The Dog Stars

Just finished The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, which was post-apocalyptic, but beautiful and poignant in a way that The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, most definitely was not.

I have to memorialize the closing poem to The Dog Stars here, so I can remember it:

When Will I Be Home?
by Li Shangyin

When will I be home? I don't know.
In the mountains, in the rainy night,
The autumn lake is flooded.
Someday we will be back together again.
We will sit in the candlelight by the west window,
And I will tell you how I remembered you
Tonight on the stormy mountain.

Dilemma

For my friend, S., who needs a laugh.

Dilemma

by David Budbill

I want to be
famous
So I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

Saturday Poem: Riding Lesson

This poem always makes me laugh.

Riding Lesson
by Henry Taylor

I learned two things
from an early riding teacher.
He held a nervous filly
in one hand and gestured
with the other, saying "Listen.
Keep one leg on one side,
the other leg on the other side,
and your mind in the middle."

He turned and mounted.
She took two steps, then left
the ground, I thought for good.
But she came down hard, humped
her back, swallowed her neck,
and threw her rider as you'd
throw a rock. He rose, brushed
his pants and caught his breath,
and said, "See that's the way
to do it. When you see
they're gonna throw you, get off."

Poem: Letter to New York

I love this poem and hope that one day I will be sending it to Miss M as she makes her way in the world.

Letter to New York
by Elizabeth Bishop
for Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the building rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid if it's wheat
it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

Saturday Poem: Song of Wandering Aengus

Honoring my English major roots (they've got to be good for something, right?), I'm starting a new tradition of posting a favorite poem on Saturdays. Here's The Song of Wandering Aengus, a great fairy tale of a poem for children and adults, by Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.