The Sunday Paper

I was going to write about the plumbing leak that ruined my kitchen ceiling, but after reading the Sunday paper I don't like to complain. Most of the world is so much worse off than I am.



Charles Simic
Something Large Is in the Woods

That's what the leaves are telling us tonight.
Hear them frighten and be struck dumb
So that we sit up listening to nothing,
Which is always more worrisome than something.
The minutes crawl like dog fleas up our legs.
We must wait for whatever it is to identify itself
In some as-yet-unspecified way
As the trees are rushing to warn us again,
The branches beat against the house to be let in,
And then change their minds abruptly.
Think how many leaves are holding still in the woods
With no wish to add to their troubles
With something so large closing upon us?
It makes one feel vaguely heroic
Sitting so late with no light in the house
And the night dark and starless out there.



Wislawa Szymborska
The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

The Maple Tree

I have a maple tree in the front yard. It's too close to the driveway and to the power lines. The roots come up through what's left of the grass. It doesn't shade the house, only the yard, preventing me from growing grass or anything else. And, the bottom limbs are too low so I bump my head on it when I'm trying to mow. So I should have it taken out.

I know some tree guys who would be happy to remove it (for a price, of course). The main tree guy says maple trees are just the weeds of the tree world anyhow. But still, it's a tree. It's a living thing. Can I really just have it chopped down for my own convenience? What would the other trees think?

The Hawthorne Tree

Side by side, not
hand in hand: I watch you
walking in the summer garden—things
that can’t move
learn to see; I do not need
to chase you through
the garden; human beings leave
signs of feeling
everywhere, flowers
scattered on the dirt path, all
white and gold, some
lifted a little by
the evening wind; I do not need
to follow where you are now,
deep in the poisonous field, to know
the cause of your flight, human
passion or rage: for what else
would you let drop
all you have gathered?


Louise Gluck

Three Poems

I get some of my best poems from the Sunday Washington Post Book World. Here are two I found recently and loved.

The first makes reference to "folding chairs":

Moving Day

Scraps and small reminders said the scissors to the shelf
Why do I feel empty said the oven to itself
Some of us are hungry said can opener to tin
Tell me said the radio how much you want to win
And take us along when you go.

All the way from Thailand said the topmost row of cans
Rise and turn around again explained the standing fan
None of us are broken said the tumblers to the towel
Scratch me up or polish me said banister to dowel
And take us along when you go.

When they come to get you said a carton to its box
Count your lucky hours said a doorjamb to its locks
Will she will he will she sang the plumbing to the void
Did you mean to build me will I ever be destroyed

Carpet said to ceiling Can I offer any more
Nothing I can give you said the lintel to the door
You always overlook me said the baseboard to the stair
Board games valise said the attic and a folding chair
And take us along when you go.

Stephen Burt

Don't think about this next poem too hard - just enjoy.

Pumpkin Envy

How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling
my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets,
thought’s curare, when I finally did dial Tami Jamison,
numbing my lips too much to speak?

How often did I think, “I’m dead,” feeling
my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs,
sarcoma thrust like red toads up out of my skin
in the three days between the blood-drawing

and the doctor’s benediction: “Negative.”
Thought is a rope that pulls the kite out of the sky—
a cramp that locks the boxer’s chin as fists hiss
toward his head. “What sharks?” my friend demands,

launching the sea-kayak that gives him so much fun.
How many odes would Keats have traded for one
night with Fanny Brawne? What did understanding do
for Nietzsche, but make him more insane?

Thought is more deadly than crack or heroin.
Its pipe to my lips, the needle in my vein.
I loll in my dark room, and envy pumpkin vines.
Whatever’s in their way, they overrun. Unafraid

of blight, birds, drought, or humans’ being
they stretch out in the heat, let their roots drink deep
and—never giving a thought to anything—
make a million copies of the sun.

Charles Harper Webb

And one final poem from Billy Collins.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins