“Now Close the Windows” by Robert Frost

Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost 

 

Now close the windows and hush all the fields;

If the trees must, let them silently toss;

No bird is singing now, and if there is,

Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,

It will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred.

Thomas Merton, born on this day in 1915

It’s the birthday of Thomas Merton,

(books by this author) born in Prades, France (1915).

Quotation by Thomas Merton:

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future.

Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

Wallace Stevens… “The Snowman”

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

“Welcome Morning” by Anne Sexton

Welcome Morning
by Anne Sexton

“There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry ‘hello there, Anne’
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
let it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.”

Today is the birth day of Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)

“Dare to be honest and fear no labor.”

(Quotation by Robert Burns)

Ikkyu

A Gentleman’s Wealth (by Ikkyu)

A poet’s treasure consists of words and phrases;
A scholar’s days and nights are perfumed with books.
For me, plum blossoms framed by the window is an unsurpassable pleasure;
A stomach tight with cold but still enchanted by snow, the moon, and dawn frost.

Li Po

Poem by Li Po:

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Gwendolyn Brooks

when you have forgotten Sunday:

the love story

by Gwendolyn Brooks

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies—

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other—

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ebb  by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

I know what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge

Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

William Butler Yeats…

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  

From The Wind Among the Reeds.  1899.

Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be at Peace (a poem by W.B. Yeats)

I HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love’s lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.