Compost Studios

by Robert Graves

He is quick, thinking in clear images;

I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;

I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;

Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;

Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;

When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;

I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

June 17, 2008

by Mark Strand

We have done what we wanted.

We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry

of each other, and we have welcomed grief

and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.

The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.

The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.

The wine waits.

Coming to this

has its rewards:  nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.

We have no heart or saving grace,

no place to go, no reason to remain.

June 5, 2008

Window shades drawn, messages under lock and key, so many stone walls, a lamp not lit...

A Secret Life

Why you need to have one

is not much more mysterous than

why you don't say what you think

at the birth of an ugly baby.

Or, you've just made love

and feel you'd rather have been

in a dark booth where your partner

was nodding, whispering, yes, yes

you're brilliant. The secret life

begins early, is kept alive

by all that's unpopular

in you, all that you know

a Baptist, say, or some other

accountant would object to.

It becomes what you'd most protect

if the government said you can protect

one thing, all else is ours.

When you write late at night

it's like a small fire

in a clearing, it's what

radiates and what can hurt

if you get too close to it.

It's why your silence is a kind of truth.

Even when you speak to your best friend,

the one who'll never betray you,

you always leave out one thing;

a secret life is that important.

--Stephen Dunn

(To Hear Us Talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood

Throws down in front of us is not to bar

Our passage to our journey's end for good,

But just to ask us who we think we are.

Insisting always on our own way so,

She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,

And make us get down in a foot of snow

Debating what to do without an axe.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:

We will not be put off the final goal

We have it hidden in us to attain,

Not though we have to seize earth by the pole.

And, tired of aimless circling in one place,

Steer straight off after something into space.

--Robert Frost

The heads of the roses begin to droop.

The bee who has been hauling his gold

all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

In the sky, traces of clouds,

the last few darting birds,

watercolors on the horizon.

The white cat sits facing a wall.

The horse in the field is asleep on its feet.

I light a candle on the wood table.

I take another sip of wine.

I pick up an onion and a knife.

And the past and the future?

Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

--Billy Collins

May 8, 2008

Everyone who made love the night before

was walking around with flashing red lights

on top of their heads--a white-haired old gentleman,

a red-faced schoolboy, a pregnant woman

who smiled at me from across the street

and gave a little secret shrug,

as if the flashing red light on her head

was a small price to pay for what she knew.

Hugo Williams

April 26, 2008

At night when the house is silent

Dreams slide by

Like the trains

Carrying lives and luggage

To a new destination.

The engineers

Blow the horns

The soundtrack

Behind my quiet life

The music of arrivals and departures.

The passengers

Pass by

Glimpsing backyards and clothes lines

Graffiti and bridges

White clapboard houses

With black shutters.

They see the shape of my life

While I sleep behind locked doors

Dreaming of departures

And homecomings

And arms that circle tight 

The rumbling journey ahead.

April 22, 2008

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with pebbly meaning

with a scent which does not remind one of anything

does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

its ardour and coldness

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse

when I hold it in my hand

and its noble body

is permeated by a false warmth

--Pebbles cannot be tamed

to the end they will look at us

with a calm and clear eye

Zbigniew Herbert

Translated from the Polish by Czelaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

I like to think

I was your favorite

mistake.

We only had silver--

never gold.

Diamonds were too hard

the cost too high--

We chose onyx and turquoise instead.

Today all I see is black and blue--

All our bruises

Still tender

After all these years.

We never stopped

circling each other.

Another round and

I'm dizzy wondering

When will this end?

I am done with rings.

I  am turning--

Searching for hands

reaching out

holding on

steadying me

while the world tilts and spins.

April 11, 2008

--James Dickey