Poetry

Thanksgiving has come round again. On this side of the pond we think we are reenacting an old morality play, one in which Squanto and Massasoit save the Pilgrims with eels and corn turkey and sweet potatoes, for which the Pilgrims thank them God. Read more about Come Ye Thankful People

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Campaign songs from Andrew Jackson (he ran on the "Democratic Republican Party ticket), William Henry Harrison (a Republican against Democrat Martin Van Buren), Abraham Lincoln's second campaign, Al Smith (Democrat defeated by Herbert Hoover), Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Andrew Jackson, 1828: The Hunters of Kentucky

William Henry Harrison, 1840: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too Read more about All Together Now

From around 1947 or so. Seems particularly apropos, if not entirely accurate, on several fronts today.

No Holy Wars for Them

States strong enough to do good are but few,
Their number would seem limited to three,
Good is a thing that they, the great, can do,
But puny little states can only be.
And being good for these means standing by
To watch a war in nominal alliance,
And when it's over watch the worlds supply
Get parceled out among the winning giants.
God, have You taken cognizance of this?

The Hotel Poem in Istanbul is a stone's throw from the Hagia Sofia, The Blue Mosque, and Topkapi Palace.

This was the poem on our door.

LISTENING TO ISTANBUL
Orhan Veli Kanik Read more about Hotel Poem

Purple prosody, perhaps. But that's what happens when you mix red and blue.

For You, O Democracy

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,

On Monday, I said something about my friend Sue and a poem I wrote for her way back when. Sue and I met when we both worked for a tree nursery in Door County, Wisconsin, in the late 70's. I drove a tractor pulling a tree planter that sat six. Six other women with a never-ending supply of evergreen seedlings. I hauled them up one set of rows and down another while they put tiny trees in the ground. It must be entirely automated now. I can't find a single picture of a tree planter with actual human beings aboard. Read more about To Sue

At first I thought this lovely poem by Emily Dickinson was one of the few I've read so far that didn't reference death in some way. But a second look at the one I call Second Summer convinces me that Emily does not mistake signs of life for life itself.

These are the days when Birds come back --
A very few -- a Bird or two --
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old -- old sophistries of June --

Channel surfing the other night, I came across the American Masters showing of The Day Carl Sandburg Died.

In the light of our current political climate, Sandburg is worth revisiting. Take this excerpt from:

Carl Sandburg

The people yes
The people will live on.

The core of any people, any religion, lies in its poets. When we remember that, this contention will cease.

The Freshness

Rumi

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,