Bus Stop

 

Lights are burning

In quiet rooms

Where lives go on

Resembling ours

 

The quiet lives

That follow us –

These lives we lead

But do not own –

 

Stand in the rain

So quietly

When we are gone,

So quietly . . .

 

And the last bus

Comes letting dark

Umbrellas out –

Black flowers, black flowers.

 

And lives go on.

And lives go on

Like sudden lights

At street corners

 

Or like the lights

In quiet rooms

Left on for hours,

Burning, burning.

 

— Donald Justice

 

 

Aspen Tree

 

Aspen Tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.

My mother’s hair was never white.

 

Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.

My yellow-haired mother did not come home.

 

Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?

My quiet mother weeps for everyone.

 

Round star, you wind the golden loop.

My mother’s heart was ripped by lead.

 

Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?

My gentle mother cannot return.

 

— Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger

 

 

This Room

 

The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait

of a dog was me at an early age.

Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

 

We had macaroni for lunch every day

except Sunday, when a small quail was induced

to be served to us.

Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here.

 

­­— John Ashberry

 

 

Virginia Woolf

 

I wish I had been at Rodmell

to parlay with Virginia Woolf

when she was about to take

that fatal walk: “I know you’re

sick, but you’ll be well

again: trust me: I’ve been there.”

Would I have offered to take

her place, for me to die and

she to live? I think not. Each

has his “fiery particle”

a fan into flame for his own

sake. So, no. But still I

wish I’d been there, before she

filled her pockets with stones

and lay down in the River Ouse.

Angular Virginia Woolf, for whom

words came streaming

like clouded yellows over the downs.

 

— James Schuyler

 

 

My mistress’ eyes

 

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks.

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

     As any she belied with false compare.

 

— William Shakespeare

 

Three Floors

 

Mother was a crack of light

and a grey eye peeping;

I made believe by breathing hard

that I was sleeping.

 

Sister’s doughboy on last leave

had robbed me of her hand;

downstairs at intervals she played

Warum on the baby grand.

 

Under the roof a wardrobe trunk

whose lock a boy could pick

contained a red masonic hat

and a walking stick.

 

Bolt upright in my bed that night

I saw my father flying;

the wind was walking on my neck,

the windowpanes were crying.

 

— Stanley Kunitz

 

 

thy fingers make early flowers of

 

thy fingers make early flowers of

all things.

thy hair mostly the hours love:

a smoothness which

sings,saying

(though love a day)

do not fear,we will go amaying.

 

thy whitest feet crisply are straying.

Always

thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,

whose strangeness much

says;singing

(though love be a day)

for which girl art thou flowers bringing?

 

To be thy lips is a sweet thing

and small.

Death, Thee i call rich beyond wishing

if this thou catch,

else missing

(though love be a day

and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing.)

 

— e. e. cummings

 

 

Sonnet 30

 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;

Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,

And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

     But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)

     All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

 

— William Shakespeare

 

A Lullaby

 

Sleep, child, lie quiet, let be:

Now like a still wnd, a great tree,

Night upon this city moves

Like leaves, our hungers and our loves.

     Sleep, rest easy, while you may.

     Soon it is day.

 

And elsewhere likewise love is stirred:

Elsewhere the speechless song is heard:

Whenever children sleep or wake

Souls are lifted, hearts break.

     Sleep, be careless while you can.

     Soon you are man.

 

And everywhere good men contrive

Good reasons not to be alive.

And even should they build thteir best

No man could bear tell you the rest,

     Sleep child, for your parents’ sake.

     Soon you must wake.

 

— James Agee