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)

Trojan Poetry 102: "Field of Skulls" by Mary Karr

Field of Skulls

By Mary Karr

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,  

and if you're predisposed to dark—let’s say  

the window you’ve picked is a black

postage stamp you spend hours at,

sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love  

Lucy reruns have gone off—stare

like your eyes have force, and behind

any night’s taut scrim will come the forms  

you expect pressing from the other side.  

For you: a field of skulls, angled jaws

and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.  

They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals

roam your very block, and even history lists  

monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe

who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters  

unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps  

that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet—that’s him  

rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought,

for it proves there’s no better spot for you

than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing  

the bad news piped steady from your head. The night  

is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way,  

you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine  

and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all  

your remembered loves. If the skulls are there—

let’s say they do press toward you

against night’s scrim—could they not stare

with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh

that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,  

at the force your hands hold?

Mary Karr, “Field of Skulls” from Viper Rum. Copyright © 1998 by Mary Karr.

Source: The Devil's Tour (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)

Trojan Poetry 101: "All Hallows' Eve" by Dorothea Tanning

All Hallows’ Eve

By Dorothea Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Hear bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

Dorothea Tanning, “All Hallows’ Eve” from Coming to That.

Copyright © 2011 by Dorothea Tanning.

Source: Coming to That (Graywolf Press, 2011)

Trojan Poetry 100: "When You Saw the Lightning" by Frank X. Gaspar

When You Saw the Lightning

by Frank X. Gaspar

When I was a fish—in that time when no one

walked the long tangled banks of the pond in

those deep woods unscarred by roads—oh, you should

have seen me, my long fish body one muscle, and

my will narrowed to the fine essentials!  You would

have cried out for my beauty when I leapt into the

sun and air and you saw the rainbows and lightning

on my stippled back.  And I would have made you

jump.  Your breath would have caught above your

heart, and you would have loved me in that certain

way that we love things beyond any need for them,

but desiring them senselessly.  Yes, the buzz of the

dragonflies, and then my killing heart in the shade

of the lilies, in the black water with all its treasures,

and my wicked teeth, and how the green leaves on

the trees shuddered when I rose and struck!  That was

when I was a fish.  I would never lie to you about that. 

I don’t know why I would tell you this now.  I don’t

know why you would even listen to anything in a poem

except that it might stop you for a moment, it might

make you lift your head and look around in just that

lonely hour of the day or night when the world isn’t

quite enough.  Oh, yes, I was a power—I razed that

hidden world with splendor and terror, and if you

only could have seen me, your breast would have been

filled with rapture, I’m sure of it.  Along those wild

shores, along that gloss of water, among the sweet

greens of summer—where were you? 

Resources:

https://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-onlin...

http://srivilasicatimes.blogspot.com/...

http://www.frankgaspar.com/bio.html

“The Olive Trees”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_1EW...

Q&A with students about writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUNP5...

Trojan Poetry 99:"To the Dead in the Graveyard . . ." by Adelaide Crapsey

To The Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window

By Adelaide Crapsey

Written in A Moment of Exasperation

How can you lie so still? All day I watch

And never a blade of all the green sod moves

To show where restlessly you toss and turn,

And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees

Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;

I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth

To take its freedom of the midnight hour.

Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?

The very worms must scorn you where you lie,

A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,

Meek habitants of unresented graves.

Why are you there in your straight row on row

Where I must ever see you from my bed

That in your mere dumb presence iterate

The text so weary in my ears: "Lie still

And rest; be patient and lie still and rest."

I'll not be patient! I will not lie still!

There is a brown road runs between the pines,

And further on the purple woodlands lie,

And still beyond blue mountains lift and loom;

And I would walk the road and I would be

Deep in the wooded shade and I would reach

The windy mountain tops that touch the clouds.

My eyes may follow but my feet are held.

Recumbent as you others must I too

Submit? Be mimic of your movelessness

With pillow and counterpane for stone and sod?

And if the many sayings of the wise

Teach of submission I will not submit

But with a spirit all unreconciled

Flash an unquenched defiance to the stars.

Better it is to walk, to run, to dance,

Better it is to laugh and leap and sing,

To know the open skies of dawn and night,

To move untrammeled down the flaming noon,

And I will clamour it through weary days

Keeping the edge of deprivation sharp,

Nor with the pliant speaking on my lips

Of resignation, sister to defeat.

I'll not be patient. I will not lie still.

And in ironic quietude who is

The despot of our days and lord of dust

Needs but, scarce heeding, wait to drop

Grim casual comment on rebellion's end;

"Yes, yes . . Wilful and petulant but now

As dead and quiet as the others are."

And this each body and ghost of you hath heard

That in your graves do therefore lie so still.