The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Wed 6/6/2007)

[RetroLounge]

Sonnet

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.
He has loved her voice and listens with attention
to every modulation of its tone. Knowing
it intimately. Not knowing what he wants
from the sound of it, from the tendered civility.
He studies, out the window, the seed shapes
of the broken pods of ornamental trees.
The kind that grow in everyone's garden, that no one
but horticulturalists can name. Four arched chambers
of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches,
a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber.
A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian,
lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white,
patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.

Robert Haas

****************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[aaronbees]

1. What a fine poem

and a very skillful sonnet. Here's another good one from Hass...


MISERY AND SPLENDOR

Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,
before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,
The window has many small panes, and they are on a couch
embracing. He holds her as tightly
as he can, she buries herself in his body.
Morning, maybe it is evening, light
is flowing through the room. Outside,
the day is slowly succeeded by night,
succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly
and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the
room
does not change, so it is plain what is happening.
They are trying to become one creature,
and something will not have it. They are tender
with each other, afraid
their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment
when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,
their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal
washed up on the shore of a world--
or huddled up against the gate of a garden--
to which they can't admit they can never be admitted.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Good morning, my dear Retro!

Oh, how beautiful this is!

I can feel his longing for her, and how he takes in the landscape as we all do when our minds are elsewhere...

Yet it all ties together, doesn't it?

Just lovely....

Thank you...:hug:

[wildhorses]

3. it is wierd to me how we can each read the same poem and

come away with a different meaning of it.

peggy sees longing

where i see confusion and frustration...

i like it though, thanks.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

4. A good poem, like a good song, does that...

You filter it thru your own experience and your own situation, and you get your own meaning...

I like this one too...

But I get a lost, adrift, melancholy feeling...

RL

[wildhorses]

5. yes. i can see that...it left me a little sad and lost, too.

truly, a nice poem...one worth reflecting.

[Justpat]

6. Gerald Stern n/t