I’d be remiss to let National Poetry Month slip by without a single post dedicated to it in celebration.
So. Was I one of those young girls scribbling lines in unfinished notebooks, half afraid to say the right thing, to put down a line of truth, willing to do so only because it was poetry, and who can ever say what meaning lies between breaks on the page? Yes. I was. I still am, when time and mood allows.
More often than I write it, I read it. Below are a few of my favorites, discovered too many years ago. And then one of my own, not quite done.
Die Schöne Nacht – Goethe
Now I leave the little cottage
Of my dearest; through the dark.
Secret, in a dreary silence,
Wander in the wooded park.
Luna peers though bush and oaktree
zephyr makes her coming known:
Birches bow; they strew a fragrance
On the winds of midnight blown.
What a pleasure in the coolness
Of so rich a summer night!
What a hush! The feeling spirit
Revels in untold delight.
Rapture I can hardly cope with,
Nights of secrecy astir,
Yet, I’d trade them, by the thousand,
For a single night with her.
For Jane – Charles Bukowski
225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
Untitled - Mine
After a brief, bright hospital stay
you took me home; you unwound
the blanket meant to protect me
from all kinds of cold. Still,
It’s true I took time
to find my voice;
seasons of mindful laryngitis
held me close. And
quiet, I remained. You see,
I wasn’t born to silence you;
your voice was ever stronger than mine.
Beautiful, and also new to me. Thank you
That Goethe one gets me every time.