A Drone Scans the Wreckage

A Drone Scans the Wreckage

Smoke gets in my eyes,

My fifteen eyes.

Glass insulation smolders.

Pink tongues get stuck on it.

Charred cotton candy.

Did I do that?

Palm tree shorn of its head.

Cathedral ceilings, opened up

To the stars, to the stark.

What did they worship in there?

The overhead fans?

The bolsters? The naked bedspread?

I spy.

They cried O God to the pillows.

Now ripped and fluttering,

Angel feathers.

These hover, slower than me.

See raw finger paint. Red.

Wet still crawling.

Must have missed something.

Better home in again.

Do some stuttering.

Attapat. Attatat. Attastasis. Attaboom.

Accurate this time. Rah.

Anything saved equals failure.

Was I bad?

Teardrops fall and fall.

The rain shower’s broken.

      --Margaret Atwood

The New Yorker

August 13 & 20, 2012

Lifting
by Ouyang Yu


For years
I have been dreaming
of turning
writing into a sport
in the Olympic Games
that is called, tentatively
Wordlifting
in which I'd give
my simplest performance
by lifting
the lightest and the liveliest
word: Love
till it flies
lifting me, weightless
into a sky
of loving
eyes

The Summer Day

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver, from The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2008.

Tree Marriage

Tree Marriage
by William Meredith

In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding. 

"Tree Marriage" by William Meredith, from Effort at Speech. © Northwestern University Press, 1997.

Pig

Pig
by Henri Cole

Poor patient pig -- trying to keep his balance,
that's all, upright on a flatbed ahead of me,
somewhere between Pennsylvania and Ohio,
enjoying the wind, maybe, agains the tufts of hair
on the tops of his ears, like a Stoic at the foot 
of the gallows, or, with my eyes heavy and glazed
from caffeine and driving, like a soul disembarking, 
its flesh probably bacon now tipping into split

pea soup, or, more painful to me, like a man
in his middle years struggling to remain 
vital and honest while we're all just floating
around accidental-like on a breeze.
What funny thoughts slide into the head,
alone on the interstate with no place to be.


From Touch: Poems by Henri Cole Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011

Stay near to me

Hinterhof
by James Fenton

Stay near to me and I'll stay near to you —
As near as you are dear to me will do,
    Near as the rainbow to the rain,
    The west wind to the windowpane,
As fire to the hearth, as dawn to dew.


Stay true to me and I'll stay true to you —
As true as you are new to me will do,
    New as the rainbow in the spray,
    Utterly new in every way,
New in the way that what you say is true.

Stay near to me, stay true to me. I'll stay
As near, as true to you as heart could pray.
    Heart never hoped that one might be
    Half of the things you are to me —
The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day 


"Hinterhof" by James Fenton, from Yellow Tulips: Poems 1986-2011. © Faber & Faber, 2011

Ein Gleiches

Nachtlied II 

Ein Gleiches

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh'
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest Du auch.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe