MOONLESS NIGHT - Louise Glück

A lady weeps at a dark window.

Must we say what it is? Can’t we simply say

a personal matter? It’s early summer;

next door the Lights are practicing klezmer music.

A good night: the clarinet is in tune.

As for the lady--she’s going to wait forever;

there’s no point in watching longer.

After awhile, the streetlight goes out.

But is waiting forever

always the answer? Nothing

is always the answer; the answer

depends on the story.

Such a mistake to want

clarity above all things. What’s

a single night, especially

one like this, now so close to ending?

On the other side, there could be anything,

all the joy in the world, the stars fading,

the streetlight becoming a bus stop.

Breakfast - Jacques Prévert (translation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

He put the coffee

In the cup

He put the milk

In the cup of coffee

He put the sugar

In the café au lait

With the coffee spoon

He stirred

He drank the café au lait

And he set down the cup

Without a word to me

He lit

A cigarette

He made smoke-rings

With the smoke

He put the ashes

In the ash-tray

Without a word to me

Without a look at me

He got up

He put

His hat upon his head

He put his raincoat on

Because it was raining

And he left

In the rain

Without a word

Without a look at me

And I       I took

My head in my hand

And I cried.

Remember How Sad That Was When - Paul Guest

I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,

how emotionally counterintuitive it was

as my citizenship in the nation I made of you

gradually lapsed. I woke some other

place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours

and strangers I worried about. But no you.

No ages of you. No your name three times

when I walked somewhere or lay down at night

to bargain with sleep. No you

falling from my mouth everywhere I went.

No you anywhere to be seen.

A secret to keep. And mostly I did,

even beside other women who asked

with the privilege of their bodies

if you had ever existed and what did you do

and did you have a name I’d share

and had you been good to me

but I never gave you up. I left the last of you

to be lost in the fog inside me.

Napping in bomb craters, haggling

over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,

memorizing every month’s horoscope.

It seemed then the days

you had left me stained in sadness

were like that. Good apples on back order from God

and the steaks full of blood

you taught me to love, rationed.

At least I told myself this,

thinking of all the never you were.

But there were limits and lengths

and limits again. There were

songs inside the fog inside the world.

She Dotes - Edward Thomas

She dotes on what the wild birds say

Or hint or mock at, night and day, --

Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,

     And songless plover,

Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker.

They never say a word to her

     About her lover.

She laughs at them for childishness,

She cries at them for carelessness

Who see her going loverless

     Yet sing and chatter

Just as when he was not a ghost,

Nor ever ask her what she has lost

     Or what is the matter.

Yet she has fancied blackbirds hide

A secret, and that thrushes chide

Because she thinks death can divide

     Her from her lover:

And she has slept, trying to translate

The word the cuckoo cries to his mate

     Over and over.

Sadness - Stephen Dunn

It was everywhere, in the streets and houses,

    on farms and now in the air itself.

It had come from history and we were history

    so it had come from us.

I told my artist friends who courted it

    not to suffer

on purpose, not to fall in love

    with sadness

because it would naturally be theirs

    without assistance,

I had sad stories of my own,

    but they made me quiet

the way my parents’ failures once did,

    nobody’s business

but our own, and, besides, what was left to say

    these days

when the unspeakable was out there being spoken,

    exhausting all sympathy?

Yet, feeling it, how difficult to keep

    the face’s curtains

closed - she left, he left, they died -

    the heart rising

into the mouth and eyes, everything so basic,

    so unhistorical

at such times. And then, too, the woes

    of others would get in,

but mostly I was inured and out

    to make a decent buck

or in pursuit of some slippery pleasure

    that was sadness disguised.

I found it, it found me, oh

    my artist friends

give it up, just mix your paints,

    stroke,

the strokes unmistakably will be yours.