brown penny

i whispered, "i am too young,"
and then, "i am old enough";
wherefore i threw a penny
to find out if i might love.

"go and love, go and love, young man,
if the lady be young and fair."
ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
i am looped in the loops of her hair.

o love is the crooked thing,
there is nobody wise enough
to find out all that is in it,
for he would be thinking of love.

till the stars had run away
and the shadows eaten the moon.
ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
one cannot begin it too soon.

- william butler yeats

a clear midnight

this is the hour o soul, thy free flight into the worldless,
away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
night, sleep, and the stars.


- walt whitman

owachomo bridge at night, utah

for a poet

i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
and laid them away in a box of gold;
where long will cling the lips of the moth,
i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
i hide no hate; i am not even wroth
who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
and laid them away in a box of gold.

- countee cullen

thirteen footnotes in search of a poem

1 A reference to his first love affair.

2 Its tragic sensibility co-opted forever, it is now a part of television comedy lore and legend.

3 Another use of his iconic cedar hedge, perennially surrounded by blooming African-lilies, Goat’s beards, Bee balms and Four-o'clocks.

4 A Yiddish word meaning “lost person” or “fool.” Similar to putz or shmuck, but without the sexual/genital innuendo.

5 Thrift, thrift Horatio! the funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the wedding tables. His favorite lines from “Hamlet,” he often remarked how “contemporary” they sounded.

6 30 Pounds Sterling, and too, a reference to Judas’s 30 pieces of silver.

7 See Michael Ostroff and Lawrence Trachtenberg, “Umvelt, Mitvelt, and Eigenvelt, The Journal of Cultural Phenomenology, Vol. 12, July, (1988) 12–43. The issue is addressed again by Ronald Housman in his insightful piece: “Yehuda Amichai,” Tanach: A Journal of Ideas 31 (1996) 53–85

8 The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz, writ. J. Epstein, P. Epstein, H Koch, C. Robinson (uncredited), perf. Claude Rains, DVD, Warner Brothers, 1942

9 For a brilliant exegesis of this most central theme in his work see: Dr. Marjorie Saunders, “Mimesis and Family Myth,” Poetry, Image, and Id, Lon Berk Ed., Washington Universe Press, St. Louis, 1976 204–310

10 IBID. Editor’s Introduction 4–10

11 Clearly, the poetry of this his last period, (after 1970), shows little of his famous / infamous self-abnegation.

12 cf. Funeral baked meats

13 “Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” Author Unknown.


- Matthew Sisson

children playing in the rain, bangladesh

meggie

"the day that i first saw you at the gilly station, you smiled at me, then you said my name. then you touched me. and since that day, i have somehow known, though i never saw you again, that my last thought this side of the grave would be of you."

roald dahl

"we have so much time and so little to do. strike that, reverse it."

the voice project