The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye

Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me

You're so near to Russia
So far from Japan
Quite a long way from Cairo
Lots of miles from Vietnam

Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Eating breakfast or dinner
Or snack lunch in the hall
Finland, Finland, Finland

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

-Raymond Carver, "Late Fragment"

Not every man has gentians in his house

in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark

darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto'sgloom,

ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue

down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day

torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,

I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)
Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

The Wump-Wump Zoo,
by Martha Webster

Jimmy Joe John Jacob Jackson Boo
who had just turned four-- plus two,
was wondering aloud what a man was supposed to do.
Sheesh, he muttered. All he needed was just another minute or two.
Didn’t people know it wasn‘t easy being caretaker of
The Wump-Wump Zoo? He had to feed the addles and the ordles.
He had to walk the wiggers and the wodders,

The Kalamazoo Mall
by Martha Webster

With a hearty -- ho, ho, ho! -- and a -- Merry Christmas to you! --
that jolly ol’ soul dressed all in red and looking like you know who,
waved to that next kid in line and said, “come on up here, and I’ll see what I can do! I‘ve always wanted to meet the infamous Jimmy Joe John Jacob Jackson Boo! And don’t ask me how I knew,” said that man dressed all in red and looking like you know who. “It‘s just one of the many things -- ho, ho, ho! -- jolly ol’ Saint Nick’s paid to do. And bring that list with ya, Jimmy Joe,” he said, cuz my job you know -- ho, ho, ho! -- is making the hopes and wishes of little boys come true.”

A Bird came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass-

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought –
He stirred his Velvet head

Like one in danger, Cautious

by Elizabeth Coatsworth

Swift things are beautiful:
Swallows and deer
And lightning that falls
Bright-veined and clear,
Rivers and meteors,
Wind in the wheat,
The strong-withered horse,
The runner's sure feet.

And slow things are beautiful:
The closing of day,
The pause of the wave
That curves downward to spray,
The ember that crumbles,
The opening flower,
And the ox that moves on

by A. A. Milne

I've got shoes with grown up laces,
I've got knickers and a pair of braces,
I'm all ready to run some races.
Who's coming out with me?

I've got a nice new pair of braces,
I've got shoes with new brown laces,
I know wonderful paddly places.
Who's coming out with me?

Every morning my new grace is,
"Thank you God, for my nice braces:
I can tie my new brown laces."

When my mother died I was very young;
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Darce, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

by Langston Hughes

In time of silver rain
The earth
Puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
Of life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls

The Second Person

You are the second person.

You look around for someone else to be the second person. But there is no one else. Even if there were someone else there they could not be you. You try to shelter in imagining that you are plural. It is a dream which the whole of the waking world is trying to remember. It is the orphan's mother who never lived but is longed for and has been accorded a pronoun that is an echo of your own, since she has no name. Her temple is an arrangement of mirrors. But nothing stays in it. Think how you keep your thoughts to yourself, on your rare visits there. And how quickly you leave.