this is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

laughter

laughter dies but is never dead
laughter lies outside the back of its head
laughter laughs at what is never said
it trills and squeals and swills in your head
it trills and squeals in the heads of the dead
and so all the lives remain laughing instead
sucked in by the laughter of the severed head
sucked in by the mouths of the laughing dead

AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION (excerpt) - dylan thomas

Though they go mad they shall be sane
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion

SMALL SONG - a. r. ammons

The reeds give way to the wind
and give the wind away.

WANDERER'S SONG - meng jiao

The thread in the hand of a kind mother
Is the coat on the wanderer's back.
Before he left she stitched it close
In secret fear that he would be slow to return.
Who will say that the inch of grass in his heart
Is gratitude enough for all the sunshine of spring?

FORGETFULLNESS - billy collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

FIRST FIG - edna st. vincent millay

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

It gives a lovely light!

HOW I LOVE YOUR EYES - fyodor tyuchev

how I love your eyes, my friend,
with their radiant play of fire,
when you lift them fleetingly
and like lightning in the skies
your gaze sweeps swiftly round.

but there is charm more powerful still
in eyes downward cast
for the moment of a passionate kiss,
when through lowered eyelids glows
the sombre, dull flame of desire.

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAIN - sara teasdale

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

MY LIFE - henri michaux

You're going someplace without me, my life.
You're rolling away.
And I'm still waiting to make my move.
You've taken the battle somewhere
Abandoning me on the way.
I never followed, I stay.
Where you are leading me, I can't plainly see.
The very little that I want, you never bring to me.
Because of this emptiness, I want
So many things, almost everything...
Because of this emptiness, that you never fill.

BUT THERE HAS TO BE MORE - arseny tarkovsky

Now summer is gone
And might never have been.
In the sunshine it's warm.
But there has to be more.

It all came to pass,
All fell inot my hands
Like a five-petalled leaf,
But there has to be more.

Nothing eveil was lost,
Nothing good was in vain,
All ablaze with clear light
But there has to be more.

Life gathered me up
Safe under its wing,
My luck always held,
But there has to be more.

Not a leaf was burnt up
Not a twig ever snapped...
Clean as glass is the day,
But there has to be more.

KEEPING THINGS WHOLE - mark strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

ANGELS (excerpt) - rainer maria rilke

angels
all of them
have weary mouths
and bright souls without a seam
and a longing (as towards sin)
goes sometimes through
their dreams...

A TOMB FOR ANATOLE (excerpt) - stephen marlame

oh you understand that if i consent to live
to seem to forget you
it is to feed my pain
and so that this apparent forgetfulness
can spring forth more horribly
in tears at some random moments
in the middle of this life
when you appear to me.