#61 - of departures and arrivals
Art by Fermin Rocker
The Poet by Jane Hirshfield
She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not; she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair --
let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.
Other poems I read this week:
"Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up
on the game before it was done
and forgot I was still hiding.
I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose."
-Hide-and-Seek 1933 by Galway Kinnell
"There were the roses, in the rain.
Don’t cut them, I pleaded.
They won’t last, she said.
But they’re so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand."
-The Act by William Carlos Williams
"It’s nice sometimes
to open up the heart a little
and let some hurt come in.
It proves you’re still alive.
If nothing else
it says to you–
clear as a high hill air,
uncomfortable
as diving through cold water–
I’m here.
However wretchedly I feel,
I feel."
-from The Need by Rod McKuen
"This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me"
-The Only Poem by Leonard Cohen
"Late in the night I pay
the unrest I owe
to the life that has never lived
and cannot live now.
What the world could be
is my good dream
and my agony when, dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury
in the sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolity. That would heal
the earth, and heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go." -Awake at Night by Wendell Berry
Recommended Listening:
Homesickness - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou Sligo River Blues - John Fahey Tears in the Typing Pool - Broadcast Little Bit of Rain - Karen Dalton + her full album In My Own Time Some Things Cosmic - Angel Olsen There Was You - The Beatles Tennessee Waltz - Les Paul & Mary Ford
Love Is Strange - Mickey & Sylvia
It's my last night at the seaside residency, so I felt like restricting this newsletter to only poetry and music.
“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Good night :)