R.S. Thomas

Raptor

You have made God small,
setting him astride
a pipette or a retort
studying the bubbles,
absorbed in an experiment
that will come to nothing.
I think of him rather
as an enormous owl
abroad in the shadows,
brushing me sometimes
with his wing so the blood
in my veins freezes, able
to find his way from one
soul to another because
he can see in the dark.
I have heard him crooning
to himself, so that almost
I could believe in angels,
those feathered overtones
in love’s rafters, I have heard
him scream, too, fastening
his talons in his great
adversary, or in some lesser
denizen, maybe, like you or me.

R.S Thomas   
No Truce with the Furies 1995

Jane Hirshfield

Rebus

You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.

Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.

This rebus - slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life -
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.

The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.

How can I enter this question the clay has asked?

 Jane Hirshfield, “Rebus” from Given Sugar, Given Salt Harper Collins 2001

Carol Ann Duffy

The Windows

How do you earn a life going on

Behind yellow windows, writing at night

The Latin names of plants for a garden,

Opening the front door to a wet dog?

Those you love forgive you, clearly,

With steaming casseroles and red wine.

It’s the same film down all the suburban streets,

It’s a Wonderful Life. How do you learn it?

What you hear – the doorbell’s familiar chime.

What you touch – the clean, warm towels.

What you see what you smell what you taste

All tangible to the stranger passing your gate.

There you are again, in a room where those early hyacinths

Surely sweeten the air, and the right words wait

In the dictionaries, on the tip of the tongue you touch

In a kiss, drawing your crimson curtains now

Against dark hours. And again, in a kitchen,

The window ajar, sometimes the sound of your radio

Or the scent of your food, and a cat in your arms, a child in your arms, a lover. Such vivid flowers.

In New Selected Poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Picador 2004

Eavan Boland

The Pomegranate

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Eavan Boland 

Louis MacNeice

 

Snow

 

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— 

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Neruda Ode to My Socks

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Pablo Neruda

Enheduanna

Temple Hymn 26
The Zabalam Temple Of Inanna

O house   wrapped in beams of light
wearing shining stone jewels   wakening great awe

sanctuary of pure Inanna
    (where) divine powers the true me spread wide

    Zabalam
               shrine of the shining mountain
    shrine that welcomes the morning light
    she makes resound with desire

the Holy Woman grounds your hallowed chamber
    with desire

    your queen  Inanna of the sheepfold
    that singular woman
    the unique one

who speaks hateful words to the wicked
    who moves among the bright shining things
    who goes against rebel lands

and at twilight makes the firmament beautiful
    all on her own

    great daughter of Suen
    pure Inanna

O house of Zabalam
    has built this house on your radiant site
    and placed her seat upon your dais.

Enheduanna (2285-2250) was an Akkadian/Sumerian poet, high priestess of the main temple of Ur and daughter of Sargon the Great. She was also the first recorded author: not female author, the first recorded author in history. She created the genres, patterns and paradigms for poetry, psalms and prayers that have been used for millennia echoing through Homer, the Bible, church liturgies and hymns.

The photo is a detail of my work, Creator Spirit.