Day 17

And do you think that love itself by Edna St. Vincent Millay

And do you think that love itself,
Living in such an ugly house,
Can prosper long?
We meet and part;
Our talk is all of heres and nows,
Our conduct likewise; in no act
Is any future, any past;
Under our sly, unspoken pact,
I KNOW with whom I saw you last,
But I say nothing; and you know
At six-fifteen to whom I go— 
Can even love be treated so?

I KNOW, but I do not insist,
Having stealth and tact, thought not enough,
What hour your eye is on your wrist.

No wild appeal, no mild rebuff
Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat— 

Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book
To intercept my clockward look— 
Tell me, can love go on like that?

Even the bored, insulted heart,
That signed so long and tight a lease,
Can BREAK it CONTRACT, slump in peace.

Day 16

"Sonnet XCIV"
Pablo Neruda

Si muero sobrevíveme con tanta fuerza pura
que despiertes la furia del pálido y del frío,
de sur a sur levanta tus ojos indelebles,
de sol a sol que suene tu boca de guitarra.
No quiero que vacilen tu risa ni tus pasos,
no quiero que se muera mi herencia de alegría,
no llames a mi pecho, estoy ausente.
Vive en mi ausencia como en una casa.
Es una casa tan grande la ausencia
que pasarás en ella a través de los muros
y colgarás los cuadros en el aire.
Es una casa tan transparente la ausencia
que yo sin vida te veré vivir
y si sufres, mi amor, me moriré otra vez.

If I die, survive me with such a pure force
you make the pallor and the coldness rage;
flash your indelible eyes from south to south,
from sun to sun, till your mouth sings like a guitar.

I don’t want your laugh or your footsteps to waver;
I don’t want my legacy of happiness to die;
don’t call to my breast: I’m not there.
Live in my absence as in a house.

Absence is such a large house
that you’ll walk through the walls,
hang pictures in sheer air.

Absence is such a transparent house
that even being dead I will see you there,
and if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time.

Day 15

Again and Again by Rainer Maria Rilke 

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Day 14

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, 
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 
Because their words had forked no lightning they 
Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 
Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 
And you, my father, there on the sad height, 
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 
Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Day 13

Drinking Alone by Du Mu


Window outside straight wind snow
Embrace stove open wine flask
How like fishing boat rain
Sail down sleep autumn river
Outside the window, wind and snow blow straight,
I clutch the stove and open a flask of wine.
Just like a fishing boat in the rain,
Sail down, asleep on the autumn river.

Day 12

Present by Frank O'Hara

The stranded gulch
                              below Grand Central
the gentle purr of cab tires in snow
and hidden stars
                              tears on the windshield
torn inexorably away in whining motion
and the dark thoughts which surround neon

in Union Square I see you for a moment
red green yellow searchlights cutting through
falling flakes, head bent to the wind
wet and frowning, melancholy, trying

I know perfectly well where you walk to
and that we'll meet in even greater darkness
later and will be warm
                              so our cross
of paths will not be just muddy footprints
in the morning
                              not like celestial bodies'
yearly passes, nothing pushes us away
from each other
                              even now I can lean
forward across the square and see
your surprised grey look become greener
as I wipe the city's moisture from
your face
                              and you shake the snow
off onto my shoulder, light as a breath
where the quarrels and vices of
estranged companions weighed so bitterly
and accidentally
                              before, I saw you on
the floor of my life walking slowly
that time in summer rain stranger and
nearer
                              to become a way of feeling
                              that is not painful casual or diffuse
                              and seems to explore some peculiar insight
                              of the heavens for its favorite bodies
                              in the mixed up air

Day 11

Let These Be Your Desires by Khalil Gibran

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself 
But if your love and must needs have desires, 
Let these be your desires: 

To melt and be like a running brook 
That sings its melody to the night. 
To know the pain of too much tenderness. 
To be wounded by your own understanding of love; 
And to bleed willingly and joyfully. 
To wake at dawn with a winged heart 
And give thanks for another day of loving; 
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; 
To return home at eventide with gratitude; 
And then to sleep with a prayer 
For the beloved in your heart 
And a song of praise upon your lips. 

