A poem I wrote about my father in 1994, shared here in recognition of his birthday. I’m not sure what he would have thought about this poem; he appreciated more the poetry of the long sloping lines of a 64 Galaxie 500.

Tool & Die
John Lyon

Calipers and micrometers, cradled by the red felt
lining the half opened drawers of the wooden toolbox that belonged to his father,
wait to measure the tolerances of parts that must work together without touching.

And his corrugated space smells of the sweet oil sliding down the bit,
smoking as metal bites into metal,
digging towards the core,
extruding the sharp helix that can tempt blood from my young fingers.

We hide behind masks, he and I,
as he draws a molten bead along the cold unparted edges,
the inscrutable panes protect our dark eyes.
We must not look directly at such couplings.

Even here, among the jagged edges and melting surfaces,
kindness lays down in the teeth.
The blade, oiled to cut softly through the angle iron
eases itself down under his sure fingers , chewing gently
through the 90º angles, 6″ at a time.

And there are no shadows here;
the cold fluorescent lights illuminate every square inch of my father’s workshop.
The only darknessess are the fears
lying beneath his clean work shirt,
beating against the pencils and rulers he carries in his breast pocket.

Eating Poetry
Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

This is another one of those poems that has much more resonance now that it did then

Driving Through Tennessee
Charles Wright

It’s strange what the past brings back.
Our parents, for instance, how ardently they still loom
In the brief and flushed
Fleshtones of memory, one foot in front of the next
Even in retrospect, and so unimpeachable.

And towns that we lived in once,
And who we were then, the roads we went back and forth on
Returning ahead of us like rime
In the moonlight’s fall, and Jesus returning, and Stephen Martyr
And St. Paul of the Sword …

— I am their music,
Mothers and fathers and places we hurried through in the night:
I put my mouth to the dust and sing their song.
Remember us, Galeoto, and whistle our tune, when the time comes,
For charity’s sake.

Working with Tools
A.R. Ammons

I make a simple assertion
like a nice piece of stone
and you
alert to presence and entrance
man your pick and hammer

and by chip and deflection
distract simplicity
and cut my assertion
back to mangles, little heaps:

well, baby, that’s the way
you get along: it’s all right,
I understand such ways of being afraid:
sometimes you want my come-on

hard, something to
take in and be around:
sometimes you want
a vaguer touch: I understand
and won’t give assertion up.

This is from an anthology I’ve had since my college days. It’s been transmogrified into an electronic version I can carry on my iPad, which I love. I’m sure I’ve read this poem, but it’s speaking to me now more directly than it might have back in the day.

Sleeping in the Forest
Mary Oliver

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Why I Am Not a Painter
Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

A favorite poem, by one of my favorite poets.

It Is This Way with Men
C.K. Williams

They are pounded into the earth
like nails; move an inch,
they are driven down again.
The earth is sore with them.
It is a spiny fruit
that has lost hope
of being raised and eaten.
It can only ripen and ripen.
And men, they too are wounded.
They too are sifted from their loss
and are without hope. The core
softens. The pure flesh softens
and melts. There are thorns, there
are the dark seeds, and they end.

This is new to me. Or if not new, so old to me as to be new again.

I Am Writing To You From A Far Off Country
Henri Michaux

1

Here we only, she says, have sun once a month, and just for a short time. We rub our eyes days in advance. But it’s no use. Inexorable weather. Sunlight only arrives on time.
Then we have a world of things to do, as long as there’s light, so much there’s scarcely time to look at each other a little.
Trouble for us is we have to work at night, and we really have to: dwarves are born constantly.

2

When you walk in the country, she confides to him further, you may happen to run into some considerable masses in the road. These are mountains and sooner or later you have to kneel down to them. It doesn’t do any good to resist, you couldn’t go any further, even if you did yourself harm.
I don’t say this to be hurtful. I could says other things if I really wanted to be hurtful.

3
Dawn is gray here, she says to him further. It wasn’t always like this. We don’t know whom to accuse.
At night, the cattle’s loud bellows grow long and flute-like at the end. We have compassion, but what can be done?
The odor of eucalyptus surrounds us: a blessing, serenity, but it can’t protect us from everything; or else do you think it really can protect us from everything.

4

I’m adding another word to you, a question rather.
Does water flow in your country too? (I don’t remember if you’ve told me) and it gives the chills, if it’s the real thing.
Am I fond of it? I don’t know. One feels so alone inside when it’s cold. It’s altogether different when it’s warm. So? How do I decide? How do you others decide, tell me, when you talk about it with no disguises, with open hearts?

