It hangs from heaven to earth.
There are trees in it, cities, rivers,
small pigs and moons. In one corner
the snow falling over a charging cavalry,
in another women are planting rice.
You can also see:
a chicken carried off by a fox,
a naked couple on their wedding night,
a column of smoke,
an evil-eyed woman spitting into a pail of milk.
— by Charles Simic
… …
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.
And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain—
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.
— by Dana Gioia
This this will it always be, and why
To ever argue for: here walking
In its life, or sprawled, or loitering
Down shallow valleys of the lawn:
The trees that are there
The pigeon bobbing through
Its fallowgray ellipse of ground—
The comfort of this ground
Is physical: the sun
Goes through your shirt like liniment,
The tilting
Child in fact now finding
Its first step, the blue balloon, the string
Of ducks drawn through the pond,
The twined twain, the air that hears
The day’s gamegame, and where
Up through the cross-rack oak
Deep gladed lofts of leaf, green
Overtaking green and light and green
Array and hold
Their silent chord,
To where the vergemost
Quibble at clear nothing—there
Is not a purer ledge of opening; nothing
Here is not enough to be without
All need to ever argue for.
— by Alvin Feinman
A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she’s
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.
— by Kay Ryan
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last!
– Helen Maria Williams “To Mrs K”
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance.
– R. W. Emerson “The River”
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
– James Wright “A Blessing”
The night is chill, the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bbleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady’s cheek —
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
– S.T. Coleridge “Christabel”
Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
— S. T. Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.
– Lord Byron “Stanzas for Music”
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