Three poems today, two for Halloween and one for the midterm elections.
(I realize I posted one of these poems recently, but I like it, so I'm using it again.)
Don't forget to vote!
Karl Krolow
Someone
translated by Herman Salinger
Someone, in the twilight, is taking a walk
And singing.
The wolf from the fable
Is in flight.
The wild plum thickets
Hover before him.
The man in the moon
Starts up out of the yellow straw
Whenever anyone goes past.
The wind’s hand rubs
The hazel nuts
Whenever the darkness
Likes anybody.
Somebody takes the night
Upon his shoulders,
Gives love her names,
And the hands of the dead
Begin again in the dust
To stir.
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.
Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave a stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
