meeting point - louis macneice

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise --
Between a clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

MacNeice, Louis. "Meeting Point" Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry. Peter Forbes, Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 290-1.

we go forward - anne compton

We go forward by grace days. A phalanx of survivors.
On either side, the Inscrutable lays a hand on some friend.
Wrestles him to the ground, stops her dead. This is not an elegy.
Though we sign the air with ceremony, hands and heart in slow motion,
our feet don't stop: we're already crossing the border into tomorrow.
More of everything is what we want. We're greedy. Glad to be left
standing. When we glance behind in grief, we're afoot in a changed world
and isn't it every day? Altered, larger somehow, and we're allowed.
That's what's amazing. And what's on our minds every morning?
Prevent us, O Lord, not from sin -- we stir the dust of it with every footfall --
but from nonchalance: a look unanswered, a kiss unrequited. Someone else
in our arms. And though words can't compass this tender of days,
let the one word be yes even if every step away concurs, Be it so.
Consider the foot, beloved, the hold it has on here.

Compton, Anne. "We Go Forward" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 152-3.

mystery of the verb - anne hebert

In a quiet country we received the passion of the world, naked sword laid on our two hands

Our heart had never known the light when that first was confided to us, and its glimmer deepened the shadow of our features

It was before all weakness, charity was alone
Preceding fear and shame.

It invented the universe in primal justice and we shared this vocation in the great vitality of our love.

Light and death within us received right of asylum, looked at each other with blind eyes, touched each other with careful hands.

Arrows of odour reached us, uniting us to the earth like wounds at a wedding marked by its excesses

O seasons, rivers, alders and ferns, leaves, flowers, wet wood, blue grasses, all our riches bleed their fragrance, animal musk beside us

Colours and sounds visited us in numbers and by small stunning groups, while the dream doubled our spell as the storm hems in the blue of an innocent eye

Joy set to crying out, a new mother smelling of game-birds among the reeds. Spring delivered was so fair that it took our hearts with one hand

The three strokes of the world's creation sounded in our ears and grew like the beating of our blood

In a single dizziness the instant was. Its flash passed over our face and we received a mission of fire and burning.

Silence, nothing moves or speaks, the world is founded, and lifts our hearts, seizes the world in a single stormy gesture, has us clinging to its dawn like the skin to fruit

All the quick earth, the forest on our right, the deep city to our left, right in the world's centre, we advance to the world's tip

Foreheads with curls where silence turns to stale musky shocks of hair, every grimace, aged faces, children's cheeks, loves, wrinkles, joys, mournings, creatures, creatures, tongues of fire at the earth's solstice

O my darkest brothers, all feasts engraved in secret; human breasts, musician gourds where captive voices rage

Let him who has received the function of the world take you in charge like an extra, shadowed heart, too full of shadows, never relent until the dead and living are justified in one single song among the dawns and grasses

Hebert, Anne. "Mystery of the Verb" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 58-9.

april is national poetry month!

as per the last few years, i will be posting a poem a day in honour of national poetry month (in both canada and the united states). 

there's no theme this year, other than that i think these are each beautiful or moving. 

feel free to make other suggestions or to share your responses/ reactions/ resonances.

a birthday poem for my wife

let's assume one foundational fact:
i love you. let's also assume
some other facts: know that you are
adored, appreciated, valued, cherished.

vocabulary sometimes fails me,
as i sometimes fail you in word & deed,
needing to place them in their right order --

visualizing their effect, how they might fill your heart with
light & hope & joy; how they change & yet remain.
in spite of it all -- my fumblings & oh, so feeble attempts,
earnest & well-intentioned, of varying success --
there is still this one incontrovertible fact: i love you.