Happy World Poetry day! In honour of the day I thought it’d be nice to share a few poems and poets that I really like. Quite a few years ago I tried my hand at writing poetry and I liked it, it’s an immersive and challenging experience that makes you look at the world differently. I wish I’d kept it up but instead I changed my job which was a different kind of challenging and immersive experience that pays the bills better but isn’t quite so psychologically rewarding.
Anway, I wasn’t very good at it but because I was trying to write poetry I read a lot of poetry and I found a lot of poets that I love. Here are a few of my favourites. Who are your favourite poets and favourite poems?
October by Louise Gluck (note: this is part 3 and my favourite part of the poem, but it is worth reading the whole
3.
Snow had fallen. I remember
music from an open window.
Come to me, said the world.
This is not to say
it spoke in exact sentences
but that I perceived beauty in this manner.
Sunrise. A film of moisure
on each living thing. Pools of cold light
formed in the gutters.
I stood
at the doorway,
ridiculous as it now seems.
What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,
bits of green were showing.
Come to me, said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal –
I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure.
Beauty
the healer, the teacher –
Death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.
Although the Wind by Izumi Shikibu (tr. Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani)
Although the wind
Blows terribly here,
The moonlight also leaks
Between the roof planks
Of this ruined house.
Photo by Fabian Wiktor on Pexels.com
Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise by W. S. Merwin
When it is not yet day
I am walking on centuries of dead chestnut leaves
In a place without grief
Though the oriole
Out of another life warns me
That I am awake
In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them
Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life
Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me
Black Maps by Mark Strand
Not the attendance of stones,
nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,
nor the sea that celebrates
only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.
Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been.
You can walk
believing you cast
a light around you.
But how will you know?
The present is always dark.
Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing
in their slow ascent
into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,
the bleak, temperate
necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath.
And if they are studied at all
it is only to find,
too late, what you thought
were concerns of yours
do not exist.
Your house is not marked
on any of them,
nor are your friends,
waiting for you to appear,
nor are your enemies,
listing your faults.
Only you are there,
saying hello
to what you will be,
and the black grass
is holding up the black stars.
Photo by Mike B on Pexels.com
Gift by Czeslaw Milosz (tr. Anthony Milosz)
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and the sails.
biisbooks 
Thank you for sharing the lovely poems! Happy World Poetry Day!