Poems that I love

by Lisel Mueller This is not fantasy, this is our life. We are the characters who have invaded the moon, who cannot stop their computers. We are the gods who can unmake the world in seven days. Both hands are stopped at noon. We are beginning to live forever, in lightweight, aluminum bodies with numbers stamped on our backs. We dial our words like Muzak. We hear each other through water. The genre is dead. Invent something new. Invent a man and a woman naked in a garden, invent a child that will save the world, a man who carries his father out of a burning city. Invent a spool of thread that leads a hero to safety, invent an island on which he abandons the woman who saved his life with no loss of sleep over his betrayal. Invent us as we were before our bodies glittered and we stopped bleeding: invent a shepherd who kills a giant, a girl who grows into a tree, a woman who refuses to turn her back on the past and is changed to salt, a boy who steals his brother’s birthright and becomes

by Donald Hall Let us meditate the virtue of slogans. Let us declare onomastic* solutions to difficulties largely unnameable, and by the mottoes of euphemism contract verbal righteousness. Let's indite bulletins to tell everyone the Jargon of Things, to name Lifestyles, to learn the Tongue of High Coy: Do you desire to purchase a beverage? We thank you for not smoking. Have a nice day. May we share these suggestions with you? Let us praise exultation, never calling a route salesman a milkman, nor an officer of the law a cop, nor a senior citizen old, nor a starving freezing bagwoman poor. When we can't alter ills that upset us, we will change their names to prevent compassion from disturbing our ungulate composure: words to deny worlds. Vocabulary voids original sin; cavalry of the lie reaches Calvary just in time--to bugle Christ down from the cross. But: no nails, no Christ. Jean Jouvenet "Descent From The Cross"

by Gerard Manley Hopkins To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dáwn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rólling level úndernéath him steady áir, & stríding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl & gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty & valour & act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, o my chevalier! No wónder of it: shéer plód makes plóugh down síllion Shine, & blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gáll themsélves, & gásh góld-vermílion.

by W.S. Merwin In the morning as the storm begins to blow away the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe simpler than I could have begun to find words for not patient not even waiting no more hidden than the air itself that became part of me for a while with every breath and remained with me unnoticed something that was here unnamed unknown in the days and the nights not separate from them not separate from them as they came and were gone it must have been here neither early nor late then by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

by Rafael Jesus Gonzalez Thanks & blessings be to the Sun & the Earth for this bread & this wine, this fruit, this meat, this salt, this food; thanks be & blessing to them who prepare it, who serve it; thanks & blessings to them who share it (& also the absent & the dead). Thanks & Blessing to them who bring it (may they not want), to them who plant & tend it, harvest & gather it (may they not want); thanks & blessing to them who work & blessing to them who cannot; may they not want - for their hunger sours the wine & robs the taste from the salt. Thanks be for the sustenance & strength for our dance & work of justice, of peace.

by Rebecca del Rio Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep, love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit, rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping. Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers, reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda. To talk of gratitude is to be the fool in a cynic’s world. Gratitude is pride’s nightmare, the admission of humility before something given without expectation or attachment. Gratitude tears open the shirt of self importance, scatters buttons across the polished floors of feigned indifference, ignores the obvious and laughs out loud. Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart. What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice? Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy, something unasked for, something unearned. What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this: Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you, Rebecca!