5

I am writing to you from the end of the world. You have to realize this. The trees often tremble. We gather the leaves. They’ve got an insane number of veins. But what’s the use? Nothing more between them and the tree, and we scatter, embarrassed.
Couldn’t life on earth continue without wind? Or does everything always have to tremble, always?
There are subterranean disturbances too, and in the house as well, like rages that come right up to you, like severe beings who want to wring out confessions.
We see nothing, only things it doesn’t matter to see. Nothing, and nonetheless we tremble. Why?

6

Here we all live with lumps in our throats. Do you realize that, although I’m very young, in the past I was even younger, and my companions likewise. What does that mean? Surely there’s something horrible in that.
And in the past when, as I’ve already told you, we were even younger, we were afraid. Someone might have profited from our confusion. Someone might have told us:
“Look, we’re going to bury you. The time has come.” We thought: “It’s true, we could very well be buried this evening, if it’s been established that it’s time.”
And we didn’t dare run too much: Out of breath, at the end of a race, coming right up to a ditch, and no time to say a word, not a breath.
Tell me, what’s the secret in this connection?

7

There are constantly, she tells him further, lions in the village that stroll around without the least constraint. Providing we pay no attention to them, they don’t pay any attention to us.
But if they see a girl running away from them, they won’t excuse her anxiety. No! they devour her immediately.
That’s why they stroll around constantly in the village where they have nothing to do, since they could yawn just as well elsewhere, isn’t that obvious?

8

For a long, long time, she confides to him, we’ve had a dispute with the sea.
Those rare times she’s blue, mild, we could believe she’s content. But that can’t last. Her odor says it anyway, an odor of rot (if it wasn’t her bitterness).
Here I should explain the affair with the waves. It’s insanely complicated, and the sea… I implore you, have faith in me. Would I want to deceive you? She isn’t just a word. She isn’t just a fear. She exists, I swear: she’s seen constantly.
By whom? Why we, we see her. She comes from very far off to quarrel with us and scare us.
When you come, you’ll see her yourself, you’ll be completely astonished. “Hey!” you’ll say, since she’s stupefying.
We’ll look at her together. I’m sure that I won’t feel afraid anymore. Tell me, will this never happen?

9

I can’t leave you with any doubts, she continues, or with a lack of faith. I’d like to speak to you about the sea again. But there’s still this quandary. Streams go forward; but she doesn’t. Listen, don’t be annoyed, I swear I’d never dream of deceiving you. She’s like that. However strongly she stirs, she stops for a bit of sand. It’s a huge impediment. She certainly wants to move forward, but facts are facts.
Later on maybe, someday she’ll move forward.

10

“We’re more than ever surrounded by ants”, says her letter. Uneasy, bellies against the ground, they kick up dust. They don’t take any interest in us.
Not one raises its head.
It’s the most closed society that could exist, although they spread constantly outside. It doesn’t matter, their fulfilled schemes, their preoccupations… they’re among themselves… everywhere.
And up till now not one has raised its head toward us. It’d rather be squashed.

11

She writes to him further:
“You can’t imagine everything that’s in the sky, you have to see it to believe it. So, here you go, the… but I’m not going to tell you their name just now.”
Despite an air of being very heavy and despite taking up almost the whole sky, they don’t weigh, big as they are, as much as a newborn baby.
We call them clouds.
It’s true they give off water, but not by squeezing them or by pulverizing them. This would be useless, since they hold so little.
But provided that they take up lengths upon lengths, and widths upon widths, and depths, too, upon depths, and that they swell up, in the long run they let a few drops of water, yes, water, fall. And we get good and soaked. We run away furious at having been trapped; because no one knows the moment when they’re going to let their raindrops loose; sometimes they hold off for days without letting them loose. And one would stay home in vain waiting.

12

Education about chills isn’t handled well in this country. We’re ignorant of the real rules and when the event arises, we’re taken by surprise.
It’s Time, of course. (Is it the same where you are?) One has to get there sooner than it does; you see what I mean to say, no more than just a little bit beforehand. Do you know the story of the flea in the drawer? Yes, of course. And it’s so true, isn’t it! I don’t know what more to say. When are we going to see each other at last?

It’s been a long time since I read much poetry. I used to love it. And then it fell out of favor for me, for no good or apparent reason. I have plenty of poetry books to peruse. And so this is my year of 1000 poems.

I don’t know that I’ll always offer any explanation, but I’ll try to do so when I revisit an old favorite. This is one that I love so much. It touches the world’s darknesses we carry with us. “What is poetry which does not save nations, or people?” That line gets me every time.

Dedication
Czeslaw Milosz

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty;
Blind force with accomplished shape.

Here is a valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge
Going into white fog. Here is a broken city;
And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave
When I am talking with you.

What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.

They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.

Warsaw, 1945