Let us play Yesterday

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G a z e

Monument Square

Camden, South Carolina

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Let Us play Yesterday --

I -- the Girl at school --

You -- and Eternity -- the

Untold Tale --

Easing my famine

At my Lexicon --

Logarithm -- had I -- for Drink --

'Twas a dry Wine --

Somewhat different -- must be --

Dreams tint the Sleep --

Cunning Reds of Morning

Make the Blind -- leap --

Still at the Egg-life --

Chafing the Shell --

When you troubled the Ellipse --

And the Bird fell --

Manacles be dim -- they say --

To the new Free --

Liberty -- Commoner --

Never could -- to me --

'Twas my last gratitude

When I slept -- at night --

'Twas the first Miracle

Let in -- with Light --

Can the Lark resume the Shell --

Easier -- for the Sky --

Wouldn't Bonds hurt more

Than Yesterday?

Wouldn't Dungeons sorer grate

On the Man -- free --

Just long enough to taste --

Then -- doomed new --

God of the Manacle

As of the Free --

Take not my Liberty

Away from Me --

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

In the mystical moist night-air

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F i r e   A t   M y   B a c k

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

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When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures,

were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,

to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer

where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

= Walt Whitman =

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Happy Friday

The dark unguarded goes

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I n   E v e r y   T h i n g

St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Cemetery

Flat Rock, North Carolina

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I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season. Now
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.

= Archibald MacLeish =

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Happy Thursday

Watch for ever earnestly

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R e d   H a n d e d

Old Gray Cemetery

Knoxville, Tennessee

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The pine-trees bend to listen

to the autumn wind as it mutters

Something which sets the black poplars ashake

with hysterical laughter;

While slowly the house of day

is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley

the clustered tombstones recede,

Winding about their dimness

the mist's grey cerements, after

The street lamps in the darkness

have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window

and utter a word as they pass

To the face that leans from the darkness,

intent, with two dark-filled eyes

That watch for ever earnestly

from behind the window glass.

= D.H. Lawrence =

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Happy Wednesday

The chorus I hear and am elated

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H e a d   G a m e

Old Gray Cemetery

Knoxville, Tennessee

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The music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning,

yet long untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health,

with glad notes of daybreak I hear,

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly

over the tops of immense waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously

under and through the universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings

with sweet flutes and violins,

all of these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely,

I am moved by the exquisite meanings,

I listen to the different voices winding in and out,

striving, contending

with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;

I do not think the performers know themselves --

but now I think I begin to know them.

= Walt Whitman =

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Happy Tuesday