American poet

Sonnet by Elizabeth Bishop

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I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breadth, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

from 90 North by Randall Jarrell

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I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone–

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness–that the darkness flung me–
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

The Children: after Patrick Kavanagh by Robert Creeley

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Down on the sidewalk recurrent
children’s forms, reds, greens,
walking along with the watching
elders not their own.

It’s winter, grows colder and colder.
How to play today without sun?
Will summer, gone, come again?
Will I only grow older and older?

Not wise enough yet to know
you’re only here at all
as the wind blows, now
as the fire burns low.

an old favorite: Later by Robert Creeley

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If I could get
my hands on
a little bit
of it–neither fish,

flesh, nor fowl. Not
you, Harry. No one’s
mother–or father,
or children. Not

me again. Not
earth, sky, water–
no mind, no time.
No islands in the sun.

Money I don’t want.
No place more
than another–
I’m not here

by myself. But,
if you want to give
me something for Xmas,
I’ll be around.

The Sharks by Denise Levertov

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Well, then, the last day the sharks appeared.
Dark fins appear, innocent
as if in fair warning. The sea becomes
sinister, are they everywhere?
I tell you, they break six feet of water.
Isn’t it the same sea, and won’t we
play in it any more?
I liked it clear and not
too calm, enough waves
to fly in on. For the first time
I dared to swim out of my depth.
It was sundown when they came, the time
when a sheen of copper stills the sea,
not dark enough for moonlight, clear enough
to see them easily. Dark
the sharp lift of the fins.

Coda by James Tate

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Love is not worth so much;
I regret everything.
Now on our backs
in Fayetteville, Arkansas,
the stars are falling
into our cracked eyes.

With my good arm
I reach for the sky,
and let the air out of the moon.
It goes whizzing off
to shrivel and sink
in the ocean.

You cannot weep;
I cannot do anything
that once held an ounce
of meaning for us.
I cover you
with pine needles.

When morning comes,
I will build a cathedral
around our bodies.
And the crickets,
who sing with their knees,
will come there
in the night to be sad,
when they can sing no more.

and for Valentine’s Day: Carrier Letter by Hart Crane

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My hands have not touched water since your hands,–
No;–nor my lips freed laughter since ‘farewell’.
And with the day, distance again expands
Between us, voiceless as an uncoiled shell.

Yet,–much follows, much endures. . .Trust birds alone:
A dove’s wings clung to my heart last night
With surging gentleness; and the blue stone
Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.