Xenophanes – The Image of God

 Poems  Tagged with: ,
Nov 202010
 

1.
It was man who made god, who endowed god
with the body of a man, the voice of a man,
who dressed him in the earthly garments of a man.

2.
If a workhorse or lion or unyoked ox
had eyes to paint, had hands to sculpt,
had voice to sing its tribal song,

the horse would paint god as a horse,
the lion would sculpt a lion god,
the ox would sing a divinity of oxen.

3.
The Ethiopians say, “Our gods have flat noses
and black skins.” The Thracians say, “The hair
of our gods is red, their eyes the color of jade.”

translated by Sherod Santos from Greek Lyric Poetry

W.S. Merwin – Just This

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about ever arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 141

 Poems  Tagged with:
Nov 202010
 

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleas’d to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone.
Nor taste nor smell desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

Alexander Pope – Ode on Solitude

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

I
How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breaths his native air,
In his own grounds.

II
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

III
Blest! who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

IV
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix’d; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

V
Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.

Louise Gluck – Nostos

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.