“Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you
That you may be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.”
– Walt Whitman, from “To You” in Leaves of Grass
Author: Christina's Words
“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford
“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver From A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.
* Related: “HOW POEMS WORK: Late Fragment by Raymond Carver” poem analysis and article by AISLINN HUNTER. From that article:
Late Fragment is the final poem in the poet and short story writer Raymond Carver’s (1938-1988) last published work, A New Path to the Waterfall, a collection that was written while he was dying of cancer. I value the Carver poem for a number of reasons. Mostly, I admire its simplicity and its poignancy. There is no measure of irony or artifice in it. There is also an underlying sense of celebration — this, in the affirmative “I did” and in the realization that when all is said and done, to call oneself beloved and to feel oneself beloved (a kind of proof) is enough.
“You Learn” by Jorge Luis Borges
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.
–“You Learn” by Jorge Luis Borges
“But she had known, better than anyone else, …
“But she had known, better than anyone else, what demons he had faced, had known how hard he had fought to free himself from them. That he had lost the fight in the end made the struggle no less honorable.” ~ Donna Woolfolk Cross, Pope Joan
“Permission Granted” by David Allen Sullivan
You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don’t have to bury
your grandmother’s keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.
You don’t need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine’s wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.
You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.
You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.
Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world’s pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes …
See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.
“Permission Granted” by David Allen Sullivan, from Strong-Armed Angels. © Hummingbird Press, 2008.
Words ... for the Time Being 