I am in love...I'm ready...

~ Terry Gross and Maurice Sendak

with thanks to erin w

in my beginning is my end

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older 

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated 

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment 

Isolated, with no before and after, 

But a lifetime burning in every moment 

And not the lifetime of one man only 

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. 

There is a time for the evening under starlight, 

A time for the evening under lamplight 

(The evening with the photograph album). 

Love is most nearly itself 

When here and now cease to matter. 

Old men ought to be explorers 

Here or there does not matter 

We must be still and still moving 

Into another intensity 

For a further union, a deeper communion 

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, 

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters 

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~  Thomas Sterns Eliot

from Four Quartets, East Coker

I have daughters and I have sons

1

Who is out there at six a.m.?  The man

Throwing newspapers onto the porch,

And the roaming souls suddenly

Drawn down into their sleeping bodies.

2

Wild words of Jacob Bohme

Go on praising the human body,

But heavy words of the ascetics 

Sway in the fall gales.

3

Do I have a right to my poems?

To my jokes? To my loves?

Oh foolish man, knowing nothing -

Less than nothing - about desire.

4

I have daughters and I have sons.

When one of them lays a hand 

On my shoulder, shining fish

Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

5

At this age, I especially love dawn

On the sea, stars above the trees,

Pages in The Threefold Life,

And the pale faces of baby mice.

6

Perhaps our life is made of struts

And paper, like those early

Wright Brothers planes.  Neighbors

Run along holding the wingtips.

7

I do love Yeats's fierceness

As he jumped into a poem,

And that lovely calm in my father's

Hands, as he buttoned his coat.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

circus animals

Bears are stomping in perfect time.

A lion jumps through flaming hoops.

A whip cracks and the music grinds.

A monkey rides a bike in a yellow suit.

A whip cracks and the animals turn their glance.

Dogs dance in carefully measured movements.

An elephant walks with a pitcher in perfect balance.

Myself, I'm quite embarrassed, I, a human.

People didn't enjoy themselves that day.

You wouldn't know it from the clapping hands

though one hand elongated by a whip

cast a striking shadow on the sand.

~Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

translation by Joanna Trzeciak

the end and the beginning

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won't

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has to get mired 

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs, 

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag a girder

to prop up a wall,

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,

and takes years,

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about 

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

 sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here 

must make way for 

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

translation by Joanna Trzeciak

the frogs after dark

I am so much in love with mournful music

That I don't bother to look for violinists.

The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.

The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.

The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.

The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.

Bears are often piled up close to each other.

In caves of bears, it's just one hump

After another, and there is no one to sort it out.

You and I have spent so many hours working.

We have paid dearly for the life we have.

It's all right if we do nothing tonight.

We've heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,

And the singer urging the low notes to come.

We've heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

There is some slowness in life that is right for us.

But we love to remember the way the soul leaps

Over and over into the lonely heavens.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the ear of a Donkey

coursera

~ Daphne Koller

co-creator of Coursera