Traveller, There Is No Path by Antonio Machado

Mary

Megan

Everything passes on and everything remains,

But our lot is to pass on,

To go on making paths,

Paths across the sea.

I never sought glory,

Nor to leave my song

In the memory of man;

I love those subtle worlds,

Weightless and graceful,

As bubbles of soap.

I like to watch as they paint themselves

In sunlight and scarlet, floating

Beneath the blue sky, trembling

Suddenly then popping…

I never sought glory.

Traveller, your footprints

Are the path and nothing more;

Traveller, there is no path,

The path is made by walking.

By walking the path is made

And when you look back

You'll see a road

Never to be trodden again.

Traveller, there is no path,

Only trails across the sea…

Some time past in that place

Where today the forests are dressed in barbs

A poet was heard to cry

"Traveller, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…"

Beat by beat, verse by verse…

The poet died far from home.

He lies beneath the dust of a neighbouring land.

As he walked away he was seen to weep.

"Traveller, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…"

Beat by beat, verse by verse…

When the goldfinch cannot sing,

When the poet is a pilgrim,

When prayer will do us no good.

"Traveller, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…"

Beat by beat, verse by verse.

Butterfly with Parachute by Stephen Burt

Mary

A real one wouldn't need one, 

but the one Nathan draws surely does: 

four oblongs the size and color of popsicles, 

green apple, toasted coconut and grape, 

flanked, two per side, by billowing valentine hearts, 

in a frame of Scotch tape. 

Alive, it could stay off the floor 

for a few unaerodynamic minutes; 

thrown as a paper airplane, for a few more.

Very sensibly, therefore, 

our son gave it something, not to keep it apart 

from the ground forever, but rather to make safe its

descent.  When we ask that imagination discover the limits

of the real 

world only slowly, 

maybe this is what we meant.

To See This Clearly by Maya Stein

Mary

Megan

I am no magic trick, no doer of miracles, no water walker.

I am no architect of glory, no layer-on of hands, no angel wing.

I am no weaver of gold, no mythmaker, no parachute artist.

I am no halo of stillness in a downpour.

I am no treasure chest, no hero, no thunderbolt wielder.

I am no rabbit foot or lottery number.

I am no combination lock, no mystery ingredient, no optical illusion.

But here is a handful of sunflowers from the florist's sidewalk jungle.

Here is a blanket to spread on the grass for an afternoon.

Here is a song on the radio that calls for dancing.

Here is a chocolate bar I will share with you.

Here is a road sign, a notebook, photographs of those I have loved.

Here is a slice of bright blue sky, a hummingbird

thrashing her wings around an apricot tree.

To see this clearly

is enough.

Midday Summer Dream: 14 by Yannis Ritsos

Megan

Mary

The girls lather the sun's head, and he curses like a

spoiled boy when they thrust his head into the wash basin

in order to rinse it. 

Thousands of soap bubbles rise into

the air, like tiny rainbows above the horizon of a

spellbound butterfly. 

The pigeons chase after the bubbles.

The light gestures, scolding the just waking swallows.

It's amazing the grownups remain asleep with so much

racket. 

We'll thrust a cicada under grandfather's nostril

so he can smell our same spring and the end of his cane

will bloom like a miniature cherry tree.

Being But Men by Dylan Thomas

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And, after the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder, that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.

Monet refuses the operation by Liesel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no halos

around the streetlights of Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don’t see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don’t know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent. The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and change our bones, skin, clothes

to gases. Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

 

Desire by Alice Walker

My desire
is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
& soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
& sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
& dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I've survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.