[Reading Auden today for my 20th-century British Poetry and Prose class. I was particularly struck by this poem and its matter-of-fact tone. It seems to point out the indifference of the world, the universe, and other humans to individual suffering. And not only suffering, but the mundane aspects of daily life make us miss the [...]
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He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread lightly because [...]
An Ancient Gesture
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: Penelope did this too. And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day And undoing it all through the night; Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight; And along towards morning, when you think it will [...]
Valediction
Lady with the frilled blouse And simple tartan skirt, Since you have left the house Its emptiness has hurt All thought. In your presence Time rode easy, anchored On a smile; but absence Rocked love’s balance, unmoored The days. They buck and bound Across the calendar Pitched from the quiet sound Of your flower-tender Voice. [...]
Journey
But whom does this bring peace? The classic war between a passion and responsibility is never finished, and has been the same to the sea-wanderer and the one on shore, now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant’s boulder heaved the trough from which the [...]
The Sea Call
When Odysseus met Tieresias in the underworld, the prophet told him that he would reach home, but would then take another journey to a land where people live who know nothing of the sea. In this excerpt from a modern sequel to the Odyssey by the twentieth-century Greek poet Nicos Kazantzakis, Odysseus has returned to [...]
O Mistress Mine
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know. What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure: [...]
