Ithaka by Constantine Cavafy

Ithanka by Constantine Cavafy As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians and Cyclops, angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as […]

Continue reading →

Prodigy by Charles Simic

Prodigy BY CHARLES SIMIC I grew up bent over a chessboard. I loved the word endgame. All my cousins looked worried. It was a small house near a Roman graveyard. Planes and tanks shook its windowpanes. A retired professor of astronomy taught me how to play. That must have been in 1944. In the set we were […]

Continue reading →

Old Couple by Charles Simic

Old Couple BY CHARLES SIMIC They’re waiting to be murdered, Or evicted. Soon They expect to have nothing to eat. In the meantime, they sit. A violent pain is coming, they think. It will start in the heart And climb into the mouth. They’ll be carried off in stretchers, howling. Tonight they watch the window Without […]

Continue reading →

At Sixty Five by Henri Cole

At Sixty-Five Henri Cole It was all so different than he expected.For years he’d been agnostic; now he meditated.For years he’d dreamed of being an artist living abroad;now he reread Baudelaire, Emerson, Bishop.He’d never considered marriage . . .Still, a force through green did fuse.Yes, he wore his pants looser.No, he didn’t do crosswords in bed.No, he […]

Continue reading →

Late Spring by W.S. Merwin

LATE SPRING by W. S. Merwin Coming into the high room again after years after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of lies after losses and feet on stairs after looking and mistakes and forgetting turning there thinking to find no one except those I knew finally I saw you sitting in white […]

Continue reading →