Poem of the day - Guide to the Other Gallery

Guide to the Other Gallery

by Dana Gioia 

 

This is the hall of broken limbs
Where splintered marble athletes lie
Beside the arms of cherubim.
Nothing is ever thrown away.

These butterflies are set in rows.
So small and gray inside their case
They look alike now. I suppose
Death makes most creatures commonplace.

These portraits here of the unknown
Are hung three high, frame piled on frame.
Each potent soul who craved renown,
Immortalized without a name.

Here are the shelves of unread books,
Millions of pages turning brown.
Visitors wander through the stacks,
But no one ever takes one down.

I wish I were a better guide.
There’s so much more that you should see—
Rows of bottles with nothing inside,
Displays of locks which have no key.

You’d like to go? I wish you could.
This room has such a peaceful view.
Look at that case of antique wood
Without a label. It’s for you.

 

“Guide to the Other Gallery” by Dana Gioia from 99 Poems.

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A Red, Red Rose

Brigid Collection photoshoot, by Aileen Devlin

A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose,
     That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody,
     That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
     So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
     Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
     And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
     While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare the weel, my only luve!
     And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
     Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!

 

“A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns. Public domain.

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Song by Allen Ginsberg

Photo by Aileen Devlin

 SONG

The weight of the world
             is love.
Under the burden
             of solitude,
under the burden
             of dissatisfaction

             the weight,
the weight we carry
             is love.

Who can deny?
             In dreams
it touches
             the body,
in thought
             constructs
a miracle,
             in imagination
anguishes
             till born
in human—

looks out of the heart
             burning with purity—
for the burden of life
             is love,
but we carry the weight
             wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
             at last,
must rest in the arms
             of love.
No rest
             without love,
no sleep
             without dreams
of love—
             be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
             or machines,
the final wish
             is love
—cannot be bitter,
             cannot deny,
cannot withhold
             if denied:

the weight is too heavy

             —must give
for no return
             as thought
is given
             in solitude
in all the excellence
             of its excess.

The warm bodies
             shine together
in the darkness,
             the hand moves
to the center
             of the flesh,
the skin trembles
             in happiness
and the soul comes
             joyful to the eye—

yes, yes,
             that’s what
I wanted,
             I always wanted,
I always wanted,
             to return
to the body
             where I was born.

"Song” by Allen Ginsberg from Collected Poems 1947-1980. © Harper Collins, 1981.

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The Divine Image

 

Photo by Aileen Devlin

The Divine Image

by William Blake

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

"The Divine Image” by William Blake. Public Domain

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Deceiving the Gods

Bast Collection photo by Aileen Devlin

Deceiving the Gods

by Ellen Bass 

 

The old Jews rarely admitted good fortune.
And if they did, they’d quickly add kinahora—
let the evil eye not hear. What dummkopf
would think the spirits were on our side?
But even in a tropical paradise
laden with sugarcane and coconut,
something like the shtetl’s wariness exists.
In Hawaii, I’m told, a fisherman
never spoke directly, lest the gods
arrive at the sea before him.
Instead he’d look to the sky,
the fast-moving clouds, and say,
I wonder if leaves are falling in the uplands!
Let us go and gather leaves.
So, my love, today let’s not talk at all.
Let’s be like those couples
eating silently in restaurants,
barely a word the entire meal.
We pitied them, but now I see
they were always so much smarter than we were.

"Deceiving the Gods” by Ellen Bass from Like a Beggar. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014. Pin It

On the Shortest Days by Joyce Sutphen

Photo by Aileen Devlin.

On the Shortest Days

by Joyce Sutphen 

 

At almost four in the afternoon, the
wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches
on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder
what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window
measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink
edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp
in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills
and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.

“On the Shortest Days” by Joyce Sutphen from Modern Love & Other Myths. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2015.

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Never give all the heart

Photo by Aileen Devlin

Never give all the heart

by William Butler Yeats 

 

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

“Never give all the heart” by William Butler Yeats. Public Domain.

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Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

Photo by Bayardo Caceres, Model: Rosie Nova, Make up by Meagan Wilson

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
by Robert Frost 

 

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be—
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

“Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” by Robert Frost from Complete Poems of Robert Frost.

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The Bridge

Photo by Aileen Devlin

The Bridge

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
      As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
      Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection
      In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
      And sinking into the sea.

And far in the hazy distance
      Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
      Gleamed redder than the moon.

Among the long, black rafters
      The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
      Seemed to lift and bear them away;

As, sweeping and eddying through them,
      Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
      The seaweed floated wide.

And like those waters rushing
      Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o’er me
      That filled my eyes with tears.

How often, O, how often,
      In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
      And gazed on that wave and sky!

How often, O, how often,
      I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
      O’er the ocean wild and wide!

For my heart was hot and restless,
      And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
      Seemed greater than I could bear.

But now it has fallen from me,
      It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
      Throws its shadow over me.

Yet whenever I cross the river
      On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
      Comes the thought of other years.

And I think how many thousands
      Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
      Have crossed the bridge since then.

I see the long procession
      Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
      And the old subdued and slow!

And forever and forever,
      As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
      As long as life has woes;

The moon and its broken reflection
      And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
      And its wavering image here.

“The Bridge” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Public Domain.

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And Ode to the winter season

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

“Sonnet 97” by William Shakespeare. Public Domain. 

Momentary Myth photo by Sim Asher.  Model Ashleigh Bowden

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