Maiden Name, a poem by Philip Larkin.

Post 662 - Maiden name, a poem by Philip Larkin.

Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it,scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, a poem by Adrienne Rich.

Post 661 - Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was considered one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, and was credited with bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. In 1971, she was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. She also was awarded the Ruth Paul Lilly Poetry Prize in 1986, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters from NYU, and the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry in 1989. In 1997, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in protesting against the House of Representatives’ vote to end the National Endowment for the Arts as well as other policies of the Clinton Administration regarding the arts generally and literature in particular. In 2002, she was appointed a chancellor of the newly augmented board of the Academy of American Poets. She was the winner of the 2003 Yale Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich.

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band

Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made

Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Woman Waving to Trees, a poem by Dorothea Tanning.

Dorothea Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre. She died earlier this year at 101 having just published her second anthology of poems, Coming To That.

Woman Waving to Trees, a poem by Dorothea Tanning.

Not that anyone would
notice it at first.
I have taken to marveling
at the trees in our park.
One thing I can tell you:
they are beautiful
and they know it.
They are also tired,
hundreds of years
stuck in one spot—
beautiful paralytics.
When I am under them,
they feel my gaze,
watch me wave my foolish
hand, and envy the joy
of being a moving target.

Loungers on the benches
begin to notice.
One to another,
"Well, you see all kinds..."
Most of them sit looking
down at nothing as if there
was truly nothing else to
look at until there is
that woman waving up
to the branching boughs
of these old trees. Raise your
heads, pals, look high,
you may see more than
you ever thought possible,
up where something might
be waving back, to tell her
she has seen the marvelous.

Testy Pony, a poem by Zachary Schomburg.

Post 659 - Zachary Schomburg was born in Omaha, Nebraska, spent his childhood in Iowa, and received his BA from College of the Ozarks. Currently, he's pursuing a doctorate in creative writing from the University of Nebraska. Schomburg edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books, and co-curates the Clean Part Reading Series in Lincoln, NE. His debut collection, The Man Suit, was published Black Ocean in 2007.

Testy Pony by Zachary Schomburg.

I am given a pony for my birthday, but it is the wrong
kind of pony. It is the kind of pony that won't listen.
It is testy. When I ask it to go left, it goes right.
When I ask it to run, it sleeps on its side in the tall
grass. So when I ask it to jump us over the river into
the field I have never before been, I have every
reason to believe it will fail, that we will be swept down
the river to our deaths. It is a fate for which I am
prepared. The blame of our death will rest with the
testy pony, and with that, I will be remembered with
reverence, and the pony will be remembered with
great anger. But with me on its back, the testy pony
rears and approaches the river with unfettered
bravery. Its leap is glorious. It clears the river with
ease, not even getting its pony hooves wet. And then
there we are on the other side of the river, the sun
going down, the pony circling, looking for something
to eat in the dirt. Real trust is to do so in the face of
clear doubt, and to trust is to love. This is my failure,
and for that I cannot be forgiven.

Are You Drinking? a poem by Charles Bukowski.

Post 658 - Are You Drinking? by Charles Bukowski.

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook

out again

I write from the bed

as I did last

year.

will see the doctor,

Monday.

"yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-

aches and my back 

hurts."

"are you drinking?" he will ask.

"are you getting your
exercise, your

vitamins?"

I think that I am just ill 

with life, the same stale yet

fluctuating

factors.

even at the track

I watch the horses run by

and it seems

meaningless.

I leave early after buying tickets on the

remaining races.

"taking off?" asks the motel 

clerk.

"yes, it's boring,"

I tell him.

"If you think it's boring 

out there," he tells me, "you oughta be

back here."

so here I am

propped up against my pillows

again

just an old guy

just an old writer

with a yellow

notebook.

something is 

walking across the

floor

toward 

me.

oh, it's just 

my cat

this

time.

Pebble, a poem by Zbigniew Herbert.

Post 657 - Zbigniew Herbert was born in 1924 in Lvov, which was then in eastern Poland but is currently in the Ukraine. In a world which seems confusing to many, Herbert’s honesty and clarity are perhaps unparalleled among poets. He would be my choice as the most under-appreciated poet of our times.

Pebble.

The pebble 

is a perfect creature

equal to itself 

mindful of its limits

filled exactly 

with a pebbly meaning

with a scent that does not remind one of anything 

does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

its ardour and coldness 

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse 

when I hold it in my hand 

and its noble body 

is permeated by false warmth

- Pebbles cannot be tamed 

to the end they will look at us 

with a calm and very clear eye

Translated by Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz

Their Lonely Betters, a poem by W.H. Auden.

Post 656 - Their Lonely Betters by W.H. Auden.

