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“Does It Matter?” by Siegfried Sassoon
Does it matter? — losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When the others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter? — losing...
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“The Remains” by Mark Strand
I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. What...
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“Not Dying” by Mark Strand
These wrinkles are nothing. These gray hairs are nothing. This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother...
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The Light in My Father’s Study
A light is on in my father’s study. “Still up?” he says, and we are silent, looking at the harbor lights, listening to the surf and the creak of coconut boughs. He is working late on cases. No...
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“Friends” by Ian Hamilton
‘At one time we wanted nothing more Than to wake up in each other’s arms.’ Old enemy, You want to live forever And I don’t Was the last pact we made On our last afternoon together. __________...
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“One Time” by Christian Wiman
But the world is more often refuge than evidence, comfort and covert for the flinching will, rather than the sharp particulate instants through which God’s being burns into ours. I say God and mean...
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“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the...
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“Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children” by John Updike
They will not be the same next time. The sayings so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected. Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in the more securely to the worldly buzz of television,...
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“A Letter from Tegucigalpa” by Mark Strand
In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark of consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit...
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“Peggy Lutz, Fred Muth” by John Updike
They’ve been in my fiction; both now dead, Peggy just recently, long stricken (like my Grandma) with Parkinson’s disease. But what a peppy knockout Peggy was!— cheerleader, hockey star, May Queen, RN....
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“Ancient of Days” by Charles Wright
There is a kind of sunlight, in early autumn, at sundown, That raises cloud reflections Inches above the pond water, that sends us packing into the chill evening To stand like Turner’s blobbed...
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“A Fable” by Louise Glück
Two women with the same claim came to the feet of the wise king. Two women, but only one baby. The king knew someone was lying. What he said was Let the child be cut in half; that way no one will go...
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“The History of Poetry” by Mark Strand
Our masters are gone and if they returned Who among us would hear them, who would know The bodily sound of heaven or the heavenly sound Of the body, endless and vanishing, that tuned Our days before...
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“Hunger for Something” by Chase Twichell
Sometimes I long to be the woodpile, cut-apart trees soon to be smoke, or even the smoke itself, sinewy ghost of ash and air, going wherever I want to, at least for a while. Neither inside nor out,...
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“Snowdrops” by Louise Glück
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect to waken again, to feel in...
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“Perfection Wasted” by John Updike
And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market — the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved...
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“Portofino” by Spencer Reece
Promise me you will not forget Portofino. Promise me you will find the trompe l’oeil on the bedroom walls at the Splendido. The walls make a scene you cannot enter. Perhaps then you will comprehend...
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“Your Place” by Ian Hamilton
The main street burns. It’s two blocks to your place. There are girls everywhere and the one I’m looking at Might. She holds my stare a second, then, compassionate, She lets it go. And I can hardly...
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“Carlos” by Theodore Deppe
My first day leading the prison writing workshop: Carlos complimented my choosing the chair nearest the door. I read a poem by Whitman that once sent me hitchhiking and Carlos stood up, asked to read...
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“Immortality Ode” by William Wordsworth
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not,...
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