The New Song by W. S. Merwin For some time I thought there was time and that there would always be time for what I had a mind to do and what I could imagine going back to and finding it as I had found it the first time but by this time I do […]

After Zeno For my father By Kay Ryan When he was I was. But I still am and he is still. Where is is when is is was? I have an is but where is his? Now here— no where: such a little fatal pause. There’s no sense in past tense.

THE THINGS By Donald Hall • • • • When I walk in my house I see pictures,bought long ago, framed and hanging—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,yet my eyes keep returning to the mastersof the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,tiny lead models of baseball players, a […]

Not Waving but Drowning BY STEVIE SMITH Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. […]

In June’s high light she stood at the sink With a glass of wine, And listened for the bobolink, And crushed garlic in late sunshine. I watched her cooking, from my chair. She pressed her lips Together, reached for kitchenware, And tasted sauce from her fingertips. “It’s ready now. Come on,” she said. “You light […]

Ox Cart Man Donald Hall In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor. He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hoped by […]

anyone lived in a pretty how town by e.e. cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their […]

WE are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, 5 On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s great cities, […]

CONVERSATION OVER A CUP OF CAPPUCCINO It was high summer. The afternoon breeze Was kind enough, And so we talked away Our time. “You are beautiful,” I tell her. She looks on, And asks me: Like what? I smile: “Like a flower garden.” Rose, tulip or jasmine? She asks me. “Jasmine,” I say. Why? She […]

Askesis, Praxis, Theoria of the Wild By Gary Snyder The shining way of the wild —–its theoria is, that the world is unrelenting, brief, and often painful and its askesis, cold, hunger, stupid mistakes, bitterness, delusions, loneliness; hard nights and days are unavoidable to find the praxis is to hang in, work it out, watch […]