Winning Words

by William Sieghart

  By shallow rivers, to whose falls

  Melodious birds sing madrigals.

  There will I make thee beds of roses

  And a thousand fragrant posies,

  A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

  Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

  A gown made of the finest wool,

  Which from our pretty lambs we pull,

  Fair linèd slippers for the cold,

  With buckles of the purest gold.

  A belt of straw and ivy buds

  With coral clasps and amber studs:

  And if these pleasures may thee move,

  Come live with me and be my Love.

  Thy silver dishes for thy meat

  As precious as the gods do eat,

  Shall on an ivory table be

  Prepared each day for thee and me.

  The shepherd swains shall dance and sing

  For thy delight each May-morning:

  If these delights thy mind may move,

  Then live with me and be my Love.

  DENISE LEVERTOV

  Variation on a Theme by Rilke

  The Book of Hours, Book 1, Poem 1, Stanza 1

  A certain day became a presence to me;

  there it was, confronting me – a sky, air, light:

  a being. And before it started to descend

  from the height of noon, it leaned over

  and struck my shoulder as if with

  the flat of a sword, granting me

  honor and a task. The day’s blow

  rang out, metallic or it was I, a bell awakened,

  and what I heard was my whole self

  saying and singing what it knew: I can.

  TED HUGHES

  Full Moon and Little Frieda

  A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket –

  And you listening.

  A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.

  A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror

  To tempt a first star to a tremor.

  Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath –

  A dark river of blood, many boulders,

  Balancing unspilled milk.

  ‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’

  The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

  That points at him amazed.

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

  Spring

  Nothing is so beautiful as spring –

  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

  Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

  The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

  With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

  What is all this juice and all this joy?

  A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

  In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

  Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

  Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

  Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

  SEAMUS HEANEY

  The Railway Children

  When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

  We were eye-level with the white cups

  Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

  Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

  East and miles west beyond us, sagging

  Under their burden of swallows.

  We were small and thought we knew nothing

  Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires

  In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

  Each one seeded full with the light

  Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

  So infinitesimally scaled

  We could stream through the eye of a needle.

  CHARLES SIMIC

  The Old World

  I believe in the soul; so far

  It hasn’t made much difference.

  I remember an afternoon in Sicily.

  The ruins of some temple.

  Columns fallen in the grass like naked lovers.

  The olives and goat cheese tasted delicious

  And so did the wine

  With which I toasted the coming night,

  The darting swallows,

  The Saracen wind and moon.

  It got darker. There was something

  Long before there were words:

  The evening meal of shepherds …

  A fleeting whiteness among the trees …

  Eternity eavesdropping on time.

  The goddess going to bathe in the sea.

  She must not be followed.

  These rocks, these cypress trees,

  May be her old lovers.

  Oh to be one of them, the wine whispered to me.

  JAMES WRIGHT

  Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s

  Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

  Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

  Asleep on the black trunk,

  Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

  Down the ravine behind the empty house,

  The cowbells follow one another

  Into the distances of the afternoon.

  To my right,

  In a field of sunlight between two pines,

  The droppings of last year’s horses

  Blaze up into golden stones.

  I lean back as the evening darkens and comes on.

  A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

  I have wasted my life.

  SYLVIA PLATH

  You’re

  Clownlike, happiest on your hands,

  Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,

  Gilled like a fish. A common-sense

  Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.

  Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,

  Trawling your dark as owls do.

  Mute as a turnip from the Fourth

  Of July to All Fools’ Day,

  O high-riser, my little loaf.

  Vague as fog and looked for like mail.

  Farther off than Australia.

  Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn.

  Snug as a bud and at home

  Like a sprat in a pickle jug.

  A creel of eels, all ripples.

  Jumpy as a Mexican bean.

  Right, like a well-done sum.

  A clean slate, with your own face on.

  ALISON FELL

  Pushing Forty

  Just before winter

  we see the trees show

  their true colours:

  the mad yellow of chestnuts

  two maples like blood sisters

  the orange beech

  braver than lipstick

  Pushing forty, we vow

  that when the time comes

  rather than wither

  ladylike and white

  we will henna our hair

  like Colette, we too

  will be gold and red

  and go out

  in a last wild blaze

  ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

  Say not the struggle nought availeth,

  The labour and the wounds are vain,

  The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

  And as things have been, things remain.

  If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

  It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

  Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

  And, but for you, possess the field.

