Music

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow
For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

Anne Porter

They say it's the new year
and I believe them.
How could they be lying to me
when the whole world lights up in flames
like clockwork,
first Beijing then New York.

Sometimes I feel they lie to us
about the passage of time.
It is moving fast and slow through me.
Inside I am five, fifteen, twenty
yet outside I am supposed to make money,
buy a house,
be in a movie.

I do not believe them anymore
when they say another year has passed.
Time is arbitrary and so am I.
Who says I am changed?
Who says I am the same?
Today is just another day.

You got engaged
and it came as a shock to my system
even though I fell out of love first.
The thought of you planning a wedding
with someone else and not me took a while
to sink in,
I still wonder if it is me you are visualizing
in that ivory gown,
walking toward you, you
you and only you.
I told you I didn't love you anymore
and that is true,
but still that came as a shock to my system
to know that maybe you loved her too
despite what you told me.
I guess somewhere in my heart of hearts
I'll always wonder what it would be like
to have known life with you.
Alas alternate realities do not coincide with mine
so I'll let it go until you tell me more,
Congratulations,
she'll make a beautiful bride,
I hope you have a happy life.

"I'm trying to get out of your face,"
he whispered to the bus,
"I'm old enough now to work."
The bus rumbled back
some misunderstood grunts
and all the creatures laughed at him.
"Him, independent?" they tittered.
But he didn't let it get to him
as he limped in the dank grey weather,
"Onwards and upwards," he whispered.
Didn't he too have a god in him like the rest of us?
Couldn't he too have a chance?

Everything We Don't Want Them to Know

At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughter
did, that slender body, that thin face, the grace

with which she moves. When she visits, she sits
with my daughter; they have hot chocolate together

and talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hands,
the concentration with which she does everything,

knocks me back to the time when I sat with my daughter
at this table and we talked and I watched the grace

with which she moved her hands, the delicate way
she lifted the heavy hair back behind her ear.

My daughter is grown now, married
in a fairy-tale wedding, divorced, something inside

her broken, healing slowly. I look at my granddaughter
and I want to save her, as I was not able

to save my daughter. Nothing is that simple,
all our plans, carefully made, thrown into a cracked

pile by the way love betrays us.


Maria Mazziotti Gillan

It is odd to think that you,
you beautiful creature,
are just a skeleton like the rest of us.

Static

Well, Old Flame, the fire’s out.
I miss you most at the laundromat.
Folding sheets is awkward work
Without your help. My nip and tuck
Can’t quite replace your hands,
And I miss that odd square dance
We did. Still, I’m glad to do without
Those gaudy arguments that wore us out.
I’ve gone over them often
They’ve turned grey. You fade and soften
Like the hackles of my favorite winter shirt.
You’ve been a hard habit to break, Old Heart.
When I feel for you beside me in the dark,
The blankets crackle with bright blue sparks.

Barton Sutter

Good Stories

1.
The one where the preacher’s kid
from Georgia, growing up in a house
with no books but the Bible,
became a great poet.

2.
The one where the great poet
remained faithful to his wife
even after her stroke, devoted
to her for fifty years.

3.
The one where he won the Nobel Prize
and finally got to live by the sea,
fishing every dawn
waist deep in the blue-green water.

4.
The one where, near the end,
he found the love of his life
and left behind the child
he’d never wanted before.

5.
Once there was a man
who failed at everything he tried
but wrote it all down
before he died.

William Greenway