Sally's World

Friday Poetry: Walking Away by C Day Lewis

For Sean

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

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I found my old poetry book from high school. This poem I remember well. I still have my pencil notes scribbled all over the book. The book is "For All Seasons." Edited by Rumboll and Gardener.

Friday Poetry: Fire by Greg Williamson

Imagine the first fire, the doubletakes

Among the vegans, cold, dark, wet: Cave guy

Strikes flint and, boom, you're grilling mammoth steaks,

You're holding hands, you're hooking up, you're dry.

 

And (years of R&D) it catches on,

Brick ovens, candlelight, of course appalling

Losses, but still, fondue, filet mignon,

And the three-alarm, fanned fire of your first calling

 

Until there's no more call for you, you box

Up your life's work, archive the ardencies,

The once hot, test -tube topics, and retire

To country climes, keeping an eye on the phlox

In your old field, avuncular now, at peace

With not quite having set the world

                                                                on fire.

 

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See p 301, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets. Edited by David Yezzi

Friday Poetry: A Simple Thing by Deborah Warren

A branch that broke with the weight of the winter snow

went on with April, blooming anyway,

its death not having reached its hasty bud.

How simple- not to stop or think or know;

to answer a single impluse with a drive

that assumes the sap as a habit in the blood;

to carry on with business of the day

and eat the light and call itself alive.

 

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I found this poet and this poem in a book I got out from our local library. "The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets." Edited by  David Yezzi.

 

Friday Poetry: Don't Kill That Fly by Kobayashi Issa

Look, don't kill that fly!

It is making a prayer to you

By rubbing its hands and feet

Friday Poetry: Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves. 
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
     A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw;
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.