Written by Himself

I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet

whispering my name. I was born to rainwater and lye;

I was born across the river where I

was borrowed with clothespins, a harrow tooth,

broadsides sewn in my shoes. I returned, though

it please you, through no fault of my own,

pockets filled with coffee grounds and eggshells.

I was born still and superstitious; I bore an unexpected burden.

I gave birth, I gave blessing, I gave rise to suspicion.

I was born abandoned outdoors in the heat-shaped air,

air drifting like spirits and old windows.

I was born a fraction and a cipher and a ledger entry;

I was an index of first lines when I was born.

I was born waist-deep stubborn in the water crying

ain’t I a woman and a brother I was born

to this hall of mirrors, this horror story I was

born with a prologue of references, pursued

by mosquitoes and thieves, I was born passing

off the problem of the twentieth century: I was born.

I read minds before I could read fishes and loaves;

I walked a piece of the way alone before I was born.

-Gregory Pardlo

To the New Year

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

-W. S. Merwin, 2005

Happy Christmas.

[little tree]

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see-------i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look-------the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

-E. E. Cummings

Meet Jayber.

Five Moose Night

Wonderful, really, the way the full moon
casts an enormous shadow of a seemingly tiny
but in truth enormous moose across the meadow grasses
stroked by wind. Happy, too, the way the wind
in my face does not blow my scent to the moose.
The wonderful moose and the wonderful moose shadow,
the very possibilities of which I have never imagined
but the reasons nevertheless I walk in the woods at night.

His shadow dewlap's a yard long, his antlers vast
spatulate hands holding up the moonlight
and the brightest few barely visible stars.
Wonderful, the abundant chartreuse wolf lichens silvered,
the meadow grasses dimly flashing, the moss-filled
not uncomfortable depression of stone I have seated myself in.
Intermittently dark, the shadows under the trees,
into which the tiny moose, at last, herds the enormous shadow one.

Lonesome, the thirty more minutes I wait, the wind
wandering also away, and half-blind, my walking
into the woods myself, watchful, slow, straining for silence.
Wonderful, the silence and the shadows of the trees,
and wonderful, the light from the kitchen window,
a golden parallelogram illuminating both the bird bath
and the great bull moose lapping with its shadows,
one cast to the left by window light, one to the right by the moon.

-Robert Wrigley, 2014

Porch Pew in Summer

-------for Brian and Wilbur Frink

Never a prayer for some place more than this,
wild turkeys in the field where old years blaze
each December into new, where grandkids
roam the drive now, in charge of cat, daisy,

spontaneous song. Any ten disciples
might take their rest on this long crafted oak
left to weather. Wine all around then, the spell
of day sinking in a gospel of talk.

And on quiet nights, painting or writing done,
the garden weeded, house projects holding
for the time being, two people might lean
to one another on the pew, holding

hands in the spreading dark, these few candles
lighting up the sanctuary, the world.

-Richard Robbins, 2014

Harlan County

Stepping over the stones of my mother,
chicken bones, straw,

the cellar in which the man was found,
that man my grandfather

the day the sharecroppers left town,
their son shot dead —

the thing whiskey’ll do to a man.

The woman who waited under the house at night,
counting ghosts and bobcats through lattice of leaves,

walking bare-boned lanes,
toes buried beneath blackened leaves —

no cause for worry
if you’ve walked every acre, planted every row.

Nothing can get you if you pay it no mind.

I tell you these things
so you’ll not mistake my actions for fear,

not think I do not know what makes a life,
what makes people do the things they do.

I know my fears — I’ve named them,
counted them out one by one

like tarot cards, voodoo dolls:

birth,
death,
poverty,
obscurity,
that you will leave me,
or I will leave you.

-Kate Buckley, 2008

The Distance

Prayer, as in:
my silence approaches
God's silence.
The distance to be covered
is so immense
that there is time
to live my life
peacefully.

Psalm

I am still on a rooftop in Brooklyn
on your holy day. The harbor is before me,
Governor's Island, the Verrazano Bridge
and the Narrows. I keep in my head
what Rabbi Nachman said about the world
being a narrow bridge and that the important thing
is not to be afraid. So on this day
I bless my mother and father, that they be
not fearful where they wander. And I
ask you to bless them and before you
close your Book of Life, your Sefer Hachayim,
remember that I always praised your world
and your splendor and that my tongue
tried to say your name on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Take me safely through the Narrows to the sea.

-Harvey Shapiro

A Certain Weariness

I don't want to be tired alone,
I want you to grow tired along with me.

How can we not be weary
of the kind of fine ash
which falls on cities in autumn,
something which doesn't quite burn,
which collects in jackets
and little by little settles,
discoloring the heart.

I'm tired of the harsh sea
and the mysterious earth.
I'm tired of chickens--
we never know what they think,
and they look at us with dry eyes
as though we were unimportant.

Let us for once--I invite you--
be tired of so many things,
of awful apertifs,
of a good education.

Tired of not going to France,
tired of at least
one or two days in the week
which have always the same names
like dishes on the table,
and of getting up--what for?--
and going to be without glory.

Let us finally tell the truth:
we never thought much of
these days that are like
houseflies or camels.

I have seen some monuments
raised to titans
to donkeys of industry.
They're there, motionless,
with their swords in their hands
on their gloomy horses.
I'm tired of statues.
Enough of all that stone.

If we go on filling up
the world with still things
how can the living live?

I am tired of remembering.

I want men, when they're born,
to breathe in naked flowers,
fresh soil, pure fire
not just what everyone breathes.
Leave the newborn in peace!

Leave room for them to live!
Don't think for them,
don't read them the same book;
let them discover the dawn
and name their own kisses.

I want you to be weary with me
of all that is already well done,
of all that ages us.
of all that lies in wait
to wear out other people.

Let us be weary of what kills
and of what doesn't want to die.

-Pablo Neruda

East Tennessee

Fields humped up
bordered with cedars.
Here and there a pale
flash of Cumberland
limestone like an ancient
creature rolling up.
Breaching. Never
far under the grass.

Few folk left now
with the bone so close
in their faces. Hard
to scrape a living
behind a mule. Hard
even to bury the dead.
People who if they
didn’t shoot fed you
and passed the jug.

Headlights hauling
the car from hollow
to hollow, turning
the dial—the little
stations still remember
and you can sing
along. Sometimes
whatever the fiddle
saws falls apart
and leaves a voice—

a wail like bare wire
lifting up and away
from the cedars along
the fencerows like dark
torches against a sky
the sun’s forsaken
into which from somewhere
stars are wandering.

-Edward Wilson

Four Very Fat Legs

I am jolly as if I were
very fat.
As if I had four
very fat legs. As if I jumped very high
on my four very fat legs.
As if I barked
cheerfully and very loudly
with those four very fat legs.
That’s how jolly I am today.

-Anna Swir