A blossom
made from fire and snow
broke the earth with a thunderous sound.
He found it
when the hills were old
and the grass was turning gray.
“What beauty!”
he cried, pierced with longing
for the blossom of fire and snow.
He was young,
impetuous like the spring,
plucking up the object of his love.
In a flash,
his hand was frozen stiff:
it stopped above the slender stem.
The blossom
turned to crystal glass,
and the boy wept in his grief.
Little poems I found while looking through folders from several years ago!
—
The dread blink of a night-full eye
when there is so much
to be done.
—
Fallow fields dead by sun
the earth has all gone flat;
I amble in the yellow yard,
I think of this think
I think of that.
—
Still is the goodly heart –
oh quiet little room!
My face as pale as the moon,
I ask my tiny star
that all the flowers of the earth
might be made young again.
—
Mademoiselle, you must
learn the books by heart –
But I keep a lonely house, madame,
with little room for poems,
where all the rooms have fallen cold
and the tinder’s all been spent.
—
If I crack a house of mirrors,
will it be through my own fault?
—
I scatter all the daisy chains
Sleeping in the underground
And no one spares a blink.
If I am nameless, I have gone
To rest and then to sink.
—
I walk below a small bright star
at the lighting of the lamps
while in the little far-off house
a piano plays nocturnal sounds,
the child’s fast asleep.
—
What a lovely lullaby –
you sung the lilies sleeping
in the summer air:
unblinkingly I loved you
flowers scattered out my hair
…
if there is a lightlife in these madhouse blues
please, where is the place?
—
Slow summer
we walked
by a red-berry bush
and talked to the sky
of paupers and papers
and kingdoms and capers
of halfpenny sense:
but clockhands have run
their course thousand rounds,
my face is grown pale,
the moon of a tale
of gladness and chattering tattering sounds;
how ugly it pounds –
the flat-footed day in her old stomping boots
the bootlegger bootless!
forsooth oh forsooth!
—
O, what madness blasts in the little face!
The jingle of cross’d sense a-ring in the streets
Like courier’s bells in a snow-falling storm.
A flower in the eye, for remembrance
Of the childlike things, lost to the souls
That forgot the hour they slept for their dreams.
It’s not like a plum.
Not so simple, or ripe,
Or sweet.
The first time
He won your heart
Was long ago:
He spoke a word,
Plain enough.
You wore a key around your neck.
What a long acquaintance
Could follow
From a word and a key.
The mystery still surprises you.
Sometimes the moon
Knows your thoughts
And shivers with light.
The illumination
Touches your chin
As you sit in the garden and think.
Rolling pins in the buttered kitchen
Give me advice:
Press out your troubles, knead them, shape them,
Make them rise and burn like dough.
I have never caused anyone to weep. I have never spoken with a haughty voice. I have never made anyone afraid. I have never been deaf to words of justice and truth.
Egyptian Book of the Dead
The best gift a man can give to his children is to love their mother.
Attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Do you see this simple truth?
Thousands upon thousands of magnificent stories—the kinds your mother read to you as a child, the kinds a soldier carried into war, the kinds you fell asleep with under the bedclothes—have all been made from 26 letters. Twenty-six unchanging letters, tiny and discreet. How could such humble materials give birth to so many unforgettable moments of beauty?
We forget that we already have what we need. The building blocks of creation are simple and perfect in their smallness. We can honor them and use them in elegant ways, taking only what is essential to our design. If we are foolish, or extravagant, we begin to think that what we have is not enough, and we complicate and contrive, spoiling the integrity of our project.
Twenty-six letters can be built to towering heights: a glistening castle of magic and stone. That is to say, small pieces—if they are put together in an intelligent way—can aspire to grand proportions. The smallness of our materials does not limit the scope of our dreams.
The trick is to use our materials as they ask to be used. Do not stand in the way and try to order them into something they are not. Each of the 26 letters comes with an indwelling of sound: a particular hum or ring that can make a happy strain of music if combined with another in a delicate way.
Do not complicate. Remember that even the most high-turreted castle was made of simple brick. The most vital body was made of muscle and bone. The most enchanting story in all the world was made of the alphabet you learned when you were just barely old enough to speak.