“On Time” by John Milton

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum’d,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t’whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

“At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border” by William Stafford

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed - or were killed - on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

(From The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by William Stafford)

“America” by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

From Liberator (Library of America, 1921).

“The Hymn of a Fat Woman” by Joyce Huff

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

(From Gargoyle Magazine, Volume 44)

“The Same City” by Terrance Hayes

For James L. Hayes

The rain falling on a night
  in mid-December,
I pull to my father’s engine
  wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
  jumper cables to his battery,
then to mine without looking in
  at me and the child. Water beads
on the windshields, the road sign,
  his thin blue coat. I’d get out now,
prove I can stand with him
  in the cold, but he told me to stay
with the infant. I wrap her
  in the blanket, staring
for what seems like a long time
  into her open, toothless mouth,
and wish she was mine. I feed her
  an orange softened first in my mouth,
chewed gently until the juice runs
  down my fingers as I squeeze it
into hers. What could any of this matter
  to another man passing on his way
to his family, his radio deafening
  the sound of water and breathing
along all the roads bound to his?
  But to rescue a soul is as close
as anyone comes to God.
  Think of Noah lifting a small black bird
from its nest. Think of Joseph,
  raising a son that wasn’t his.

Let me begin again.
  I want to be holy. In rain
I pull to my father’s car
  with my girlfriend’s infant.
She was eight weeks pregnant when we met.
  But we’d make love. We’d make
love below stars and shingles
  while her baby kicked between us.
Perhaps a man whose young child
  bears his face, whose wife waits
as he drives home through rain
  & darkness, perhaps that man
would call me a fool. So what.
  There is one thing I will remember
all my life. It is as small
  & holy as the mouth
of an infant. It is speechless.
  When his car would not stir,
my father climbed in beside us,
  took the orange from my hand,
took the baby in his arms.
  In 1974, this man met my mother
for the first time as I cried or slept
  in the same city that holds us
tonight. If you ever tell my story,
  say that’s the year I was born.

From Hip Logic by Terrance Hayes

For comment:

• Describe your different reactions to the poem as the facts are narrated one by one.
• What are the present and past conflicts revealed in the poem?
• What’s redemptive about this poem; which is to say, why’s it worth reading?

“Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to’another due,
Labor to’admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly’I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me,’untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you’enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

“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.”

- From Henry Taylor’s The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards

“A Wedding at Cana, Lebanon, 2007″  by Tom Sleigh

(more…)

“Lullabye for the Second Millennium” by J. Allyn Rosser

From the point of view of all time,
these recent changes signal
more a return to nature
than a departure, than degradation.
In the beginning, after all,
there was boiling rock.
Then waters arranging their bodies
around an era of softer forms:
lichen, grassland, swaying treetops.
Then creatures, movingly fleshed,
treading pathways that hardened.
Then pavement hardening
and cities, monumental.
Soon mostly rock again,
and radiant. More and more like moon.
Soon, sooner than is being thought,
there will be even more light.
The creatures will have stopped
being able to move
or be moved.
And the rock will boil.

“Pirates” by Ernest Hilbert 

Impatiently polite, imperious,
Our neighbors only just tolerated
The peculiar clan at cul-de-sac’s end.
We were insufficiently industrious
With lawn care, and our plot was at last rated
An eyesore. How, they wondered, could we spend
So much time sleeping, so little weeding:
Crabgrass spiked brown, dandelions spackled gold.
Of an old German barbarian born,
A sour, thin kid, moping, slouching, reading,
I’d gather bruised windfall apples and throw
Them over the hedge-a broadside launched with scorn
From our blue-shingled brigantine, square prow
Lodged in high grass, underneath long boughs.