Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

The Secret

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.

Denise Levertov :

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

 

Pablo Neruda :

Li Bai (Li Po-701-762)

Addressed Humourously to Du Fu

Li Bai 701-762 Here! is this you on the top of Fanke Mountain, Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun? How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown! You must have been suffering from poetry again.

Dàyǔlǐng, Big Rice Barrel Ridge

Spring Rain

Meng Haoran 689-740 Spring nap          oblivious of dawn, Everywhere          birdsong. Night comes         sound of wind and rain, Flowers fall         who knows how many?

Genghis Khan (1165-1267)

In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly explanation."

Wil Smith

Serena Malyon

Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)

Casida de la Rosa

 

                    The rose was

                    not looking for the morning:

                    on its branch, almost immortal,

                    it looked for something other.

 

                    The rose was

                    not looking for wisdom, or for shadow:

                    the edge of flesh and dreaming,

                    it looked for something other.

 

                    The rose was

                    not looking for the rose, was

                    unmoving in the heavens:

                    it looked for something other.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)

When we are face to face with truth, the point
of view of Krishna, Buddha, Christ, or any other
Prophet, is the same. When we look at life from the
top of the mountain, there is no limitation; there is
the same immensity.
  ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Fu Hsuan (217-278)

A Gentle Wind

By Fu Hsuan

Translated by Arthur Waley

A gentle wind fans the calm night;
A bright moon shines on the high tower.
A voice whispers, but no one answers when I call:
A shadow stirs, but no one comes when I beckon.
The kitchen man brings in a dish of lentils:
Wine is there, but I do not fill my cup.
Contentment with poverty is fortune’s best gift:
Riches and Honour are the handmaids of Disaster.
Though gold and gems by the world are sought and prized,
To me they seem no more than weeds or chaff.

 

 

 

Eliran Kantor

Charles Simic

The School Of Metaphysics

Executioner happy to explain
How his wristwatch works
As he shadows me on the street.
I call him that because he is grim and officious
And wears black.

The clock on the church tower
Had stopped at five to eleven.
The morning newspapers had no date.
The gray building on the corner
Could've been a state pen,

And then he showed up with his watch,
Whose Gothic numerals
And the absence of hands
He wanted me to understand
Right then and there.

Charles Simic :

Josh Courlas

Denise Levertov (1923-1995)

Caedmon

All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I’d wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I’d see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.

 

Denise Levertov :

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

Thinking Of Madame Bovary

The first hot April day the granite step
was warm. Flies droned in the grass.
When a car went past they rose
in unison, then dropped back down. . . .

I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!

Everyone longs for love's tense joy and red delights.

And then I spied an ant
dragging a ragged, disembodied wing
up the warm brick walk. It must have been
the Methodist in me that leaned forward,
preceded by my shadow, to put a twig just where
the ant was struggling with its own desire.

 

Jane Kenyon :

James Joyce (1882-1941)

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

"Peacefully
 The quiet stars came out, one after one;
The holy twilight fell upon the sea,
The summer day was done."
-  Celia Thaxter

Phyllis Diller (1917-2012)

“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.”