She Walks in Beauty_ A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy [54]
Fundamentally, poetry celebrates our individuality and the creative effort of living. The next to last poem in this book was one of my mother’s favorites. She loved the ancient Greek attitude toward life—the closeness to nature, the relationship of men and gods, and the reverence for the heroic. Constantine Cavafy, a modern Greek poet who lived a short and tragic life in Alexandria, drew heavily on the ancient myths and history in his work. “Ithaka” is his masterpiece, and it is one of those poems that I carry with me always in my mind.
May 2
DAVID LEHMAN
Someday I’d like to go
to Atlantic City with you
not to gamble ( just being
there with you is enough
of a gamble) but to ride
the high white breakers
have a Manhattan and listen
to a baritone saxophone
play a tune called “Salsa
Eyes” with you beside me
on a banquette but why
stop there let’s go to
Paris in November when
it’s raining and we read
the Tribune at La Rotonde
our hotel room has a big
bathtub I knew you’d like
that and we can be a couple
of unknown Americans what
are we waiting for let’s go
From a Letter to His Daughter
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities
no doubt have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with
your old nonsense.
This day is all that is
good and fair.
It is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on yesterdays.
To be of use
MARGE PIERCY
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Leap Before You Look
W. H. AUDEN
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream