Goodbye...

The Summer Ends

by Wendell Berry

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.

All things spare and strange

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
    For skies of cople-colour as a brindled cow;
        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
    Landsape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
        And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

The Dreamer

by Djuna Barnes

 

 

The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem-- 

To grope, with eerie fingers for the window--then-- 

To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream 

Faith--might I awaken! 

And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat. 

Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise, 

And softly patters by, like little fearing feet. 

Faith--this weather! 

The feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane,-- 

The dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,-- 

Then closes in the night and gently falling rain. 

Faith--what darkness!

Twilight--and you...

El Beso

by Angelina Weld Grimké

 

Twilight--and you 

Quiet--the stars; 

Snare of the shine of your teeth, 

Your provocative laughter, 

The gloom of your hair; 

Lure of you, eye and lip; 

Yearning, yearning, 

Languor, surrender; 

Your mouth, 

And madness, madness, 

Tremulous, breathless, flaming, 

The space of a sigh; 

Then awakening--remembrance, 

Pain, regret--your sobbing; 

And again, quiet--the stars, 

Twilight--and you.

Belief

In This Season of Waiting

by Linda Pastan

Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance

even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;

or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;

when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still

it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.