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through

The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew, 

And rustling flowers for some third party waited

To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying, 

There was not one which knew that it was dying

Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme

Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters

Who count some days and long for certain letters; 

We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep: 

Words are for those with promises to keep.

If You Forget Me, a poem by Pablo Neruda.

Post 655 - Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. The Italian film Il Postino, inspired by Antonio Skármeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (Ardent Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman), centres on the story of Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) living in exile on Salina Island near Sicily during the 1950s. While there, he befriends the local postman and inspires in him a love of poetry.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Clouds, a poem by Wisława Szymborska.

Post 654 - Sad news today about Wisława Szymborska (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012). Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent in Western Poland, she lived in Kraków from 1931 until the end of her life today when she died peacefully in her sleep.
Some of her prizes and awards include:
• 1954: The City of Kraków Prize for Literature
• 1963: The Polish Ministry of Culture Prize
• 1991: The Goethe Prize
• 1995: The Herder Prize
• 1995: Honorary Doctor of the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań)
• 1996: The Polish PEN Club prize
• 1996: Nobel Prize for Literature


Clouds by Wisława Szymborska.

I’d have to be really quick
to describe clouds -
a split second’s enough
for them to start being something else.

Their trademark:
they don’t repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Unburdened by memory of any kind,
they float easily over the facts.

What on earth could they bear witness to?
They scatter whenever something happens.

Compared to clouds,
life rests on solid ground,
practically permanent, almost eternal.

Next to clouds
even a stone seems like a brother,
someone you can trust,
while they’re just distant, flighty cousins.

Let people exist if they want,
and then die, one after another:
clouds simply don't care
what they're up to
down there.

And so their haughty fleet
cruises smoothly over your whole life
and mine, still incomplete.

They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on.

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

Three in the Morning, a poem by Judith Viorst.

Post 653 - Judith Stahl Viorst was born in Newark, NJ in 1931. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1952 and subsequently from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute in 1981 where she’s now a research affiliate. She lectures widely on topics, ranging from the subjects of loss and control to children's literature. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband Milton, a political writer.
Viorst received an Emmy Award for poetic monologues written for a CBS television special, Annie, the Woman in the Life of a Man, in 1970. She received the Foremother Award for lifetime achievements from the National Research Center for Women & Families in 2011.
She says her first writing attempt when she was seven or eight was a poem to her dead mother and father - who were both actually alive and not particularly pleased with their poetic fate!

Three (O'Clock) in the Morning.

At three in the morning I used to be sleeping an untroubled
sleep in my bed.
But lately at three in the morning I'm tossing and turning,
Awakened by hypochondria, and gas, and nameless dread,
Whose name I've been learning. (worry)

At three in the morning I brood about what my cholesterol
count might reveal,
And the pains in my chest start progressing from gentle to racking,
While certain intestinal problems make clear that the onions
I ate with my meal
Plan on counter attacking.

At three in the morning I look toward the future with blankets
pulled over my ears,
And all of my basic equipment is distinctly diminished.
My gums are receding, my blood pressure's high, and I can't
begin listing my fears
Or I'll never get finished.
At three in the morning I used to be sleeping but lately I wake
and reflect

That my girlhood has gone and I'll now have to manage without it.
They tell me that I'm heading into my prime. From the previews
I do not expect
To be crazy about it.

The Contortionist’s Wife, a poem by Bill Meissner.

Post 652 - Bill Meissner is the Director of Creative Writing at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota and the author of seven books. His writing has appeared in more than 200 journals, magazines and anthologies. His numerous awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Loft-McKnight Award in Poetry, a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in Fiction, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and five PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Awards. He's one of my favorite poets.

The Contortionist’s Wife.

She knows him, yet she doesn’t always recognize him -
some mornings she finds him in the kitchen cupboard
flattened among the cereal boxes,
some evenings, he’s folded beneath her chair
when she sits down for dinner.
Once he surprised her when he rose from the washing machine tub
like a genie, gave her three wishes
and a box of Cheer.

Some days she doesn’t know if he’s shaping himself
or if she’s shaping him. All she knows is the way
he twists her emotions: he makes her laugh, he makes her cry.

She’s not sure if it’s funny that he
could be lying between the sheets of her bed without her
noticing him.
Some times he’s closer to her than she ever imagined, like the
tub full of warm bath water she slides herself into.
Sometimes he’s distant, pinpricks of stars in the night sky.
But most often he’s both near and far, lifting himself
from the vase in the corner, his smile full of flowers.

Ah, she wishes she could be a contortionist, too.
She wishes she could be the one to surprise him
some morning, disguising herself as the wheat bread
popping from the toaster
or the coat rack as he reaches for his jacket.
She gazes at her stiff flesh with the brittle bones inside,
thinking if only she could slip herself around his finger
like a ring he didn’t know he was wearing
for the rest of his life.

