Category Archives: poetry

Rain and a hundred connections.

It’s still raining here, but it’s not hailing, and the air is warmer. So it’s a day when I can imagine spending time in the elements with someone you love, and this poem I’ve been wanting to share finally fits the mood of the season, and the current weather. On our honeymoon in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, my beloved and I walked in rain under redwood trees, and it wasn’t the last time. Here’s to all the rainy days when we’ve been in love with somebody and with life.

ANNIVERSARY POEM

Remember that day in the rain
at the park where we used to meet,

how we took and we gave,
and what couldn’t be spoken

was nevertheless contained
in what we were able to say,

well, it’s raining again
and it’s the body, I realize,

that stores memory
and sends it, when keyed,

to those long unvisited
regions of the brain – remember

that steady collision
of rain and branch and leaf,

a hundred connections
happening at once,

long before I said I do.
I was saying I will and Let’s.

-Stephen Dunn

What late was hidden in the heart.

LOVE’S BONDMAN

Great joy it were to me to join the throng
That thy celestial throne, O Lord, surround,
Where perfect peace and pardon shall be found,
Peace for good doings, pardon for the wrong;
Great joy to hear the vault of heaven prolong
That everlasting trumpet’s mighty sound,
That shall to each award their final bound,
Wailing to these, to those the blissful song.
All this, dear Lord, were welcome to my soul,
For on his brow then every one shall bear
Inscribed, what late was hidden in the heart;
And round my forehead wreath’d a lettered scroll
Shall in this tenor my sad fate declare:
“Love’s bondman, I from him might never part.”

-Fra Guittone d’Arezzo (c. 1235–1294)
……Translated by Henry Francis Cary

 

 

Like a face one has loved.

PRUNING TREES

Trees growing–right in front of my window;
The trees are high and the leaves thick.
Sad alas! the distant mountain view
Obscured by this, dimly shows through.
One morning I took knife and axe;
With my own hand I lopped the branches off.
Ten thousand leaves fall about my head;
A thousand hills come before my eyes.
Suddenly, as when clouds or mists break
And straight through, the blue sky appears;
Again, like the face of a friend one has loved
Seen at last after an age of parting.
First there came a gentle wind blowing;
One by one the birds flew back to the tree.
To ease my mind I gazed to the South East;
As my eyes wandered, my thoughts went far away.
Of men there is none that has not some preference;
Of things there is none but mixes good with ill.
It was not that I did not love the tender branches;
But better still -– to see the green hills!

-Po Chü-i

China, 9th century
Translated by Arthur Waley

Central Valley of California

 

The Burning of the Books

THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cart loads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me. Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!

-Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956

 Opera Square in Berlin, Germany on May 10, 1933