Sep 26 2022
Essayist, playwright, and my favorite poet, T. S. Eliot, was born on this day September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. Morning at the Window They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,And along the trampled edges of the streetI am aware of the damp souls of housemaidsSprouting despondently at area gates. The brown waves …
Sep 25 2022
Where The Sidewalk Ends There is a place where the sidewalk endsand before the street begins,and there the grass grows soft and white,and there the sun burns crimson bright,and there the moon-bird rests from his flightto cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows blackand the dark street winds …
Sep 24 2022
The Poets They, like all creatures, being madeFor the shovel and worm,Ransacked their perishable minds and foundPattern and formAnd with their own hands quarried from hard wordsA figure in which secret things confide.They are abroad: their spirits like a prideOf lions circulate,Are desperate, just as the jewelled beast,That lion constellate,Whose scenery is Betelgeuse and Mars,Hunts …
Sep 23 2022
Lost Paradise The Old Jewish Cemeteryis one great bouquet of grey stoneon which time has trodden.I was drifting among the graves,thinking of my mother.She used to read the Bible. The letters in two columnswelled up before her eyeslike blood from a wound.The lamp guttered and smokedand Mother put on her glasses.At times she had to …
Sep 22 2022
For the Chipmunk in My Yard I think he knows I’m alive, having come downThe three steps of the back porchAnd given me a good once over. All afternoonHe’s been moving back and forth,Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,While all about him the great fields tumbleTo the blades of the thresher. He’s luckyTo …
Sep 22 2022
Chimes Brief, on a flying night,From the shaken tower,A flock of bells take flight,And go with the hour. Like birds from the cote to the gales,Abrupt–O hark!A fleet of bells set sails,And go to the dark. Sudden the cold airs swing.Alone, aloud,A verse of bells takes wingAnd flies with the cloud. -Alice Meynell
Sep 21 2022
I’d Like to Be Alone in the South Perhaps my lazy eyes won’t see the south againWith its light landscapes drowsing in the air,Its flowerlike bodies lying in the shadeOr running away at a gallop like mad horses. The south is a desert crying as it sings,And that voice never stops like a dead bird;It …
Sep 20 2022
The Baseball Players Against the brightgrass the white-knickeredplayers, tense, seize,and attend. A momentago, outfieldersand infielders adjustedtheir clothing, glancedat the sun and settledforward, hands on knees;the pitcher walked backof the hill, establishedhis cap and returned;the catcher twitcheda forefinger; the batterrotated his batin a slow circle. But nowthey pause: wary,exact, suspended— whileabiding moonriselightens the angelof the overgrownhardens, …
Sep 19 2022
Something Told the Wild Geese Something told the wild geeseIt was time to go.Though the fields lay goldenSomething whispered, — “Snow.”Leaves were green and stirring,Berries, luster-glossed,But beneath warm feathersSomething cautioned, — “Frost.”All the sagging orchardsSteamed with amber spice,But each wild breast stiffenedAt remembered ice.Something told the wild geeseIt was time to fly,—Summer sun was on …
Sep 18 2022
“A great work of art is one that continues to repay attention.” -Christopher Ricks