Category: poetry

A Psalm of Life from (and for) my grandpa

My grandfather Lauren Lee Alley passed away yesterday. Going through his old things, my father found a small note in his former happy place — the garage. Written, front and back on the small piece of yellow paper, in grandpa’s all-caps printing were two verses of poetry. As his grand-daughter I was surprised because, as far as I was concerned, grandpa was not known for being particularly poetic nor flowery of verse. As an english major, I was delighted and immediately got to researching. What I found was a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Turns out Longfellow was inspired to write this poem by one of those deep, late night conversations that, for me, are usually spurred by close friendships and glasses of wine. He and fellow professor at Harvard spent an evening “talking of matters, which lie near one’s soul — and how to bear one’s self doughtily in Life’s battle: and make the best of things.” The next day, Lonfellow wrote “A Psalm of Life.”

I found this piece particularly pitch perfect, given the recent events. I also want to take this chance to thank my Grandfather for leaving it behind for me to find and to take comfort in:

Read More

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda

(i love this poem, it’s so saddly beautiful… just thought i’d share cuz i’m in that mood)

"you are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you"

Nightclub
by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

It’s funny now, 5 years after posting this, I think this poem is saying something completely different than I thought it said then. 🙂

Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond, by E.E. Cummings

Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond
by E.E. Cummings

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility; whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

When I posted this on my Myspace blog all those years ago it reminded me of a boy I was dating. It was something about the last stanza. Of course when I read it then the poem struck such a chord in me, it was as if Cummings had seen inside my soul and reproduced it in poetry. And now, sadly, as I’ve grown and forgotten about my past loves, I can’t even remember why it touched me so. All I remember now is that I burst into tears when I read that last stanza.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén