Words That Burn

Day Lilies, by Susanna Warren (1953-)

For six days, full-throated, they praised 
the light with speckled tongues and blare 
        of silence by the porch stair: 
honor guard with blazons and trumpets raised 
still heralding the steps of those 
        who have not for years walked here 
        but who once, pausing, chose

this slope for a throng of lilies: 
and hacked with mattock, pitching stones 
        and clods aside to tamp dense 
clumps of bog-soil for new roots to seize. 
So lilies tongued the brassy air 
        and cast it back in the sun's 
        wide hearing. So, the pair 

who planted the bulbs stood and heard 
that clarion silence. We've heard it, 
        standing here toward sunset 
as those gaping, burnished corollas poured 
their flourish. But the petals have 
        shrivelled, from each crumpled knot 
        droops a tangle of rough 

notes shrunk to a caul of music. 
Extend your palms: you could as well 
        cup sunbeams as pour brim-full 
again those absent flowers, or touch the quick 
arms of those who bent here, trowel in 
        hand, and scraped and sifted soil 
        held in a bed of stone.

Fifteen, by Leslie Monsour (1948-)

Out of Metropolis, by Lynn Emanuel (1949-)

Armistice, by Sophie Jewett (1861-1909)

In the Winter of This Climate, by Mark Wunderlich (1968-)

When I dream it is of sheep

tangled in the marsh, their calls

growing faint and the light failing

or winter’s handful of piano notes

against the highway’s salt hiss.

Nothing stays at home forever.

This is the house I go back to,

long since torn down

and your footsteps walking the same five rooms

the day the men were frozen in their boats

when the weather changed

and a storm blew in from the east.

There is the sky filling with the same dim stars,

the night birds fanning in the tree’s icy ribs

and you knee-deep in the river’s motion

hand cupped to your head

an upturned hand filling with rapid blood

your voice loose of its short tether, saying

Do you hear it?  Do you hear what I’m trying to say?

The City of God, by David Baker (1954-)

Now we knelt beside 
the ruined waters 
as our first blood, 
our bulb-before-bloom, 
unfurled too early 

in slender petals. 
Now we were empty. 
Now we walked for months 
on softer shoes and 
spoke, not quite with grief. 

This morning four deer 
come up to the yard 
to stand, to be stunned, 
at the woods' edge 
on their hoof-tips. Their 

ears twist like tuners, 
but they stay for minutes,
minutes more, while 
we are shadows behind 
windows watching them 

nip at the pine bark, 
nibble some brown tips 
of hydrangea. It's 
been a mean, dry winter. 
The last time I prayed—

prayed with any thought 
of reply, any 
hope of audience— 
I sat in a church 
and the city smell 

of lilac, fumes from 
the bus line, filled me. 
The joys of the body 
are not the sins 
of the soul. 

     Who knows 
how many have come 
to be with us? We
knelt, not as in prayer, 
beside the toilet 

and watched the first one 
leave us utterly—.
They were deer. Now they 
are fog. 
     Now the wind 

pulls back though the trees.
We know it will 
be this way always 
—whatever fades—
and the dreadful wake.

Prelude, by J. M. (John Millington) Synge (1871-1909)

Still south I went and west and south again,

Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,

And far from cities, and the sights of men,

Lived with the sunshine and the moon’s delight.

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,

The gray and wintry sides of many glens,

And did but half remember human words,

In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.

Fly, Dragonfly!, by Joyce Sidman (1956-)

Sympathy, by Farnoosh Fathi (1981-)

The Mermaid in the Hospital, by Nuala Ni Dhohmnaill (1952-)