It's my birthday and not in a terribly good way. This is a translation by Basil Bunting of a Persian poet:
When the sword of sixty comes nigh his head
give a man no wine, for he is drunk with years.
Age claps a stick in my bridle-hand:
substance spent, health broken,
forgotten the skill to swerve aside from the joust
with the spearhead grazing my eyelashes.
The sentinel perched on the hill top
cannot see the countless army he used to see there:
the black summit's deep in snow
and its lord himself sinning against the army.
He was proud of his two swift couriers:
lo! sixty ruffians have put them in chains.
The singer is weary of his broken voice,
one drone for the bulbul alike and the lion's grousing.
Alas for flowery, musky sappy thirty
and the sharp Persian sword!
The pheasant strutting about the briar,
pomegranate-blossom and cypress sprig!
Since I raised my glass to fifty-eight
I have toasted only the bier and the burial-ground.
I ask the just Creator
so much refuge from Time
that a tale of mine may remain in the world
from this famous book of the ancients
and they who speak of such matters weighing their words
think of that only when they think of me.
Hakim Abu'l-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi Firdowsi
(Ferdosi)
Originally posted by finneganfinnegan, all the best and every belated good wish on your birthday. Thanks for the poem; I enjoyed it.
It's my birthday and not in a terribly good way. This is a translation by Basil Bunting of a Persian poet:
When the sword of sixty comes nigh his head
give a man no wine, for he is drunk with years.
Age claps a stick in my bridle-hand:
substance spent, health broken,
forgotten the skill to swerve aside from the joust
with the spearhead grazing my ...[text shortened]... nk of that only when they think of me.
Hakim Abu'l-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi Firdowsi
(Ferdosi)
Pot Roast
I gaze upon the roast,
that is sliced and laid out
on my plate,
and over it
I spoon the juices
of carrot and onion.
And for once I do not regret
the passage of time.
I sit by a window
that looks
on the soot-stained brick of buildings
and do not care that I see
no living thing—not a bird,
not a branch in bloom,
not a soul moving
in the rooms
behind the dark panes.
These days when there is little
to love or to praise
one could do worse
than yield
to the power of food.
So I bend
to inhale
the steam that rises
from my plate, and I think
of the first time
I tasted a roast
like this.
It was years ago
in Seabright,
Nova Scotia;
my mother leaned
over my dish and filled it
and when I finished
filled it again.
I remember the gravy,
its odor of garlic and celery,
and sopping it up
with pieces of bread.
And now
I taste it again.
The meat of memory.
The meat of no change.
I raise my fork
and I eat.
"Pot Roast" by Mark Strand from
New Selected Poems. © Knopf, 2007.
Birds and Bees
When my daughter starts asking I realize
I don't know which, if any, birds
have penises. I can't picture how swans
do it. I'm even confused about bees:
that fat queen and her neurotic workers,
her children grown in cells. I'm worried
by turtles and snakes: their parts hidden
in places I have never seen. How do they
undress? Long ago, awash in college
boyfriends, I knew a little about sex.
I understood the dances and calls,
the pretty plumage. Now, I am as ignorant
as a child. We have gone to the library
to find books though I know sex
is too wild for words. The desire to be
kissed is the desire to live forever
in the mouth of pleasure. My God
I can never tell my daughter the truth.
It is a secret the way spring is a secret,
buried in February's fields. It is a secret
the way babies are a secret: hidden
by skin or egg, their bodies made of darkness.
by Faith Shearin
"Birds and Bees" by Faith Shearin from Moving the Piano.
© Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2011
Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet
Here is a genial congregation,
well fed and rosy with health and appetite,
robust children in tow. They have come
and all the generations of them, to be fed,
their old ones too who are eligible now
for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.
Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,
heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.
Here there is good will; here peace
on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits
of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance,
here is the promised
land of milk and honey, out of which
a flank of the fatted calf, thick still
on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction
over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter.
"Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet" by Anne Caston
from Flying Out with the Wounded. © New York University Press, 1997
WODWO
What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over
Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge
I enter water. What am I to split
The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed
Of the river above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find
this frog so interesting as I inspect it's most secret
interior and make it my own? Do these weeds
know me and name me to each other have they
seen me before, do I fit in their world? I seem
separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped
out of nothing casually I've no threads
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere
I seem to have been given the freedom
of this place what am I then? And picking
bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me
no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it
m and doing that have coincided very queerly
But what shall I be called am I the first
have I an owner what shape am I what
Shape am I huge if I go
to the end of this way past these trees and past these trees
till I get tired that's touching one wall of me
for the moment if I sit still how everything
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre
but there's all this what is it roots
roots roots roots and here's the water
again very queer but I'll go on looking.
Ted Hughes: Poet Laureate 1984 - 1998
(In the mythology of the British Isles the Wodwo is a "wild man", a missing link between forest creatures. Ted Hughes takes us directly into the mind of the wild man himself as he snuffles around the side of a creek.
Originally posted by Pianoman1... a "wild man" with the same self consciousness, mentality, sensitivities and unanswered questions as you and I. Nice.
WODWO
What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over
Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge
I enter water. What am I to split
The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed
Of the river above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find
this frog so interesting as I inspect it's most secret
interio ...[text shortened]... kes us directly into the mind of the wild man himself as he snuffles around the side of a creek.
Here's a complete change of pace:
The Pig
by Anonymous
It was the first of May
A lovely warm spring day
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter
When a lady passing by did softly say
'You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses' — And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
"The Pig" by Anonymous. Public domain.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/05/01
The Last Things I'll Remember
The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.
Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.
Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy
as fruit, drooping their deep heads
on the dog house roof.
Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods,
a tractor shifting from one gear into
the next, the throttle opened,
the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river,
the drone of the hammer mill,
milk machines at dawn.
"The Last Things I'll Remember" by Joyce Sutphen
from First Words. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2010.
________________________________________________________
"It's the birthday of the poet who wrote the lines, "I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by," in his poem "Sea Fever": John Masefield (books by this author), born in Ledbury, England (1878). An orphan, Masefield was sent to live with an aunt, who soon sent him off on a naval training school ship, convinced it would break his bad habit of reading all the time. In fact, Masefield had lots of spare time aboard the ship, and read more than ever. Within four years, determined to be a writer, he deserted ship in New York City. He got work in a carpet factory and saved enough money to return to England, where he married and began publishing. Masefield was chosen as the U.K.'s poet laureate in 1930 — a post he kept for 37 years, second in duration only to Tennyson."
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/archive.php
No Problem
by Kevin McCaffrey
The problem is there is no problem and
the problem solvers have nothing to do
so they start creating problems out
of thin air, out of nothing. Then the problem
is not to see that there are big problems
everywhere and it is woe unto
him or her who cannot see or who will
not acknowledge the problems—they become
part of the problem, a big part of it,
their apathy or obstinacy holding
progress back until they are educated
to the fact that, one, there are big problems,
and, two, if you are not part of solving
them then you represent the problem
the problem solvers have been talking about
all along. So you see now how it is:
there is no problem worse than no problem.
"No Problem" by Kevin McCaffrey from Laughing Cult. © Four Winds Press, 2014.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/06/06
Vernal Sentiment
Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places,
The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green,
And boys moon at girls with last year's fatuous faces,
I never am bored, however familiar the scene.
When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter,—
Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between,—
Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter:
I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.
"Vernal Sentiment" by Theodore Roethke from The Collected Poems
of Theodore Roethke. © Anchor Books, 1974
Young and Old
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.
When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.
"Young and Old" by Charles Kingsley.
Public Domain (Writers Almanac)
Marrying Late
When I think of what it means not to marry
the high school sweetheart, but to find each other
as we did at ages thirty and forty, I think
of John and I singing along to an old cassette
of Jackson Browne on car trips, and how, as we sing,
a part of me is hearing the song for the first time
in Detroit, on WRIF with my first boyfriend
in his truck as he took curves, shifting hard and fast.
And probably John is making love with a black-haired girl
in the carpeted back of his van in 1979, out west,
the cassette new and popular, draining the battery.
How unlikely that we ended up traveling together
singing a song we each learned with someone else.
Neither of us minds that, the way we might have then.
"Marrying Late" from The Alphabet Not Unlike the World
by Katrina Vandenberg (Milkweed Editions, 2004)
'Salutation'
O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen the fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972)