Stella dayrit roden                          

​

A star is tumbling downward

Bard Suverkrop

A star falls down

from from its shimmering heights,

it is the star of love,

that I see falling there.

From the apple trees fall

so many white petals, 

the teasing breezes come

and plays with them their game.

The swan is singing in the pond,

and paddles up and down,

and the singing ever softer, 

it dives into the watery depths.

It is so still and dark,

leaf and flower have been blown away,

the star has been sputtered and scattered,

faded away the song of the swan.

​

Loss

Alma Strettel

And if the little flowers could see

  How pierced my heart with grief,

Then surely they would weep with me

  To bring my pain relief.

And if the nightingales could tell

  How sick I am, and sad,

Their merry songs would fill the vale, 

  To make my heart more glad.

And if the golden stars on high

  My sorrows could but guess,

They would come down from out the sky,

  To comfort my distress.

Yet none of these can ever know;

  One knows, but only one.

Herself (himself) she(he) pierced my heart

- - and so she(he) knows, and she(he) alone.

Yours is my heart

Emily Ezust

Yours is my heart, 

my pain is your own

and all the joy that blasts it;

yours is the forest, with all the branches,

all the blossoms, and the songs.

The best prize that I may hope to carry off,

with songs that captured my heart,

is one word to me that they delighted you,

one mute glance, that they moved you.

​

Mignonne

Faith J. Cormier

 Sweetheart, let us see if the rose

 that only this morning unfolded

 its scarlet dress in the sun

 has lost, at vesper-time,

 the folds of its scarlet dress

 and its colour, so like yours.

 Alas! See how rapidly,

 Sweetheart, she has let 

 her beauty fall all over the place!

 Nature is truly a cruel stepmother

 when such a flower only lasts

 from dawn to dusk!

 So if you hear me, Sweetheart,

 while your age flowers 

 in its greenest newness,

 gather, gather your youth.

 Age will tarnish your beauty

 as it has faded this flower.

Sad song

Thomas Whitman

​

In the deep seas

The amber pearl was born,

At the foot of the green firs,

The violet in bloom,

In the blue morning air,

The drop of dew,

Me, in your heart!

In a royal necklace

The round pearl dies,

In an elegant vase,

The violet in bloom,

In the kiss of the sun

The small dewdrop dies,

Me, in your heart!

These are exquisite things

That often do not speak,

They are dead when one breaks them;

For pity, do not break them!

Because these frail and tender things,

Fine wings of butterflies,

Bird feathers, rose branches

Disappear in the furrow.

My poor dream of happiness

Is dead, like the rose,

The somber day when I, in my heart,

felt something broken!

The casket of jewels

Faith J. Cormier

 Your mischievous eyes

 are the colour of emeralds.

 Their pure, delicious rays

 cheer the gloomiest moods.

 In their capricious nets

 they have caught my wandering heart.

 Your mischievous eyes

 are the colour of emeralds.

 Your satin lips

 are a nest of hot caresses,

 a tasty fruit tinted

 with rays of tenderness,

 and your kiss, like an elf,

 pours out ineffable drunkenness.

 Your satin lips

 are a nest of hot caresses.

 Your soul is a jewel,

 the diamond in my crown.

 It's the most delicate bauble

 of my flower scented love.

 It's the perfume that drives me mad,

 the sweet charm that surrounds me.

 Your soul is a jewel,

 the diamond in my crown!

Hai luli

Richard Stokes

I am sad, I am anxious,

I no longer know what’s to become of me.

My lover was to have come,

And I wait for him here alone.

Hai luli, hai luli,

How sad it is without my lover!

I sit down to spin my wool,

The thread snaps in my hand:

Well then! I shall spin tomorrow,

Today I am too upset.

Hai luli, hai luli,

Where can my lover be?

Ah! If it’s true that he’s unfaithful,

And will one day abandon me,

Then let the village burn

And me too along with the village!

Hai luli, hai luli,

What point is there in living without a lover?

The girls of Cadix

Barbara Miller

We were coming from seeing the bull,

Three boys, three girls,

On the grass the weather was fair,

And we were dancing a bolero

To the sound of castanets;

Tell me, neighbor,

If I look well

And if my skirt

Looks good on me, this morning,

Do you find my waist slender?

Ah! Ah!

The girls of Cadiz rather like that.

