From Collected Poems ~
Afternoon in the House
by Jane Kenyon
It's quiet here. The cats
sprawl, each
in a favored place.
The geranium leans this way
to see if I'm writing about her:
head all petals, brown
stalks, and those green fans.
So you see,
I am writing about you.
I turn on the radio. Wrong.
Let's not have any noise
in this room, except
the sound of a voice reading a poem.
The cats request
The Meadow Mouse, by Theodore Roethke.
The house settles down on its haunches
for a doze.
I know you are with me, plants,
and cats - and even so, I'm frightened,
sitting in the middle of perfect
possibility.
Drink, Eat, Sleep
by Jane Kenyon
I never drink from this blue tin cup
speckled with white
without thinking of stars on a clear,
cold night - of Venus blazing low
over the leafless trees; and Canis
great and small - dogs without flesh,
fur, blood, or bone ... dogs made of light,
apparitions of cold light, with black
and trackless spaces in between....
The angel gave a little book
to the prophet, telling him to eat -
eat and tell of the end of time.
Strange food, infinitely strange,
but the pages were like honey
to his tongue....
No comments:
Post a Comment