memory & desire

Hidden Joy

Nothing is Lost
- by Noel Coward -

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of that wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

From Collected Verse edited by Graham Payn & Martin Tickner, Graywolf Press, 2000.  Electronic text via The Writer's Almanac

Assia's Dior: A Mystery

Chlorophyl
- by Ted Hughes -

She sent him a blade of grass, but no word.
Inside it
The witchy doll, soaked in Dior.
Inside it
The gravestone. Inside it
A sample of her own ashes.  Inside it
Her only daughter's
Otherwise non-existent smile.
Inside it, the keys
Of a sycamore.
Inside those, falling
The keys
Of a sycamore. Inside those,
Falling and turning in the air the
Keys
Of a Sycamore.

From Capriccio (Gehenna Press, 1990) reprinted in Collected Poems, edited by Paul Keegan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) p. 799.

discovery

A New Poet
- by Linda Pastan -

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.

From Heroes In Disguise, 1991, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
Electronic text:  http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/090.html