A Poem a Day

[Flying Horse]

The Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century by Maureen McLane

They were not kidding
when they said they were blinded
by a vision of love.

It was not just a manner
of speaking or feeling
though it's hard to say

how the dead
really felt harder
even than knowing the living.

You are so opaque
to me your brief moments
of apparent transparency

seem fraudulent windows
in a Brutalist structure
everyone admires.

The effort your life
requires exhausts me.
I am not kidding.

Maureen McLane's most recent book of poems is World Enough (2011). She is also the author of My Poets (2012), an experimental hybrid of memoir and criticism which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. McLane teaches at New York University.

About This Poem
"This poem will appear in my forthcoming book This Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)--a book devoted in part to ecology and transformations of courtly love, not least Dante's vision. The poem most likely springs from ongoing reading in and around Dante and Petrarch and troubadours as well as reading in the book of life. I'm interested in historical and lyrical conjunctures: contemporary intimacies and opacities, shot through by deep pasts and unknown futures."

[Royston Vasey]

I don't recall posting this poem here previously, but if I have posted it before then please forgive this Lament's repetition.


Chorister's Lament

And what of skylarks? Are they guarantor
Of dreamy days and easy sleep laid low
By Shylock-pursed refuseniks who ignore
A static summer state? Thereby to - woe
Betide us - see testosterone prevailing
(Disastrously for Aled Jones and other
Practitioners of high-pitched tunes), unveiling
A rush for adulthood by boys, to smother
All vestiges of prepubescent tells.
Defaulting, losing songbirds, wayward balls,
Are all resultant of our changing selves -
We pay the butcher's bill when Nature calls.
And what of skylarks, what of balls, one's youth?
- They fly away or drop or pass, forsooth.


Go well.

[Flying Horse]

I don't recall reading that poem before. Thanks - I enjoyed it.

[Flying Horse]

I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Born in 1884, Sara Trevor Teasdale's work was characterized by its simplicity and clarity and her use of classical forms.

[Royston Vasey]

Hi Pegasus,

I'm happy that you liked my tongue-in-cheek Shakespearean sonnet.

The Sarah Teasdale poem that you posted brought bodice-busting passion, heaving bosoms and something of Courtly Love to mind. And those aren't bad things. Lovely.


Go well.

[Flying Horse]

It was a hard thing to undo this knot by Gerard Manley Hopkins

It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention?
And many standing round a waterfall
See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand's breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling waters writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.

The fragment "It was a hard thing to undo this knot" is one of Hopkins's few surviving early poems; after making the decision to join the Society of Jesus, Hopkins burned most of his early work, believing at the time that poetry was distracting him from his religious calling.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, near London. A Jesuit priest, he devoted most of his time to his religion, but is best remembered today for the inventive and ingeniously musical verse he wrote in private. Hopkins died in 1889.

[trevorw2539]

How about something lighthearted.

He sat at the front all pensive and sad
When really he should be happy and glad.
Was this the moment of which he had dreamed
Or the finale for which another had schemed.

It started promisingly a long time ago.
He remembered the time - his life in full flow.
A night with the boys, drinks at the bar.
Laughter and joking, an ever full jar. (glass for those in the USA)

Life seemed so full, no worries, no cares,
When events overtook him - all unawares.
Open swung the door, and in came a troupe
Of very noisy girls - she leading the group.

What was the attraction, the smile that she gave
When she saw him looking, and gave him a wave?
Startled and puzzled, in turn he waved back
And from that time life's course took a tack.

She made the advance, though it did seem strange.
They had never met, she was not in the range
Of his usual girls. But that didn't matter
She'd the skill and charm, him to flatter.

They dated, and mated, got on well together
And it didn't seem he was tied to a tether.
Very slowly she gained his love and his trust.
Any resistance he had quickly turned into dust.

One evening at dinner with friends someone said
When are you lovebirds going to get wed.
She looked at him, and the look in her eye
Said 'shall we, shan't we, and if not, WHY?

A proposal was made, and the date was set,
Now all that was needed was a place to get
All the guests together, both Church and Hall,
But big enough to have a ball.


