Richard Cory

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Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine -- we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light, And went without the meat and cursed the bread, And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet in his head.

~ Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935)

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Poets Needed. Please Apply Within...

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"Of all nations the United States with veins full of potential stuffmost needs poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man... He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land... He supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace... If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it... He can make every word he speaks draw blood."

~ Walt Whitman

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Moonlight, Summer Moonlight

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'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, All soft and still and fair; The solemn hour of midnight Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending Their breezy boughs on high, Or stooping low are lending A shelter from the sky.

And there in those wild bowers A lovely form is laid; Green grass and dew-steeped flowers Wave gently round her head.

~ Emily Bronte

(Full moon tomorrow, July 15th at 06:40.)

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pity this busy monster

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pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness - electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself.

A world of made is not a world of born - pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if - listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

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~ E. E. Cummings (1944)

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I've Got Spring Fever, Bishes...

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TO THE THAWING WIND Come with rain, O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; Make the settled snow-bank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate'er you do to-night, Bathe my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ice will go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like a hermit's crucifix; Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o'er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.

~ Robert Frost

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Let It Be...

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"Introduction To Poetry" I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

~ Billy Collins

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The History Teacher

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Trying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.

~ Billy Collins

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Out Of Tune

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The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, Are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

~ William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850)

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The Investment

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Over back where they speak of life as staying("You couldn't call it living, for it ain't"), There was an old, old house renewed with paint, And in it a piano loudly playing.

Out in the ploughed ground in the cold a digger, Among the unearthed potatoes standing still, Was counting winter dinners, one a hill, With half an ear to the piano's vigor.

All that piano and new paint back there, Was it some money suddenly come into? Or some extravagance young love had been to? Or old love on an impulse not to care -

Not to sink under being man and wife, But get some color and music out of life?

~ Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)

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What Hurts The Soul?

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We tremble, thinking we're about to dissolveinto nonexistence, but nonexistence fears even more that it might be given human form!

Loving is the only pleasure. Other delights turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of its own essence. People focus on death and this material earth. They have doubts about soul water.

Those doubts can be reduced! Use night to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water are lovers. Let them stay up together.

When merchants eat their big meals and sleep their dead sleep, we night-thieves go to work.

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Love is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things.

Love is the mother. We are her children. She shines inside us, visible-invisible,

as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again.

~ Rumi (September 30, 1207 – December 17, 1273)

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For Each Other And All The One Anothers...

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~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

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