The two poems below have been longer-time companions, gifts that I keep in a file called "Poems I Cannot Live Without." They feel personal. I wish I had written them. They nestle up against Gerard Manley Hopkins and Walt Whitman, and dear Emily and others. If they are new to you, I hope you like them.
(1)
Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye
The river is famous to
the fish.
The loud voice is famous
to silence,
which knew it would
inherit the earth
before anybody said
so.
The cat sleeping on the
fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the
birdhouse.
The tear is famous,
briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close
to your bosom
is famous to your
bosom.
The boot is famous to the
earth,
more famous than the
dress shoe,
which is famous only to
floors.
The bent photograph is
famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to
the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to
shuffling men
who smile while crossing
streets,
sticky children in
grocery lines,
famous as the one who
smiled back.
I want to be famous in
the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not
because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never
forgot what it could do.
(2)
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
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"because it never forgot what it could do"
ReplyDeleteA keeper for sure. Thanks.
Adrienne Rich... Yes! Thanks for the share, Susan!
ReplyDeleteSusan, these are both treasures which I had not come upon before. Thank you so much for such rich reading. Lovely!
ReplyDeleteI really LOVE Naomi Shihab Nye and am very familiar with that wonderful poem you shared here, Susan!
ReplyDeleteBoth gorgeous poems. Adrienne Rich has such a way of cutting through the bs and delivering life as we know it in a way to cut the heart.
ReplyDeleteI love these and was not familiar with either~
ReplyDeleteTheir is so much richness in the first one and a lift of seeing things differently! :D
"Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer"
I love the wonder in these poems!
Thank you Susan so much~ What a joy these both are :D
Thank you for your kind comments and for bringing these to light~
famous the way a pulley is famous....very cool poem....and def like rich's as well....both of these are def worthy of keeping around like a favorite blanket....
ReplyDeletewonderful... thank you!
ReplyDeleteI had read Famous once and somehow lost it, so thank you so much for reposting it! And of course, A. Rich is always awesome :D
ReplyDelete