Ars Poetica, Modern Sorcery and Song of the Builders---Poems I Love

I share with you three of my photographs and three of my favorite poems by Archibald MacLeish, Charles Simic and Mary Oliver. It's a lazy, hot Sunday here in drought-ridden, scorching Louisiana.

Even the exotic, black and yellow grasshopper came out for a drink of hose water this morning as I watered the drooping, brown flora and fauna, and I captured a photo of him! Wishing you cooling summer showers, peace, blessings, health and happiness. ~Marion~

ARS POETICA

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases,

twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time

as the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:

not true.

For all the history of grief

an empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love

the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean

but be.

Modern Sorcery

By Charles Simic

You could have been just another maggot

squirming over history's roadkill.

Instead a witch took pity on you, lucky fellow,

made you say abracadabra, and much else

you didn't understand

while you held on to the hem of her skirt.

You know neither the place nor the hour

of your transfiguration.

A kitten lapping a drop of milk

fallen from the Blessed Virgin's breast

in a church at dawn. That's how it felt:

the two of you kneeling there.

Outside, there was a flash of lightning

like a tongue passed over a bloody knife,

but you were safe.

Hexed once and for all in her open arms,

giddy and tickled pink with her sorcery.

From: "Staying Alive, Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley

Song of the Builders

By Mary Oliver

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

from: "Why I Wake Early" (2004)