She Walks in Beauty_ A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy [40]
I’m happiest when most away
EMILY BRONTË
I’m happiest when most away
I can bear my soul from its home of clay
On a windy night when the moon is bright
And my eye can wander through worlds of light
When I am not and none beside
Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky
But only spirit wandering wide
Through infinite immensity
Keeping Things Whole
MARK STRAND
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
We All Know It
MARIANNE MOORE
That silence is best: that action and re-
Action are equal: that control, discipline, and
Liberation are bywords when spoken by an appraiser, that the
Accidental sometimes achieves perfection, loath though we may be to admit it:
And that the realm of art is the realm in
Which to look for “fishbones in the throat of the gang.” Pin-
Pricks and the unstereotyped embarrassment being the contin-
Ual diet of artists. And in spite of it all, poets ask us just what it
Is in them that we cannot subscribe to:
People overbear till told to stop: no matter through
What sobering process they have gone, some inquire if emotion, true
And stimulated are not the same thing: promoters request us to take our oath
That appearances are not cosmic: mis-
Fits in the world of achievement want to know what bus-
Iness people have to reserve judgment about undertakings. It is
A strange idea that one must say what one thinks in order to be understood.
As Much As You Can
CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY
And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.
Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.
Sense of Something Coming
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live it through,
While the creatures of the world beneath still do not move in their sleep:
The doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full of silence,
The windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.
I already know the storm, and I am as troubled as the sea,
And spread myself out, and fall into myself,
And throw myself out and am absolutely alone
In the great storm.
Death, Etc.
MAXINE KUMIN
I have lived my whole life with death, said William Maxwell,
aetat ninety-one, and haven’t we all. Amen to that.
It’s all right to gutter out like a candle but the odds are better
for succumbing to a stroke or pancreatic cancer.
I’m not being gloomy, this bright September
when everything around me shines with being:
hummingbirds still raptured in the jewelweed,
puffballs humping up out of the forest duff
and the whole voluptuous garden still putting forth
bright yellow pole beans, deep-pleated purple cauliflowers,
to say nothing of regal white corn that feeds us
night after gluttonous night, with a slobber of butter.
Still, Maxwell’s pronouncement speaks to my body’s core,
this old body I trouble to keep up the way
I keep up my two old horses, wiping insect deterrent
on their ears, cleaning the corners of their eyes,
spraying their legs to defeat the gnats, currying burrs
out of their thickening coats. They go on grazing thoughtlessly
while winter is gathering in the wings. But it is not given
to us to travel blindly, all the pasture bars down,
to seek out the juiciest grasses,