Why not wake at dawn? Why not break
From the coffin of night, whose nails
Are the only stars left.  Why not follow
A tear like a comet's tail, and trail
The grief of a year until it ends--
Who knows where.  Why not wake
At dawn, after all is gone, and go on?

~ from The Art of Losing (Bloomsbury USA, 2010)

Because we dream and want and carry on,
we think we're exempt. We think we're
above working the Earth on all fours.

We often miss the point.
A bear may feel like a hummingbird
the moment he catches a salmon,
but his paws are still paws.

As for me, I feel like a horse chasing
birds that cross the sky.  When they fly
out of view, I know I'm a hawk born as
a horse.  All poets are.  A tangle of wings
and hooves.  Trying to run in the sky
and fly on Earth.

So it's useless to pine for your lover
to be delicate, if she's really a cheetah.
Or for your mother to see clearly,
if her path is that of a bat.

It doesn't mean we can't try.
Just that we work
with what we're given.

~ from Reduced to Joy (Viva Editions  2013)

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue. 

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck 

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly. 

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod. 

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm. 

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today 
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

~ from Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (Faber and Faber, 2002)

As the wind makes a different song
through the same tree as its branches
break, God makes finer and finer music
through the wearing down of our will.

~ from Reduced to Joy (Viva Editions  2013)

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

~ from Collected Poems 1930-1993 (W.W. Norton & Co, 1993)

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

~ Copyright Susan Cooper 1974

You know when you unwrap them:
fruitcake is notorious. There were only
51 of them baked in 1917 by the
personal chef of Rasputin. The mad monk
ate one. That was what finally killed him

But there are many more bouncers:
bowls green and purple spotted like lepers.
Vases of inept majolica in the shape
of wheezing frogs or overweight lilies.
Sweaters sized for Notre Dame's hunchback.

Hourglasses of no use humans
can devise. Gloves to fit three-toed sloths.
Mufflers of screaming plaid acrylic.
Necklaces and pins that transform
any outfit to a thrift shop reject.

Boxes of candy so stale and sticky
the bonbons pull teeth faster than
your dentist. Weird sauces bought
at warehouse sales no one will ever
taste unless suicidal or blind.

Immortal as vampires, these gifts
circulate from birthdays to Christmas,
from weddings to anniversaries.
Even if you send them to the dump,
they resurface, bobbing up on the third

day like the corpses they call floaters.
After all living have turned to dust
and ashes, in the ruins of cities
alien archeologists will judge our
civilization by these monstrous relics. 

~ from The Hunger Moon (Knopf, 2012)

I meant to return long before this
but in looking back we learn too much
of loss and I dreaded that.
Now going through the house
and my parents’ lives
too revealed by what they saved
and what they left behind
for me to find, I feel nothing
but pain for the past
trying to understand
how I fell so short of what I intended
to do with my life.
How life twists and turns
against us. How a childhood
is not really understood
until it is lived a second time
in memory. How wonderful
and how terrible
it seems now
because it is gone
and because it was mine.

~ from The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home
edited by Jim Perlma, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, and
Pamela Mittlefehldt (Holy Cow! Press, 2013)

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate, 
Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers 
In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes. 
This could be our last winter, it could be many 
More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks: 
Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines 
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even 
As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair. 

[translated by Burton Raffel]

~ from Ten Windows, How Great Poems Transform the World, by Jane Hirshfield (Alfred A Knopf, 2015)

In Italy, on the day of the dead, 
they ring bells,
from every church and village in every direction.
At the usual times, the regular bells of the hour—
eleven strokes, twelve.  Oar strokes
laid over the bottomless water and air.
But the others?  Tuneless, keyless,  
rhythm of wings at the door of the hive 
when the entrance is suddenly shuttered
and the bees, returned heavy, see
that the world of flowering and pollen is over.
There can be no instruction  
to make this.  Undimensioned
the tongues of the bells,
the ropes of the bells, their big iron bodies unholy.
Barred from form. Barred from bars, 
from relation.  The beauty—unspeakable—
was beauty.  I drank it and thirsted, 
I stopped.  I ran.  Wanted closer in every direction.
Each bell stroke released without memory  
or judgment, unviolent, untender.  Uncaring.
And yet: existent.  Something trembling.
I— who have not known bombardment—
have never heard so naked a claim
of the dead on the living, to know them.

~ from The Beauty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)

If someone asks
My abode
I reply:
"The east edge of
The Milky Way."

Like a drifting cloud,
Bound by nothing:
I just let go
Giving myself up
To the whim of the wind
	
      translated by John Stevens

~ from Art and Wonder, An Illustrated Anthology of Visionary Poetry (Bullfinch Press, 1996)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.

Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something —
some useful door —
somewhere —
up there.

~ from The Awful Rowing Toward God (Houghton Mifflin, 1975)

(translated by Jane Kenyon)  

Though this land is not my own
I will never forget it,
or the waters of its ocean,
fresh and delicately icy.

Sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine.
Late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pine trees.

And the sun goes down in waves of ether
in such a way that I can't tell
if the day is ending, or the world,
or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

~ from Art and Wonder; An Illustrated Anthology of Visionary Poetry (Bullfinch Press, 1996)

Committee Meeting.       Burden of Proof.
              The Simple Truth.      Trying To Be Nice.
 Honestly.   I Could Have Died.      I Almost Cried.
          It's Only a Cold Sore.
    It's My Night.     Trust Me.    Dead Serious.
 I Have Everything All Under Control.
             I'm Famous For My Honesty.
       I'm Simply Beside Myself.      We're On The Same Page. 
            Let's Not Reinvent The Wheel.
 For The Time Being.   There Is That.
                  I'm Not Just Saying That.
    I Just Couldn't Help Myself.          I Mean It.

~ from Ecstatic (Allbook Books, 2007)

The fields look empty, 
landing strips for light.
Primed for plurality, for excess, 
we beg for more, hungry
for the shiver of light and dark.
It’s what the world teaches: 
a hundred excuses
for beauty, our minds oiled
with gorgeousness, the fields
not really empty
but so full they seem so: 
wheat rustles on wheat.

~ from Mortal Arguments (Brick Books, 2007)

 for George Whalley 

An hour after the storm on Birch Lake 
the island bristles. Rock. Leaves still falling. 
At this time, in the hour after lightning 
we release the canoes. 
Silence of water 
purer than the silence of rock. 
A paddle touches itself. We move 
over blind mercury, feel the muscle 
within the river, the blade 
weave in dark water. 

Now each casual word is precisely chosen 
passed from bow to stern, as if 
leaning back to pass a canteen. 
There are echoes, repercussions of water. 
We are in absolute landscape, 
among names that fold in onto themselves. 

To circle the island means witnessing 
the blue grey dust of a heron 
released out of the trees. 
So the dialogue slides 
nothing more than friendship 
an old song we break into 
not needing all the words. 

We are past naming the country. 
The reflections are never there 
without us, without the exhaustion 
of water and trees after storm.

~from The Cinnamon Peeler (Vintage International, 1997)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)