Poem in Your Pocket Day

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Here are some poems out of the (electronic) pockets of friends today:

From Matt S:

“On Armida’s Tooth-Ache,” by Mr. Gale

Ah cruel pain, thus to torment
the soft, the fair, the innocent!
Thus to disguise that angel-face
by nature form’d with ev’ry grace.

What could aim thy fury there;
is there a crime in being fair?
Go plague the ugly; thy assaults
may there perhaps mend nature’s faults;

Or let, by thee, some cruel fair
guess what we hopeless lovers bear.
If not, be kind and torture me;
but let the tender fair be free.

Source: Gentleman’s Journal, 1694.

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From Susan P:

Tree by Jane Hirshfield


It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

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From Audrey B:

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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From me, because I just watched the movie Bright Star, about John Keats:

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

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