Day 10

Chinese Whispers by John Ashbery

And in a little while we broke under the strain:   

suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller,   

though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller,   

like any tree in any forest.

                                           Mute, the pancake describes you.

It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim.

It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days,

always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct.   

It was a hundred years before anyone noticed.

                                                                     The governor general

called it “sinuous.” But we, we had other names for it,   

knew it was going to be around for a long time,

even though extinct. And sure as shillelaghs fall from trees   

onto frozen doorsteps, it came round again

when all memory of it had been expunged

                                                            from the common brain.

Everybody wants to try one of those new pancake clocks.   

A boyfriend in the next town had one

but conveniently forgot to bring it over each time we invited him.   

Finally the rumors grew more fabulous than the real thing:   

I hear they are encrusted with tangles of briar rose,

                                                                                 so dense

not even a prince seeking the Sleeping Beauty could get inside.   

What’s more, there are more of them than when they were extinct,

yet the prices keep on rising. They have them in the Hesperides   

and in shantytowns on the edge of the known world,   

blue with cold. All downtowns used to feature them.

                                                                              Camera obscuras,

too, were big that year. But why is it that with so many people

who want to know what a shout is about, nobody can find the original recipe?

All too soon, no one cares. We go back to doing little things for each other,

pasting stamps together to form a tiny train track, and other,

less noticeable things. And the past is forgotten till next time.

How to describe the years? Some were like blocks of the palest halvah,

careless of being touched. Some took each others’ trash out,   

put each other’s eyes out. So many got thrown out

before anyone noticed, that it was like a chiaroscuro

                                                                                 of collapsing clouds.

How I longed to visit you again in that old house! But you were deaf,   

or dead. Our letters crossed. A motorboat was ferrying me out past   

the reef, people on shore looked like dolls fingering stuffs.

                                                                                             More

keeps coming out, about the dogs I mean. Surely a simple embrace

from an itinerant fish would have been spurned at certain periods. Not now.

There is a famine of years in the land, the women are beautiful,   

but prematurely old and worn. It doesn’t get better. Rocks half-buried   

in bands of sand, and spontaneous execrations.

                                                                      I yell to the ship’s front door,

wanting to be taller, and somewhere in the middle all this gets lost.   

I was a phantom for a day. My friends carried me around with them.

It always turns out that much is salvageable.

                                                                     Chicken coops

haven’t floated away on the flood. Lacemakers are back in business   

with a vengeance. All the locksmiths had left town during the night.   

It happened to be a beautiful time of season, spring or fall,   

the air was digestible, the fish tied in love-knots

on their gurneys. Yes, and journeys

were palpable too: Someone had spoken of saving appearances   

and the walls were just a little too blue in mid-morning.   

Was there ever such a time? I’d like to handle you,

bruise you with kisses for it, yet something always stops me short:   

the knowledge that this isn‘t history,

                                                          no matter how many

times we keep mistaking it for the present, that headlines

trumpet each day. But behind the unsightly school building, now a pickle

warehouse, the true nature of things is known, is not overrided:   

Yours is a vote like any other. And there is fraud at the ballot boxes,

stuffed with lace valentines and fortunes from automatic scales,   

dispensed with a lofty kind of charity, as though this could matter   

to us, these tunes

                            carried by the wind

from a barrel organ several leagues away. No, this is not the time   

to reveal your deception to us. Wait till rain and old age   

have softened us up a little more.

                                                    Then we’ll see how extinct

the various races have become, how the years stand up   

to their descriptions, no matter how misleading,

and how long the disbanded armies stay around. I must congratulate you   

on your detective work, for I am a connoisseur

of close embroidery, though I don’t have a diploma to show for it.

The trees, the barren trees, have been described more than once.   

