Inverse Proportions

Proverbs, aphorisms, epigrams
are designed to contain worlds
in solution: little goblets for
sampling whole seas and raging climates.

In this way would it not be good
to have one's life center upon something
private and small, such as
keys, names, sleeping tablets?

You could carry this secret
everywhere and fondle it like a lucky piece,
cool and heavy in the fingers . . .
perhaps like a coin minted in antiquity,
by some old Emperor blurred by
the rub of dead thumbs for centuries;
engraved with words nobody alive
can read. Here would be salvation
and all the wisdom you'd ever need.

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by Jack Matthews

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
by white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

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by Wallace Stevens

Late Echo

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

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by John Ashbery

Five Flights Up

Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions - if that is what they are -
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins . . .
The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.

The little black dog runs in his yard.
His owner's voice arises, stern,
"You ought to be ashamed!"
What has he done?
He bounces cheerfully up and down;
he rushes in circles in the fallen leaves.

Obviously, he has no sense of shame.
He and the bird know everything is answered,
all taken care of,
no need to ask again.
- Yesterday brought to today so lightly!
(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)

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by Elizabeth Bishop