Summer Morn in New Hampshire

Claude McKay1889 –1948

All yesterday it poured, and all night long    

I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat

Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,    

Upon the grass like running children’s feet.

And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,    

Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,

Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,    

And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!    The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,

The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,    

The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.

And all things were transfigured in the day,    

But me whom radiant beauty could not move;

For you, more wonderful, were far away,    

And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Erie Waters

Emily Pauline Johnson

A dash of yellow sand,

Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;

Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;

And, creeping close to these

Long shores that lounge at ease,

Old Erie rocks and ripples to a fresh sou’-western breeze.

A sky of blue and grey;

Some stormy clouds that play

At scurrying up with ragged edge, then laughing blow away,

Just leaving in their trailSome snatches of a gale;

To whistling summer winds we lift a single daring sail.

O! wind so sweet and swift,

O! danger-freighted gift

Bestowed on Erie with her waves that foam and fall and lift,

We laugh in your wild face,

And break into a race

With flying clouds and tossing gulls that weave and interlace.

My Dream

Han Yong-un1879 –1944translated from the Korean by Younghill KangWhen you go walking through the clear dawn in the shade of trees,  my dream will become the few little stars     that are staying on over your head.When during summer days you are sleeping a daytime sleep  unable to conquer the heat, my dream will become the clear winds     that are floating about your vicinage.When in the still Autumn nights, you sit alone reading books,  my dream will become the voice of the cricket, crying     under your table, “chirrup, chirrup.”

Summer in the South

                 The oriole sings in the greening grove                                           As if he were half-way waiting,                                           The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,                                           Timid and hesitating.The rain comes down in a torrent sweep             And the nights smell warm and piney,The garden thrives, but the tender shoots             Are yellow-green and tiny.Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,             Streams laugh that erst were quiet,The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue             And the woods run mad with riot.

Deep Lane

 [June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies]Mark Doty1953 –June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies,we’re walking in the cemetery down the road,and I look up from my distracted study of whatever,an unfocused gaze somewhere a few feet in front of my shoes,and see that Ned has run on aheadwith the champagne plume of his tail held especially high,his head erect,which is often a sign that he has something he believes he is not allowed to have,and in the gathering twilight (what is it that is gathered,who is doing the harvesting?) I can make out that the long horizontalbetween his lovely jaws is one of the four stakes planted on the slopeto indicate where the backhoe will dig a new grave.Of course my impulse is to run after him, to replace the marker,out of respect for the rule that we won’t desecrate the tombs,or at least for those who knew the womanwhose name inks a placard in the rectangle claimed by the four polesof vanishing—three poles now—and how it’s within their recollection,their gathering, she’ll live. Evening of memory. Sparklamps in the grass.I stand and watch him go in his wild figure eights,I say, You run, darling, you tear up that hill.Copyright © by Mark Doty. Used with the permission of the author.

A Poet to His Baby Son

By James Weldon Johnson

Tiny bit of humanity,

Blessed with your mother’s face,   

And cursed with your father’s mind.

I say cursed with your father’s mind,

Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back,   

Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot,   

And looking away,

Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond.

Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet?

Why don’t you kick and howl,   

And make the neighbors talk about   

“That damned baby next door,”   

And make up your mind forthwith   

To grow up and be a banker

Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter   

Or—?—whatever you decide upon,   

Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts   

About being a poet.

For poets no longer are makers of songs,   

Chanters of the gold and purple harvest,   

Sayers of the glories of earth and sky,   

Of the sweet pain of love

And the keen joy of living;

No longer dreamers of the essential dreams,   

And interpreters of the eternal truth,   

Through the eternal beauty.

Poets these days are unfortunate fellows.   

Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way   

Or new things in an old language,   

They talk abracadabra

In an unknown tongue,

Each one fashioning for himself

A wordy world of shadow problems,

And as a self-imagined Atlas,

Struggling under it with puny legs and arms,   

Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load.

My son, this is no time nor place for a poet;   

Grow up and join the big, busy crowd   

That scrambles for what it thinks it wants   

Out of this old world which is—as it is—

And, probably, always will be.

Take the advice of a father who knows:   

You cannot begin too young   

Not to be a poet.

After

Mark Bibbins

Who wouldn’t have preferred a longer June; ’thoughthis seems trivial now in these milk-white lights. With Junecomes Folsom East and Pride and waking up in someoneelse’s bed and I am not really good at telling you these liesso I will explain my sadness here; try to come clean. One June,the rain fell nightly; felt like everyone had died. I understandSexton now, though I pretended I did before, tried tograsp onto grief like a child holding onto their mother’sthumb. It can be hard to wake in the middle of someoneelse’s leaving. Impossible even to carry that burden.