Always they are taller, it seems, and the river passes them   

without noticing. We, too, are taller,

our ceilings higher, our walls more tinctured

with telling frescoes, our dooryards both airier and vaguer,

according as time passes and weaves its minute deceptions in and out,   

a secret thread.

Peace is a full stop.

And though we had some chance of slipping past the blockade,   

now only time will consent to have anything to do with us,   

for what purposes we do not know.

Day 9

This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten 
the plums 
that were in 
the icebox 

and which 
you were probably 
saving 
for breakfast 

Forgive me 
they were delicious 
so sweet 
and so cold

Day 8

L'invitation au voyage

Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre;
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale,
Tout y parlerait
À l'âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l'humeur est vagabonde;
C'est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde.
— Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D'hyacinthe et d'or;
Le monde s'endort
Dans une chaude lumière.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

— Charles Baudelaire

Invitation to the Voyage

Think, would it not be
Sweet to live with me
All alone, my child, my love? —
Sleep together, share
All things, in that fair
Country you remind me of?
Charming in the dawn
There, the half-withdrawn
Drenched, mysterious sun appears
In the curdled skies,
Treacherous as your eyes
Shining from behind their tears.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

We should have a room
Never out of bloom:
Tables polished by the palm
Of the vanished hours
Should reflect rare flowers
In that amber-scented calm;
Ceilings richly wrought,
Mirrors deep as thought,
Walls with eastern splendor hung,
All should speak apart
To the homesick heart
In its own dear native tongue.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

See, their voyage past,
To their moorings fast,
On the still canals asleep,
These big ships; to bring
You some trifling thing
They have braved the furious deep.
— Now the sun goes down,
Tinting dyke and town,
Field, canal, all things in sight,
Hyacinth and gold;
All that we behold
Slumbers in its ruddy light.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Day 7

A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body by Andrew Marvell
SOUL
O, who shall from this dungeon raise
A soul, enslaved so many ways,
With bolts of bone, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands.
Here blinded with an eye; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear,
A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins,
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart?

BODY
O, who shall me deliver whole,
From bonds of this tyrranic soul,
Which, stretched upright, impales me so,
That mine own precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless frame
(A fever could but do the same),
And, wanting where its sprite to try,
Has made me live to let me die,
A body that could never rest,
Since this ill spirit it possessed?

SOUL
What magic could me thus confine
Within another's grief to pine,
Where, whatsoever it complain,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain,
And all my care itself employs,
That to preserve, which me destroys:
Constrained not only to endure
Diseases, but, what's worse, the cure:
And ready oft the port to gain,
Am shipwrecked into health again?

BODY
But physic yet could never reach
The maladies thou me dost teach:
Whom first the cramp of hope does tear,
And then the palsy shakes of fear;
The pestilence of love does heat,
Or hatred's hidden ulcer eat;
Joy's cheerful madness does perplex,
Or sorrow's other madness vex;
Which knowledge forces me to know,
And memory will not forego.
What but a soul could have the wit
To build me up for sin so fit?
So architects do square and hew,
Green trees that in the forest grew. 

Day 6

The Swimmer by Mary Oliver

All winter the water
has crashed over
the cold sand.  Now
it breaks over the thin 

branch of your body.
You plunge down, you swim
two or three strokes, you dream
of lingering

in the luminous undertow
but can’t; you splash
through the bursting
white blossom,

the silk sheets—–gasping,
you rise and struggle
lightward, finding you way
through the blue ribs back

to the sun, and emerge
as though for the first time.
Poor fish,
poor flesh,

you can never forget.
Once every walll was water,
the soft strings filled
with a perfect nourishment,

pumping your body full
of appetite, elaborating
your stubby bones, tucking in,
like stars,
the seeds of restlessness
that made you, finally
swim toward the world,
kicking and shouting

but trailing a mossy darkness—–
a dream that would never breathe air
and was hinged to your wildest joy
like a shadow.