Am meisten gelesen ▸
Sarojini Naidu
Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain passes.
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes
That stir the hidden depths of native life,
Stray melodies of dim remembered runes.
I shall return, I shall return again,
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.
How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge -
The changing heaven the breezy weather,
More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears.
How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter far
Than laughing mirth's most joyous swell
However pure its raptures are.
Come, sit down on this sunny stone:
'Tis wintry light o'er flowerless moors -
But sit - for we are all alone
And clear expand heaven's breathless shores.
Sunrise, & the wren’s song bubbles
up from his feet. He dances on the wall
as the ridge turns crimson. Watching from
the window, I feel the heaviness in my chest
lifting like a field stone flipped by the plow,
turning its unmarked cheek toward the harrow.
This world was never a text. With the spring
plowing, arrowheads swim to the surface
of the field adjoining the large sinkhole
down in the valley where an underground stream
briefly exposes itself to view. You can follow it
back under the bedrock in growing darkness,
hunching farther & farther over until you’re down
on all fours & the water meets the ceiling
with a final gurgle. I think of this whenever
the sky in a poem shivers under the knife
in this foreign land
Norway maple leaves turn
ugly
upside-down somehow
in my phone’s photo
false Solomon’s-seal
backwater
stream-blurred trees come into
sharper focus
Keep Your Dog on a Leash
the notice board co-signed
by porcupine teeth
fallen cucumbertree
the white undersides
of its leaves
roots lost their grip
on the saturated slope
seed pods still clenched
leaf duff undotted
by any black cherries
rained out
that mob of red trilliums
melted away
foam in the stream
after failing
this year to blossom
Clintonia leaves
seedhead
the two sterile florets’
showy bracts
the mountain road’s
one straight stretch
turning to look back
headwater stream
a dark and slender
mink’s road
looking for beechdrops’
nondescript stalks
the road down dips up
hollow or holler?
just ’round the bend
the stream falls away
deepening ravine
trees stretched thin
to reach the sky
musclewood
I was that skinny once
another ash I never noticed
lit up by the sun
its death let in
for so many years
I saw it as an eye
island in the stream
don’t call them Indian graves
these mounds
that once held roots
God or microbes
everywhere you look
undiscovered
one katydid
this late in the season
texting my wife
migrant flycatcher
swiping its beak back and forth
on a bare branch
a plastic toy football
unearthed by the summer floods
all the stream’s voices
rain-softened ground
even the gravel road
has a bit of give
A winter wren darts low
over the rushing stream
and unwinds its hurdy-gurdy song.
Not all water-lovers
are bouyant in the same way.
The waterthrush walks
on the bottom, tail bobbing
as if spring-loaded. We stand
dripping in the rain.
I have no mouth but
I must scream,
says the wind.
My tongue knows its
own taste: the half-
frozen stream.
You draw me & I’ll
draw you, I tell
my childhood self.
We lean like ladders
against the clouds.
With one listening foot I feel
for the next rung down.