a mountain

till split by lightning.

But a gardener

carefully pruned it.

It is nine inches high.

Every day as he

whittles back the branches

the gardener croons,

It is your nature

to be small and cozy,

domestic and weak;

  how lucky, little tree,

  to have a pot to grow in.

With living creatures

  one must begin very early

  to dwarf their growth:

  the bound feet,

  the crippled brain,

  the hair in curlers

  the hands you

  love to touch.

Try To Praise the Mutilated World                Adam Zagajewski 
 
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 ahead of it, 
while salty oblivion awaited others. 
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere, 
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. 
You should praise the mutilated world. 
Remember the moments when we were together 
in a white room and the curtain fluttered. 
Return in thought to the concert where music flared. 
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn 
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. 
Praise the mutilated world 
and the grey feather a thrush lost, 
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes 
and returns. 
 
Snow                                                             Louis Macneice 

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was 
Spawning snow and pink roses against it 
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: 
World is suddener than we fancy it. 
 
World is crazier and more of it than we think, 
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion 
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel 
The drunkenness of things being various. 
 
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world 
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes– 
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands– 
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers                        Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, 
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. 
They do not fear the men beneath the tree; 
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. 
 
Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool 
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. 
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band 
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. 
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie 
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. 
The tigers in the panel that she made 
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.  
 
Traveling through the Dark                 William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer 
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. 
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: 
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. 
 
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car 
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; 
she had stiffened already, almost cold. 
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. 
 
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-- 
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, 
alive, still, never to be born. 
Beside that mountain road I hesitated. 
 
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; 
under the hood purred the steady engine. 
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; 
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. 
 
I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--, 
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

The Bean Eaters                                               Gwendolyn Brooks

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. 
Dinner is a casual affair. 
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,  
Tin flatware. 
 
Two who are Mostly Good. 
Two who have lived their day, 
But keep on putting on their clothes 
And putting things away. 
 
And remembering . . . 
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, 
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that 
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, 
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Ethics                                                                            Linda Pastan

In ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:

if there were a fire in a museum

which would you save,  a Rembrandt painting

or an old woman who hadn’t many

years left anyhow?  Restless on hard chairs

caring little for pictures or old age

we’d opt one year for life, the next for art

and always half-heartedly.  Sometimes

the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half-imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews

the burden of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself.  The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn

darker even than winter – the browns of earth,

though earth’s most radiant elements burn

through the canvas.  I know now that woman

and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.

Insomnia                                                                Elisabeth Bishop

The moon in the bureau mirror

looks out a million miles

(and perhaps with pride, at herself,

but she never, never smiles)

far and away beyond sleep, or

perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,

she'd tell it to go to hell,

and she'd find a body of water,

or a mirror, on which to dwell.

So wrap up care in a cobweb

and drop it down the well

into that world inverted

where left is always right,

where the shadows are really the body,

where we stay awake all night,

where the heavens are shallow as the sea

is now deep, and you love me.

                                                                                     Cat in an empty apartment                               Wislawa Szymborska

Dying--you wouldn't do that to a cat.                                                                                                                 For what is a cat to do in an empty apartment?                                                                                                                              Climb up the walls?                                                                                                                                                                               Brush up against the furniture?                                                                                                                            Nothing here seems changed,                                                                                                                                    and yet something has changed.                                                                                                                        Nothing has been moved,                                                                                                                                             and yet there's more room.                                                                                                                                                 And in the evenings the lamp is not on.

One hears footsteps on the stairs,                                                                                                                      but they're not the same.                                                                                                                                         Neither is the hand                                                                                                                                                      hat puts a fish on the plate.

Something here isn't starting                                                                                                                                       at its usual time.                                                                                                                                          Something here isn't happening                                                                                                                                  as it should.                                                                                                                                                   Somebody has been here and has been,                                                                                                                  and then has suddenly disappeared                                                                                                                          and now is stubbornly absent.

All the closets have been scanned                                                                                                                         and all the shelves run through.                                                                                                                              Slipping under the carpet and checking came to nothing.                                                                                    The rule has even been broken and all the papers scattered.                                                                           What else is there to do?                                                                                                                                       Sleep and wait.

Just let him come back,                                                                                                                                      let him show up.                                                                                                                                                    Then he'll find out                                                                                                                                                         that you don't do that to a cat.                                                                                                                    Going toward him                                                                                                                                                faking reluctance,                                                                                                                                                slowly,                                                                                                                                                                      on very offended paws.                                                                                                                                              And no jumping, purring at first.

The Night is Darkening

Emily Bronte

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me,

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow;

The storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me:

I will not, cannot go.