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To Love Thee Year by Year by Rebecca Hazelton

01:12
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They call it sacrifice— imagine me a tiny poppy on a field of green felt—brief blip of color, limitless expanse. I’ve never felt foreign, or like a lash in his eye. If it’s not love, it’s very like. Most days it feels the same— exacting—he tweezes the stray thoughts from my speech, cleans up my heart with a tortoiseshell comb. Every lady should have such a man, edging her lawn with a sharp rotary blade. Year by year—let’s call it always— editor and editrix. Engaged against a flurry of typos, showered in revisionist white out. I erase his crow’s feet, buff away his frown. My head—he yawns it open, scoops out dark foam, yesses I’ve regretted, the tiny poppy everyone sees flapping to pieces— And so, we are growing taller, sweeter, ratified in the glow of the big correction.
01:12
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Envoi by Eavan Boland

Envoi by Eavan Boland It is Easter in the suburb. Clematis shrubs the eaves and trellises with pastel. The evenings lengthen and before the rain the Dublin mountains become visible. My muse must be better than those of men who made theirs in the image of their myth. The work is half-finished and I have nothing but the crudest measures to complete it with. Under the street lamps the dustbins brighten. The winter-flowering jasmine casts a shadow outside my window in my neighbor's garden. These are things my muse must know. She must come to me. Let her come to be among the donnee, the given. I need her to remain with me until the day is over and the song is proven. Surely she comes, surely she comes to me-- no lizard skin, no paps, no podded womb about her but a brightening and the consequences of an April tomb. What I have done I have done alone. What I have seen is unverified. I have the truth and I need the faith. It is time I put my hand in her side. If she will not bless the ordinary, if she will not sanctify the common, then here I am and here I stay and then am I the most miserable of women.
01:27

Tamer and Hawk by Thom Gunn

I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands, Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go At your commands. Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled me with your love, I am blind to other birds— The habit of your words Has hooded me. As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel, In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist. You but half civilize, Taming me in this way. Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as prey.
00:48

There is a Girl Inside - Lucille Clifton

There is a girl inside. She is randy as a wolf. She will not walk away and leave these bones to an old woman. She is a green tree in a forest of kindling. She is a green girl in a used poet. She has waited patient as a nun for the second coming, when she can break through gray hairs into blossom and her lovers will harvest honey and thyme and the woods will be wild with the damn wonder of it.
00:33

Ship of Fools - Robert Plant

On waves of love my heart is breaking And stranger still my self control I can't rely on anymore New tides surprise my world it's changing Within this frame an ocean swells Behind this smile I know it well Beneath a lover's moon I'm waiting I am the pilot of the storm Adrift in pleasure I may drown I built this ship it is my making And furthermore my self control I can't rely on anymore I know why I know why Crazy on a ship of fools Crazy on a ship of fools Turn this boat around back to my loving ground Oh no, oh no Who claims that no man is an island While I land up in jeopardy More distant from you by degrees I walk this shore in isolation And at my feet eternity tries ever sweeter plans for me I know why I know why Crazy on a ship of fools Oh, crazy on a ship of fools Turn this boat around back to my loving ground Oh no, oh no Ship of fools Turn this boat around back to my loving ground Oh no, oh Crazy on a ship of fools Oh, crazy on a ship of fools Turn this boat around back to my loving ground Oh no, oh no Ship of fools
00:54

