poem endings

If you want what visible reality
can give, you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for
forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.

- Rumi (tr. Coleman Barks)

Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

The wind blows
through the doors of my heart.
It scatters my sheet music
that climbs like waves from the piano, free of the keys.
Now the notes stripped, black butterflies,
flattened against the screens.
The wind through my heart
blows all my candles out.
In my heart and its rooms is dark and windy.
From the mantle smashes birds’ nests, teacups
full of stars as the wind winds round,
a mist of sorts that rises and bends and blows
or is blown through my rooms of my heart
that shatters the windows,
rakes the bedsheets as though someone
had just made love. And my dresses
they are lifted like brides come to rest
on the bedstead, crucifixes,
dresses tangled in trees in the rooms
of my heart. To save them
I’ve thrown flowers to fields,
so that someone would pick them up
and know where they came from.
Come the bees now clinging to flowered curtains.
Off with the clothesline pinning anything, my mother’s trousseau.
It is not for me to say what is this wind
or how it came to blow through the rooms of my heart.
Wing after wing, through the rooms of the dead
the wind does not blow. Nor the basement, no wheezing,
no wind choking the cobwebs in our hair.
It is cool here, quiet, a quilt spread on soil.
But we will never lie down again.

- Deborah Digges

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, 
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

- John Ashbery, At North Farm

The day is a woman who loves you.  Open.
Deer drink close to the road and magpies
spray from your car.  Miles from any town
your radio comes in strong, unlikely
Mozart from Belgrade rock and roll
from Butte.  Whatever the next number
you want to hear it.  Never has your Buick
found this forward a gear.  Even
the tuna salad in Reedpoint is good.

Towns arrive ahead of imagined schedule
Absorakee at one.  Or arrive so late—
Silesia at nine—you recreate the day.
Where did you stop along the road
and have fun?  Was there a runaway horse?
Did you park at that house, the one
alone in a void of grain, white with green
trim and red fence, where you know you lived
once?  You remembered the ringing creek,
the soft brown forms of far off bison.
You must have stayed hours, then drove on.
In the motel you know you’d never seen it before.

Tomorrow will open again, the sky wide
as the mouth of a wild girl, friable
clouds you lose yourself to.  You are lost
in miles of land without people, without
one fear of being found, in the dash
of rabbits, soar of antelope, swirl
merge and clatter of streams. 
                                    —Richard Hugo, Driving Montana
  

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark’s Place too, beneath a white moon.
I’ll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
will be too; but
I’ll be shattered by then
But now I’m not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941—
I’ll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.

- Ted Berrigan

A man standing at the bus stop

reading the newspaper is on fire

Flames are peeking out

from beneath his collar and cuffs

His shoes have begun to melt

The woman next to him 

wants to mention it to him

that he is burning

but she is drowning

Water is everywhere

in her mouth and ears

in her eyes

A stream of water runs

steadily from her blouse

Another woman stands at the bus stop

freezing to death

She tries to stand near the man

who is on fire
to try to melt the icicles

that have formed on her eyelashes

and on her nostrils

to stop her teeth long enough

from chattering to say something

to the woman who is drowning

but the woman who is freezing to death

has trouble moving

with blocks of ice on her feet

It takes the three some time

to board the bus

what with the flames

and water and ice

But when they finally climb the stairs 

and take their seats

the driver doesn’t even notice

that none of them has paid

because he is tortured

by visions and is wondering

if the man who got off at the last stop

was really being mauled to death

by wild dogs.

The most troubling thing is everything. It’s all happening 
At the same time. Interpreting dreams while watching Let’s Make 
A Deal. Eating tofurkey & Cherry Garcia while practicing 
Yoga. Happy Baby. Down Dog. The temperature drops 
Sixty degrees in ten minutes. Stop signs wobble, wobble, 
& then everyone is outside watching the meteor shower. 
It is so contemporary of us to feel the sky pressing 
Down. Copernicus was an impossible dullard & Darwin 
Didn’t even grind up the finch beaks before he smoked 
Them. It is far too easy to get stuck, circling the roundabout, 
Thinking about the reality show you wish you’d starred in. 
The first & final season of Let’s Make a Baby. The time 
Has come to triumph over the oppression of our 
Zippers. My finger is on the button of a machine 
I’ve never seen before. Night sounds like an ice cube 
Dropped into a hot bath. We could warn each other 
About the coming windchill advisory. Tomorrow’s slick roads. 
It’s so discouraging. Today, I ran the microwave 
With nothing in it just to see it catch fire. The purple-
Lipped days are upon us but don’t dwell on it for much 
Longer than it takes to assemble the washable nativity set. 
We all have a better place to be, right? My appointment 
Started ten minutes ago. I slept through the alarm 
& then the rest of my life.

- Alex Lemon, Tick, Tick, Tick

I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter’s curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don’t, don’t jump.

- Bill Knott