Daily Digest

“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”

“After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Just because it perished?”

“Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.”

“These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.”

“Love is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.”

“To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.”

“Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”

“Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!”

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you- Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!”

“I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;”

“Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.”

“I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.”

“On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”

“And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night”

“Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. - Next, Please”

“If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls - The Consumptive. Belsen 1945”

“A poem should not mean But be.”

“Go then, O my inseperable, this once more,”

“Around, around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.”

“And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see, -- A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, -- I know not how such things can be! -- I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky”

“To Those Without Pity Cruel of heart, lay down my song. Your reading eyes have done me wrong. Not for you was the pen bitten, And the mind wrung, and the song written.”

“Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”

“There is a god in whom I do not believe Yet to this god my love stretches, This god whom I do not believe in is My whole life, my life and I am his. Everything that I have of pleasure and pain (Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt) I give this god for him to feed upon As he is my whole life and I am his. When I am dead I hope that he will eat Everything I have been and have not been And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat Eating my life all up as it is his. - God the Eater”

“Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning. - Not Waving but Drowning”

“It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image.”

“সবেধন পুত্র মোর, আমার চেয়েও বেশি ঈশ্বরের তুই থেকে যা এখানে এই নাশপাতি গাছের বাগানে। সুপ্রচুর ফলভারে এইখানে গাছেরা আনত তৃপ্ত আর পরিমিত রঙের বাহারে উদ্ভাসিত; বার্ধক্যপীড়িত হয়ে তারা যেই কাঁদে, নোনাজল নয় কোনো, সুমধুর অলস সিরাপে অশ্রু ঝরে। “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকি না নিজের” তাকে দেখে মনে হতো বেগানা নাগর, চুপচাপ সে-বিদেশি,পদ্মডাঁটা হাতে নিয়ে এসেছিল আমার দুয়ারে; ঈশ্বরের জোড়াচক্ষু, ইউসুফেরও চোখের অধিক গনগনে তার চোখে চোখ রেখে কী হলো আমার আমি কী করে বোঝাই? ছিলাম নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকিনি নিজের। আর এই জনাবারো শ্রমশীল লোক, এরা কারা? তোর কথা মাথামুণ্ডু কিছুই বুঝি না: শিখিয়েছি আমি তোকে বুলি; রেখেছি পাখির নামগুলি যে কোনো শিশুর মতো তুই দেখাতি ওদের যারা দীর্ঘ পরিযায়ী। ভিড় থেকে দূরে গিয়ে তুই ফের হয়ে যারে চুপ “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকি না নিজের” আমি যেই কথা বলি মুখভার কেন তোর বাপ? এই তোর মালামাল, চাকু ও করাত আর এই হাতুড়িটা বেঞ্চির ওপর। দিনে দিনে হয় মাপা এইখানে তোর এ-জীবন, মাপজোক নিয়ে তুই আসবাব বানাস যেমন; আর আমি পত্নী হেন তোকে দেবো পাঠ; আমার নিজের হবো আর হবো কেবলই আমার ইচ্ছেমতো যথাতথা বয়ে চলে বেয়াড়া বাতাস দিলখোশ না হলে কি কেউ চলে তার অনুরূপ? আজও মনে পড়ে, তুই গিয়েছিলি আলাপ জমাতে পশমের আলখাল্লাধারী যতো পণ্ডিতের সাথে। কানে এলো শহরের তীব্র হট্টগোল; এ-অশুভ যন্ত্রখানি কে বয়ে বেড়ায়? “সে তার নিজের আর নয় সে নিজের” মাড়িয়ে সবুজ আর দ্রুত-তৃণ গালিচা মাড়িয়ে দেখি এক আজগুবি ছায়া এসে পড়ে ও মানিক, এই পেটে তোকে আমি ধরেছি রে একা! ছিলো না নিকটে কোনো কবিরাজ নাড়ি কাটবার; ডাকবো না তোকে আমি প্রভু বলে ওরে সবেধন পুত্র মোর, দে আমায় সাড়া! “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি নই তো নিজের।”

“Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.”

“Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be.”

“Dirge Without Music I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

“Time Does Not Bring Relief Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”

“I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am; Maelström of passions in that hidden sea Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me; And in small compass the dark waters cram. - I, While the Gods Laugh, the World's Vortex Am”