And we were dancing a bolero

One evening--it was Sunday,

Toward us came a hidalgo

Covered with gold, a feather in his hat,

And his fist on his hip:

If you want me,

Brunette with the sweet smile,

You have only to say so,

This gold is yours.

Go on your way, good sir,

Ah! Ah!

The girls of Cadiz don't understand that.

Equations of the Light

by Dana Gioia

Turning the corner, we discovered it

just as the old wrought-iron lamps went on—

a quiet, tree-lined street, only one block long   

resting between the noisy avenues.

The streetlamps splashed the shadows of the leaves   

across the whitewashed brick, and each tall window

glowing through the ivy-decked facade

promised lives as perfect as the light.

Walking beneath the trees, we counted all   

the high black doors of houses bolted shut.   

And yet we could have opened any door,   

entered any room the evening offered.

Or were we deluded by the strange

equations of the light, the vagrant wind   

searching the trees, that we believed this brief   

conjunction of our separate lives was real?

It seemed that moment lingered like a ghost,   

a flicker in the air, smaller than a moth,   

a curl of smoke flaring from a match,   

haunting a world it could not touch or hear.

There should have been a greeting or a sign,   

the smile of a stranger, something beyond

the soft refusals of the summer air

and children trading secrets on the steps.

Traffic bellowed from the avenue.

Our shadows moved across the street’s long wall,   

and at the end what else could I have done   

but turn the corner back into my life?

​

Becoming a Redwood

The Song

by Dana Gioia (After Rilke)

How shall I hold my soul that it

does not touch yours? How shall I lift

it over you to other things?

If it would only sink below

into the dark like some lost thing

or slumber in some quiet place

which did not echo your soft heart’s beat.

But all that ever touched us–you and me–

touched us together

like a bow

that from two strings could draw one voice.

On what instrument were we strung?

And to what player did we sing

our interrupted song?

Pentecost

by Dana Gioia

after the death of our son

Neither the sorrows of afternoon, waiting in the silent house,

Nor the night no sleep relieves, when memory

Repeats its prosecution.

Nor the morning’s ache for dream’s illusion, nor any prayers

Improvised to an unknowable god

Can extinguish the flame.

We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost,

And our innocence consumed by these implacable

Tongues of fire.

Comfort me with stones. Quench my thirst with sand.

I offer you this scarred and guilty hand

Until others mix our ashes.

Curriculum Vitae

by Dana Gioia

The future shrinks

Whether the past

Is well or badly spent.

We shape our lives

Although their forms

Are never what we meant.

Becoming a Redwood

by Dana Gioia

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds

start up again. The crickets, the invisible

toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.

First one, then another, until innumerable

they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,

fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers

snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone

can bear to be a stone, the pain

the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,

rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall

and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time

to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,

and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt

these hills and packs of feral dogs.

But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,

moving more slowly than the crippled stars,

part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,

part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows

there is no silence but when danger comes.

​

I am in doubt

by Florence Hynes Willette

I’ll love you until stars fall.

Can it be so sure, so lasting as my heart demands

of one whose slightest touch upon my hands

is like the wind inside an aspen tree?

I am in doubt of this frail thing

I hold so sworn to constancy

And this is why, why,

Too often I have watched a burnt blue sky

Where slipping stars spilled scarlet

and grew cold.    

Love let the wind cry…How I adore thee

by Sappho

Love let the wind cry

On the dark mountain,

Bending the ash trees

And the tall hemlocks

With the great voice of

Thunderous legions,

How I adore thee.

Let the hoarse torrent

In the blue canyon,

Murmuring mightily

Out of the gray mist

Of primal chaos

Cease not proclaiming

How I adore thee.

Let the long rhythm

Of crunching rollers,

Breaking and bursting

On the white seaboard

Titan and tireless,

Tell, while the world stands,

How I adore thee.

Love, let the clear call

Of the tree cricket,

Frailest of creatures,

Green as the young grass,

Mark with his trilling

Resonant bell-note,

How I adore thee.

Let the glad lark-song

Over the meadow,

That melting lyric

Of molten silver,

Be for a signal

To listening mortals,

How I adore thee.

But, more than all sounds,

Surer, serener,

Fuller of passion

And exultation,

Let the hushed whisper

In thine own heart say,

How I adore thee.           
 

To Be Baptized

from Traditional African American spiritual

Take me to the water to be baptized.

Jesus saved me, Bless His name.

Here comes another one to be baptized. Amen.

Go under the water and-a be baptized.