unask

 

 

holding her hand

 

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd--
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainess of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends could see:
A sculptor's sweet comissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone finality
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

 

 

 

 

 

door

 

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

Adrienne Rich

 

 

 

 

 

thy music

 

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

John Donne

 

 

 

 

 

unlikely gold

 

If you are not in love
sleep on.

If you don't know that pain
in your heart
the pain of love
sleep on.

If you don't long for
the oneness
if you're not always asking
where, oh where?
sleep on.

If your heart doesn't melt
and run, like molten copper
as you search all of alchemy
for the unlikely gold
sleep on.

I have let my mind go
there is nothing to say
if you are still talking
sleep on.

Rumi, Ghazal 314, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

 

 

 

audacity and hope

 

I just want to let go of it,
This need to write beautifully.
Instead, I roll up my sleeves.

Look, the dough is rising.
Pity, isn't it, that I can't
Bake a cathedral?
Oh, that sublimity,
That longed-for sublimity!

Daughter of now
Have you not found
The style of your soul?

Before I die
I will, I will
Bake a cathedral.

Edith Sodergran, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

 

 

 

sleeping

 

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Margaret Atwood

 

 

 

 

 

the wild swan

 

Does it matter whether you hate your … self? At least
Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

Robinson Jeffers