DPF / Tate

Twenty-three years today since our father had his gun salute and American-flag folding. He was not a pilot, but he was a B-52 navigator.

from The Lost Pilot / by James Tate

and you, passing over again,
fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well

DPF / Justice

An extra one today, for the rain. The poem that carried me to Florida.

from Bus Stop / by Donald Justice

And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out —
Black flowers, black flowers.

DPF / Forche

from Sequestered Writing / by Carolyn Forché

What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?
— With its no one without its I

DPF / Milosz

from Ars Poetica? / by Czeslaw Milosz trans. by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

DPF / Akhmatova

Dreams, war.

from Poem Without a Hero / by Anna Akhmatova

But a dream — is also something real,
Soft embalmer, Blue Bird,
The parapets and terraces of Elsinore.

DPF / Tadic

Dreams, fire, outrage.

from Armful of Twigs, Dream / by Novica Tadic trans. by Charles Simic

Armful of dry twigs
I carry to the fire
through busy streets.

DPF / Hugo

War, dreams, home.

from In Your War Dream / by Richard Hugo

You ask, “Why must I do this again?” A man
replies, “Home.” You fly over one country
after another. The nations are bright, like a map.

DPF / Hughes

Fathers and sons (written on the back of one of his father’s letters) and rivers.

from The Negro Speaks of Rivers / by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

DPF / Berg

Rivers.

from Water Bottoms / by Aase Berg trans. by Johannes Goransson

And here a feather moves toward the river surface, as she who loves water sinks back through the bottoms of light.

DPF / Wright

Fathers and sons.

from Youth / by James Wright

I know his ghost will drift home
To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,
Whittling a root.