The Great Explosion

The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each
other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae
like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.
No wonder we are so fascinated with
fireworks
And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
the howling fireblast that we were born from.
But the whole sum of the energies
That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will
gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the
whole universe beats like a heart.
Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back
and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His
terrible life.
He is beautiful beyond belief.
And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.
We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.
He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care
and will never cease. Look at the seas there
Flashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the
tide-stream stars--and the fall of nations--and dawn
Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to
meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.
The great explosion is probably only a metaphor--I know not
--of faceless violence, the root of all things.

Robinson Jeffers

(this poem was passed on to me by a very cool Bukowski fan.)

Impervious to Starlight

...

Life keeps insisting. Nights I worry
about the spiders inside the vacuum cleaner.
I notice the squirrels look simian bounding,
foot over branch, about the trees
and I wonder if I wasted my youth
imagining this future.



excerpt from Jennifer Moxley's "The Sense Record"

Like a Flower

Sometimes in the water
like a flower
will devour

water

flower

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?


William Carlos Williams

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems to be dead in winter
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


Pablo Neruda
(thanks to Tom, the President of Naropa)

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
The fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
Burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
In that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?.

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
When I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight
And my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
Toward the twilight erasing statues.


Pablo Neruda

When I am dead, my dearest

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.


Christina Rossetti

The Hug

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
_____Half of the night with our old friend
__________Who'd showed us in the end
_____To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
__________Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
__________Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
__________Your instep to my heel,
_____My shoulder-blades against your chest.
_____It was not sex, but I could feel
_____The whole strength of your body set,
_______________Or braced, to mine,
___________And locking me to you
_____As if we were still twenty-two
_____When our grand passion had not yet
___________Become familial.
_____My quick sleep had deleted all
_____Of intervening time and place.
___________I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.


Thom Gunn

Nothing will Die

When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, O, never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;
All things will change
Thro’ eternity.
’Tis the world’s winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro’ and thro’,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill’d with life anew.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro’ eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.


Alfred Lord Tennyson

(John Merrick's mother whispers sections of this poem at the end of David Lynch's film "The Elephant Man")

Gedicht pro Tag

Not only is it important to me that I create and share my own poetry, it is important to share my favorite poetry that is created by others. Most of these Poem per Day's will be published writers, but I also have poet and poetess friends with great talent, and with their consent I would like to spread their word as well.

I'd like this blog to be a forum for discussion of the poems posted, or suggestions as to what I should/could post.

Please feel free to comment!!! Forum!