It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
~ William Carlos Williams, excerpt from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower“
Author: Christina's Words
“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford
“Today and Two Thousand Years from Now” by Philip Levine
The job is over. We stand under the trees
waiting to be told what to do,
but the job is over.
The darkness pours between the branches above,
but the moon’s not yet
on its walk
through the night sky trailed by stars.
Suddenly a match flares, I see
there are only us two,
you and me, alone together in the great room
of the night world, two laborers
with nothing to do,
so I lean to the little flame and light my Lucky
and thank you, comrade, and again
we are in the dark.
Let me now predict the future. Two thousand years
from now we two will be older,
wiser, having escaped
the fleeting incarnations of workingmen.
We will have risen from the earth
of southern Michigan
through the tangled roots of Chinese elms
or ancient rosebushes to take
the tainted air
into our leaves and send it back, purified,
down the same trail we took
to escape the dark.
Two thousand years passed in a flash to shed
no more light than a wooden match
gave under the trees
when you and I were lost kids, more scared than
now, but warm, useless, with names
and different faces.
“Wasted” by Charles Bukowski
too often the people complain that they have
done nothing with their
lives.
and then they wait for somebody to tell them
that this isn’t so.
look, you’ve done this and that and you’ve
done that and that’s
something.
you really think so?
of course.
but they had it right.
they’ve done nothing.
shown no courage.
no inventiveness.
they did what they were taught to
do.
they did what they were told to
do.
they had no resistance, no thoughts
of their own.
they were pushed and shoved
and went obediently.
they had no heart.
they were cowardly.
they stank in life.
they stank up life.
and now they want to be told that
they didn’t fail.
you’ve met them.
they’re everywhere.
the spiritless.
the dead-before-death gang.
be kind?
lie to them?
tell them what they want to hear?
tell them anything they want to hear?
people with courage made them what they
aren’t
and if they ask me, I’ll tell them what they
don’t want to hear.
it’s better you
keep them away from me, or
they’ll tell you I’m a cruel man.
it’s better that they confer
with you.
I want to be free of
that.
– Charles Bukowski from What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire
“Leaves” by Lloyd Schwartz
1
Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony
isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
go out in style, and return in style: a new style.
2
Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far
enough away from home to see not just trees
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks
like rain, or snow, but it’s probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder,
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the
most color last year, but it doesn’t matter since
you’re probably too late anyway, or too early—
whichever road you take will be the wrong one
and you’ve probably come all this way for nothing.
3
You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You
can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop.
It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll
remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.
Copyright © 1992 by Lloyd Schwartz. From Goodnight, Gracie (The University of Chicago Press, 1992)
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first… (Salinger)
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Words ... for the Time Being 