April 6, 2021: Love the Wild Swan by Robinson Jeffers in Oxford Anthology of Amer. Lit., pg 1,382

 Love the Wild Swan

'I HATE my verses, every line, every word
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to a twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things,
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings'
--This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast,
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?  At least
Love your eyes that you can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings.
Love the wild swan.

April 5, 2021: Isolation

               Isolation 

Yes:   I’m in my cage.

“freedom”

I shouted from the walls on the hill.

The echoing voice laughed shrill

Ee dumb

Ee dumb

Ee dumb

“leave alone!” cried the stones.

“The stars are too far,

And the moon’s

Not around

As the clock calls us all to lunch

And eats us.”

The bugs giggle in the grass,

But the snake is stern.

A breeze passes through and is gone

From my soul.

It leaves me staring at the stones

All alone but together,

Building the walls of my cage on the hill.

April 5, 2021: Because I Could Not Stop For Death by Emily Dickinson in the U.S. in Lit., page 433

 Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground,
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

April 4, 2021: Trouble Returning to Camp

               Trouble Returning to Camp

 

The rocks have changed

From orange to brown to gray.

I’m still unable to find my way.

It’s as though somehow they’ve re-arranged.

No matter how I’ve looked and looked,

I can’t find the place where I crossed the brook.

 

And the hills – not so far,

Changed from yellow and green to sultry black.

It’s useless anymore to try to go back.

The sky is opening, star by star.

I look for my flashlight in the base of my pack.

It has so many pockets.  Hard to keep track.

 

I’ll build me a fire.

Dry wood is abundant and I find it in piles.

But also, so are the reptiles!

Seeking my comfort is my present desire.

I haven't the heart to hike -- how many miles?

My friends will be worried.  I'll bring them a smile.

 

All I have is right here:

Here, in this clearing, where the stream takes a bend.

I am alone with my instincts, on which I depend.

I have little to fear:

No cause to explain what I didn't intend:

I may be lost, but this isn’t the end.

April 4, 2021: Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden in The United States in Lit., page 545

 Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters:  how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance:  how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

April 3, 2021 -- Rising Stream

               Rising Stream

 

Every day,

Just going along.

We deal with stuff,

Or we figure wrong,

And we sing our songs.

 

We go through our changes.

We remember our dreams,

And we turn the pages,

Or we blow off steam,

While life seems to flow like a stream.

 

Except now, the stream is rising,

And the height it reaches might be surprising,

And at a certain point there’ll be no disguising

That hell’s breaking loose and it’s time to get ready!

 

The rain keeps on falling,

And it’s going to flood.

Don’t know what’ll happen, but you got to keep steady:

Pile up the sand bags to keep out the mud,

And feel your love as it pumps in your blood.

April 3, 2021: The Bath by Jose-Maria de Heredia, "Adventures in World Lit.", page 766

 The Bath

As might a centaur, man and beast in one,
  Into the surf they plunge, naked and free;
  Powdered with golden mist, they seem to be
Athletes of bronze aglow beneath the sun.
The rustic rider and wild stallion
  Breathe in the briny odor thirstily,
  And as they meet the chill surge of the sea
Through flesh and mane delicious shivers run.
The wave swells, rushes, rises like a wall,
  Then breaks in foam.  The bathers shout and neigh
  And from the stallion's tail blue showers fly;
Mane streaming wild, he rears against the sky,
Then dark breasts cleave the billows as they fall
  Whipped into frothing cataracts of spray.