Thirst

By Mary Oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

Psalm

 By Harvey Shapiro

I am still on a rooftop in Brooklyn on your holy day. The harbor is before me, Governor’s Island, Verrazano Bridge and the Narrows. I keep in my head what Rabbi Nachman said about the world being a narrow bridge and that the important thing is not to be afraid. So on this day I bless my mother and father, that they be not fearful where they wander. And I ask you to bless them and before you close your Book of Life, your Sefer Hachayim, remember that I always praised your world and your splendor, and that my tongue tried to say your name on Court Street in Brooklyn. Take me safely through the Narrows to the sea.

The Bears Take Tea

 

By Antique Lady

Bears in the garden
sipping sasafras tea

'Neath the shade and shadows
of the old plum tree

"How many sugars?" "One lump or two?"
"Not too sweet, one lump will do."

Rasberry scones, to go with their tea
Silently I watch, wishing they'd included me

Papa's tea is hot... Mama bears is cold
Something familiar...of how this story goes

Don't imitate me; 

it's as boring as the two
halves of a melon.
By Matsuo Basho
Translated By Robert Hass
Tweaked By Neil Fleischmann

 Symbols

Whoever puts on a tallis when he was young he will never forget;
Taking it out of the soft velvet bag, opening the folded shawl,
Spreading it out, kissing the length of the neckband (embroidered
or trimmed in gold.) Then swinging it in a great swoop overhead
like a sky, a wedding canopy, a parachute. And then winding it
around his head as in hide-and-seek, wrapping
his whole body in it, close and slow, snuggling into it like the cocoon
of a butterfly, then opening would-be wings to fly.
And why is the tallis striped and not checkered black-and-white
like a chessboard? Because squares are finite and hopeless.
Stripes come from infinity and to infinity they go
like airport runways where angels land and take off.
Whoever has put on a tallis will never forget.
When he comes out of a swimming pool or the sea,
he wraps himself in a large towel, spreads it out again
over his head, and again snuggles into it close and slow,
still shivering a little, and he laughs and blesses.

-- Yehuda Amichai

Mindful

By Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

Something

That more or less

Kills me

With delight,

That leaves me

Like a needle

In the haystack

Of light.

It is what I was born for--

To look, to listen,

To lose myself

Inside this soft world--

To instruct myself

Over and over

In joy,

And acclamation.

Nor am I talking

About the exceptional,

The fearful, the dreadful,

The very extravagant--

But of the ordinary,

The common, the very drab,

The daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

How can you help

But grow wise

With such teachings

As these--

The untrimmable light

Of the world,

The ocean's shine,

The prayers that are made

Out of grass?

In My Room

By Brian Wilson

There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears:

Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday

Now it's dark and I'm alone but I won't be afraid

In my room.

Dirge Without Music

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music

After the still small voice

-Yehuda Amichai

a noise

And after the noise,

a still small voice.

And after it, a noise.

And after it, a still small voice

And after the still small voice,

a noise.

Discard the rest.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

By Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Just say if I’m disturbing you,

He said as he stepped over the threshold,

And I'll leave immediately.

You do more than disturb me,

I answered,

You turn my whole existence upside down.

Welcome.

-  Eeva Kilpi (1928 - )

Thirst

 by Mary Oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

My Way

By Blu Greenberg,

From Black Bread: Poems, After the Holocaust- Ktav, 1995

I am the princess on the pea
That's the way I'm going to be
Creature comforts all for me
Like my chaise lounge by the sea

"Ooh, it's raining, hail a cab"
"Stop! I must cotton this toenail scab"
"Radio's loud, shut off that blab"
"Candlelight dinner, you pay the tab"

"Please don't interrupt, I've a deadline to meet"
"Order by phone, I can't stand on my feet"
"Air - condition this hot, hot suite"
"Ah, it's time for my persimmon treat"

"Off I go to visit my mother"
"This shop is not stocked, let's go find another"
"I'm busy now, kids, go ask your father"
"If the trip is too long I simply won't bother"

"This elastic waist's a bit too tight"
"Open the shades, I need more light"
"Fax it to me, I want it tonight"
"Let's pay the fine and avoid a fight"

"I'm feeling tired, I'll take a nap"
"Come sweet child, sit on my lap"
"I'll have spring water, it's better than tap"
It's chilly in here, please fetch my wrap"

"Get the best seats at the new play"
"Porter, come carry this suitcase away"
"I wish to have it done my way"
I'd not have survived a single day.

For Rachel Hadas

Old wounds leave good hollows

Where one who goes can hold

Himself in ghostly embraces

Of former powers and graces

Whose domain no strife mars—

I am made whole by my scars

For whatever now displaces

Follows all that once was

And without loss stows

Me into my own spaces



Samuel Menashe





From The Niche Narrows: New
and Selected Poems, Talisman
House, Publishers

By John Roedel

 whenever I feel helpless

in this overwhelming world

I become a helper

oh, oh,

my love

on the days

when it feels like

I have no power

I serve others

you see,

whenever I wash

the world’s feet

my hands

immediately

stop shaking

~ and I know peace

~ and I reclaim my power

~ and I get back to work

 

After
By Stephen Dunn


Jack and Jill at home together after their fall,

the bucket spilled, her knees badly scraped,

and Jack with not even an aspirin for what’s broken.

We can see the arduous evenings ahead of them.

And the need now to pay a boy to fetch the water.

Our mistake was trying to do something together,

Jill sighs. Jack says, If you’d have let go for once

you wouldn’t have come tumbling after.

He’s in a wheelchair, but she’s still an item--

for the rest of their existence confined

to a little, rhyming story. We tell it to our children,

who laugh, already accustomed to disaster.

We’d like to teach them the secrets

of knowing how to go too far,

but Jack is banging with his soup spoon,

Jill is pulling out her hair. Out of decency

we turn away, as if it were possible to escape

the drift of our lives, the fundamental business

of making do with what’s been left us.

 Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

A Man in His Life: A Poem by Yehuda Amichai

 

אדם בחייו אין לו זמן שיהיה לו

זמן לכל.

ואין לו עת שתהיה לו עת

לכל חפץ. קהלת לא צדק כשאמר כך.

A man in his life doesn’t have time to have
a time for everything.
He doesn't have enough seasons to have a season
for every purpose. Qohelet didn’t get it right when he said that.

אדם צריך לשנא ולאהב בבת אחת

באותן עיניים לבכות ובאותן עיניים לצחוק

באותן ידים לזרוק אבנים

ובאותן ידים לאסוף אותן,

לעשות אהבה במלחמה ומלחמה באהבה.

A man needs to love and hate in the same instant,
to laugh and cry with one and the same eyes,
with one and the same hands to throw stones,
and with one and the same hands to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.

ולשנוא ולסלוח ולזכור ולשכוח

ולסדר ולבלבל ולאכל ולעכל

את מה שהסטוריה ארכה

עושה בשנים רבות מאד.

To hate and forgive, to remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and digest
what history elongates
over a great many years.

אדם בחייו אין לו זמן.

כשהוא מאבד הוא מחפש

כשהוא מוצא הוא שוכח,

כשהוא שוכח הוא אוהב

וכשהוא אוהב הוא מתחיל לשכוח.

A man in his life doesn’t have time.
The moment he lets go, he seeks.
The moment he finds, he forgets.
The moment he forgets, he loves.
The moment he loves, he begins to forget. 

ונפשו למודה,

His soul is skilled,

ונפשו מקצועית מאד

רק גופו נשאר חובב

תמיד. מנסה וטועה

לא לומד ומתבלבל

שכור ועור בתענוגיו ובמכאוביו.

his soul is very efficient.
Only his body remains an amateur
forever. It tries and errs,
it doesn’t learn, it gets confused,
drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains.

מות תאנים ימות בסתו

מצמק ומלא בעצמו ומתוק,

העלים מתיבשים על האדמה,

והענפים הערומים כבר מצביעים

אל המקום שבו זמן לכל.

He will die as figs do, in autumn,
shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
leaves dessicating on the ground,
bare branches already pointing
to the place where there's time for everything.

Happiness

JANE KENYON

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

One new perception,
one fresh thought,
one act of surrender,
one change of heart,
one leap of faith,
can change your life forever.

 
- Robert Holden