The Dormitory – Jascha Kessler

What was desire — Dido bawling from the cliffs,
her general mulling fresher conquests,
that gorgeous insipidity — has gone:
there are high heels clacking in Saskatoon;

what might be — when little stars are great suns
in a universe too large for discourse,
lucid difficulties like adult poems,
so austere a jazz — blinds in this shadow;

what is — neither convoy nor residence,
nothing remembered, nothing found — we have:
our wish, engineered climate, draftsman’s walls,
and our life, single minds in double beds.

Earth Bed – Colin Morton

Less fiercely than river
carves banks

more subtly than glacier
hollows lake

you fit my body
to yours even now

as you turn in sleep
this stone to breathing soil

After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes – Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First–Chill–then Stupor–then the letting go -

The Truth The Dead I Know – Anne Sexton

Gone, I say and walk from church
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye, and knucklebone.

The Human Animal – Jane Mayhall

To make me do the thing I will, I won’t.
Facing front, it’s back I turn
to scorn the right intent.
The worse I am, the better do. Against
my own impulse I plot; and overthrown
rise up to govern all I have undone.

To live my life, I’ve lost it. Or reversed,
the greatest loss was living most;
the best I did was least.
By counter causes, grown then capable,
I’ve come to some short pass. And passing still
go on to learn what’s gone, and what I will.

Leaves – Don Emigh

Leaves fell from the tree
Reluctant to the ground.
Strange how soft they died–
Died without a sound.

But now their drying bones
Whisper on the walk.
Like tragic ghosts, they are
Now compelled to talk.

Whisper on, you ghosts,
Of a springtime spent,
Of a summer past,
Of a life that went.

In April – Margaret Lee Ashley

If I am slow forgetting,
It is because the sun
Has such old tricks of setting
When April days are done.

The soft spring sunlight traces
Old patterns — green and gold;
The flowers have no new faces,
The very buds are old!

If I am slow forgetting –
Ah, well, come back and see
The same old sunbeams petting
My garden-plots and me.

Come smell the green things growing,
The boxwood after rain;
See where old beds are showing
Their slender spears again.

At dusk, that fosters dreaming –
Come back at dusk and rest,
And watch our old star gleaming
Against the primrose west.

An Adieu – Florence Earle Coates

Sorrow, quit me for a while!
Wintry days are over;
Hope again, with April smile,
Violets sows and clover.

Pleasure follows in her path,
Love itself flies after,
And the brook a music hath
Sweet as childhood’s laughter.

Not a bird upon the bough
Can repress its rapture,
Not a bud that blossoms now
But doth beauty capture.

Sorrow, thou art Winter’s mate,
Spring cannot regret thee;
Yet, ah, yet — my friend of late –
I shall not forget thee!

The Old Maid – Sara Teasdale

I saw her in a Broadway car,
The woman I might grow to be;
I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me.

Her hair was dull and drew no light,
And yet its color was as mine;
Her eyes were strangely like my eyes,
Tho’ love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin,
Hungry for love that never came;
Her soul was frozen in the dark,
Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.

I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me –
His eyes were magic to defy
The woman I shall never be.

Lest I learn – Wytter Brynner

Lest I learn, with clearer sight,
Such beauty cannot be –
Tie a bandage, pull it tight,
Blind me, I would not see!

Lest I learn, with clearer will,
Such a wonder cannot be –
Oh, kiss me nearer, nearer still,
And make a fool of me!