Trojan Poetry 105: "When Giving Is All We Have" by Alberto Ríos

When Giving Is All We Have

by Alberto Rios

                                             One river gives

                                             Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,

We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

Trojan Poetry 104: "In Celebration" by Mark Strand with van Gogh and Egon Schiele

In Celebration

By Mark Strand

You sit in a chair, touched by nothing, feeling

the old self become the older self, imagining

only the patience of water, the boredom of stone.

You think that silence is the extra page,

you think that nothing is good or bad, not even

the darkness that fills the house while you sit watching

it happen. You've seen it happen before. Your friends

move past the window, their faces soiled with regret.

You want to wave but cannot raise your hand.

You sit in a chair. You turn to the nightshade spreading

a poisonous net around the house. You taste

the honey of absence. It is the same wherever

you are, the same if the voice rots before

the body, or the body rots before the voice.

You know that desire leads only to sorrow, that sorrow

leads to achievement which leads to emptiness.

You know that this is different, that this

is the celebration, the only celebration,

that by giving yourself over to nothing,

you shall be healed. You know there is joy in feeling

your lungs prepare themselves for an ashen future,

so you wait, you stare and you wait, and the dust settles

and the miraculous hours of childhood wander in darkness.

Trojan Poetry 103: "This Inwardness, This Ice" by Christian Wiman and Paul Klee

The Path Into the Blue
by Paul Klee, 1934

This Inwardness, This Ice

By Christian Wiman

This inwardness, this ice,

this wide boreal whiteness

into which he's come

with a crawling sort of care

for the sky's severer blue,

the edge on the air,

trusting his own lightness

and the feel as feeling goes;

this discipline, this glaze,

this cold opacity of days

begins to crack.

No marks, not one scar,

no sign of where they are,

these weaknesses rumoring through,

growing loud if he stays,

louder if he turns back.

Nothing to do but move.

Nowhere to go but on,

to creep, and breathe, and learn

a blue beyond belief,

an air too sharp to pause,

this distance, this burn,

this element of flaws

that winces as it gives.

Nothing to do but live.

Nowhere to be but gone.

Christian Wiman, "This Inward, This Ice" from Hard Night. Copyright © 2005 by Christian Wiman. 

Source: Hard Night (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)