The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens


One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The More Loving One

by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

from Homage to Clio

Scientific Purposes

by Thomas Bernhard

A hairdresser who suddenly went mad and decapitated a duke, allegedly a member of the royal family, with a razor and who is now in the lunatic asylum in Reading-- formerly the famous Reading Jail-- is said to have declared himself ready to make his head available for those scientific purposes which, in his opinion, would be rewarded with the Nobel Prize within at least eight or ten years.

from The Voice Imitator

Snowy Morning Blues

by Charles Simic

The translator is a close reader.
He wears thick glasses
As he peers out of the window
At the snowy fields and bushed
That are like a sheet of paper
Covered with quick scribble
In a language he knows well enough,
Without knowing any words in it,

Only what the eyes discern,
And the heart intuits of its idiom.
So quiet now, not even a faint
Rustle of a page being turned
In a white and wordless dictionary
For the translator to avail himself
Before whatever word are there
Grow obscure in the coming darkness.

from My Noiseless Entourage

"I Wrung My Hands..."

by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz

I wrung my hands under my dark veil...
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
--Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate...
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all
in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain."
He smiled at me--oh so calmly, terribly--
and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?"
-Kiev, 1911

from Poems of Akhmatova

XII. On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour

by John Keats

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.
The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

House, Garden, Madness

by Cate Marvin

Meeting his mouth made it so I had house again.
I called him garden and drew him so, grew
his long lashes like grasses so I could comb
them with my stare. Some evenings a low cloud
would arrive, hang its anxiety over the yard.

Having his mouth at mine again gave me back
home. The walls painted themselves blue,
flowers grew larger than my head, stared
at me with wide eyes through the windows.
I was surrounded. A cloud stretched gray arms.

His mouth and mine again built something back
up with heat. The house was home again, wherever
I lived. The flower grew fat, fed on weeds
around them. Ladybugs tucked their red luck
beneath the petals' chin. The cloud came home again.

His eyes were closed but mine kept swinging open.
I saw him in the garden, surrounded by its light.
The flowers cut their own stalks, handed themselves
over to him in bunches. He kissed their bouquets,
and petals raptured. A cloud lowered, dark with fury.

I pressed my mouth to palm, closed my eyes
to find the garden, then saw: windows shut in fright,
roots drowned, flower stalks broken, their heads dead
in puddles. Startled, I looked around. The cloud
descended, prepared to hemorrhage in my arms.

from World's Tallest Disaster

God's List of Liquids

by Anne Carson

It was a November night of wind.
Leaves tore past the window.
God had the book of life open at PLEASURE

and was holding the pages down with one hand
because of the wind from the door
For I made their flesh as a sieve

wrote God at the top of the page
and then listed in order:
Alcohol
Blood
Gratitude
Memory
Semen
Song
Tears
Time.

Runaway Cafe I

by Marilyn Hacker

You hailed a cab outside the nondescript
yuppie bar on Lexington to go
downtown. Hug; hug; this time I brushed my lips
just across yours, and fire down below
in February flared. O bless and curse
what's waking up no wiser than it was.
I will not go to bed with you because
I want to very much. If that's perverse,
there are, you'll guess, perversions I'd prefer:
fill the lacunae in: one; two; three; four...
I did, cab gone. While my late bus didn't come
desire ticked over like a metronome.
For you, someone was waiting up at home.
For me, I might dare more if someone were.

from Love, Death, and the Changing of Seasons.

Inventory

by Dorothy Parker

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be thing things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

from Complete Poems

Spleen

by Frank O'Hara

I know so much
about things, I accept
so much, it's like
vomiting. And I am
nourished by the
shabbiness of my
knowing so much
about others and what
they do, and accepting
so much that I hate
as if I didn't know
what it is, to me.
And what it is to
them I know, and hate.

Worsening Situation

by John Ashbery

Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colors
Wash over me and are no help. Or like one
At a feast who eats not, for he cannot choose
From among the smoking dished. This severed hand
stands for life, and wander as it will,
East or west, north or south, it is ever
A stranger who walks beside me. O seasons,
Booths, chaleur, dark-hatted charlatans
On the outskirts of some rural fete,
The name you drop and never say is mine, mine!
Some day I'll claim to you how all used up
I am because of you but in the meantime the rid
Continues. Everyone is along for the ride,
It seems. Besides, what else is there?
The annual games? True, there are occasions
For white uniforms and a special langiage
Kept secret from the others. The limes
Are duly sliced. I know all this
But can't seem to keep it from affecting me,
Every day, all day. I've tried recreation,
Reading until late at night, train rides
And romance.
One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I've been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering
Starched white collars, wondering whether there's a way
To get them really white again. My wife
Thinks I'm in Oslo--Oslo, France, that is.

from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

TV Men: The Sleeper

by Anne Carson

The sleeper, real and dear, is carved on the dark.
Minerals of sleep travelling into him.
Travelling out of him.
Signal leaps in his wrist.
Caught to me, caught to my nerve.

Night kneels over the sleeper.
Where did his journey begin, where will
it burn through to?
And what does he swim for now.
Swim, sleeper, swim.


Your peace as an evangelist to me.
Your transformations unknown.
I study your sleeping form
at the bottom of the pool
like a house I could return to,

like a head to be cradled in the arms.
Unless you are asleep I cannot make my way
across the night
and through my isolation.
Your small hands lap at the wave.

And contradict everything her, passion
a whole darkness swung against the kind of sleep we
know,
the stumbled-into sleep of lanterns clipped on for tour of the mine.
You dove once

into your privatest presentiment
and stayed, face down in your black overcoat.
To my wonder.
Endlessness runs in your like leaves on the tree of night.
To live here one must forget much.


from Glass, Irony, and God

Tensions in the Rocks

by John Ashbery


They changed for dinner. In those days
no one was in a hurry, it was real time
every time. Usually the streets were saddled with fog
at night. In the daytime it mostly blew away.
We kept on living because we knew how.
Maple seeds like paperclips skittered in the allees.
We knew not how many enthusiasts climbed the slope,
nor how long they took. It was, in the words of one,
"beholding" not to know. We eased by.

You can see how the past has come to pass
in the ferns and the sweepings of ore and text
that shadowed such narratives as had been scratched,
as though any hotel guest could wipe the blight away
and in so doing, be redeemed for the moment.
I tell you it was not unseemly.
Little girls gathered in groves to see the wish spelled out,
yet under the hemlocks all was moulting, a fury
of notations, obliterated. We knew who to thank
for the postcard. It was signed, "Love, Harold and Olive."

from Where Shall I Wander