T.S. Eliot - "Landscapes"

I. New Hampshire

Children’s voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and the fruit-time:
Golden head, crimson head,
Between the green tip and the root.
Black wing, brown wing, hover over;
Twenty years and the spring is over;
To-day grieves; to-morrow grieves;
Cover me over, light-in-leaves;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling, swing,
Spring, sing,
Swing up into the apple-tree.

II. Virginia

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.

III. Usk

Do not suddenly break the branch, or
Hope to find
The white hart beside the white well.
Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell
Old enchantments. Let them sleep.
’Gently dip, but not too deep’,
Lift your eyes
Where the roads dip and where the roads rise
Seek only there
Where the grey light meets the green air
The hermit’s chapel, the pilgrim’s prayer.



- from The Waste Land and Other Poems

From "Petroglyphs of Serena", by Adrian C. Louis

“The old people were moving slowly

through the cold air like exhausted swimmers

fighting the tides of a lung-raping sea.

But, the sun had its high beams on

and near the creek children were laughing

and moving as fast as spit on a hot woodstove.

Grandfather, it was a good day to pray.

Grandfather, it was a good day to pray

that the young would somehow get to be old….”


full poem at http://poems3.blogspot.com/, from his collection “Ceremonies of the Damned”

Henri Cole - "Solitude: The Tower"

Long ago, I lived at the foot of the mountains,

where my parents lived when they were young.

Nearby, there was a daffodil farm, which I bicycled past

each day on my way to the supermarket.

Occasionally, there were earthquakes, but no one noticed.

At my desk, words and phrases grew only slowly,

like the embedded or basal portion of a hair,

tooth, nail, or nerve. As I looked at the empty page—

seeing into love, seeing into suffering,

seeing into madness—my head ached so,

dear reader, emotions toppling me in one

direction, then another, but writing this now,

sometimes in a rush, sometimes after drifting thought,

I feel happiness, I feel I am not alone.