To The Light of September

To the Light of September
When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew
– W. S. Merwin

Bring in the Gods

Bring in the gods, I say, and he goes out.  When he comes

back and I know they are with him, I say, Put tables in front

of them so they may be seated, and food upon the tables

so they may eat.  When they have eaten, I ask which of them

will question me.  Let him hold up his hand, I say.

The one on the left raises his hand I tell him to ask.

Where are you now, he says.  I stand on top of myself, I hear

myself answer.  I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life

is spread before me.  Does it surprise you, he asks.  I explain

that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot

see our lives.  Because we are inside of that.  Because we can

see no shape to it, since we have nothing to compare it to.

We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.

We dion’t know the names of things that would bind them to us,

so we cannot feed on them.  One near the middle asks why not.

Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living.

Why is that? she asks.  Because we are too much in a hurry.

Where are you now? the one one left says.  With the ghosts.

I am with Gianna those two years in Perugia.  Meeting secretly

in the thirteenth-century alleys of stone.  Walking in the fields

through the spring light, she well dresed and walking in heels

over the plowed land.  We are just outside the city walls

hidden under the thorny blackberry bushes and her breasts naked.

I am with her those many twilights in the olive orchards,

holding the heart of her as she whimpers.  Now where are you?

he says.  I am with Linda those years and years.  In American

cities, in Copenhagen, on Greek islands season after season.

Lindos and Monolithos and the other places.  I am with Michiko

for eleven years, East and West, holding her clear in my mind

the way a native can hold all of his village at one moment.

Where are you now? he says.  I am standing onmyself the way

a bird sits in her nest, with the babies half asleep underneath

and the world all leaves and morning air.  What do you want?

a glonde one asks.  To keep what I already have, I say.  You ask

too much, he says sternly.  Then you are at peace, she says.

I am not at peace, I tell her.  I want to fail.  I am hungry

for what I am becoming.  What will you do? she asks.  I will

continue north, carrying the past in my arms, flying into winter.

–Jack Gilbert

Waiting For A Ride

Standing at the baggage, passing time:

Austin, Texas, airport–my ride hasn’t come yet.

My former wife is making Web sites from her home,

one son’s seldom seen,

the other and his wife have a boy and girl of their own.

My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town

so she can get to high school.

My mother, ninety-six, still lives alone and she’s in town, too,

always gets her sanity back just barely in time.

My former former wife has become a unique poet;

most of my work,

such as it is, is done.

Full moon was October 2nd this year,

I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck,

white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine,

owl hoots and rattling antlers,

Castor and Pollux rising strong–

it’s good to know that the polestar drifts!

That even our present night sky slips away;

not that I’ll see it.

Or maybe I will, much later,

some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,

that long walk of spirits–where you fall right back into the

“narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”

squeeze your little skull

and there you are again

waiting for your ride

–Gary Snyder

The Waking

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

History

History

It’s like this, the king marries

a commoner, and the populace cheers.

She doesn’t even know how to curtsy,

but he loves her manners in bed.

Why doesn’t the king do what his father did,

the king’s mother wonders—

those peasant girls brought in

through that secret entrance, that’s how

a kingdom works best. But marriage!

The king’s mother won’t come out

of her room, and a strange democracy

radiates throughout the land,

which causes widespread dreaming,

a general hopefulness. This is,

of course, how people get hurt,

how history gets its ziggy shape.

The king locks his wife in the tower

because she’s begun to ride

her horse far into the woods.

How unqueenly to come back

to the castle like that,

so sweaty and flushed. The only answer,

his mother decides, is stricter rules—

no whispering in the corridors,

no gaiety in the fields.

The king announces his wife is very tired

and has decided to lie down,

and issues an edict that all things yours

are once again his.

This is the kind of law

history loves, which contains

its own demise. The villagers conspire

for years, waiting for the right time,

which never arrives. There’s only

that one person, not exactly brave,

but too unhappy to be reasonable,

who crosses the moat, scales the walls.

~Stephen Dunn

Rain Light

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

~ W.S. Merwin

A Single Autumn

A Single Autumn

The year my parents died

one that summer one that fall

three months and three days apart

I moved into the house

where they had lived their last years

it had never been theirs

and was still theirs in that way

for a while

echoes in every room

without a sound

all the things that we

had never been able to say

I could not remember

doll collection

in a china cabinet

plates stacked on shelves

lace on drop-leaf tables

a dried branch of bittersweet

before a hall mirror

were all planning to wait

the glass doors of the house

remained closed

the days had turned cold

and out in the tall hickories

the blaze of autumn had begun

on its own

I could do anything

~ W.S. Merwin

Through

Irrevocable? Never irrevocable, you said,

picking me up wrong through the din of the coffee machine.

We were in the Ulster Milk Bar I think they blew up back

in the seventies. We must have been barely acquainted.

Noise is what surrounds us, I’d said earlier, gesturing

to the wider world of disinformation, the dizzy

spells that come when someone you know might have been in a bomb

as the toll has not yet been reckoned except by hearsay.

I’d have my ear glued to the radio, waiting for what

passed for the truth to come out, men picking through the rubble.

Some of the victims would appear in wedding photographs

blinded by a light forever gone. Graveside by graveside

I shake hands with men I have not shaken hands with for years,

trying to make out their faces through what they have become.

~ Ciaran Carson

First Snow

Like a child, the earth’s going to sleep,

or so the story goes.

But I’m not tired, it says.

And the mother says, You may not be tired but I’m tired—

You can see it in her face, everyone can.

So the snow has to fall, sleep has to come.

Because the mother’s sick to death of her life

and needs silence.

~ Louise Gluck

One Day

One day

one of us

will be lost

to the other

this has been

talked about but

lightly   turning

away   shyness   this

business of con-

fronting the

preference for

survival

my mother said   the

children are grown   we

are both so sick   let us

die together   my father

replied    no no   you

will be well    he lied

of course I

want you in the world

whether I’m in it or

not   your spirit

I probably mean

there is always

something to say   in

the end   speaking

without breath   one

of us will be lost

to the other

~ Grace Paley