C. P. Cafavy, "Days of 1896"

He became completely degraded. His erotic tendency, 
condemned and strictly forbidden
(but innate for all that), was the cause of it: 
society was totally prudish. 
He gradually lost what little money he had, 
then his social standing, then his reputation. 
Nearly thirty, he had never worked a full year - 
at least not at a legitimate job. 
Sometimes he earned enough to get by
acting the go-between in deals considered shameful. 
He ended up the type likely to compromise you thoroughly
if you were seen around with him often. 


But this isn't the whole story - that would not be fair. 
The memory of his beauty deserves better. 
There is another angle; seen from that
he appears attractive, appears
a simple, genuine child of love,
without hesitation putting, 
above his honor and reputation,
the pure sensuality of his pure flesh. 


Above his reputation? But society, 
prudish and stupid, had it wrong. 

Philip Levine, "You Can Have It"

My brother comes home from work

and climbs the stairs to our room.

I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop   

one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window   

and his unshaven face is whitened

like the face of the moon. He will sleep

long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember   

that moment when suddenly I knew each man   

has one brother who dies when he sleeps   

and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man   

sharing a heart that always labors, hands   

yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps   

for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed

the chute its silvery blocks, and then I   

stacked cases of orange soda for the children   

of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty   

for such a short time and always in

the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt

and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded

by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes   

of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,   

no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now

that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,

calendars, doctors’ appointments, bonds,   

wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.   

The ice to standing pools or rivers

racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose   

between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.   

I give you all the years from then

to the coming one. Give me back the moon   

with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard

and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse   

for God and burning eyes that look upon   

all creation and say, You can have it.

E. A. Markham, "A History Without Suffering"

In this poem there is no suffering.

It spans hundreds of years and records

no deaths, connecting when it can,

those moments where people are healthy

 

and happy, content to be alive. A Chapter,

maybe a Volume, shorn of violence

consists of an adult reading aimlessly.

This line is the length of a full life

 

smuggled in while no one was plotting

against a neighbour, except in jest.

Then, after a gap, comes Nellie. She

is in a drought-fisted field

 

 with a hoe. This is her twelfth year

on the land, and today her back

doesn’t hurt. Catechisms of self-pity

and of murder have declared a day’s truce

 

in the Civil War within her. So today,

we can bring Nellie, content with herself,

with the world, into our History.

For a day. In the next generation

 

we find a suitable subject camping

near the border of a divided country:

for a while no one knows how near. For these

few lines she is ours. But how about

 

the lovers? you ask, the freshly-washed

body close to yours; sounds, smells, tastes;

anticipation of the young, the edited memory

of the rest of us? How about thoughts

 

higher than their thinkers?...Yes, yes.

Give them half a line and a mass of footnotes:

they have their own privileged history,

like inherited income beside our husbandry.

 

We bring our History up to date

in a city like London: someone’s just paid

the mortgage, is free of guilt

and not dying of cancer; and going

 

past the news-stand, doesn’t see a headline

advertising torture. This is all

recommended reading, but in small doses.

It shows you can avoid suffering, if you try. 

Tess Gallagher, "Willingly"

When I get up he has been long at work,

his brush limber against the house.

Seeing him on his ladder under the eaves,

I look back on myself asleep in the dream

I  could not carry awake. Sleep

inside a house that is being painted,

whole lifetimes now only the familiar cast

of morning light over the prayer plant.

This “not remembering” is something new

of where you have been.

 

What was settled or unsettled in sleep

stays there. But your house

under this steady arm is leaving itself

and you see this gradual surface of

new light covering your sleep

has the greater power.

You think now you felt brush strokes or

the space between them, a motion

bearing down on you—accumulation

of stars, each night of them

arranging over the roofs of entire cities.

 

His careful strokes whiten the web,

the swirl of woodgrain blotted

out like a breath stopped

at the heart. Nothing has changed

you say, faithlessly. But something has

cleansed you past recognition. When

you stand near his ladder looking up

he does not acknowledge you,

and as from daylight in a dream you see

your house has passed from you

into the blessed hands of others.

