 | | | Subject: a good bit of poetry
Posted Mar 18, 2006 by  anhaga
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 | | You know, it's not often I find a bit of contemporary poetry that really does anything much for me. I remember a quasi-haiku by John Cerzny entitled 'Ago' from about twenty years ago (perhaps because I happened to have a trifle published in the same issue of an exceptionally short-lived little journal) but since then the 'aha' moments have been few. Mervyn Peake's 'Revery of Bone' has the potential to teach the worst of boors a love of poetry. George Elliot Clarke's 'Whylah Falls' had moments and Roo Boorson's 'Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida' had a general wonderfulness. And, of course, there's Leonard Cohen.
But today while reading Anne Compton's 'Processional' I came across what I find to be something truly exceptionally from 'Settling in Under the Roof of Possibility':
'I want to be in the rooms where you were
before I knew you.
Never mind making tea. Tell me
were there dormers and deep sills?
Did the closet door close up snug
or scrape on the floor?
Cold in winter, was it?
I want you to lie down in the past
and wait for me there.
On a rainy day back then, I'll go through the cupboards
arrange our lives as they should have been.
Light a fire. Burn the rubbish.'
I had to copy it out and put it somewhere. There it is. To often good things become misplaced on a bookshelf.
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| | | Subject: a good bit of poetry
Posted Mar 18, 2006 by Mudhooks: ,,, busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest...
This is a reply to this Posting
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 | | "It's ironic, really. All my pleasures are homey ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare's long red-gold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare's breasts, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked. I love meandering through the stacks at the library after the patrons have gone home, lightly touching the spines of the books. These are the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced from them by Time's whim."
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