Awkward Party Talk, a poem by Tanya Davis.

Post 651 - Tanya Davis is a Canadian poet, storyteller, musician and a singer-songwriter. Since bursting onto the Halifax music scene in 2006 with her debut, Make a List, Tanya has garnered praise from industry, audience, and peers, as well as multiple award nominations, including one for her sophomore release, Gorgeous Morning, for the 2009 ECMA Female Recording of the Year. She is a two-time winner in the CBC National Poetry Face-off as well as the Canadian Winner of the 2008 Mountain Stage NewSong contest. In 2009, with support from Bravo, she collaborated with independent filmmaker Andrea Dorfman to produce a short videopoem entitled How to Be Alone; the short has since been featured at numerous film festivals, including The Vancouver Film Fest, The Worldwide Short Film Festival, and the VideoPoetry Festival (Berlin). It also has 1.8 million views on Youtube.


Awkward Party Talk by Tanya Davis.

Hello. Do you wish to make small talk?
ok. my name is tanya, i am 30 years old
oh, that is not appropriate information to lay out on the table
okay then, my name is tanya and i am an adult
who are you?
I mean.. and your name? Is?
And what do you do?
Oh, i see, you are a job
well, i have a job, too
i also eat and sleep and breathe and drink and poo
you know, the essentials
i am, after all, merely a mammal
oh, your drive is here and you gotta run?
Ok, nice talking to you

hi. i am a child of the age of aquarius
and i wish my parents had named me something more daring and glamorous
like tatianna
which means princess in russian but they just named me tanya
what is your name?
Oh, hi bob.
And why did you come to this party?
Oh, you know so-and-so, well that's neat
i came for the chips and dip
i knew they'd be here
i also think i should go out more, so people don't forget me
and also, i don't like bars but i do like company
and i like to watch people dancing and humping
oh, i don't mean, like, people having sex in the living room
although i would watch that, too, if it was happening right now
no, i mean dancing to attract mates
there's interesting dynamics at house parties, don't you think?
Oh, you need to go get another drink?
Ok, nice talking to you

hi. tanya.
Nice to meet you
oh, that's a great handshake
do you have strong arms, too?
Hahahah.... ooooh
those are nice
i like where biceps connect to shoulders
i like strong and defined shoulders
girls or guys, i like both
to have them over me at night, i like them to hold me down like i am the project and they are the vice
oh, am i making you shy?
never mind, i talk too much
no? you don't think?
Okay, great, well my boyfriend in high school
caused me internal ridicule
when i told him i wanted to have strong shoulders
and he said “what kind of guy wants to date a girl with strong shoulders
that won't do”
and so now when i love strong shoulders on the bodies of my lovers
i can't tell if i want them
or want to be them, you know?
Oh, you have to go?
Ok, nice talking to you.

hi. (eat a chip)

I Will Wade Out, a poem by E.E.Cummings.

Post 650 - Here's a poem for the New Year.

I Will Wade Out by E.E.Cummings.

i will wade out

till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

I will take the sun in my mouth

and leap into the ripe air

Alive

with closed eyes

to dash against darkness

in the sleeping curves of my body

Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery

with chasteness of sea-girls

Will i complete the mystery

of my flesh I will rise

After a thousand years

lipping

flowers

And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

Beannacht, a poem by John O'Donohue.

Beannacht ("Blessing") by John O’Donohue.

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Interview with the Wind, a poem by Alice Oswald.

Post 646 - Alice Oswald was born in 1966. She read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon. In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her debut collection, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, won the 1996 Forward Best First Collection prize and her second collection, Dart, won the 2002 TS Eliot prize. In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year). In 2009 she published both A sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.

Interview with the Wind by Alice Oswald.

Once the Wind existed as a person


Carrying its unguarded inner mouth wide open . . .

And I notice a kind of girlish nervousness


Sensitive to any tiny shock, tell me,

When did it lose its mind?

I love the kind of sounds it carries.

I think of the Wind as the Earth's voice muscle,

Very twisted and springy, but is it tired?

What happens to bells for example

Being lifted over hills?

And prayers?

There are millions of grass-nibs trying their names on the air.

There are phrases not fully expressed, shaking the bars of the trees.

Never any conclusion. Every decision being taken back again into movement.

Why?

And on a long road on a hot day,

When the Wind gets under the Wind


And blows up a mist of dust,

Obviously it speaks in verse, obviously


It inhales for a while and then describes by means of breath


Some kind of grief, what is it?

A kind of kiss. A coldness.

And yet not uptight, not afraid to fondle.

Is it blind is it some kind of blindness


The way it breezes at Dusk


And goes on and on turning over and over


More and more leaves in the darkness?

