Hugo Williams – Patent Pending

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

The slightest movement of the body,
whether of genuine revival
or only a false alarm
caused by pockets of air
trapped in the abdomen,
triggers a highly sensitive
release mechanism
housed in a spring-loaded ball
positioned over the heart.

If this ball is disturbed
by so much as a twitching nerve-end,
a message is transmitted
to a box on the surface,
which immediately flies open,
admitting air to the coffin.
A flag rises in warning,
a bell rings for half an hour,
a lamp burns after sunset.

Simonides – On Beauty

 Poems  Tagged with:
Nov 202010
 

As the ancient stories tell us, invisible
to mortal men, beauty dwells among
the high-capped rocks near a wind gap
arduous to climb. And you must almost
wear your heart out in the struggle
required to attain its height.

On Poetry

Like the bee, she consorts with flowers
to concoct her dream
of a scented, pollen-yellow honey.

On Poetry and Painting

The word is the image of the thing.

Poetry is painting that speaks.
Painting is poetry that’s silent.

translated by Sherod Santos in Greek Lyric Poetry

Richard Wilbur – Anteroom

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

Out of the snowdrift
Which covered it, this pillared
Sundial starts to lift,

Able now at last
To let its frozen hours
Melt into the past

In bright, ticking drops.
Time so often hastens by,
Time so often stops—

Still, it strains belief
How an instant can dilate,
Or long years be brief.

Dreams, which interweave
All our times and tenses, are
What we can believe:

Dark they are, yet plain,
Coming to us now as if
Through a cobwebbed pane

Where, before our eyes,
All the living and the dead
Meet without surprise.

Anne Carson – Helen

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

Nights of a marriage are like an Egypt in a woods.
Dark around its edges mirror at the heart.
War has gone quiet.
It moves, a reflection: no.
Cheap theatre smell, rooms
settle and hiss. What is he doing. Sleep,
its hours pleat together and close
like a fan, what does she know.
Waters move slightly or do they.
Paths glide to them, to who? Glide off.
Vanishes
out of the marriage, into the marriage.
Troy
vanishes too, murmuring, stain
is a puzzle you do not want
the answer to.
Every war
needs
one.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Snow-Flakes

 Poems
Nov 202010
 

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.