THANKSGIVING

As the sun rose this Thanksgiving morning, gradually warming the fields and woodlands that surround our new home in South Carolina, I remembered a Denise Levertov song of praise that I recently discovered.  It's an excerpt from Levertov's long poem, Mass For The Day of St. Thomas Didymus, and it expresses much of what I feel on this day — a deep sense of gratitude for the daily unfolding of life; for simple, overlooked things like light and shadow; and for the mysterious forces that continue to give meaning to our lives through "flow and change, night and the pulse of day."  Perhaps you, too, will be inspired by the poem.

                                                            ii Gloria

by Denise Levertov

                                Praise the wet snow

                                         falling early.

                                Praise the shadow

                                         my neighbor's chimney casts on the tile roof

                                even this gray October day that should, they say,

                                have been golden.

                                                 Praise

                                the invisible sun burning beyond

                                     the white cold sky, giving us

                                light and the chimney's shadow.

                                Praise

                                god or the gods, the unknown,

                                that which imagined us, which stays

                                our hand,

                                our murderous hand,

                                                     and gives us

                                still,

                                in the shadow of death,

                                             our daily life,

                                             and the dream still

                                of goodwill, of peace on earth.

                                Praise

                                flow and change, night and 

                                the pulse of day.

                       HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVERYONE!

SMALL POEMS, BIG IDEAS

Robert Frost famously wrote that "happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."  The same might also be said for poetry.  In my view, some of the shortest poems have the deepest meanings.

Set forth below are a few of the small poems that are included in the poetry anthologies I've been reading this winter.  If you have a favorite small poem and would like to include it in your comments, please feel free to do so.

                                            THE RED WHEELBARROW
                                                 William Carlos Williams


                                                      so much depends
                                                      upon


                                                      a red wheel 
                                                      barrow


                                                      glazed with rain
                                                      water


                                                      beside the white
                                                      chickens


                                                 THE SECRET SITS
                                                        Robert Frost
                                                         
                                   We dance round in a ring and suppose,
                                   But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.


                                                          COMMENT
                                                        Dorothy Parker


                                     Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
                                     A medley of extemporanea;
                                     And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
                                     And I am Marie of Roumania.


                                      TODAY, LIKE EVERY OTHER DAY
                                                                 Rumi


                                  Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
                                  and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
                                  and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.


                                  Let the beauty we love be what we do.
                                  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.


                                                LOVING THE RITUALS
                                               Palladus (4th Century A.D.)


                                      Loving the rituals that keep men close,
                                      Nature created means for friends apart;


                                      pen, paper, ink, the alphabet,
                                      signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.


                                                               WITNESS
                                                           Denise Levertov


                                                   Sometimes the mountain
                                                   is hidden from me in veils
                                                   of cloud, sometimes
                                                   I am hidden from the mountain
                                                   in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
                                                   when I forget or refuse to go
                                                   down to the shore or a few yards
                                                   up the road, on a clear day,
                                                   to reconfirm
                                                   that witnessing presence.


                                                           AUTO MIRROR
                                                           Adam Zagajewski
                                    (translation by Czelaw Milosz and Robert Hass)


                                               In the rear-view mirror suddenly
                                               I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral; 
                                               great things dwell in small ones
                                               for a moment.


                                                        A LONG LIFETIME
                                                           Kenneth Rexroth


                                                        A long lifetime
                                                        Peoples and places
                                                        And the crisis of mankind—
                                                        What survives is the crystal—
                                                        Infinitely small—
                                                        Infinitely large—


                                                        MY FIFTIETH YEAR
                                                         William Butler Yeats


                                               My fiftieth year had come and gone,
                                               I sat, a solitary man,
                                               In a crowded London shop,
                                               An open book and empty cup
                                               On a marble table-top.


                                               While on the shop and the street I gazed
                                               My body of a sudden blazed;
                                               And twenty minutes more or less
                                               It seemed, so great my happiness,
                                               That I was blessed and could bless.

AUTUMN WHISPERS

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.

Thomas Wolfe

Nothing stirs the soul like autumn.  We awake from the nepenthean sleep of summer and witness something even more beautiful than we imagined —  more beautiful perhaps because we are forced the recognize the transient nature of what we love.  It is a time for reckoning,  a time to discard the frivolous and return to our essence, a time to prepare for the coming winter.  That is why, as Thomas Wolfe observed, all things point to home in late October.  Home is the place where our hearts find solace, the place where our authentic lives are rooted, the place where we will wait like the ancients for the reassurance of another spring.

Some of our finest poets have meditated on the implications of autumn for the human spirit.  What they have to say is much of what I feel during these closing days of October. What you take from these poems will depend upon where you are at this point in your own personal journey.  Enjoy.

                                    A certain day became a presence to me;

                                    there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:

                                    a being.  And before it started to descend

                                    from the height of noon, it leaned over

                                    and struck my shoulder as if with

                                    the flat of a sword, granting me

                                    honor and a task.  The day's blow

                                    rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

                                    and what I heard was my whole self 

                                    saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

"Variation on a Theme by Rilke"

                                     Withered vines, gnarled trees, twilight crows,

                                     river flowing beneath the little bridge,

                                     past someone's home.

                                     The wind blows from the west

                                     where the sun sets, it blows

                                     across the ancient road,

                                     across the bony horse,

                                     across the despairing man

                                     who stands at heaven's edge.

Ma Chih-Yuan

"Meditation in Autumn"

                                     Nature's first green is gold,
                                     Her hardest hue to hold.
                                     Her early leaf's a flower;
                                     But only so an hour.
                                     Then leaf subsides to leaf.
                                     So Eden sank to grief,
                                     So dawn goes down to day.
                                     Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

         

                                  Lord, it is time.  The summer was so great,

                                  Impose upon the sundials now your shadows

                                  and round the meadows let the winds rotate.

                                      

                                  Command the last fruits to incarnadine;

                                  vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness,

                                  yet two more south-like days; and that last

                                        sweetness,

                                  inveigle it into the heavy vine.

                                  He'll not build now, who has no house awaiting.

                                  Who's now alone, for long will so remain:

                                  sit late, read, write long letters, and again

                                  return to restless perambulating

                                  the avenues of parks when leaves downrain.

Rilke

"Autumn Day"

                                   The leaves are falling, falling as from far,

                                    as though above were withering farthest gardens;

                                    they fall with a denying attitude.

                                    And by night, down into solitude,

                                    the heavy earth falls far from every star.

                                    We are all falling.  This hand's falling too —

                                    and have this falling-sickness none withstands.

                                    And yet there's One whose gently-holding hands

                                    this universal falling can't fall through.

   

Rilke
"Autumn"

Peace to Everyone!