Life Poems

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

A woman who my mother knows
Came in and took off all her clothes.

Said I, not being very old,
'By golly gosh, you must be cold!'

'No, no!' she cried. 'Indeed I'm not!
I'm feeling devilishly hot!'

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

In the garden of time and destiny, we have seen both
The autumn and the spring
We have seen both the time of joy and the time
Of sorrow

Don’t be exceedingly proud, for in the tavern
Of good fortune
We have seen one thousand drunks intoxicated
On pride

We have seen countless stone fortresses
In the land of wordly fame
And not one could withstand the exploding sigh
Of a broken heart

We have seen a flood of tears from the people
Of grief
With a roar we have seen the deluge engulf
One thousand homes of luck

We have seen countless swift riders
Of this battlefield
Whose only remaining wealth is the life-taking
Arrow of love’s sigh

We have seen many who are proud
Of their high office
Who must one day wait on others hands folded
By the door

Oh Nabi, we have seen many wine drinkers
At life’s party
Who have exchanged a cup full of their desires
For a beggar’s bowl

You, who behold in wonder Rome and all
Her former passion, menacing the Gods,
These ancient palaces and baths, the sods
Of seven hills, and temple, arch and wall,
Consider in the ruins of her fall,
That which destroying Time has gnawed away –
What workmen built with labor day by day
Only a few worm fragments now recall.

Then look again and see where, endlessly
Treading upon her own antiquity,
Rome has rebuilt herself with works as just:
There you may see the demon of the land
Forcing himself again with fatal hand
To raise the city from the ruined dust.

You were the morning star amongst the living:
But now in death your evening lights the dead.

No thing existed, nor did nothing exist:
There was no air-filled space, no sky beyond.
What held it all? And where? And who secured it?
Was water all there was, deep beyond measure?

There was no death, nor anything immortal –
No sign by which to mark off night and day.
Self-moved where no wind blew, one Being breathed:
Other than it no thing had being then.

All was obscured at first, darkness in darkness,
And endless ocean – featureless, unlit:
There, at the heart of nothingness, the One
Took on its being, born of an austere heat.

Desire came over it in the beginning –
First seed of all, engendered by the mind.
Wise thinkers who had searched within their hearts
Found where what is is bound to what is not,
There were seed-casters, there were primal forces –
Power below, strong urgency above.

But who can know for certain, who proclaimed it?
Who can explain the birth of this various world?
The gods themselves came into existence later –
Who knows the source of this great tangled world?

Hot it all came about, or was created –
Whether or not he fashioned it himself –
He who surveys it from the highest heaven,
He of all beings knows – or perhaps not.

When some great sorrow, like a mighty river,
Flows through your life with peace-destroying power
And dearest things are swept from sight forever,
Say to your heart each trying hour:
"This, too, shall pass away."

When ceaseless toil has hushed your song of gladness,
And you have grown almost too tired to pray,
Let this truth banish from your heat its sadness,
And ease the burdens of each tring day:
"This, too, shall pass away."

When fortune smiles, and, full of mirth and pleasure,
The days are flitting by without a care,
Lest you should rest with only earthly treasure,
Let these few words their fullest import bear:
"This, too, shall pass away."

When earnest labor brings you fame and glory,
And all earth's noblest ones upon you smile,
Remember that life's longest, grandest story
Fills but a moment in earth's little while:
"This, too, shall pass away."

Life is a game
It's simple and true
And all that you can do
Is sit and wonder what's in it for you
And how you play this game of life
Well that's up to you

Life is a game
It's really true
You can play fairly, nicely, and clean
Or you can cheat, play dirty, and mean
Life can be easy or it can be hard
All you can do is play your cards

And at the end
When this is all over
You can look back
And remember
All that you have lost and gained
Because you had your shot
And what happened
Well that was up to you

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

THE MORE we live, more brief appear
Our life’s succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.

But as the care-worn cheeks grow wan,
And sorrow’s shafts fly thicker,
Ye Stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,
Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange—yet who would change
Time’s course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportion’d to their sweetness.

The body of man is like a flicker of lightning
existing only to return to Nothingness.
Like the spring growth that shrivels in autumn.
Waste no thought on the process for it has no purpose,
coming and going like the dew.

Spring goes, and the hundred flowers.
Spring comes, and the hundred flowers.
My eyes watch things passing,
my head fills with years.
But when spring has gone not all the flowers follow.
Last night a plum branch blossomed by my door.

Corpses push up through thawing permafrost,

as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink;
on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light

undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous
as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to

seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom

of a decaying exterior jamb when I glimpsed
jagged ice floating in a bay. Naval sonar

slices through whales, even as a portion
of male dorsal fin is served to the captain

of an umiak. Stopped in traffic, he swings from

a chairlift, gazes down at scarlet paintbrush.
Moistening an envelope before sealing it,

I recall the slight noise you made when I
grazed your shoulder. When a frost wiped out

the chalk-blue flowering plant by the door,

I watered until it revived from the roots.
The song of a knife sharpener in an alley

passes through the mind of a microbiologist
before he undergoes anesthesia for surgery.

The first night of autumn has singed

bell peppers by the fence, while budding
chamisa stalks in the courtyard bend to ground.

Observing people conversing at a nearby table,
he visualizes the momentary convergence

and divergence of lines passing through a point.

The wisteria along the porch never blooms;
a praying mantis on the wood floor sips water

from a dog bowl. Laughter from upstairs echoes
downstairs as teenage girls compare bra sizes.

An ex-army officer turned critic frets

over the composition of a search committee,
snickers and disparages rival candidates.

