When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.


~Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

I have thoughts that are fed by the sun:

     The things which I see

     Are welcome to me,

     Welcome every one –

     I do not wish to lie

          Dead, dead,

Dead, without any company.

     Here alone on my bed

With thoughts that are fed by the sun,

And hopes that are welcome every one,

     Happy am I.

Oh life there is about thee

A deep delicious peace;

I would not be without thee,

     Stay, oh stay!

Yet be thou ever as now –

Sweetness and breath, with the quiet of death –

Be but thou ever as now,

     Peace, peace, peace.

~Public Domain

Faux-leather bound and thick as an onion, it flakes —
an heirloom from Iowa my dead often read.
I open the black flap to speak the spakes
and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred.
She taped our family register as it tore,
her hand stuttering like a sewing machine,
darning the blanks with farmers gone before —
Inez, Alvah, Delbert, Ermadean.
Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft
between the testaments, with spaces to spare,
and one stillborn’s name, smudged; her fingers left
a mounting watchfulness, a quiet repair —
when I saw the AIDS quilt, spread out in acres,
it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers.

~ from The Road to Emmaus (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014)

Death visits you	
in the face of your father.
He calls you	
to his curious room	
and reaches out a hand.

He has called you for a reason	
and you want to cry, want to see
what the reason is.

		*

In the long afterward	
the dead have obligations.
You see them less and less,	
like your very first friend,
like your parents in the years after leaving home.

		*

Dreams are the borrowed eyes of the dead.
They come down to you	
in old poses, faces resplendent:

you dream, and dream and dream
until they are certain you see.

		*

The dead are like the soul	
of a man while he’s singing.
They are clear escaping 	
nights, wandering and cool.

They are not breath; they have given that up.
Not breath.  But everything else.

~ from What Kind of Man Are You (Brick Books, 2018)

when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of

Flesh

when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached

the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of

Joy

Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale

so many shriek-mouthed blooms

as if Patience
had run out of

Patience

~from Falling Awake (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016)

I give everything away and it goes way, 	
into the dusty air,
onto the face of the water
that goes away beyond our seeing.
I give everything away	
that has been given to me:
the voices of children under clouds,
the men in the parks at the chess tables,
the women entering and leaving bakeries.
God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird.
All things silent in my seeing.
All things believable in their leaving.
Everything I have I give away	
and it goes away.

~from All of It Singing  (Graywolf Press, 2008)

In spring
I return to wonder	
as a camel calls upon
water from its hump,

I return to wonder	
carving it	
from emaciated air
inducing it—	

not from the
rubbing of genie lamps,
the recitation of wishes,
puffs of smoke,
the palming of cards,

but from irises
pushing up in their patch,
bursting through soil,
valiant purple.

I return to wonder	
snatching it 
from the press of should-dos 
distilling it
from the tug
of schedule and event
to my involuntary present.

Without wonder
I might bear winter	
in me always

Then
there might be
nothing to admire

beyond my own being.

So in spring,
I return to wonder.

~ from Red Silk, An Anthology of South Asian 
Canadian Women Poets (Mansfield Press, 2004)

I was hoping to be happy by seventeen. 
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book, 
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team 
Was going to win at night. The teachers were 
Too close to dying to understand.  The hallways 
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus, 
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday, 
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves 
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground 
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard 
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,  
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds 
And be with people who knew more than three chords 
On a guitar. We didn't drink or smoke, 
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when 
The wind picked up and the shadows of 
This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car, 
By the sway of train over a long bridge, 
We wanted to get out. The years froze 
As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water, 
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.

~from Poetry 180, Selected by Billy Collins (Random House, 2003)

The days are cold and brown,
Brown fields, no sign of green,
Brown twigs, not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in
The tree frogs begin
Their shrill sweet singing,
And we lie on our beds
Through the ecstatic night,
Wide awake, cracked open.
There will be no going back.

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

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

~ from Alive Together (Louisiana State University Press, 1996)

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

~ from Good Poems for Hard Times, Selected by Garrison Keillor (Viking, 2005)

(signs on first rows of chairs at poetry festival, La Conner, Washington)

Sunsets.
Trouble.
Full moons.
No really—they’re everybody’s.
Nothing is reserved.
We’re all poets rippling with    
layers of memories,
mostly what we might forget.
Let it belong.  Every pocket,     
satchel, hand.
We forgot to make a reservation.
But there’s room.

