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Things Being Various
Snow by Louis MacNeice The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and…
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Garden Yeats
Down by the Salley Gardens by W. B. Yeats Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a…
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Just Saying
I recently sent the following email: This is just to say I have put the program organdon_input.sas into the directory U:\TIS-Access\SAS Programs\HRSA Grant and modified the program to use the file All Surveys – Round One.txt in the same directory. And then I thought of Jon. And then I thought of Hoke. And then I…
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Easter Egg Salad
Marginalia by Billy Collins Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other…
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Worms, Worms, Worms
The Early Bird by Ted Kooser Still dark, and raining hard on a cold May morning and yet the early bird is out there chirping, chirping its sweet-sour wooden-pulley notes, pleased, it would seem, to be given work, hauling the heavy bucket of dawn up from the darkness, note over note, and letting us drink.…
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Epiphany
Etude by Ted Kooser I have been watching a Great Blue Heron fish in the cattails, easing ahead with the stealth of a lover composing a letter, the hungry words looping and blue as they coil and uncoil, as they kiss and sting. Let’s say that he holds down an everyday job in an office.…
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Night
Night by Louise Bogan The cold remote islands And the blue estuaries Where what breathes, breathes The restless wind of the inlets, And what drinks, drinks The incoming tide; Where shell and weed Wait upon the salt wash of the sea, And the clear nights of stars Swing their lights westward To set behind the…
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A Light Left On
A Light Left On by May Sarton In the evening we came back Into our yellow room, For a moment taken aback To find the light left on, Falling on silent flowers, Table, book, empty chair While we had gone elsewhere, Had been away for hours. When we came home together We found the inside…
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For The Anniversary Of My Death
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W.S. Merwin Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveller Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange…
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Green Rain
Green Rain by Dorothy Livesay I remember the long veils of green rain Feathered like the shawl of my grandmother— Green from the half-green of the spring trees Waving in the valley. I remember the road Like the one which leads to my grandmother’s house, A warm house, with green carpets, Geraniums, a trilling canary…