Poems that I love

by Lynn Ungar It's hard not to laugh. What a picture it makes— the dumbfounded shepherds and the stricken sheep, the cacophony of bleating and the barking of sheepdogs dashing and nipping in a vain attempt at order, and over it all the angels trying to make their shimmery voices heard. “A who? Wrapped in what?” the shepherds holler back. “Where are we supposed to go?” Poor guys. They wanted directions, a purpose, some sense of how the story might end. And all they got, all any of us ever get, was the sound of angels, somewhere beyond the din, singing “Glory, Hosanna” across the improbable night.

by Jane Hirshfield for J.S. It was like this: you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not. It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not. At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say? Now it is almost over. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life. It does this not in forgiveness— between you, there is nothing to forgive— but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation. Eating, too, is a thing now only for others. It doesn’t matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened. Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

by Li-Young Lee And what did I learn, a child, on the Sabbath? A father is bound to kill his favorite son, and to his father's cherishing the beloved answers Yes. The rest of the week, I hid from my father, grateful I was not prized. But how deserted he looked, with no son who pleased him. And what else did I learn? That light is born of dark to usurp its ancient rank. And when a pharaoh dreams of ears of wheat or grazing cows, it means he's seen the shapes of the oncoming years. The rest of my life I wondered: Are there dreams that help us to understand the past? Or is any looking back a waste of time, the whole of it a too finely woven net of innumerable conditions, causes, effects, countereffects, impossible to read? Like rain on the surface of a pond. Where's Joseph when you need him? Did Jacob, his father, understand the dream of the ladder? Or did his enduring its mystery make him richer? ** Why are you crying? my father asked in my...

by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days-- likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears-- that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one-- except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence--can escape this violent, automatic life's companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend once told about the tim...

by W.S. Merwin The sky said I am watching to see what you can make out of nothing I was looking up and I said I thought you were supposed to be doing that the sky said Many are clinging to that I am giving you a chance I was looking up and I said I am the only chance I have then the sky did not answer and here we are with our names for the days the vast days that do not listen to us

by Li-Young Lee So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet, we raise it. billowing, then pull it tight, measuring by eye as it falls into aignment between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky, she'll remember a recent dream and tell me. One day we'll lie down and not get up. One day, all we guard will be surrendered. Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize what we love, and what it takes to tend what isn't for our having. So often, fear has led me to abandon what I know I must relinquish in time. But for the moment, I'll listen to her dream, and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling more and more detail into the light of a joint and fragile keeping.

by Li-Young Lee A lamp so you can read the words on the tablet. A hand to copy the sentences you find. A hand for you to rest your head. Feet to dance the gist of what you find. A bird to scour your heart. A bird to help you pronounce the sentences. Breath to fan the fire's nest. A kiln to test the choice. A crown to keep underfoot. Two eyes to see the one in one. Three to see the two in one. Seven to see the all in one. A hand to cross out your name. A donkey to carry your shit. A monkey to filch change and food. A brother to point the way. A sister to redeem the refused. A sister to ransom straw. A sister to wake you with kisses when you've fallen asleep at your opus.