Lamium - Louise Glück

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: a silver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.

The Geranium - Theodore Roethke

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled,

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,

I brought her back in again

For a new routine--

Vitamins, water, and whatever

Sustenance seemed sensible

At the time: she'd lived

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,

Her shriveled petals falling

On the faded carpet, the stale

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--

The dumb dames shrieking half the night

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,

Me breathing booze at her,

She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--

And that was scary--

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,

I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,

I was that lonely.

Rainy Morning - Louise Glück

You don't love the world.

If you loved the world you'd have

images in your poems.

John loves the world. He has

a motto: judge not

lest ye be judged. Don't

argue this point

on the theory it isn't possible

to love what one refuses

to know: to refuse

speech is not

to suppress perception.

Look at John, out in the world,

running even on a miserable day

like today. Your

staying dry is like the cat's pathetic

preference for hunting dead birds: completely

consistent with your tame spiritual themes,

autumn, loss, darkness, etc.

We can all write about suffering

with our eyes closed. You should show people

more of yourself; show them your clandestine

passion for red meat.

How to kill a living thing - Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

Neglect it

Criticize it to its face

Say how it kills the light

Traps all the rubbish

Bores you with its green

Continually

Harden your heart

Then

Cut it down close

To the root as possible

Forget it

For a week or a month

Return with an axe

Split it with one blow

Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

"Places among the stars," - Stephen Crane

Places among the stars,

Soft gardens near the sun,

Keep your distant beauty;

Shed no beams upon my weak heart.

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Not your golden days

Nor your silver nights

Can call me to you.

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Here I stay and wait.

Walking Around - Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

And it happens that I walk into tailor-shops and movie

houses

dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt

steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse

sobs.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,

no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails

and my hair and my shadow.

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous

to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,

or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.

It would be great

to go through the streets with a green knife

letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,

insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,

going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,

taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.

I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,

alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,

half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming

with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,

and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,

and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the

night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist

houses,

into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,

into shoe-shops that smell like vinegar,

and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines

hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,

and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,

there are mirrors

that ought to have wept from shame and terror,

there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical

cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,

my rage, forgetting everything,

I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic

shops,

and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:

underwear, towels and shirts from which slow

dirty tears are falling.