  For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

  Seem here no painful inch to gain,

  Far back through creeks and inlets making

  Comes, silent, flooding in, the main,

  And no
t by eastern windows only,

  When daylight comes, comes in the light,

  In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

  But westward, look, the land is bright.

  LOUIS UNTERMEYER

  Portrait of a Child

  Unconscious of amused and tolerant eyes,

  He sits among his scattered dreams, and plays,

  True to no one thing long; running for praise

  With something less than half begun. He tries

  To build his blocks against the furthest skies.

  They fall; his soldiers tumble; but he stays

  And plans and struts and laughs at fresh dismays,

  Too confident and busy to be wise.

  His toys are towns and temples; his commands

  Bring forth vast armies trembling at his nod.

  He shapes and shatters with impartial hands.

  And, in his crude and tireless play, I see

  The savage, the creator, and the god:

  All that man was and all he hopes to be.

  JOHN DONNE

  The Good Morrow

  I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

  Did, till we loved: were we not weaned till then,

  But sucked on childish pleasures sillily?

  Or slumbered we in th’Seven Sleepers’ den?

  ’Twas so: but this, all pleasures fancies be.

  If ever any beauty I did see,

  Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

  And now, ‘Good morrow’ to our waking souls,

  Which watch not one another out of fear,

  But love all love of other sights controls,

  And makes a little room an everywhere.

  Let sea-discov’rers to new worlds have gone;

  Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown;

  Let us possess our world: each hath one, and is one.

  My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

  And plain, true hearts do in the faces rest.

  Where can we find two fitter hemispheres

  Without sharp North, without declining West?

  What ever dies, is not mixed equally:

  If both our loves be one, or thou and I

  Love just alike in all, none of these loves can die.

  WENDELL BERRY

  The Peace of Wild Things

  When despair for the world grows in me

  and I wake in the night at the least sound

  in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

  I go and lie down where the wood drake

  rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

  I come into the peace of wild things

  who do not tax their lives with forethought

  of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

  And I feel above me the day-blind stars

  waiting with their light. For a time

  I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  DYLAN THOMAS

  Do not go gentle into that good night

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

  Because their words had forked no lightning they

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

  Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  And you, my father, there on the sad height,

  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  DOUGLAS DUNN

  Modern Love

  It is summer, and we are in a house

  That is not ours, sitting at a table

  Enjoying minutes of a rented silence,

  The upstairs people gone. The pigeons lull

  To sleep the under-tens and invalids,

  The tree shakes out its shadows to the grass,

  The roses rove through the wilds of my neglect.

  Our lives flap, and we have no hope of better

  Happiness than this, not much to show for love

  But how we are, or how this evening is,

  Unpeopled, silent, and where we are alive

  In a domestic love, seemingly alone,

  All other lives worn down to trees and sunlight,

  Looking forward to a visit from the cat.

  JOHN MILTON

  On His Blindness

  Sonnet XIX

  When I consider how my light is spent,

  Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

  And that one talent which is death to hide

  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

  To serve therewith my Maker, and present

  My true account, lest he returning chide,

  “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”

  I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

  That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need

  Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

  Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

  And post o’er land and ocean without rest;

  They also serve who only stand and wait.”

  OGDEN NASH

  Reflections on Ice-Breaking

  Candy

  is dandy

  But liquor

  is quicker.

  PHILIP LARKIN

  Church Going

  Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

  I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

  Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

  And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

  For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

  Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

  And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

  Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

  My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

  Move forward, run my hand around the font.

  From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –

  Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

  Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

  Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

  ‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.

  The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

  I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

  Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

  Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

  And always end much at a loss like this,

  Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

  When churches fall completely out of use

  What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

  A few cathedrals chronically on show,

  Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

  And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

  Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

  Or, after dark, will dubious women come

  To make their children touch a particular stone;

  Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

  Advised night see walking a dead one?

  Power of some sort or other will go on

  In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

  But superstition, like belief, must die,

  And what remains when disbelief has gone?r />
  Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

  A shape less recognisable each week,

  A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

  Will be the last, the very last, to seek

  This place for what it was; one of the crew

  That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

  Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

  Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

  Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

  Or will he be my representative,

  Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

  Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

  Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

  So long and equably what since is found

  Only in separation – marriage, and birth,

  And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built

  This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea

  What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

  It pleases me to stand in silence here;

  A serious house on serious earth it is,