Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits, by Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) You are confronted with yourself. Each year The pouches fill, the skin is uglier. You give it all unflinchingly. You stare Into yourself, beyond. Your brush’s care Runs with self-knowledge. Here Is a humility at one with craft. There is no arrogance. Pride is apart From this […]
Address to A Child During A Boisterous Winter Evening, by Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) What way does the wind come? What way does he go? He rides over the water, and over the snow, Through wood, and through vale; and o’er rocky height, Which the goat cannot climb, takes his sounding flight; He tosses about in […]
I Say I Say I Say, by Simon Armitage (1963-) Anyone here had a go at themselves for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark at the back, listen hard. Those at the front in the know, those of us who have, hands up, let’s show […]
Snowflake, by William Baer (1948-) Timing’s everything. The vapor rises high in the sky, tossing to and fro, then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes into a perfect flake of miraculous snow. For countless miles, drifting east above the world, whirling about in a swirling free- for-all, appearing aimless, just like love, but sensing, seeking out, its […]
Piazza Piece, by John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) – I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small And listen to an old man not at all, They want the young men’s whispering and sighing. But see the roses on your trellis dying And hear the spectral […]
Shadows in the Water, by Thomas Traherne (1637-1674) In unexperienced infancy Many a sweet mistake doth lie: Mistake though false, intending true; A seeming somewhat more than view; That doth instruct the mind In things that lie behind, And many secrets to us show Which afterwards we come to know. Thus did I […]
Rattlesnakes Hammered on the Wall, by Ray Gonzales (1952-) Seven of them pinned in blood by long, shiny tails, three of them still alive and writhing against the wood, their heaviness whipping the wall as they try to break free, rattles beating in unison, hisses slowly dying in silence, the other four […]
Dear One Absent This Long While, by Lisa Olstein (1972-) It has been so wet stones glaze in moss; everything blooms coldly. I expect you. I thought one night it was you at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs, you in a shiver of light, but each […]
Her News, by Hugo Williams (1942-) You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking on the other end of the line. I pictured your expression, one eye screwed shut against the smoke as you waited for my reaction. I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news gone suddenly cold […]
Words, by Karl Krolow (1915-1999) Candor of words invented, Said behind doors out of sight, From windows and against blank walls, White-washed with patient light. Reality of words spoken, Of two syllables or of three: Carved from the riddles of heaven, From a vein in the stone set free. Deciphering of strangers’ faces, […]