Six poems to mark the end of daylight saving time.
Light Verse
It’s just five, but it’s light like six. It’s lighter than we think.
Mind and day are out of sync.
The dog is restless.
The dog’s
owner is sleeping and dreaming of Elvis.
The treetops should
be dark purple,
but they’re pink.
Here and now. Here and now.
The sun shakes off an hour.
The sun assumes its pre-calendrical power.
(It is, though, only
what we make it seem.)
Now in the dog-owner’s dream,
the
dog replaces Elvis and grows bigger
than that big tower
in Singapore, and keeps on growing until
he arrives at a size
with which only the planets can empathize.
He sprints down
the ecliptic’s plane,
chased by his owner Jane
(that’s not
really her name), who yells at him
to come back and
synchronize.
— VIJAY SESHADRI, author of “The Long Meadow”
Parable
First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis
teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and
loss, and in order also that our bodies be free to move
easily
at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or
where we might travel, with the second question being
should
we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely
that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a
limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this
word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in
our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a somethingsought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering
among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue
we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind
blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many
flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose
over the tree line so that we had shadows again; many times
this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also
avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we
would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed,
so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed
nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed
although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we
have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward
nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous.
And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed
this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.
— LOUISE GLÜCK, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author,
most recently, of “A Village Life”
How It Happens
The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of
nothing
I was looking up and I said I thought you
were supposed to
be doing that
the sky said
Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance I was
looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have then the
sky did not answer
and here we are
with our names for the
days
the vast days that do not listen to us
— W.S. MERWIN, poet laureate of the United States and
author, most recently, of “The Shadow of Sirius,” which won the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2009
The Green Flash
le rayon vert
And the sea’s skin heaves, saurian,
and the spikes of the agave
bristle
like a tusked beast bowing to charge
tonight the full moon will soar floating
without any moral or
simile
the wind will bend the longbows of the arching
casuarinas the lizard will still scuttle
and the sun will sink silently with a stake in its eye
bleeding
behind the shrouding sail
of a skeletal schooner.
You can feel the earth cooling,
you can feel its myth cooling
and watch your own heart go out
like the red throbbing dot
of a hospital machine, with a green
flash
next to Pigeon Island.
— DEREK WALCOTT, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1992 and author, most recently, of “White Egrets”
Free
I was always thinking about her even when I wasn’t thinking.
Days went by when I did little else. She had left me one night as a
complete surprise. I didn’t know where she went. I didn’t know if
she was ever coming back. I searched her dresser and closet for
any clues. There wasn’t anything there, nothing. No lotions or
creams in the bathroom. She had really cleaned out. I thought
back on our years together. They seemed happy to me. Summers
on the beach, winters in the mountains skiing. What more could
she want? We had friends, dinner parties. I walked around
thinking, maybe she didn’t love me all that time. I felt so alone
without her. I hated dinners alone, I hated going to bed without
her. I thought she might at least call, so I was never very far from
the phone. Weeks went by, months. It was strange how time flew
by when you had nothing to remember it by. My friends never
mentioned her. Why can’t they say something? I thought. I
remembered every tiny gesture of her hand, every smile, every
grimace. Birthdays, anniversaries — I never forgot. But then
something strange started to happen. I started doubting every
memory. Even her face began to fade. The trip to Majorca, was it
something I read in a book? The jolly dinner parties, were they a
dream? I didn’t trust anything any longer. I searched the house
for any trace of her. Nothing. I started asking my friends if they
remembered anything about her. They looked at me as if I were
crazy. I sat at home and began to cheer up. What if none of this
happened? I thought. What if there was nothing to be sad about?
— JAMES TATE, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author, most
recently, of “The Ghost Soldiers”
Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
Every year we have been witness to it: how the
world
descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say it’s easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us
go on
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and
black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
— MARY OLIVER, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author, most
recently, of "Swan: Poems and Prose Poems"