 

This is ownership, you think, arriving

in the heady afterlife of paint smell.

A deep opening goes on in you.

Some paint has dropped onto your shoulder

as though light concealed an unsuspected

weight. You think it has fallen through

you. You think you have agreed to this,

what has been done with your life, willingly.

Jason Shinder, "Jacksonville, Vermont"

Because I am not married, I have the skin of an orange 

that has spent its life in the dark. Inside the orange I am blind.

I cannot tell when a hand reaches in and breaks

the atoms of the blood. Sometimes a blackbird will bring the wind

into my hair. Or the yellow clouds falling on the cold floor

are animals fighting each other

out of their drifting misery. All the women I have known

have been ruined by fog and the deer crossing the field at night.

Ron Padgett, "Love Cook"

Let me cook you some dinner.   

Sit down and take off your shoes   

and socks and in fact the rest   

of your clothes, have a daquiri,   

turn on some music and dance   

around the house, inside and out,   

it’s night and the neighbors   

are sleeping, those dolts, and   

the stars are shining bright,   

and I’ve got the burners lit   

for you, you hungry thing.

Gary Snyder, "Four Poems for Robin"

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under   rhododendron   

All night   blossoms fell

Shivering on   a sheet of cardboard   

Feet stuck   in my pack

Hands deep   in my pockets   

Barely   able   to   sleep.

I remembered   when we were in school   

Sleeping together   in a big warm bed

We were   the youngest lovers

When we broke up   we were still nineteen.   

Now our   friends are married   

You teach   school back east   

I dont mind   living this way   

Green hills   the long blue beach   

But sometimes   sleeping in the open

I think back   when I had you.

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May

We walked under cherry blossoms   

At night in an orchard in Oregon.   

All that I wanted then

Is forgotten now, but you.

Here in the night

In a garden of the old capital

I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao   

I remember your cool body

Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,   

Breath smoking in the moonlight,   

Bitter memory like vomit   

Choked my throat.

I unrolled a sleeping bag   

On mats on the porch   

Under thick autumn stars.   

In dream you appeared   

(Three times in nine years)   

Wild, cold, and accusing.   

I woke shamed and angry:

The pointless wars of the heart.   

Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.   

The first time I have   

Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,

In the tall dry grass by the orchard   

When you chose to be free,

“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you

One time. You were strange.   

And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have   

Gone by: I’ve always known

          where you were—

I might have gone to you   

Hoping to win your love back.   

You still are single.

I didn’t.

I thought I must make it alone. I   

Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,   

Does the grave, awed intensity   

Of our young love

Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others   

All crave and seek for;

We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had   

Lived many lives.

And may never now know   

If I am a fool

Or have done what my   

       karma demands.

Sara Teasdale, "Since There is No Escape"

Since there is no escape, since at the end

    My body will be utterly destroyed,

This hand I love as I have loved a friend,

    This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;

Since there is no escape even for me

    Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:

The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea

    And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—

Since darkness waits for me, then all the more

Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore

    In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;

In these few hours of light I lift my head;

Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead

    If there is any way to baffle death.

John Ashbery, "Late Echo"

Alone with our madness and favorite flower

We see that there really is nothing left to write about.

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over

For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally

And the color of the day put in

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic

Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

Maxine Kumin, "Where I Live"

is vertical:
garden, pond, uphill

pasture, run-in shed.
Through pines, Pumpkin Ridge. 

Two switchbacks down
church spire, spit of town.

Where I climb I inspect
the peas, cadets erect

in lime-capped rows,
hear hammer blows

as pileateds peck
the rot of shagbark hickories

enlarging last 
year's pterodactyl nests.

Granite erratics 
humped like bears

dot the outermost pasture
where in tall grass 

clots of ovoid scat 
butternut-size, milky brown

announce our halfgrown
moose padded past

into the forest
to nibble beech tree sprouts.
  
Wake-robin trillium
in dapple-shade. Violets,

landlocked seas I swim in.
I used to pick bouquets

for her, framed them  
with leaves. Schmutzige

she said, holding me close
to scrub my streaky face. 

Almost from here I touch 
my mother's death.