One Art
BY PROF. VAROL AKMAN
This week I present a little potpourri, five favorite poems without commentary or biography. (Why five? Because five is a tidy number.) I do include photos though, for I grew up thinking that a fine poem is inseparable from its author's image.
Larry Levis (1946-1996)
The Poem You Asked For
My poem would eat nothing.
I tried giving it water
but it said no,
worrying me.
Day after day,
I held it up to the light,
turning it over,
but it only pressed its lips
more tightly together.
It grew sullen, like a toad
through with being teased.
I offered it all my money,
my clothes, my car with a full tank.
But the poem stared at the floor.
Finally I cupped it in
my hands, and carried it gently
out into the soft air, into the
evening traffic, wondering how
to end things between us.
…
Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
If You
If you were going to get a pet
what kind of animal would you get.
A soft-bodied dog, a hen --
feathers and fur to begin it again.
When the sun goes down and it gets dark
I saw an animal in a park.
Bring it home to give it to you.
I have seen animals break in two.
You were hoping for something soft
and loyal and clean and wondrously careful --
a form of otherwise vicious habit
can have long ears and be called a rabbit.
…
Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
Autobiography
In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.
Come back early or never come.
My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.
Come back early or never come.
My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gently, gently, gentleness.
Come back early or never come.
When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
Come back early or never come.
The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.
Come back early or never come.
…
Thom Gunn (1929-2004)
Baby Song
From the private ease of Mother's womb
I fall into the lighted room.
Why don't they simply put me back
Where it is warm and wet and black?
But one thing follows on another.
Things were different inside Mother.
Padded and jolly I would ride
The perfect comfort of her inside.
They tuck me in a rustling bed
--I lie there, raging, small, and red.
…
John Berryman (1914-1972)
The Ball Poem
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over -- there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up.
…