Poems that I love

by Wendell Berry At start of spring I open a trench In the ground. I put into it The winter’s accumulation of paper, Pages I do not want to read Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents of the outhouse: light of the suns, growth of the ground, Finished with one of their journeys. To the sky, to the wind, then, and to the faithful trees, I confess my sins: that I have not been happy enough, considering my good luck; have listened to too much noise, have been inattentive to wonders, have lusted after praise. And then upon the gathered refuse, of mind and body, I close the trench folding shut again the dark, the deathless earth. Beneath that seal the old escapes into the new. Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems

Peter Matthiessen, 1927-2014 You whose written words ushered so many Into the theater of meditation While all the while as restless as a leopard Confined to a soiled cage of his own making, Who sought connection but evinced a cruel Detachment from his wives, his family, What have you left for those of us who still Believe in prose, regardless of its author? Perhaps it’s nothing less than an open mind Teeming with unsummoned memories Of Himalayan vistas, the Serengeti, Greenland, Florida, a distant father. Little wonder that the title Roshi, However earned, rested uneasily On you, even as you sat in perfect stillness. By Ben Howard

If they gun me down in my own street someday may my crime be compassion. May the record show  from every angle  that I was helping a woman up  after they pushed her to the ground, that not even their weapons  could stop me from extending  my hand to those in need.  that I was a walking example  of the best my elders taught me --   that everyone is equal  and worthy of defending. If they tell the nation,  from the highest podium,  that I was a domestic terrorist,  let it be known that my radical act  was believing the best in people  when they wanted nothing more  than to divide us. By Michael F Dubois 

When one of them moved through the marketplace of Selefkia just as it was getting dark—  moved like a young man, tall, extremely handsome,  with the joy of being immortal in his eyes,  with his black and perfumed hair—  the people going by would gaze at him,  and one would ask the other if he knew him,  if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.  But some who looked more carefully  would understand and step aside;  and as he disappeared under the arcades,  among the shadows and the evening lights,  going toward the quarter that lives  only at night, with orgies and debauchery,  with every kind of intoxication and desire,  they would wonder which of Them it could be,  and for what suspicious pleasure  he had come down into the streets of Selefkia  from the August Celestial Mansions.  Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edi...

 By Kenneth Rexroth Who are you? Who am I? Haunted By the dead, by the dead and the past and the Falling inertia of unreal, dead Men and things. Haunted by the threat Of the impersonal, that which Never will admit the person, The closed world of things. Who are You? Coming up out of the Mineral earth, one pale leaf Unlike any other unfolding, And then another, strange, new, Utterly different, nothing I ever expected, growing Up out of my warm heart's blood. All new, all strange, all different. Your own leaf pattern, your own Flower and fruit, but fed from One root, the root of our fused flesh. I and thou, from the one to The dual, from the dual To the other, the wonderful, Unending, unfathomable Process of becoming each Our selves for each other. Left to right: Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, and James Laughlin.

by Danielle Coffyn If Adam Picked the Apple There would be a parade, a celebration, a holiday to commemorate the day he sought enlightenment. We would not speak of temptation by the devil, rather, we would laud Adam’s curiosity, his desire for adventure and knowing. We would feast on apple-inspired fare: tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies. There would be plays and songs reenacting his courage. But it was Eve who grew bored, weary of her captivity in Eden. And a woman’s desire for freedom is rarely a cause for celebration.