More Midweek Poetry

Here, courtesy of Davey Talbot's PoemaDay, is a portion of a poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

From Proverbs and Songs (translated by Robert Bly)

XX
Sing on, sing on, sing on,
the cricket in his cage
near his darling tomato.

XXI
Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them.

XXIV
Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin.

XXV
But don't hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance.

XXVI
What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you.

.........................

XXXIV
If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it's OK:
gold is chosen for coins.

XXXVI
Sunlight is good for waking,
but I prefer bells --
the best thing about morning.

XXXIX
Now, poet, your prophecy?
"Tomorrow what is dumb will speak,
the human heart and the stone.

XXXI
Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart."

Midweek Poetry Fix

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring--
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worth the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Said the Three-Year-Old Boy

As he colored his map of the United States: "We live in California, over here are the other states, and this one in the middle is Mashed Potato!" Also, "Lions only ride on trains if they can bring their books with them."

Signs of Spring

You know spring is in the air when you spot:
Three boys in aprons (two out of three with flowers!)

Flowering fruit trees (peach and plum, to be precise)

One grey cat dozing amidst the flowers

And daffodils, of course!

I know, I know, it's only February, but in Southern California we have to take what we can get. Days of rain alternating with sunny, breezy days, blossoms and new leaves on the fruit trees, and blooming bulbs are as springy as anyone could wish.

Why Write?

"It seems vain to add to the litter. Who can design a new leaf? The patterns from bud to unfolding, and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. But that is not true. The seed of the tree can be replanted in almost any soil, even in one so smoke-ridden (as Lang said) as that of England. Spring is, of course, not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events: like events, never from world's beginning to world's end the same event. Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men."
From "On Fairy-Stories" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Regarding Richard Wilbur

For those who want to know more about Richard Wilbur, here's a lovely article from the Harvard Magazine- the author, Craig Lambert, describes Wilbur as having a "Mozartean felicity with verse." Isn't that a beautiful phrase?

The Care and Feeding of Small Children

In true spinster fashion, I have now become a teacher of small children. I'm teaching a pre-school playgroup of three-year-olds two days a week. It is a hallmark of a certain type of spinsterhood to borrow other people's children to make up for not having your own, and these kids certainly are a joy to be around- they are bright, funny, curious, and loving, and they view the world in that astonished, joyful and yet completely serious way that young children have. Because I've been spending so much time with small children, I've been thinking about what a responsibility it is to have the care of young minds and souls. This poem by Richard Wilbur has been on my mind, so I thought I'd share it.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.