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.

Charles Simic, "Watermelons"

Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth.

Andrew Hudgins, "Day Job and Night Job"

After my night job, I sat in class   

and ate, every thirteen minutes,   

an orange peanut-butter cracker.   

Bright grease adorned my notes.

At noon I rushed to my day job   

and pushed a broom enough

to keep the boss calm if not happy.   

In a hiding place, walled off

by bolts of calico and serge,

I read my masters and copied

Donne, Marlowe, Dickinson, and Frost,   

scrawling the words I envied,

so my hand could move as theirs had moved   

and learn outside of logic

how the masters wrote. But why? Words   

would never heal the sick,

feed the hungry, clothe the naked,   

blah, blah, blah.

Why couldn’t I be practical,

Dad asked, and study law—

or take a single business class?         

I stewed on what and why         

till driving into work one day,         

a burger on my thigh

and a sweating Coke between my knees,   

I yelled, “Because I want to!”—

pained—thrilled!—as I looked down   

from somewhere in the blue

and saw beneath my chastened gaze   

another slack romantic

chasing his heart like an unleashed dog   

chasing a pickup truck.

And then I spilled my Coke. In sugar   

I sat and fought a smirk.

I could see my new life clear before me.   

It looked the same. Like work.

Linda Pastan, "The Obligation to be Happy"

It is more onerous

than the rites of beauty

or housework, harder than love.

But you expect it of me casually,

the way you expect the sun

to come up, not in spite of rain

or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity

to sadness were a hidden vice—

that downward tug on my mouth,

my old suspicion that health

and love are brief irrelevancies,

no more than laughter in the warm dark

strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it

on my narrow shoulders again—

a knapsack heavy with gold coins.

I stumble around the house,  

bump into things.

Only Midas himself

would understand.

Archibald MacLeish, "You, Andrew Marvell"

And here face down beneath the sun   

And here upon earth’s noonward height   

To feel the always coming on

The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east   

The earthy chill of dusk and slow   

Upon those under lands the vast   

And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees   

Take leaf by leaf the evening strange   

The flooding dark about their knees   

The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate   

Dark empty and the withered grass   

And through the twilight now the late   

Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge   

Across the silent river gone

And through Arabia the edge

Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra’s street

The wheel rut in the ruined stone   

And Lebanon fade out and Crete

High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air

Still flashing with the landward gulls   

And loom and slowly disappear   

The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore   

Of Africa the gilded sand

And evening vanish and no more   

The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun   

To feel how swift how secretly

The shadow of the night comes on ...   

Alice Notley, "Goddess Who Created This Passing World"

The Goddess who created this passing world

Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction

Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled

Cars & the variously shod feet were born

And the past & future & I born too   

Light as airmail paper away she flew   

To Annapurna or Mt. McKinley   

Or both but instantly

Clarified, composed, forever was I   

Meant by her to recognize a painting   

As beautiful or a movie stunning   

And to adore the finitude of words   

And understand as surfaces my dreams   

Know the eye the organ of affection   

And depths to be inflections   

Of her voice & wrist & smile

William Wordsworth, "A slumber did my spirit seal"

A slumber did my spirit seal;

 I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

 The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

 She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

 With rocks, and stones, and trees.