For Marys everywhere. #amazonlink for The Eternal Ones of the Dream: Selected Poems 1990-2010 https://amzn.to/3xYR2sU. from "Negative Employee Situation" / by James Tate The Huntingtons had a live-in maid by the name of Mary. Mary was very religious and prayed a good deal of the time. In fact, as the years went by Mary pretty much ceased working altogether and prayed all of the time. Mrs. Huntington cooked for her and cleaned her room as well as the rest of the house. Mr. Huntington would never rebuke Mary because he believed her prayers benefited the whole household.... {important information for you for the #amazonlink: as an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases}
June
DPF/Heaney
For more than 1,000 years ago; not as long ago as it seems. #amazonlink to Irish poet Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems 1988-2013: https://amzn.to/3Oyb3xk from Beowulf / translated from the Old English by Seamus Heaney No counsellor could ever expect fair reparation from those rabid hands. All were endangered; young and old... {important information for you for the #amazonlink: as an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases}
DPF / Lazard
For a nod to Kafka, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from Ordinance on Arrival / by Naomi Lazard, b. 1936
These things have always been
in short supply; now
they are impossible to obtain.
DPF / Stafford
For dust of all kinds and train travel, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from Vacation / by William Stafford (1914-1993)
One scene as I bow to pour her coffee:–
Three Indians in the scouring drouth
huddle at the grave scooped in the gravel,
lean to the wind as our train goes by.
Someone is gone.
DPF / Soseki
For mountains and parts of life that appear to be mountains, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from Magnificent Peak / by Muso Soseki (1275-1351) translated by W.S. Merwin
From the four directions
you can look up and see it
green and steep and wild.
DPF / Merton
For bells in monastery towers, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from An Elegy for Ernest Hemingway / by Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
Now for the first time on the night of your death
your name is mentioned in convents
DPF / Maj
For fleeting moments, which are all of them, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from A Leaf / by Bronislaw Maj, b. 1953, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass
no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among other leaves, no one saw
what I did.
DPF / Szymborska
For sisters and for mine who makes the world luminous, from a woman who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, and from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. A funny one in admiration and in awe of those not fully obsessed with the making of poems while equally in admiration of those who are.
from In Praise of My Sister / by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012), translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire
Under my sister’s roof I feel safe
DPF / Howard
For museums, from Poem A Day, Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck.
from Disclaimers / by Richard Howard, b. 1929
Ensconced in the Upper Rotunda alongside a fossil musk-ox, the giant Tyrannosaurus
DPF / Fernandes
For the city I haunted for about 14 years, from Poem-A-Day today on Poets.org. My sister and her family still live there and head back home today; they retreat to the sea each night. The rest of the poem may be found here:
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/jungle
from The Jungle / by Megan Fernandes
In midsummer, in Los Angeles,
the night is fractured
with mountains, grilling ink
into the blue thaw.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 