On the Eve of a Birthday by Timothy Steele

As my Scotch, spared the water, blondly sloshes About its tumbler, and gay manic flame Is snapping in the fireplace, I grow youthful: I realize that calendars aren’t truthful And that for all of my grand unsuccesses External causes are to blame. And if at present somewhat destitute, I plan to alter, prove myself more able, And suavely stroll into the coming years As into rooms with thick rugs, chandeliers, And colorfully pyramided fruit On linened lengths of table. At times I fear the future won’t reward My failures with sufficient compensation, But dump me, aging, in a garret room Appointed with twilit, slant-ceilinged gloom And a lone bulb depending from a cord Suggestive of self-strangulation. Then, too, I have bad dreams, in one of which A cowled, scythe-bearing figure beckons me. Dark plains glow at his back: it seems I’ve died, And my soul, weighed and judged, has qualified For an extended, hyper-sultry hitch Down in eternity. Such fears and dreams, however, always pass. And gazing from my window at the dark, My drink in hand, I’m jauntily unbowed. The sky’s tiered, windy galleries stream with cloud, And higher still, the dazed stars thickly mass In their long Ptolemaic arc. What constellated powers, unkind or kind, Sway me, what far preposterous ghosts of air? Whoever they are, whatever our connection, I toast them (toasting also my reflection), Not minding that the words which come to mind Make the toast less toast than prayer: Here’s to the next year, to the best year yet; To mixed joys, to my harum-scarum prime; To auguries reliable and specious; To times to come, such times being precious, If only for the reason that they get Shorter all the time.
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02:16

San Antonio by Naomi Shihab Nye

Tonight I lingered over your name, the delicate assembly of vowels a voice inside my head. You were sleeping when I arrived. I stood by your bed and watched the sheets rise gently. I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms. It was then I knew, like a woman looking backward, I could not leave you, or find anyone I loved more.
00:37

A Rhyme For Halloween by Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee And swing down this branch full of red leaves. Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare, Arrow me to town on the neck of the air. I hear the undertaker make love in the heather; The candy maker, poor fellow, is under the weather. Skunk, moose, raccoon, they go to the doors in threes With a torch in their hands or pleas: "O, please . . ." Baruch Spinoza and the butcher are drunk: One is the tail and one is the trunk Of a beast who dances in circles for beer And doesn't think twice to learn how to steer. Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb. Its hands are broken, its fingers numb. No time for the martyr of our fair town Who wasn't a witch because she could drown. Now the dogs of the cemetery are starting to bark At the vision of her, bobbing up through the dark. When she opens her mouth to gasp for air, A moth flies out and lands in her hair. The apples are thumping, winter is coming. The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming. By the caw of the crow on the first of the year, Something will die, something appear.
01:21

How to Love by January Gill O'Neil

After stepping into the world again, there is that question of how to love, how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning— the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape of cold wipers along the windshield— and convert time into distance. What song to sing down an empty road as you begin your morning commute? And is there enough in you to see, really see, the three wild turkeys crossing the street with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross. As they amble away, you wonder if they want to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too, waiting for all this to give way to love itself, to look into the eyes of another and feel something— the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night, your wings folded around him, on the other side of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.
01:07

Wait by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now. Distrust everything if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become interesting. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again; their memories are what give them the need for other hands. The desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old. Wait. Don’t go too early. You’re tired. But everyone’s tired. But no one is tired enough. Only wait a little and listen: music of hair, music of pain, music of looms weaving our loves again. Be there to hear it, it will be the only time, most of all to hear your whole existence, rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
01:14

A Message from the Wanderer by William Stafford

Today outside your prison I stand and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen; you have relatives outside. And there are thousands of ways to escape. Years ago I bent my skill to keep my cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies, and shouted my plans to jailers; but always new plans occurred to me, or the new heavy locks bent hinges off, or some stupid jailer would forget and leave the keys. Inside, I dreamed of constellations— those feeding creatures outlined by stars, their skeletons a darkness between jewels, heroes that exist only where they are not. Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought, just as—often, in light, on the open hills— you can pass an antelope and not know and look back, and then—even before you see— there is something wrong about the grass. And then you see. That’s the way everything in the world is waiting. Now—these few more words, and then I’m gone: Tell everyone just to remember their names, and remind others, later, when we find each other. Tell the little ones to cry and then go to sleep, curled up where they can. And if any of us get lost, if any of us cannot come all the way— remember: there will come a time when all we have said and all we have hoped will be all right. There will be that form in the grass.
01:44