The following short poem by William Blake (1757-1827) is not what one would expect. The All Poetry page from which I copied the poem contains an interesting comment, saying that the poem is“Part of Pickering Manuscript; distinguished by blunt depiction of collaborations across moral dichotomies.” That’s an interesting way of putting it.
I Asked A Thief To Steal Me A Peach
I asked a thief to steal me a peach: He turn’d up his eyes. I ask’d a lithe lady to lie her down: Holy and meek she cries.
As soon as I went an angel came: He wink’d at the thief And smil’d at the dame, And without one word spoke Had a peach from the tree, And ’twixt earnest and joke Enjoy’d the Lady.
British Poet and Novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Although most readers know Thomas Hardy as a novelist, do they know that in mid-career he gave up on the novel and concentrated on producing a body of verse that is as great as his prose, as the following poem demonstrates:
Hap
If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
I came out to California in 1966 after getting my college degree at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.With Robert Frost, his movement was in the opposite direction: Born in San Francisco, he is best known for the poems he wrote while living in New Hampshire.
I had the good fortune of seeing Frost give a poetry reading at Dartmouth in the last year of his life. Then, years later, Martine and I visited his home in Franconia, New Hampshire in 2005.
The following poem is one of his most un-New-England works:
Once by the Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves hooked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore That water never did to land before. The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent, It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
F. L. Lucas is remembered more as a literary critic than as a poet. The amazing thing, though, is how scholarly writers like Lucas can write powerful poems, like the following one:
Beleaguered Cities
Build your houses, build your houses, build your towns, Fell the woodland, to a gutter turn the brook, Pave the meadows, pave the meadows, pave the downs, Plant your bricks and mortar where the grasses shook, The wind-swept grasses shook.
Build, build your Babels black against the sky – But mark yon small green blade, your stones between, The single spy Of that uncounted host you have outcast; For with their tiny pennons waving green They shall storm your streets at last.
Build your houses, build your houses, build your slums, Drive your drains where once the rabbits used to lurk, Let there be no song there save the wind that hums Through the idle wires while dumb men tramp to work, Tramp to their idle work, Silent the siege; none notes it; yet one day Men from your walls shall watch the woods once more Close round their prey.
Build, build the ramparts of your giant town; Yet they shall crumble to the dust before The battering thistle-down.
I have always admired Joyce Carol Oates for being that most rare thing: a prolific writer of quality. Currently, I am reading one of her psychological mysteries, Jack of Spades, about a mystery writer with two personas, one of them destructive. The question arose: Did Joyce ever write any poetry? Upon checking, I found the following sobering poem about everyday life:
Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money
Mid-morning Monday she is staring peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard she wears flannel bedroom slippers she is sipping coffee she is thinking— —gazing at the weedy bumpy yard at the faces beginning to take shape in the wavy mud in the linoleum where floorboards assert themselves
Women whose lives are food breaking eggs with care scraping garbage from the plates unpacking groceries hand over hand
Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front tough plastic with detachable lids Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7 Friday the shopping mall open till 9 bags of groceries unpacked hand over certain hand
Men whose lives are money time-and-a-half Saturdays the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home unfolded Monday morning
Women whose lives are food because they are not punch-carded because they are unclocked sighing glad to be alone staring into the yard, mid-morning mid-week by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten
There are long evenings panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work there are love scenes where people mouth passions sprightly, handsome, silly, manic in close-ups revealed ageless the women whose lives are food the men whose lives are money fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis- understand and forgive and die and weep and embrace and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and begin yawning around 10:30 never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays, watching their braven selves perform
Where are the promised revelations? Why have they been shown so many times? Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer thumbs nagging eyes pleading Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride?
and when they return nothing is changed the linoleum looks older the Hawaiian Chicken is new the girls wash their hair more often the boys skip over the puddles in the GM parking lot no one eyes them with envy
their mothers stoop the oven doors settle with a thump the dishes are rinsed and stacked and by mid-morning the house is quiet it is raining out back or not raining the relief of emptiness rains simple, terrible, routine at peace
Franz Kafka is not know for his poetry, though he did write two poems in a 1903 letter to a school friend named Oskar Pollak. They were found by Christina Hennemann and quoted in a website called The High Window. Below is one of the two poems, entitled “Cold and Hard”:
Cold and Hard
Today is cold and hard. The clouds freeze. The winds are tugging ropes. The people freeze. The footsteps sound metallic On ore-bearing stones, And the eyes look – Wide white lakes.
