OFFERING
I made a poem going
to sleep last night, woke
in sunlight, it was clean forgotten.
If it was any good, gods
of the great darkness
where sleep goes and farther
death goes, you not named,
then as true offering
accept it.
-Ursula Le Guin
The last stanza of this poem brings to mind the advice to “Die before you die.” It has been attributed to Rumi and to C.S. Lewis, and I’ve heard Orthodox Christians echo the saying. St. Paul said, “I die daily,” and also, “I am crucified with Christ.” Whatever all these people meant, our final death we are definitely instructed to keep in mind, and as the poet says, “learn” something about it — though it’s not clear that he was numbering his days in the Christian fashion.
But it was the second stanza that caught my attention here, Larkin’s description of the disorienting effect of considering time and ageing. The images capture what I often feel.
I HAVE STARTED TO SAY
I have started to say
“A quarter of a century”
Or “thirty years back”
About my own life.
It makes me breathless
It’s like falling and recovering
In huge gesturing loops
Through an empty sky.
All that’s left to happen
Is some deaths (my own included).
Their order, and their manner,
Remain to be learnt.
-Philip Larkin
ROMANCE
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
FOOD
Tomatoes bring love.
Potatoes raise consciousness.
Onions spring compassion.
Mulberries promote change.
Corn is a generous mother.
Artichokes are modest knights.
You cannot love thy neighbor
without eating your vegetables.
You can stop world wars
with the kindness of a single fruit cup.
-Katerina Stoykova
This poem is for me like a series of riddles, or an exercise in analogies: How is an artichoke like a knight? And so on. A couple of them are pretty easy, but I am not savvy enough to know all the allusions here, much as I love vegetables, and fruits. But I try to love them purely, for what they are in themselves, which is: recurring miracles.