~ from Voices in the Air (Greenwillow Books, 2018)

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever

~ from The Collected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2000)

Ten years ago
I was writing poems	
brief as bird tracks.

A wing encapsuled 
an entire spring.

Three morning grace notes	
scored all summer.

A single beak	
bit off autumn like a worm.

A few hieroglyphs	
on the snow
said everything there was
to know of winter.

I was younger then.
I was more certain.

All my short spare poems	
knotted themselves into a final word
like a crow shot from a tree.  

But I’ve lost that brevity,	
that arrogance
of what is what,
and my poems
flock like blackbirds
gleaning word after word,
line after line
from the waving field.

They are still famished,	
cawing terribly in my mind.
I don’t know what to give them.
I keep on writing, 	
and writing.

~ from What have you lost?  (HarperCollins, Greenwillow Books, 1999)

All night	
   in and out the slippery shadows
      the owl hunted,
	the beads of blood

scarcely dry on the hooked beak before
   hunger again seized him
      and he fell, snipping
	the life from some plush breather,

and floated away
   into the crooked branches
      of the trees, that all night
	went on lapping

the sunken rain, and growing,
   bristling life
      spreading through all their branches
	as one by one

they tossed the white moon upward
   on it’s slow way
      to another morning
	in which nothing new

would ever happen,
   which is the true gift of nature,
      which is the reason
	we love it.

Forgive me.
   For hours I had tried to sleep	
      and failed;
	restless and wild,

I could settle on nothing
   and fell, in envy
      of the things of darkness
	following their sleepy course—

the root and branch, the bloodied beak—
   even the screams from the cold leaves
      were as red songs that rose and fell
	in their accustomed place.

~ from New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1993)

for my clients

Sometimes, when healing words escape I think of the gray squirrel who muscled from the office chimney. Whose sooty head poked through the pie plate hole where my wood stove had stood. The animal transfixed, my client jumping from a chair, her story interrupted— mother inaccessible, unfulfilled, a daughter’s bottled angst, black-out nights. Later, I read Addictions Professional, of White Ladies, Red Devils, Angels’ Dust. How each patient climbs from a different darkness. I think of the squirrel who clawed his way from the amazement of my building as if he could grasp hunger, bottom, ascent— bury the nuggets for winter’s stash. How I chased him from room to room. Easy Does It. Let Go. Surrender. Swing wide the blessed door.
~ from Rattle #34, Winter 2010, Tribute to Mental Health Workers

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
 
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
 
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
 
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
 
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
 
and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular,
 
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
 
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
 
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
 
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
 
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
 
~ from New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1993)

Centennial Beach, unclean and busy,		
the merry-go-round at the park in pieces
to spare the young from chipped teeth.
Every June our family gathers at a pit to roast	
hot dogs until sunset, until nausea.
My cousin Jacob and I are picked to wait, 	
secure a perfect spot.  Our nana places
pink donuts on our laps, rubs lotion
on my face, the scented kind from hotels, 
then sits on the hood of her car, the sleeves
of her custard sweater rolled around her elbows.
We wait for our aunts and uncles, stuck	
in rush hour, who must let their babies nap,
change from housecoats or suits into denim.
Jacob and I don’t feel the tension, simply	
ingest the sugar of family, the salt of family,
the processed meat of family.  Jacob, a teenager
with a beautiful girlfriend, climbs the alder tree
above us.  I time him then call for him.  I love
and fear him the higher he gets.  At the top he says,
watch me break my collarbone.  His mother,
broken, caught in traffic, will say nothing, will love
to take her son to emergency, add this to a list
of reasons why the world cannot be on her side.
I tell Jacob if he jumps his girlfriend will cry
And I’m surprised that this is enough.  I feel
the high school love in him from below,
catch in the breeze, trace his throat.
Later, I fall asleep on the picnic table,	
my head sugared with fear, imagining
he did jump and what that would mean.

~ from This Will Be Good (Book Thug, 2018)

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight. 
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a 
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

~ from Of Gravity & Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1988)