In the old town stand Small bright Christmas cottages, Their colourful windows look out Onto the snow-covered square. In the moonlight a silent man Walks into the snow, His big shadow is blown along the cottages by the wind.
People who cross dark bridges, past saints with dim little lights.
Clouds that drift across the grey sky past churches with twilight towers. One who leans against the ashlar parapet and looks into the evening water, hands on old stones.
It’s not Kafka’s best work, but it is interesting to see him work in a different literary medium.
However you pronounce his name, Laozi is one the world’s greatest thinkers. Born in 571 BC or sometimes thought to be in the 4th century BCE, or whenever, and died whenever, Laozi may in fact never have existed; yet he is a great author.
I have been reading Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2023) with great pleasure. There is something about Chinese poetry—even in English translation—that hits me where I live. And Red Pine (alias Bill Porter) is a superb translator. His explanatory notes are revealing: He says that even Chinese scholars have a difficult time and have to rely on explanatory notes dated in the centuries after the poems were written.
Here is an excerpt from Laozi’s The Way and Its Power (aka Daodejing aka Tao Te Ching) on the subject of striving:
Instead of poring in more better stop while you can making it sharper won’t help it last longer rooms full of treasure can never be safe the vanity of success invites its own failure when your work is done retire this is the Way of Heaven
Around 130 AD, the Chinese sage Heshanggong wrote the following note about this passage:
Excessive wealth and desire wearies and harms the spirit. The rich should help the poor, and the powerful should aid the oppressed. If, instead, they flaunt their riches and power, they are sure to suffer disaster. Once the sun reaches the zenith, it descends. Once the moon becomes full, it wanes. Creatures flourish then wither. Joy turns to sorrow. When your work is done, if you do not step down, you will meet with harm. This is the Way of Heaven.
This is very old and powerful wisdom. But does anyone listen? Not in today’s world.
John Milton was blind, but he did not suffer from blindness. Rather, he did not let it hinder him from producing a body of work that was nothing short of amazing. It reminds me of another blind poet, Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, who is one of my favorite writers and who wrote about Milton in a sonnet entitled “A Rose and Milton.” Now here is Milton in another sonnet writing about his own blindness:
When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Yes, that last line is quite famous and known to virtually everyone. The preceding thirteen lines, however, are not so well known—though they should be.
Sometimes I think that philosophy has not progressed substantially since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Here is an excerpt from Horace’s Epistles. Orcus is a god of the underworld, and Charon the boatman who ferries souls across the River Styx.
Book 2 Epistle 3: One Ending
When things are troublesome, always remember, keep an even mind, and in prosperity be careful of too much happiness: since my Dellius, you’re destined to die,
whether you live a life that’s always sad, or reclining, privately, on distant lawns, in one long holiday, take delight in drinking your vintage Falernian.
Why do tall pines, and white poplars, love to merge their branches in the hospitable shadows? Why do the rushing waters labour to hurry along down the winding rivers?
Tell them to bring us the wine, and the perfume, and all-too-brief petals of lovely roses, while the world, and the years, and the dark threads of the three fatal sisters allow.
You’ll leave behind all those meadows you purchased, your house, your estate, yellow Tiber washes, you’ll leave them behind, your heir will own those towering riches you’ve piled so high.
Whether you’re rich, of old Inachus’s line, or live beneath the sky, a pauper, blessed with humble birth, it makes no difference: you’ll be pitiless Orcus’s victim.
We’re all being driven to a single end, all our lots are tossed in the urn, and, sooner or later, they’ll emerge, and seat us in Charon’s boat for eternal exile.
The following poem by Victor Hugo is relevant to today’s political situation with President Trump attempting to test:
The Patience of the People
How often have the people said: “What’s power?” Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream, Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme— Austere but just, they contemplate the end To which the current of events must tend. Self-confidence has taught them to forbear, And in the vastness of their strength, they spare. Armed with impunity, for one in vain Resists a nation, they let others reign.
Tarnmoor 
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