The More Loving One - 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.
Note: Reading Auden's "Selected Poems" - I know I am little late in getting around to his centennial - on the subway earlier this morning, I read the above poem, whose core - "let the more loving one be me" - had stayed with me since I had first read it on a poetry mailing list a while ago. Since it reminds me of how Auden wrote some remarkable love poems, it goes here.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment
Sonnet #1 - Robert Kroetsch
my first (my second) garden: the primordial: nothingness. Out of which. The undomesticated.not bad. Not bad for a start: the garden again, here, north (of) America not
bad for a start, a snow white page, and this our daily, this every: come, muse find me my (singing): the red-winged
blackbird by the slough (in spring) perched on a dead cattail
(resist the temptation to give it form resist the temptation )
Note: After landing in a foggy Toronto, with this poem scribbled on a piece of paper in his jeans' back-pocket, he walks into all the pedestrians enjoying the first warm days of spring. Also now accepting applications for a muse: must be as intense as a well executed villanelle.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment
Parodos - Louise Gluck
Long ago, I was wounded.
I learned
to exist, in reaction,
out of touch
with the world: I'll tell you
what I meant to be-
a device that listened.
Not inert: still.
A piece of wood. A stone.
Why should I tire myself, debating, arguing? Those people breathing in the other beds could hardly follow, being uncontrollable like any dream- Through the blinds, I watched the moon in the night sky, shrinking and swelling-
I was born to a vocation: to bear witness to the great mysteries. Now that I've seen both birth and death, I know to the dark nature these are proofs, not mysteries-
Note: The opening poem From Gluck's latest volume of poems, "Ararat" - the book that I am carrying around this week in my overcoat, to read in the silvers of found time.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment