April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 25, 2008

Sonnet Week!

PABLO NERUDA (tr. by Ben Belitt)

XC

I dreamed that I died: that I felt the cold close to me;

and all that was left of my life was contained in your presence:

your mouth was the daylight and dark of my world,

your skin, the republic I shaped for myself with my kisses.

Straightway, the books of the world were all ended,

all friendships, all treasures restlessly cramming the vaults,

the diaphanous house that we built for a lifetime together –

all ceased to exist, till nothing remained but your eyes.

So long as we live, or as long as a lifetime’s vexation,

love is a breaker thrown high on the breakers’ successions;

but when death in its time chooses to pummel the doors –

there is only your face to fill up the vacancy,

only your clarity pressing back on the whole of non-being,

only your love, where the dark of the world closes in.

XC

Pensé morir, sentí de cerca el frío,

y de cuanto viví sólo a ti te dejaba:

tu boca era mi día y mi noche terrestres

y tu piel la república fundada por mis besos.

En ese instante se terminaron los libros,

la amistad, los tesoros sin tregua acumulados,

la casa transparente que tú y yo construímos:

todo dejó de ser, menos tus ojos.

Porque el amor, mientras la vida nos acosa,

es simplemente una ola alta sobre las olas,

pero ay cuando la muere viene a local la puerta

hay sólo tu mirada para tanto vacío,

sólo tu claridad para no seguir siendo,

sólo tu amor para cerrar la sombra.

Ukiah Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day
April 25, 2008

WILD GEESE

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things

April is National Poetry Month

In Memory of Dori Anderson
1938-2008

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 3, 2008

Prose Poem by the Empress of American Poetry – MARY OLIVER

A Settlement

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned

into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come

up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their

curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come

home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,

happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to

go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of

this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my

mind.

***

Therefore, dark past,

I’m about to do it.

I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

Ukiah Library's Poem of the day for National Poetry Month- April 3rd

White-Eyes

Mary Oliver

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—

which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.

April is POETRY month

Donna Kerr, Branch Head of the Willits Library and Eliza Wingate, Reference Librarian at Ukiah choose a poem for each day the Libraries are open during the month of April.

Poetry

April 3, 2007

Eliza's choice

Betty

She loved cut class
Fine china, lace doilies
Everything protected;
Table by a felt pad,
Chair seat by towel or throw
Where Spiky knew his place
If there was no lap

Demure steel grey car
Only 65K miles in sixteen years
Pristine except for hub-caps

Furniture minimal
Wardrobe understated
Lipsticks muted
Possessions rigorously thinned out
Anticipating death

But oh! The dangly earrings
And ah! The bank accounts
Left in aid of animals
In distress

Sandra Wade
Current Poet Laureate of Lake County



Donna's choice

PINK MOON - THE POND

You think it will never happen again.

Then, one night in April,

the tribes wake trilling.

You walk down to the shore.

Your coming stills them,

but little by little the silence lifts

until song is everywhere

and your soul rises from your bones

and strides out over the water.

It is a crazy thing to do -

for no one can live like that,

floating around in the darkness

over the gauzy water.

Left on the shore your bones

keep shouting come back!

But your soul won't listen;

in the distance it is unfolding

like a pair of wings, it is sparking

like hot wires. So,

like a good friend,

you decide to follow.

You step off the shore

and plummet to your knees -

you slog forward to your thighs

and sink to your cheekbones -

and now you are caught

by the cold chains of the water -

you are vanishing while around you

the frogs continue to sing, driving

their music upward through your own throat,

not even noticing

you are something else.

And that's when it happens -

you see everything

through their eyes,

their joy, their necessity;

you wear their webbed fingers;

your throat swells.

And that's when you know

you will live whether you will or not,

one way or another,

because everything is everything else,

one long muscle.

It's no more mysterious than that.

So you relax, you don't fight it anymore,

the darkness coming down

called water,

called spring,

called the green leaf, called

a woman's body

as it turns into mud and leaves,

as it beats in its cage of water,

as it turns like a lonely spindle

in the moonlight, as it says

yes.

Mary Oliver