A Soldier's Thoughts: Before Breakfast

You weren't the first,
God knows you weren't the last

Of all the others,
Your mark stays with me

It was the shot,
I never should've taken

And every morning since,
It's your eyes I see

The death of you,
Had become the life of me.

                                               ~Sean Barnett

in more than soil more than sky

This poem was written by a former (math) student of mine.  I knew when I taught him that he had served our country, but I didn't know until later that he was a poet.  I first came across this poem years ago, and it blew me away - still does every time I read it.  I recently shared this poem with a friend, and when she responded with, "Wow, that's gripping," I replied, "Isn't it?!  It knocks me off my feet every time I come across it, and it reminds me what a privilege it is to teach.  He sat and learned math from me, but he knows so much that I do not and that I never will  .  .  ."

Parker

Résumé

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Gone Too Soon - EB and AH

WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

A. E. Housman 1896

Destiny with Men

'Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and Days
where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays,
and one by one back in the Closet lays.

Omar Khayyám (1048-1131)

Steps to Your Eternity

You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath.
New names unknown, old names gone:
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)

The Case for Obscurity (or Good Advice!)

THE CASE FOR OBSCURITY
On Thoughts and Words I.


If no thought
your mind does visit,
make your speech
not too explicit.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)

To the Core of All

Should something from the window fall
(and if it just the smallest be)
how jumps the law of gravity
as mighty as wind from the sea
at every ball or blueberry
and take them to the core of all.

from The Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke

and Thou :-)

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, A Book of verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise now.

Omar Khayyam (1048-1141)

At Arlington

Two dates carved in stone above his grave
tell us he was seventeen, not how
this soldier died, nor whether he was brave
or terrified, or both. No matter now:
the only life he had to give, he gave.

Wiley Clements 2004

In This Short Life

In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much -- how little -- is
Within our power

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Flies

With all the flies in our area this autumn, and David swatting them left and right, I can't stop thinking about poetry involving flies!

SHAKESPEARE:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.

King Lear Act 4, scene 1

WILLIAM BLAKE:

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

from Songs of Experience 1794

What We Need

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934)

Better Spent

A REPROOF

Grook in answer to a long explanatory letter

In view of your manner
of spending your days
I hope you may learn,
before ending them,
that the effort you spend
on defending your ways
could be better spent on
amending them.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)

The Cold Pane

Between the living world
and the world of death
is a clear, cold pane;
a man who looks too close
must fog it with his breath,
or hold his breath too long.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934)

To A Young Poet

Time cannot break the bird’s wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Or Every Man Be Blind

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

But What of That?

I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that?

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poet Laureate

I have just discovered our poet laureate Kay Ryan. I guess I'd been a bit behind the times and too focused on things other than poetry for too long now! She's going to be speaking at MJC Saturday, so I took a quick look at her work and found that even after just a quick look I like it. That's unusual, but when it happens it generally turns out that those poets end up being favorites of mine. That's how it was for me and e. e. cummings and Howard Nemerov. One of my favorite things is to discover a new (to me) poet whose work I enjoy, and it's been a long time since that happened.

PERIPHERY

Founatins, for instance,
have a periphery
at some distance
from the spray.
On nice days
idle people circle
all the way around
the central spout.
They do not get wet.
They do not get hot.

Time Again

It's happening again, and I'm sad because I haven't had a chance to get out and experience the "gold:"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost (1923)

In a Hurry?

MORE HASTE --
Inscription for a monument at the crossroads.

Here lies, extinguished in his prime,
a victim of modernity:
but yesterday he hadn't the time --
and now he has eternity.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)