national poetry month, day seven: a. r. ammons

The City Limits

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Soul, the body's guest,

Upon a thankless arrant!

Fear not to touch the best;

The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

 

Say to the court it glows

And shines like rotten wood;

Say to the church it shows

What's good, and doth no good:

If court and church reply,

Then give them both the lie.

 

Tell potentates they live

Acting by others' action,

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by a faction.

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.

 

Tell men of high condition

That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

Their practice only hate:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.

 

Tell them that brave it most,

They beg for more by spending,

Who, in their greatest cost,

Seek nothing but commending:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.

 

Tell zeal it wants devotion;

Tell love it is but lust;

Tell time it is but motion;

Tell flesh it is but dust:

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.

 

Tell age it daily wasteth;

Tell honor how it alters;

Tell beauty how she blasteth;

Tell favor how she falters:

And as they shall reply,

Give every one the lie.

 

Tell wit how much it wrangles

In tickle points of niceness;

Tell wisdom she entangles

Herself in over-wiseness:

And when they do reply,

Straight give them both the lie.

 

Tell physic of her boldness;

Tell skill it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention:

And as they do reply,

So give them still the lie.

 

Tell fortune of her blindness;

Tell nature of decay;

Tell friendship of unkindness;

Tell justice of delay:

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

 

Tell arts they have no soundness,

But vary by esteeming;

Tell schools they want profoundness,

And stand too much on seeming:

If arts and school reply,

Give arts and school the lie.

 

Tell faith it fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;

Tell manhood shakes off pity;

Tell virtue least preferreth:

And if they do reply,

Spare not to give the lie.

 

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing,--

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing,--

Stab at thee, he that will,

No stab the soul can kill.

Read more at http://www.poetry-archive.com/r/the_lie.html#VpGrdcM6Yei9BiIC.99

Ammons, A. R.. "The City Limits". Essential Pleasures. Pinsky, Robert, Ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. 64.

national poetry month, day six: don coles

How We All Swiftly

My God how we all swiftly, swiftly

unwrap our lives, running from

one rummaged secret to the next

like children among their birthday stuff --

a shout, a half-heard gasp here

and for a while bliss somewhere else

when the one thing we asked for all year

is really there and practically as perfect

as we knew it would be. Those beckoning passes

into what's ahead: first words, the run

without a fall, a bike, those books,

a girl whose nakedness is endless in our bed,

and a few public stunts with results that

partly please us. And on we go, my God how

restlessly among glimpsed profiles turning and

undarkening towards us as we reach them -- praiseworthy

the ones who'll press on with this, press on

so long and so often wrong, hoping to prove

some of the children right.

 

Coles, Don. "How We All Swiftly" Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology of Poems in English. Jones, Evans and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 89.

an anne carson gem (national poetry month bonus)

God’s Handiwork

The best way to insult God
is to damage your uniqueness,
which God has worked on.

Carson, Anne. "God's Handiwork". The Body Electric: America's Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review. Berg, Stephen, David Bonanno and Arthur Vogelsang, Eds. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. 105.

national poetry month, day five: meghan o'rourke

The Window at Arles

Even the moon set him going, with its blank stare;
even the walls of the café, which seemed to tilt
and sway as he watched them, green with absinthe.
"It is a wonderful thing to draw a human being."
All night, Van Gogh painted, and then scraped paint from the easel;
the stiff sound of palette knife on canvas,
scratching, made him think of a hungry animal.
Women came and posed.
"It is a wonderful thing to paint a human being, something
that lives," he told Theo; "it is confoundedly difficult,
but after all it is splendid."
When the money for models ran out,
he bought plaster casts of hands and hung them
from the crossbeams of his room,
and woke to the sound of their knocking in the wind.

*
One night Van Gogh sat in a chair, staring.
Brush in one hand, milk saucer in the other.
The tea was weak. Nothing came. In the morning,
one of his models brought bread and cheese
and made him eat. That afternoon,
he broke the plaster casts, banging hand into hand
until he stood in a storm of dust, coughing.

*
When he worked he felt a scratch at his calf,
a scarlet wound, a whoop of blood. He was hungry;
even his eyes were hungry.
All he saw was red: red snow, red legs of women
in the village rues, red pinwheels of hay.
"It is a wonderful thing
to hurt a human being, something
that lives. It is confoundedly difficult, but after all it is splendid."

Beyond the shadow, a cave opened
in the trees and led into emptiness,
a yellow you couldn't quite see an end to.
Van Gogh walked into it,
and his body began to shake. It was a color-riot.
He could hear, somewhere, a dog
thumping its tail in the dark.
"How splendid yellow is!" he said.

*
Color was electricity, it turned you blind
if you got hold of it.
It turned you blind if something cold
got hold of you and blistered.
Walls falling toward you.
When you turn color into a weapon,
something gets left over:
a charred body.
What you must do is take the plaster
and turn it to praise
as light turns grass in the evening
into fear gone blind into the hunt.

O'Rourke, Meghan "The Window at Arles" The Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition. Pinsky, Robert, ed. New York: Scribner Poetry, 2013. 170-1.

national poetry month, day four: jan zwicky

You Must Believe In Spring

Because it is the garden. What is left to us.
Because silence is not silence without sound.
Because you have let the out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then
     out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in,
     enough.
Because otherwise their precision at the blue line would mean nothing.
Because otherwise death would mean nothing.
Because the light says so.
Because a human being can gladly eat only so much cabbage.
Because the pockets of your overcoat need mending.
Because it's easy not to.
Because your sweaters smell.
Because Gregory of Nazianzen said geometry has no place in mourning, by which
     he meant despair presumes too much.
Because it ain't over 'til it's over. - Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige.
Because Kant was wrong, and Socrates, Descartes and all the rest. Because it is
     the body thinking and Newt Gingrich would like you not to.
Because the signs are not wrong: you are here.
Because I love you. Or you love someone. Because someone is loved.
Because under the sun, everything is new.
Because the wet snow in the trees is clotted light.
Because in 1841 it took six cords of wood to get through winter in one room at
     Harvard and two-thirds of Maine used to be open country as a result.
Because sleeping is not death.
Because although an asshole was practising his Elvis Presley imitation, full
     voice, Sunday morning, April 23rd at Spectacle Lake Provincial Park, the
     winter wren simply moved 200 yards down the trail.
Because the wren's voice is moss in sunlight, because it is a stream in sunlight
     over stones.
Because Beethoven titled the sonata.
I mean: would Bill Evans and Frank Morgan lie to you?
Because even sorrow has a source.
For, though it cannot fly, the heart is an excellent clamberer.

Zwicky, Jan. "You Must Believe in Spring" Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets. Queyras, Sina, ed. New York: Persea Books, 2005. 232-3.