Monday, January 23, 2012

our second beating hearts (the third week)

The only way to be a poet is to write. The only way to know good words is to find them, and love them. So I've started a series here on Mondays, where I share some of the good words I've found throughout the week, and I share my scribbles, too. Together, we write the contours of our second beating hearts. 

Good words I've read:

Preston at See Preston Blog, in the beginning of our series of letters: In Him we have our being, letter one, preston to hilary 
Katie Davis from over at (in)courage: A Harvest of What is Yet to Come
Sarah at Emerging Mummy: In which I won't tell you that you're pretty
Susan Cain with an op-ed in the New York Times: The Rise of Groupthink
Ann at A Holy Experience: A Nutcracker Birthday Party

A poem to hear sounding through your week: 

Self-portrait as Eurydice
Edward Hirsch

How I dreamt about your engulfing arms,
my Orphic secret, my haunting primal chant,
from my place and the phantom forms

and waited for you to startle the grave
path into the underworld - dank, silent -
where I shivered in the night's embrace

until I heard your fatal cry, your fate-
ful voice rising like a forgotten dream
or a wandering soul calling for light

in eternity's dense fog, an eager song,
and I followed it towards the earth's seam
hoping to breathe again, listening,

until you whirled around, my dark flame,
and then I died for you a second time.

And a poem from me:

Orpheus and Eurydice

We feed on the failure,
the almost-escape,
the near-freedom.
They carve into history the pretty
excuses:

It was a stitch in his side, a dizziness, breath caught
in his lungs.

It was a rock in the path, her arm flung out like a banner
to keep him from falling.

It was an accident, that while they ran blind and singing
the ground did not rise up under them.

We ask them to tell us again, how for that brief
space touch was electric,
singing a roar,
imagining in our hunger
there is another ending.

Love,
Hilary

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed that article by Susan Cain! Have you read her book? Because I want to find it and read it. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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