Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

91. I Hear America Singing

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck; 5
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

The Bare Arms of Trees
John Tagliabue

Sometimes when I see the bare arms of trees in the evening
I think of men who have died without love,
Of desolation and space between branch and branch,
I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these
           branches
And the cold space between.
I think of the vastness and the courage between this step and that step
Of the yearning and the fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire
           held apart.
I think of the ocean of longing that moves between land and land
And between people, the space and ocean.
The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of
           leaves, without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
           between tree and tree,
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.

Burning the Old Year
Burning the Old Year
By Naomi Shihab Nye b. 1952
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

War is Kind

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind, Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them. Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom– A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbles in the yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died, Do not weep. War is kind. Swift blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie. Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep. War is kind!

Here’s to the moments that are not what you think but that actually are.

Not Swans

I drive toward distant clouds and my mother’s dying.
The quickened sky is mercury, it slithers
across the horizon. Against that liquid silence,
a V of birds crosses-sudden and silver.

They tilt, becoming white light as they turn, glitter
like shooting stars arcing slow motion out of the abyss,
not falling.
Now they look like chips of flint,
the arrow broken.
I think, This isn’t myth-

they are not signs, not souls.
Reaching blue
again, they’re ordinary ducks or maybe
Canada geese. Veering away they shoot
into the west, too far for my eyes, aching

as they do.

Never mind what I said
before. Those birds took my breath. I knew what it meant.

from Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems, 2000
Louisiana State University Press

Copyright 2000 by Susan Ludvigson.
All rights reserved.

Reading Hemingway

Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry,

for jambon, cheeses, and a dry white wine.

Cold, of course, very cold. And very dry.

Reading Hemingway makes some folks angry:

the hip drinking, the bitter pantomime.

But reading Hemingway makes me hungry

for the good life, the sun, the fish, the sky:

blue air, white water, dinner on the line. . .

Had it down cold, he did. And dry. Real dry.

But Papa had it all, the brio, the Brie:

clear-eyed, tight lipped, advancing on a stein. . .

Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry,

I’d knock down Monsieru Stevens, too, if I

drank too much restina before we dined.

(Too old, that man, and way too cold. And dry

enough to rub one’s famished nerves awry,

kept talking past the kitchen’s closing time!)

Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry. . .

And cold, of course. So cold. And very dry.

Here is a tree older than the forest itself

Here is a tree older than the forest itself;
The years of its life defy reckoning.
Its roots have seen the upheavals of hill and valley, Its leaves have known the changes of wind and frost.
The world laughs at its shoddy exterior And cares nothing for the fine grain
of the wood inside.
Stripped free of flesh and hide,
All that remains is the core of truth.*

* When a monk asked the Zen Master Ma-tsu what enlightenment he had achieved, he replied,
“Stripping away all flesh and hide,
I have only a single truth.”
(Ma-tsu yii-1u, in Ssu-chia yii-lu.)

Freedom to Breathe 

I stand under an apple tree in blossom and I breathe. Not only the apple tree but the grass round it glistens with moisture; words cannot describe the sweet fragrance that pervades the air. I inhale as deeply as I can, and the aroma invades my whole being; I breathe with my eyes open, I breathe with my eyes closed—I cannot say which gives me the greater pleasure.

This, I believe, is the single most precious freedom that prison takes away from us: the freedom to breathe freely, as I now can. No food on earth, no wine, not even a woman’s kiss is sweeter to me than this air steeped in the fragrance of flowers, of moisture and freshness.

No matter that this is only a tiny garden, hemmed in by five-story houses like cages in a zoo. I cease to hear the motorcycles backfiring, radios whining, the burble of loudspeakers. As long as there is fresh air to breathe under an apple tree after a shower, we may survive a little longer.

Karmelicka
By Adam Zagajewski

-translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

Karmelicka Street, a sky-blue train, the sun,
September, the first day after vacation,
some have come home from long trips,
armored divisions enter Poland,
children off to school dressed in their best,
white and navy blue, like sails and sea,
like memory and grapes and inspiration.
The trees stand at attention, honoring
the power of young minds that haven’t yet
known fire and sleep and can do what they want,
nothing can stop them
(not counting invisible limits).

The trees greet the young respectfully,
but your—be truthful—envy
that starting out, that setting off
from home, from childhood, from the sweet darkness
that tastes of almonds, raisins, and poppyseeds,
you stop in the store for bread
and then walk home, unhurried,
whistling and humming carelessly;
your school still hasn’t started,
the teachers have gone, the masters remain,
distant as summer, your sleep sails through the clouds
across the sky.

The Garden Gate
By Jean L. Connor

You will not forget the pungency
of sage, nor the grace of pink oxalis.

Yield yourself. Let the night come,
for everything, in its turn,

has its going down to darkness.
Slip through the unlatched gate,

there, at dusk, the cottage garden,
fragrant, white, lies

trellised to the moon
and there the hermit thrush

sings, “Oh holy, holy-ah, purity,
purity-ee. Sweetly, sweetly.”

Listen, for without flute,
I sing a credo, too,

and as I sing my “Holy, holy,”
I offer my blind sight to you.