pafret Loc: Northeast

The Poet: David Wagoner, “Old Man, Old Man”


“Old Man, Old Man”

"Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you remember? Was it perched in a tree?
Did it hover deep in the white water? Was it covered over
With dead stalks in the grass? Will we taste it
If our mouths have long lain empty?
Will we feel it between our eyes if we face the wind
All night, and turn the color of earth?
If we lie down in the rain, can we remember sunlight?
He answers, I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.”

- David Wagoner, “Traveling Light”


"Come, My Friends..."


“The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars...”

~ from “Ulysses,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson


The Poet: Lynn Ungar, “Hawks”


“Hawks”

“Surely, you too have longed for this-
to pour yourself out
on the rising circles of the air
to ride, unthinking,
on the flesh of emptiness.

Can you claim, in your civilized life,
that you have never leaned toward
the headlong dive, the snap of bones,
the chance to be so terrible,
so free from evil, beyond choice?

The air that they are riding
is the same breath as your own.
How could you not remember?
That same swift stillness binds
your cells in balance, rushes
through the pulsing circles of your blood.

Each breath proclaims it-
the flash of feathers, the chance to rest
on such a muscled quietness,
to be in that fierce presence,
wholly wind, wholly wild."

~ Lynn Ungar


"Worth Living..."


"Worth Living..."
by Norbert Capek


“It is worthwhile to live
and fight courageously
for sacred ideals.

O blow ye evil winds
into my body's fire,
my soul you'll never unravel.

Even though disappointed a thousand times,
or fallen in the fight,
and everything would worthless seem,
I have lived amidst eternity-
Be grateful, my soul-
My life was worth living.

He who was pressed from all sides
but remained victorious in spirit
is welcomed into the choir of heroes.

He who overcame the fetters,
giving wings to his mind,
is entering into the golden age of
the victorious.”

Composed in Dresden Prison in 1941, shortly before he was transferred
to Dachau concentration camp, where he died in October, 1942.