Now the day is here, and so is the groom
Thinking 'is this a day for joy or gloom'.
I always intended single to stay.
How did things turn out this way?

When the Wedding March on the Organ is playing
Will I still be here, desperately praying
That all will be well, life will be grand
When I put on her finger that little gold band.

Ah . The music’s now playing it's far too late,
In the hands of a woman hangs another mans fate.
Just like Adam in the hands of Eve
Men have reason to cry and......

Er. You can finish it. I guess I'm in enough trouble with the ladies now

[Royston Vasey]

It was a hard thing to undo this knot

Thanks for that, Pegasus. Interesting info too.


Go well.

[Royston Vasey]

Hi Trevor,

How about something lighthearted.

This is good, though it'd (for me) benefit from being shorter. I reckon this manner of poem needs to be snappy and to the point. Many of the stanzas have a lovely rhythm, good.

S3 L3 ("Open swung the door, and in came a troupe") struck me as oddly worded; why the pre-comma inversion when The door swung open, and in came a troupe was readily available.

Thanks for posting your work here.


Go well.

[Flying Horse]

Experiment in Divination: Voice and Character by Rebecca Wolff


There is a curiosity that knows
I know

deathless ceiling of unknowing
I know

Querent,

Who I ask
is changing

all the time

changing
now changed.

How else is one to know

How is one to know how to proceed

the course of action

a non-reflective surface

a playing card on a wooden picnic table
a knot of knowing on a node of playing

How is one to know

How else is one to know how to proceed

How is one to make the motion against


And there's forever
and that's a mighty long time.


"This is one of a group or series of 'Experiments in Voice and Character'; it is either the first or the last, I haven't decided, but so far it is the only one that announces its thematic material in its title. The divinatory practice it concerns itself with is the reading of cards; it concerns itself with longing for an answer when we cannot have an answer, the intense longing that provokes a certainty that there is a way of knowing if only we had it. And then we do."

--Rebecca Wolff's third collection of poems is The King (W. W. Norton, 2010). Wolff is the founder and editor of the journal Fence and she lives in Athens, NY.

[Royston Vasey]

Hi Pegasus,

Experiment in Divination: Voice and Character

Though not my cup of tea, I thought this was interesting. My thinking is that the piece begs for the inclusion of a question mark, though no doubt the poetess had her reasons for denying one.

Here is an entirely traditional (Shakespearean sonnet) offering from my pen:


The Road Taken

As latter-day size tens recount the route
to school: a duffeled youth, not dead but passed,
calls from within his nemesis to scoot
or miss the bell; Be wary of the massed
impediments before you - there are dragons,
witches with a taste for blood, and streams
of fire, he whispers. Monsters? - magic flagons
deny them charcoal treats, while laser beams
--well aimed-- reduce a coven into dust.
And every weekday boy who walks on pavement
knows one foot on a crack and he'll combust.
Yes, lads learn young, or die, or find enslavement.
A potion-throwing, laser-toting man
who minds his step is mates with Peter Pan.



Go well.

[Flying Horse]

Royston - An amusing poem. Funny, I was always told - "Step on a crack and break your mother's back." I spent many a walk home from school makings sure I missed those cracks!!

[Flying Horse]

Elders by Louise Bogan


At night the moon shakes the bright dice of the water;
And the elders, their flower light as broken snow upon the bush,
Repeat the circle of the moon.

Within the month
Black fruit breaks from the white flower.
The black-wheeled berries turn
Weighing the boughs over the road.
There is no harvest.
Heavy to withering, the black wheels bend
Ripe for the mouths of chance lovers,
Or birds.

Twigs show again in the quick cleavage of season and season.
The elders sag over the powdery road-bank,
As though they bore, and it were too much,
The seed of the year beyond the year.

Louise Bogan was loath to discuss her private life, and therefore skeptical of confessional poetry, preferring to write verse about subjects separate from the poet's identity.

Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, on August 11, 1897. As a writer, Bogan was known for tending to reject many of the trends of modernist poetry. She was a longtime poetry reviewer for The New Yorker, and was the 1959 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She died in 1970.