a short but comprehensive summary
... of all the subjects for lyric poetry.
William Matthews
1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We're not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.
distance
Peter Everwine
The light pulling away from trees,
the trees speaking in shadows
to whatever listens...
Something as common as water
turns away from our faces
and leaves.
The stars rise out of the hills
—old kings and animals
marching in their thin tunnels of light.
Once more I find myself
standing on a dark pier, holding
an enormous rope of silence.
The light
How it is
Peter Everwine
This is how it is—
One turns away
and walks out into the evening.
There is a white horse on the prairie, or a river
that slips away among dark rocks.
One speaks, or is about to speak,
not that it matters.
What matters is this—
It is evening.
I have been away a long time.
Something is singing in the grass.
excerpt from le voyage
Baudelaire
The true voyagers, though, are those who leave
just to be leaving. Their hearts all buoyancy,
they, never fading in their fatal drive,
always say, "Onward!" without knowing why.