A welder, who turns away for a few seconds
to gaze at the Sangre de Cristos, detects a line

of trucks backed up on an international overpass

where exhaust spews onto houses below.
The day may be called One Toothroad or Six Thunderpain,

but the naming of a day will not transform it,
nor will the mathematics of time halt.

An imprint of ginkgo leaf—fan-shaped, slightly

thickened, slightly wavy on broad edge, two-
lobed, with forking parallel veins but no

midvein—in a slab of coal is momentary beauty,
while ginkgos along a street dropping gold

leaves are mindless beauty of the quotidian.

Once thought to be extinct, the gingko was
discovered in Himalayan monasteries and

propagated back into the world. Although I
cannot save a grasshopper singed by frost

trying to warm itself on a sunlit walkway,

I ponder shadows of budding pink and orange
bougainvilleas on a wall. As masons level sand,

lay bricks in horizontal then vertical pairs,
we construct a ground to render a space

our own. As light from a partial lunar eclipse

diffuses down skylight walls, we rock and
sluice, rock and sluice, fingertips fanned

to fanned fingertips, debouch into plentitude.
Venus vanishes in a brightening sky:

the diamond ring of a solar eclipse persists.

You did not have to fly to Zimbabwe in June 2001
to experience it. The day recalls Thirteen Death

and One Deer when an end slips into a beginning.
I recall mating butterflies with red dots on wings,

the bow of a long liner thudding on waves,

crescendo of water beginning to boil in a kettle,
echoes of humpback whales. In silence dancers

concentrate on movements on stage; lilacs bud
by a gate. As bits of consciousness constellate,

I rouse to a 3 a.m. December rain on the skylight.

A woman sweeps glass shards in a driveway,
oblivious to elm branches reflected on windshields

of passing cars. Juniper crackles in the fireplace;
whale flukes break the water as it dives.

The path of totality is not marked by

a shadow hurtling across the earth’s surface
at three thousand kilometers per hour.

Our eyelashes attune to each other.
At the mouth of an arroyo, a lamb skull

and ribcage bleach in the sand; tufts

of fleece caught on barbed wire vanish.
The Shang carved characters in the skulls

of their enemies, but what transpired here?
You do not need to steep turtle shells

in blood to prognosticate clouds. Someone

dumps a refrigerator upstream in the riverbed
while you admire the yellow blossoms of

a golden rain tree. A woman weeds, sniffs
fragrance from a line of onions in her garden;

you scramble an egg, sip oolong tea.

The continuous bifurcates into the segmented
as the broken extends. Someone steals

a newspaper while we snooze. A tiger
swallowtail lands on a patio columbine;

a single agaric breaks soil by a hollyhock.

Pushing aside branches of Russian olives
to approach the Pojoaque River, we spot

a splatter of flicker feathers in the dirt.
Here chance and fate enmesh.

Here I hold a black bowl rinsed with tea,

savor the warmth at my fingertips,
aroma of emptiness. We rock back and forth,

back and forth on water. Fins of spinner
dolphins break the waves; a whale spouts

to the north-northwest. What is not impelled?

Yellow hibiscus, zodiac, hair brush;
barbed wire, smog, snowflake--when I still

my eyes, the moments dilate. Rain darkens
gravel in the courtyard; shriveled apples

on branches are weightless against dawn.

Light is my end. Born when a few cells fuse
in a big bang of love, from nothing I
become a mass living in time, and lose
my black aloneness for the unseen eye
of mind catching you. We two think and burn.
Back in 1905 Albert Einstein,
a clerk in the Patent Office in Bern,
found we electromagnetically shine,
which means that I am charged with being me,
discharging like the sun. And when my mass
and time slow down to zero gravity,
dismembering me to be infinite night,
Albert's mc2 tells me though my ass
will disappear, I shall turn into light

1.
From one darkness
into another darkness
I soon must go.
Light the long way before me,
moon on the mountain rim!

2.
Being a person
whom no one will mourn when gone,
I should perhaps
say for myself while still here—
"Ah, the pity, the pity."

3.
So forlorn am I
that when I see a firefly
out on the marshes
it looks like my soul rising
from my body in longing.

How she let her long hair down over her shoulders, making a love cave around her face. Return and return again.
How when the lamplight was lowered she pressed against him, twining her fingers in his. Return and return again.
How their legs swam together like dolphins and their toes played like little tunnies. Return and return again.
How she sat beside him cross-legged, telling him stories of her childhood. Return and return again.
How she closed her eyes when his were open, how they breathed together, breathing each other. Return and return again.
How they fell into slumber, their bodies curled together like two spoons. Return and return again.
How they went together to Otherwhere, the fairest land they had ever seen. Return and return again.
O best of all nights, return and return again.

The sky is a dark bowl, the stars die and fall.

The celestial bows quiver,

The bones of the earthgods shake and planets come to a halt

When they sight the king in all his power,

The god who feeds on his father and eats his mother.

The kin is such a tower of wisdom

Even his mother can’t discern his name.

His glory is in the sky, his strength lies in the horizon

Like that of his father the sungod Atum who conceived him….

He cooks the leftover gods into a bone soup.

Their souls belong to him

And their shadows as well.

In his pyramid among those who live on the earth of Egypt,

The dead king ascends and appears

The men and beasts of the zodiac
Have marched over us once more.
Green wine bottles and red lobster shells,
Both emptied, litter the table.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” Each
Sits listening to his own thoughts,
And the sound of cars starting outside.
The birds in the eaves are restless,
Because of the noise and light. Soon now
In the winter dawn I will face
My fortieth year. Borne headlong
Towards the long shadows of sunset
By the headstrong, stubborn moments,
Life whirls past like drunken wildfire.