Tuesday Poem: "The Week Before She Died" by Elise Paschen

I dream us young, again,
mother and daughter back
on 69th Street inside
our old brownstone—across
from the church, patch of lawn— 

a house neglected, wrecked,
as if the family
had been forced at gunpoint
to move away. In corners
dirt stacked like miniscule

anthills; along the edges
of room—crumpled clothes, bodiless;
littered across the floor
dry-cleaning bags, vestiges
of what they once protected.

A Turkish scarf, embroidered
with sequins, glitter, beads,
tantalizes. My mother
holds it close, says, “You should 
wear it.” The doorbell rings.

At the top of the stairs
he waits for us to answer.
My mother’s ballet partner, 
Russian, stows something covert
behind his almond eyes. With three

regal strides he commands
our gaze, pronounces the red
brocade robe his, lofts high 
the scarf, the sash he flung
in Giselle, circling the empty 

living room. With mischief he bows
low before my mother. Her love
for him, a mountain. The doorbell 
chimes. A blond, blue-eyed dancer,
in epaulets, arrives.

She straightens shoulders, turns,
walks away. Rudy asks 
Erik, “Did you ever tell her 
about us?” No response. The secrets 
men keep, my mother knows. 

by Elise Paschen

For more information about poet, Elise Paschen, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elise-paschen

Tuesday Poem: "Aunt Helen" by T.S. Eliot

Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet —
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees —
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

by T.S. Eliot

For more information on poet, T.S. Eliot, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-s-eliot

Tuesday Poem: "Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937" by Kenneth Rexroth

For a month now, wandering over the Sierras,   
A poem had been gathering in my mind,   
Details of significance and rhythm,
The way poems do, but still lacking a focus.   
Last night I remembered the date and it all   
Began to grow together and take on purpose.
   We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith   
And I told Marie all about Boston, how it looked   
That last terrible week, how hundreds stood weeping   
Impotent in the streets that last midnight.
I told her how those hours changed the lives of thousands,
How America was forever a different place   
Afterwards for many.
                              In the morning
We swam in the cold transparent lake, the blue   
Damsel flies on all the reeds like millions   
Of narrow metallic flowers, and I thought   
Of you behind the grille in Dedham, Vanzetti,
Saying, “Who would ever have thought we would make this history?”
Crossing the brilliant mile-square meadow   
Illuminated with asters and cyclamen,   
The pollen of the lodgepole pines drifting   
With the shifting wind over it and the blue   
And sulphur butterflies drifting with the wind,   
I saw you in the sour prison light, saying,   
“Goodbye comrade.”
                           In the basin under the crest
Where the pines end and the Sierra primrose begins,   
A party of lawyers was shooting at a whiskey bottle.   
The bottle stayed on its rock, nobody could hit it.
Looking back over the peaks and canyons from the last lake,   
The pattern of human beings seemed simpler   
Than the diagonals of water and stone.   
Climbing the chute, up the melting snow and broken rock,
I remembered what you said about Sacco,
How it slipped your mind and you demanded it be read into the record.
Traversing below the ragged arête,
One cheek pressed against the rock
The wind slapping the other,
I saw you both marching in an army
You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the rattlesnake banner.
I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came   
To the indescribably blue and fragrant
Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile
Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit.   
These are the things that will last a long time, Vanzetti,
I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them.   
Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco.   
They will be here and your name with them,
“When these days are but a dim remembering of the time   
When man was wolf to man.”
I think men will be remembering you a long time   
Standing on the mountains
Many men, a long time, comrade.

by Kenneth Rexroth

For more information about poet, Kenneth Rexroth, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kenneth-rexroth

Tuesday Poem: "Advice to a Prophet" by Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?

Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters.  We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling.  What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

by Richard Wilbur

For more information about poet, Richard Wilbur, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-wilbur

Tuesday Poem: "To Put One Brick Upon Another" by Philip Larkin

To put one brick upon another,
Add a third and then a forth,
Leaves no time to wonder whether
What you do has any worth.
 
But to sit with bricks around you
While the winds of heaven bawl
Weighing what you should or can do
Leaves no doubt of it at all.

by Philip Larkin

For more information about the poet, Philip Larkin, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/philip-larkin