Category Archives: poetry

Lifting your eyes, you realize.

poetry, , , , ,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 JANUARY 1965

The Wise Men will unlearn your name.
Above your head no star will flame.
One weary sound will be the same—
the hoarse roar of the gale.
The shadows fall from your tired eyes
as your lone bedside candle dies,
for here the calendar breeds nights
till stores of candles fail.

What prompts this melancholy key?
A long familiar melody.
It sounds again. So let it be.
Let it sound from this night.
Let it sound in my hour of  death—
as gratefulness of eyes and lips
for that which sometimes makes us lift
our gaze to the far sky.

You glare in silence at the wall.
Your stocking gapes: no gifts at all.
It’s clear that you are now too old
to trust in good Saint Nick;
that it’s too late for miracles.
—But suddenly, lifting your eyes
to heaven’s light, you realize:
your life is a sheer gift.

From Nativity Poems by Joseph Brodsky, translated by George L. Kline

We have lost our easy sleep.

poetry, winter, ,

I read these lines in Albert’s poem last December, and made a note to share them with you this year. They are just a bit of the whole, which is titled: “A CHRISTMAS STORY.”

Though winter has only just begun.
Something grey and heavy weighs
Upon us. It’s in the air.

What does it take for a year to glow
Even at the end? 

His elaboration on “something grey” is vivid and all too familiar; it was familiar even last winter! And the description of how to break free of the weight — well, it’s worth a click.

 Read it all here.

Lament for a Stone

history, poetry, saints, ,

LAMENT FOR A STONE

The bay where I found you faced the long light
of the west glowing under the cold sky

there Columba as the story goes looked
back and could not see Ireland any more

therefore he could stay he made up his mind
in that slur of the sea on the shingle

shaped in a fan around the broad crescent
formed all of green pebbles found nowhere else

flecked with red held in blue depths and polished
smooth as water by rolling like water

along each other rocking as they were
rocking at his feet it is said that they

are proof against drowning and I saw you
had the shape of the long heart of a bird

and when I took you in my palm we flew
through the years hearing them rush under us

where have you flown now leaving me to hear
that sound along without you in my hand

W.S. Merwin

St. Columba's Bay Iona
St. Columba’s Bay, Iona

 

The Elm Log

nature, poetry, trees,

THE ELM LOG

“We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground – and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.

“We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner’s block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours.”

― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Stories and Prose Poems