The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

-W. B. Yeats, 1919

Meditation at Five Islands

There is no help for it after all,
nothing to keep one’s unlived lives
from dragging their heavy chains
along the bottom of the sea,
full fathom five and so forth.
The heart wants what it wants,
which is everything. The brine
air and the hundred-year firs
and the secret music cupped
in the polished nothing of a shell.
There is no way to feel in the hand
the solid mass of the life one has
lived, to know what it is. There is
only the walk down to the shore
and the stones held in the palm,
and only the sea to look to, as far
as one can, which is only so far.

-Dave Lucas, 2012

Empire of Dreams

On the first page of my dreambook
It's always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The store-fronts gutted.

I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn't be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.

-Charles Simic, 1980

In Which the Earth Splits Under Our Feet

All day the city readied for the snowstorm;
plows lined the corners of the parks, salt was thrown.
They cancelled the postal service, closed the schools—
kitchens stocked in milk and batteries,

the city was a closed organism, shut down,
and we would be caught in its damages.
All winter I've taught myself languages and music,
studied opposite words in opposite languages

collected arias in snow globes. This city is about
nothing at all—not the tall buildings or soaked corners.
Along the ocean, even the boardwalk understood the brief
credos, how one ruin should not hold all the failed

synchronisms. Across the street he sat at the table
again, head in hands—not that I would ever know him.
Across the country, he rented a car and drove himself
and gun into the woods—not that I would ever know him.

How long could we remain deliberate rib cages,
inconsolable at the bitten world that keeps us.
At this time, the most unrecognizable shadow has become
my own. I sat at bars. We sat at bars. We followed the weather.

We took light breaths with hope that the totality of winter
we carried inside would fade quickly outside.
I've looked for the right words to say the right things
to the landscape of split ranches and swing sets, two cars

buried in snow. A simple apology wasn't enough.
And then the cities we thought we would own,
to speak of their winters is to speak of the glove
that is meant to go missing, thrown salt.

Suitcases to the door, gun to teeth—
as a letter from one who loves the other—
what do we care for, facing fracture
the very bone-scrap leverage of the earth undone.

-Florencia Varela, 2011

The Sun

Look: the sun has spread its wings
over the earth to dispel darkness.

Like a great tree, with its roots in heaven
and its branches reaching down to earth.

-Judah Al-Harizi

West of Your City

West of your city into the fern
sympathy, sympathy rolls the train
all through the night on a lateral line
where the shape of game fish tapers down
from a reach where cougar paws touch water.

Corn that the starving Indians held
all through moons of cold for seed
and then they lost in stony ground
the gods told them to plant it in--
west of your city that corn still lies.

Cocked in that land tactile as leaves
wild things wait crouched in those valleys
west of your city outside your lives
in the ultimate wind, the whole land's waves.
Come west and see; touch these leaves.

-William E. Stafford, 1960

Bird-Understander

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal----all the people
ignoring it----because they do not know
what do with it----except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or----(failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird----and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me----I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not

-Craig Arnold, 2009