I own this book as it's an edition of new and selected poems from several of her books and I must say it's a fine book of poems, one that I go to again and again. I had a hard time selecting only a few poems to post here because I have so many favorites. If you haven't yet discovered Ms. Pastan's poetry, then you're in for a delicious treat. Enjoy! Blessings, ~Marion
WHAT WE WANT
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names---
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
Linda Pastan
____________________
IN THE MIDDLE OF A LIFE
Tonight I understand
for the first time
how a woman might choose
her own death
as easily
as if it were a dark plum
she picked
from a basket
of bright peaches.
It wouldn't be despair
that moved her
or hunger,
but a kind of stillness.
The evenings are full
of closure: the pale flowers
of the shamrock fold
their fragile wings, everything
promised has been given.
There is always
that moment
when the sun balanced
on the rim
of the world
falls
and is lost at sea,
and the sky seems huge
and beautiful without it.
I lie down on my bed
giving myself
to the white sheets
as the white sheets of a sloop
must give themselves
to the wind,
setting out on a journey---
the last perhaps
or even the first.
Linda Pastan
=============================
PAIN
More faithful
than lover or husband
it cleaves to you,
calling itself by your name
as if there had been a ceremony.
At night, you turn and turn
searching for the one
bearable position,
but though you may finally sleep
it wakens ahead of you.
How heavy it is,
displacing with its volume
your very breath.
Before, you seemed to weigh nothing,
your arms might have been wings.
Now each finger adds its measure;
you are pulled down by the weight
of your own hair.
And if your life should disappear ahead of you
you would not run after it.
Linda Pastan
*********************************
A NEW POET
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush
if only there had been a flower.
Linda Pastan
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
THE BOOKSTALL
Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open---that one
and that---and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.
For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read---these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon,
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.
Linda Pastan