A kind of huge, hushed up,

Inexhaustible, millions of years old sister.

Would she describe herself, when running over grass for example,

Would she describe herself as a light breeze?

Or is she serious?

If You Forget Me, a poem by Pablo Neruda.

Post 645 - If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda.

I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Thanksgiving, a poem by Edgar Albert Guest.

Post 644 - Eddie Guest (1881– 1959) was a prolific English-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet. In 1891, Guest came with his family to the United States from England. After he began at the Detroit Free Press as a copy boy and then a reporter, his first poem appeared on December 11, 1898. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1902. For 40 years, Guest was widely read throughout North America, and his sentimental, optimistic poems were in the same vein as the light verse of Nick Kenny, who also wrote syndicated columns during the same decades.

From his first published work in the Detroit Free Press until his death in 1959, Guest penned some 11,000 poems which were syndicated in some 300 newspapers and collected in more than 20 books, including A Heap o' Livin' (1916) and Just Folks (1917). Guest was made Poet Laurate of Michigan, the only poet to have been awarded the title.

Thanksgiving by Edgar Albert Guest.

Gettin' together to smile an' rejoice,
An' eatin' an' laughin' with folks of your choice;
An' kissin' the girls an' declarin' that they
Are growin' more beautiful day after day;
Chattin' an' braggin' a bit with the men,
Buildin' the old family circle again;
Livin' the wholesome an' old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.
Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother's a little bit grayer, that's all.
Father's a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an' to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin' our stories as women an' men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we're grateful an' glad to be there.
Home from the east land an' home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an' best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We've come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an' be frank,
Forgettin' position an' station an' rank.

Give me the end of the year an' its fun
When most of the plannin' an' toilin' is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin' with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An' I'll put soul in my Thanksgivin' prayers.

That Sure is My Little Dog, a poem by Eleanor Lerman.

Post 643 - Eleanor Lerman (1952 - ) is an American poet and author and a lifelong New Yorker, born in the Bronx.  Lerman was the recipient of the inaugural Juniper Prize, the 2002 Joy Bale Boone Award for Poetry, the 2006 Milton Dorfman Poetry Prize, and a fiction grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2007, she received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2011, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She currently lives on Long Island, in Nassau County.

That Sure is My Little Dog by Eleanor Lerman.
Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She’s damn ready and so am I. What else did you expect from the brainiacs of my generation? The survivors, the nonbelievers, the oddball-outs with the Cuban Missile Crisis still sizzling in our blood? Don’t tell me that you bought our act, just because our worried parents (and believe me, we’re nothing like them) taught us how to dress for work and to speak as if we cared about our education. And I guess the music fooled you: you thought we’d keep the party going even to the edge of the abyss. Well, too bad. It’s all yours now. Good luck on the ramparts. What you want to watch for is when the sky shakes itself free of kites and flies away. Have a nice day.

Nearly A Valediction, a poem by Marilyn Hacker.

Post 642 - Marilyn Hacker (born 1942) is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York. Her books of poetry include Going Back to the River (1990), Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Presentation Piece (1974), which won the National Book Award and was also a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Winter Numbers (1996), details the loss of many of her friends to AIDS and her own struggle with breast cancer, garnered a Lambda Literary Award and The Nation's Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. In 2009, Hacker won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne, which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the National Poetry Series. In 2010, she received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

 Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker.

 You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone again,
inventing life left after you.

 I don't want to remember you as
that four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

 While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

We Are Always Too Late, a poem by Eavan Boland.

Post 640 - Eavan Boland was born in Dublin in 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter. At the age of six, Boland and her family relocated to London. She later returned to Dublin for university and received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York.
Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry, an American Ireland Fund Literary Award, a Jacob's Award for her involvement in The Arts Programme broadcast on RTÉ Radio, and an honorary degree from Trinity. She's taught at Trinity College, University College, Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She's also a regular reviewer for the Irish Times.
Boland and her husband, the author Kevin Casey, have two daughters. She's currently a professor of English at Stanford University where she directs the creative writing program.

We Are Always Too Late by Eavan Boland.

Memory
Is in two parts.

First the re-visiting:

the way even now I can see
those lovers at the café table. She is weeping.

It is New England, breakfast time, winter. Behind her,
outside the picture window, is
a stand of white pines.

New snow falls and the old,
losing its balance in the branches,
showers down,
adding fractions to it. Then

The re-enactment. Always that.
I am getting up, pushing away
coffee. Always I am going towards her.

The flush and scald is
to her forehead now, and back down to her neck.

I raise one hand. I am pointing to
those trees, I am showing her our need for these
beautiful upstagings of
what we suffer by
what survives. And she never even sees me.