tis the season...

It's National Poetry Month. Huzzah!

Some favorite poems:

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection--Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I am all at once what Christ is,' since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, 'patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond."

The Hollow Men--T.S. Eliot

"Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone"

Birches--Robert Frost

"I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over"

Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form--Matthea Harvey

"Whenever we want we can pull the plug and get out

Which is not the case with our own tighter confinement

Inside the body oh pity the bathtub but pity us too"

James Joyce--Jorge Luis Borges

"Dame Señor, coraje y alegría/Para escalar la cumbre de este día "

The Rival--Sylvia Plath

"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you

You leave the same impression

Of something beautiful but annihilating"

The Mermaid--W.B Yeats

"A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own,

Pressed her body to his body,

Laughed; and plunging down

Forgot in cruel happiness

That even lovers drown."

Haere Ra--James K. Baxter

"We are broken by the Love of the Many

And then we are at peace

Like the fog, like the river, like a roofless house

That lets the sun stream in because it cannot help it"

You Fit Into Me--Margaret Atwood

"You fit into me

Like a hook into an eye

A fish hook

an open eye"