The Late Passenger

The Late Passenger

by C.S. Lewis, from Poetry 180, ed. Billy Collins, 2003

The sky was low, the sounding rain was falling dense and dark,

And Noah's sons were standing at the window of the Ark.

The beast were in, but Japhet said, 'I see one creature more

Belated and unmated there come knocking at the door.'

'Well let him knock,' said Ham, 'Or let him drown or learn to swim.

We're overcrowded as it is; we've got no room for him.'

'And yet it knocks, how terribly it knocks,' said Shem, 'It's feet

Are hard as horn -- but oh the air that comes from it is sweet.'

'Now hush,' said Ham, 'You'll waken Dad, and once he comes to see

What's at the door, it's sure to mean more work for you and me.'

Noah's voice came roaring from the darkness down below,

'Some animal is knocking. Take it in before we go.'

Ham shouted back, and savagely he nudged the other two,

'That's only Japhet knocking down a brad-nail in his shoe.'

Said Noah, 'Boys, I hear a noise that's like a horse's hoof.'

Said Ham, 'Why, that's the dreadful rain that drums upon the roof.'

Noah tumbled up on deck and out he put his head;

His face went grey, his knees were loosed, he tore his beard and said,

'Look, look! It would not wait. It turns away. It takes flight.

Fine work you've made of it, my sons, between you all tonight!

'Even if I could outrun it now, it would not turn again.

--Not now. Our great discourtesy has earned its high disdain.

'Oh noble and unmated beast, my sons were all unkind;

In such a night what stable and what manger will you find?

'Oh golden hoofs, oh cataracts of mane, oh nostrils wide

With indignation! Oh the neck wave-arched, the lovely pride!

'Oh long shall be the furrows ploughed across the hearts of men

Before it comes to stable and to manger once again.

'And dark and crooked all the ways in which our race shall walk,

And shrivelled all their manhood like a flower with broken stalk,

'And all the world, oh Ham, may curse the hour when you were born,'

Because of you the Ark must sail without the Unicorn.'

the way it is now

the way it is now

by Charles Bukowski, from Good Poems, ed. Garrison Keillor, 2002

I'll tell you

I've lived with some gorgeous women

and I was so bewitched by those

beautiful creatures that

my eyebrows twitched.

but I'd rather drive to New York

backwards

than to live with any of them

again.

the next classic stupidity

will be the history

of those fellows

who inherit my female

legacies.

in their case

as in mine

they will find

that madness

is caused by not

being often enough

alone.

A Herbal

A Herbal

by Seamus Heaney, from Human Chain, 2010

After Guillevic's "Herbier de Bretagne"

Everywhere plants

Flourish among graves,

Sinking their roots

In all the dynasties

Of the dead.

*

Was graveyard grass

In our place

Any different?

Different from ordinary

Field grass?

Remember how you wanted

The sound recordist

To make a loop,

Wildtrack of your feet

Through the wet

At the foot of a field?

*

Yet for all their lush

Compliant dialect

No way have plants here

Arrived at a settlement.

Not the mare's tail,

Not the broom or whins.

It must have to do

With the wind.

*

Not that the grass itself

Ever rests in peace.

It too takes issue,

Now sets a fire.

To the wind,

Now turns its back.

*

"See me?" it says.

"The wind

Has me well rehearsed

In the ways of the world.

Unstable is good.

Permission granted!

Go, then, citizen

Of the wind.

Go with the flow."

*

The bracken

Is less boastful.

It closes and curls back

On its secrets,

The best kept

Upon earth.

*

And, to be fair,

There is sun as well.

Nowhere else

Is there sun like here,

Morning sunshine

All day long.

Which is why the plants,

Even the bracken,

Are sometimes tempted

Into trust.

*

On sunlit tarmac,

On memories of the hearse

At walking pace

Between overgrown verges,

The dead here are borne

Towards the future.

*

When the funeral bell tolls

The grass is all a-tremble.

But only then.

Not every time any old bell

Rings.

*

Broom

Is like the disregarded

And company for them,

Shows them

They have to keep going,

That the whole thing's worth

The effort.

And sometimes

Like those same characters

When the weather's very good

Broom sings.

*

Never, in later days,

Would fruit

So taste of earth.

There was slate

In the blackberries,

A slatey sap.

*

Run your hand into

The ditch back growth

And you'd grope roots,

Thick and thin.

But roots of what?

Once, one that we saw

Gave itself away,

The tail of a rat

We killed.

*

We had enemies,

Though why we never knew.

Among them,

Nettles,

Malignant things, letting on

To be asleep.

*

Enemies--

Part of a world

Nobody seemed able to explain

But that had to be

Put up with.

There would always be dock leaves

To cure the vicious stings.

*

There were leaves on the trees

And growth on the headrigs

You could confess

Everything to.

Even your fears

Of the night,

Of people

Even.

*

What was better then

Than to crush a leaf or a herb

Between your palms

Then wave it slowly, soothingly

Past your mouth and nose

And breathe?

*

If you know a bit

About the universe

It's because you've taken it in

Like that,

Looked as hard

As you look into yourself,

Into the rat hole,

Through the vetch and dock

That mantled it.

Because you've laid your cheek

Against the rush clump

And known soft stone to break

On the quarry floor.

*

Between heather and marigold,

Between spaghnum and buttercup,

Between dandelion and broom,

Between forget-me-not and honeysuckle,

As between clear blue and cloud,

Between haystack and sunset sky,

Between oak tree and slated roof,

I had my existence. I was there.

Me in place and the place in me.

*

Where can it be found again,

An elsewhere world, beyond

Maps and atlases

Where all is woven into

And of itself, like a nest

Of crosshatched grass blades?

Every Day

Every Day

by Denise Levertov, from Breathing the Water, 1984

Three men spoke to me today.

One, bereaved, told me his grief, saying

Had God abandoned him, or was there

no God to abandon him?

One, condemned, told me his epitaph,

'Groomed to die.' On Death Row he remembers

the underside of his gradeschool desk, air-raid drill.

He never expected to live

even this long.

He sticks his head back down between his knees,

'not even sad.'

One, a young father, told me

how he had needed his child, even

before she was conceived.

How he had planted a garden too big to hoe.

He told me about the small leaves near his window,

how he had seen in them their desire to be,

to be the world.

With this one I sat laughing,

eating, drinking wine. 'The same word,'

he said, 'she has the same word for me and the dog!

She loves us!'

Every day, every day I hear

enough to fill

a year of nights with wondering.

Girl on a Tractor

Girl on a Tractor

by Joyce Sutphen, from Good Poems, ed. Garrison Keillor, 2002

I knew the names of all the cows before

I knew my alphabet, but no matter the

subject; I had mastery of it, and when

it came time to help in the fields, I

learned to drive a tractor at just the right

speed, so that two men, walking

on either side of the moving wagon

could each lift a bale, walk towards

the steadily arriving platform and

simultaneously hoist the hay onto

the rack, walk to the next bale, lift,

turn, and find me there, exactly where

I should be, my hand on the throttle,

carefully measuring out the pace.

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins, from Poetry 180, ed. Billy Collins, 2003

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with a rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.