The Whiskey on Your Breath

“My Papa’s Waltz”

Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

“Blown”

Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Have you lost your mind, are you wingstruck,

is there a piece of you gone, why can’t

that fire fall out of your chest or are

you completely unstrung with the stripping

him down to the hot quick of you and

too lamentably eyesick, voicesick, breastsick

to understand there’s no hope for you—

you must be lightdead, you must be socket

blown, heartshot, blinded by doves

and he will not know you ever

he will not think suddenly of you, or one day

say, touch, look, anything outside of your

intoxicated shine to yourself, such a maddening

monkey, are you out of your head, are you

off your nut, have you taken leave

of your senses, are you not all there,

is something loose, gone soft—

are you beyond mercy, is he

a scent with no source in the house,

is he kind to you in dreams, is his throat a place

for you to die, unpardonable, ludicrous, bedazzled,

do you hear voices, do you see benevolent

forms, do you think you’ve been stabbed

and now you’re standing over the body

not yours—not his—but the body

drunk, drunk up again, have you entirely

lost touch, do you have roses for brains,

do you live on the moon

that his oblivion waxes you, easy pearl,

are you all balled up, have you come

unhinged, woman,

is anyone home?

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

“Cædmon’s Hymn”

Nu sculon heriġanheofonriċes Weard

Meotodes meahteand his modġeþanc

weorc Wuldor-Fæderswa he wundra ġehwæs

eċe Drihtenor onstealde

He ærest sceopielda bearnum

heofon to hrofehaliġ Scyppend

ða middanġeardmoncynnes Weard

eċe Drihtenæfter teode

firum foldanFrea ælmihtiġ

Translation

Now we must praiseheaven-kingdom’s Guardian,

the Measure’s mightand his mind-plans,

the work of the Glory-Father,when he wonders of every one,

eternal Lord,the beginning established.

He first createdfor men’s sons

heaven as a roof,holy Creator;

then middle-earthmankind’s Guardian,

eternal Lord,afterwards made—

for men earth,Master almighty.

“A Late Walk”

Robert Frost

When I go up through the mowing field,

The headless aftermath,

Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,

The whir of sober birds

Up from the tangle of withered weeds

Is sadder than any words.

A tree beside the wall stands bare,

But a leaf that lingered brown,

Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth,

By picking the faded blue

Of the last remaining aster flower

To carry again to you.

“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”

James Wright

Over my head, I see a bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

the droppings of last year’s horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

“Buffalo Bill’s…”

e e cummings

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

“The Lockless Door”

Robert Frost

It went many years,

But at last came a knock,

And I thought of the door

With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,

I tiptoed the floor,

And raised both hands

In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again.

My window was wide;

I climbed on the sill

And descended outside.

Back over the sill

I bade a “Come in”

To whatever the knock

At the door may have been.

So at a knock

I emptied my cage

To hide in the world

And alter with age.

“Traveling Through the Dark”

William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching the side brought me the reason –

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—

then pushed her over the edge into the river
“Digging for Indians”

Gary Gildner

The first week the soil was clean,

except for a shrew’s lobster-

colored jaw, a bull snake caught

in its long final bellow,

and an ocher mouse holding

its head, as if our trowels had given it

a migraine. Then we hit bird-bone

beads, clam shells,

and then we struck a spine.

Digging slowly we followed it

north, toward a stand of cottonwood

overlooking the river and beyond,

a patch of abandoned pickups and plows

taking the sun

We stopped

below the shoulder blades for lunch.

Then we resumed, working down

and into the body,

now paring

the dirt like exotic fruit,

now picking between the ribs

as if they were bad teeth

aching with impacted meat.

We were dripping wet,

and slapping at sweat bees

attacking the salt

on our backs –

but he was taking shape,

as his pelvis came through,

like a man. We covered

his thighs and brittle, tapering feet

and then we went for his skull.

Shaving close, slicing off

worms that curlicued

like brains out of place,

we unearthed his hollow expression,

his bony brow,

and finally, in back of his neck,

an arrowhead stuck to the vertebrae.

The ground quickly rumbled under our knees –

Quickly we got the Polaroid

and snapped him from several angles –

except for the scattered fingers

we could not have planned a better specimen…

then we wrapped him up in foil.

Tomorrow we would make a plaster cast,

and hang it in the junior college.

“Oranges”

Gary Soto

The first time I talked

With a girl, I was twelve,

Cold, and weighed down

With two oranges in my jacket.

December. Frost cracking

Beneath my steps, my breath

Before me, then gone,

As I walked toward

Her house, the one whose

Porch light burned yellow

Night and day, in any weather.

A dog barked at me, until

She came out pulling

At her gloves, face bright

With rouge. I smiled,

Touched her shoulder, and led

Her down the street, across

A used car lot and a line

Of newly planted trees,

Until we were breathing

Before a drugstore. We

Entered, the tiny bell

Bringing a saleslady

Down a narrow aisle of goods

I turned to the candies

Tiered like bleachers

And asked what she wanted –

Light in her eyes, a smile

Starting and the corners

Of her mouth. I fingered

A nickel in my pocket,

And when she lifted a chocolate

That cost a dime,

I didn’t say anything.

I took the nickel from

My pocket, then an orange,

And set them quietly on

The counter. When I looked up,

The lady’s eyes met mine,

And held them, knowing

very well what it was all

About.

Outside,

A few cars hissing past,

Fog hanging like old

Coats between the trees.

I took my girl’s hand

In mine for two blocks,

Then released it to let

Her unwrap the chocolate

That was so bright against

The grey of December

That, from some distance,

Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands.

“at the cemetery,

walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989”

Lucille Clifton

among the rocks

at walnut grove

your silence drumming

in my bones,

tell me your names.

nobody mentioned slaves

and yet the curious tools

shine with your fingerprints.

nobody mentioned slaves

but somebody did this work

who had no guide, no stone,

who moulders under rock.

tell me your names,

tell me your bashful names

and i will testify.

the inventory lists ten slaves

but only men were recognized.

among the rocks

at walnut grove

some of these honored dead

were dark

some of these dark

were slaves

some of these slaves

were women

some of them did this

honored work.

tell me your names

foremothers, brothers,

tell me your dishonored names.

here lies

here lies

here lies

here lies

hear

“Happiness”

Robert Hass

Because yesterday morning from the steamy window

we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek

eating the last windfall apples in the rain—

they looked up at us with their green eyes

long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things

and then went back to eating—

and because this morning

when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad

to coax an inquisitive soul

from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,

I drove into town to drink tea in the café

and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay

like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,

a small flock of tundra swans

for the second winter in a row were feeding on new grass

in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,

they are also called whistling swans, are very white,

and their eyes are black—

and because the tea steamed in front of me,

and the notebook, turned to a new page,

was blank except for a faint blue idea of order,

I wrote: happiness! it is December, very cold,

we woke early this morning,

and lay in bed kissing,

our eyes squinched up like bats.