They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker
out under the lilac bush,
and my father and mother darkly sit there, in black clothes.
Our clapboard house stands fast on its hill,
my doll lies in her wicker pram
gazing at western Massachusetts.
This was our world.
I could remake each shaft of grass
feeling its rasp on my fingers,
draw out the map of every lilac leaf
or the net of veins on my father's 
grief-tranced hand. 

Out of my head, half-bursting,
still filling, the dream condenses--
shadows, crystals, ceilings, meadows, globes of dew.
Under the dull green of the lilacs, out in the light
carving each spoke of the pram, the turned porch-pillars,
under high early-summer clouds,
I am Effie, visible and invisible,
remembering and remembered.

-- 'Mourning Picture' by Adrienne Rich (written in response to Elmer's painting)
#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Edwin Romanzo Elmer)

I read your poetry once more,
poems written by a rich man, knowing all,
and by a beggar, homeless,
an emigrant, alone.

You always wanted to go
beyond poetry, above it, soaring,
and also lower, to where our region
begins, modest and timid.

Sometimes your tone
transforms us or a moment,
we believe—truly—
that every day is sacred,

that poetry—how to put it?—
makes life rounder,
fuller, prouder, unashamed
of perfect formulation.

But evening arrives,
I lay my book aside,
and the city’s ordinary din resumes—
somebody coughs, someone cries and curses.

-- 'Reading Milosz' by Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanagh from 'The FSG Poetry Anthology' edit. by Jonathan Galassi, Robyn Creswell
#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Giancario Manneschi)

Rain has eaten 1/4 of me

yet I believe
against all evidence

these raindrops
are my letters of recommendation

here is a man worth falling on.
-- 'Letters' by Ilya Kaminsky from 'You Are Here', edit. by Ada Limón

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
-- 'Heat' by H.D.

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Twyla Gettert)

At thirty-six
I finally stopped wanting to shower—
a caricature,
convinced I couldn’t do that right,
either.

#VerseThursday

I expect you’ve seen the footage: elephants,
finding the bones of one of their own kind
dropped by the wayside, picked clean by scavengers
and the sun, then untidily left there,
decide to do something about it.

But what, exactly? They can’t, of course,
reassemble the old elephant magnificence;
they can’t even make a tidier heap. But they can
hook up bones with their trunks and chuck them
this way and that way. So they do.

And their scattering has an air
of deliberate ritual, ancient and necessary.
Their great size, too, makes them the very
embodiment of grief, while the play of their trunks
lends sprezzatura.

Elephants puzzling out
the anagram of their own anatomy,
elephants at their abstracted lamentations—
may their spirit guide me as I place
my own sad thoughts in new, hopeful arrangements.
-- 'A Scattering' by Christopher Reid from 'The FSG Poetry Anthology'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

Called after summer and the deep river,
there among us cool
and shallow others,
when I said we are all kings, you
shook your fierce kingly head, denying.
No kings any more! you said.
I keep seeing what you were saying
and that you led
clear free of rule
to our own where,
across the river in the summer,
that far shore,
nobody ever, nobody ever
singing of war.
-- 'For June Jordan' by Ursula K. Le Guin from her Collected Poems

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

You give me cloudberry jam from Lapland,
Bog amber, snow-line tidbits, scrumptious
Cloudberries sweetened slowly by the cold,
And costly enough for cloudberry wars
(Diplomatic wars, my dears).
Imagine us
Among the harvesters, keeping our distance
In sphagnum fields on the longest day
When dawn and dusk like frustrated lovers
Can kiss, legend has it, once a year, Ah,
Kisses at our age, cloudberry kisses.
--'Cloudberries' by Michael Longley

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Elisaveta Ilieva)

make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too—
what else can i call the crown of light
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?
-- 'Lullaby for the Grieving' by Ashley M. Jones from 'You Are Here'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

An early entry for #VerseThursday here. By Batool Abu Akleen a poet and translator in Gaza, Palestine.

هكذا أطهو حزني / This is how I cook my grief

أقطف من الشارع قلوباً طازجةً
أختار أكثرها خيبةً
بيدٍ خفيفةٍ أسرق الدموع
.أعبئ رائحة الحزن في علب السردين الصدئة
نظرات الأمهات تلتصق بأعينهن بشدة
.فأخطفها برشاقةٍ لأني أشبه أطفالهن
في قدرٍ نحاسيٍ
أغلي كل مسروقاتي
أضيف لها دماً لم تشربه الأرض بعد
.ونشارةَ تابوتٍ كان باباً لبيته الجديد
أسكبُ الخليطَ في قلبي
فيصبح أسوداً
هكذا أطهو حزني 

I pick fresh hearts from the street
the most defeated ones
with nimble fingers I steal the tears
I fill rusted sardine tins with the smell of sorrow.
Mothers’ glances cling tight to their eyes
but I snatch them easily, because I resemble their children.

In a copper pot
I boil what I’ve stolen
add the blood that hadn't been absorbed
& sawdust from a coffin meant as the door to a new home.
I pour the mixture into my heart
until it blackens.
This is how I cook my grief.

From this collection about to be released, 48kg.

https://tenementpress.com/Batool-Abu-Akleen
Heard on the Bulaq podcast: BULAQ | بولاق: A Young Poet in Gaza, Writing in the Shadow of Death

Episode webpage: https://shows.acast.com/bulaq-bolak/episodes/682ef266615cbd815711edf3

Media file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6447b4562cc80100119cdd5c/e/682ef266615cbd815711edf3/media.mp3