breeding lilacs from the dead ground

[harborshore]

I appear to be experiencing the only good thing to ever come from period cramps: they improve your circulation, and consequently my crick in the neck (that had me in such pain yesterday I could barely move off the couch and had me going home an hour early from work) is improving. Mobility, you guys, I kind of like it. (Even if I'm in a different kind of pain right now.)

Today is World Poetry Day, they're telling me (♥), and so, here, because it's late and I'm rather tired:


The Sciences Sing a Lullaby


Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

--Albert Goldbarth

First given to me (and I do think of it as a gift) by novembersmith. Thank you, dearest.

If you want to add your own calm or joyful or sleepy or spring-like or thundery poems, feel free. Or just read that one over, let it help with the breathing.

Comments

[roadmarks.livejournal.com]

That poem is exactly what I needed right now. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Isn't it the best? ♥ So restful.

[novembersmith.livejournal.com]

&you;

"People Like Us"
Robert Bly

There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and
people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
you're safe.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

&you;, for real

And oh, that is beautiful. Redeems Robert Bly a bit for me.

[desfinado.livejournal.com]

God, that was beautiful. Mmmm, the earth ♥ Thank you for sharing!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Always, man. You can count on me for poetry. ♥

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

♥

Sue Hubbard, 'Eurydice'

I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,

the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.

Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train's wet glass,

will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards

of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge.

Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.

You turned to look.
Second fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.

This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.

Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.

I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.

Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

God, that is stunning. Thank you, darling. ♥

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

- Czeslaw Milosz, "A Song On the End of the World"

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.