Tuesday Poem: "Silk of a Soul" by Zbigniew Herbert

Never

did I speak with her
either about love
or about death

only blind taste
and mute touch
used to run between us
when absorbed in ourselves
we lay close

I must
peek inside her
to see what she wears
at her centre

when she slept
with her lips open
I peeked

and what
and what
would you think
I caught sight of

I was expecting
branches
I was expecting
a bird
I was expecting
a house
by a lake great and silent

but there
on a glass counter
I caught sight of a pair
of silk stockings

my God
I'll buy her those stockings
I'll buy them

but what will appear then
on the glass counter
of the little soul

will it be something
which cannot be touched
even with one finger of a dream

     -- Zbigniew Herbert (translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott)

To read more about the Polish poet and writer,  Zbigniew Herbert, read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Herbert


I like this poem because it has a sensual quality that really appeals to me. Enough said.

Tuesday Poem: "Channelling his Inner Greek"

Mischief light fills his eyes

and he can’t believe his ears.

His father is giving him permission

to smash a plate on the concrete driveway.

Mum’s picked up a nice line in Crown Lynn retro plates

in a second-hand shop in Timaru

and she’s culling hard.

Tiny chip on the underside of the rim, felt but unseen,

and it’s unsentimentally consigned

to the dustbin of history

or at least some anonymous landfill.

Dad sees an opportunity for secret boy business,

sanctioned vandalism. “Don’t tell Mum. She wouldn’t approve.”

That boy’s blue eyes are

charged with adrenalin

when that white innocence shatters

in a porcelain explosion.

“Do you feel a little bit Greek?” Dad asks

and is met with incomprehension.

Tuesday Poem: "Places Becoming Lonely"

Not a name on a marquee,

but a firmament in which a star could shine

this solid Earth, dependable unless we forget

the hard lessons of gravity

understated, not showy, he knew the places

his eyes could take the audience

there are more of us now and they say

we are more visually literate

and the images multiply daily

and yet there are more

places becoming lonely

Tuesday Poem - "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

     -- Naomi Shihab Nye


There are many fine poets in the world (including all my fellow Tuesday Poets on the blogroll) and not enough time in one lifetime to discover and read all the fine poets, both alive and dead, out there in the big, wide world.

I have a poetry aficionado friend in Wellington to thank for introducing me to this wonderful poem by a poet I had never heard of.

I love this poem because I think you'd go a long way to find such a wonderful, rich and poetic encapsulation of the concept of kindness. A simple act of kindness performed from the heart can lift a person's spirit and enrich their day.

If you'd like to know more about this poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Shihab_Nye

And then you can kindly proceed to read some of the wonderful offerings of my fellow Tuesday Poets at the blogroll at:

www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com