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They say it all comes down to love and work.
Our lot: incessant dance of love and work.
We build, we serve, we cling, we yield,
we give, we're given over: love and work.
The dance exhausts. We're strained and pulled apart,
injured and used up by love and work.
The dance elates, arouses, lifts us high.
We're spry. We strike a balance: love and work.
Or if we trip we still go reeling on.
Jobless, lacking mate, we love and work.
But does it all come down to love and work?
The lilies of the field don't love or work
and yet, O Lord, it's said you tend them well,
who merely are, who do not love or work.
Why did I look at you then? Your eyes
sometimes too small, I felt raked inside.
You dragged your hope across my body
pulling me through sleep, sullying my inside.
A group of crows is a murder
and sunlight is stronger inside.
A black ribbon to remember the slow drive,
my dark face crossed slowly back inside.
Hope travels in particles of air,
the round stone of laughter begins inside.
Point at your own pain,
pour out your sadness through your inside.
Shame strolls at your feet,
let it open the door and come inside.
Tell me, Lauren, the names of your many sorrows.
Paint them gold and fold them inside.
an answer to E. A. Poe's 'Sonnet to Science'
A warm summer wind blew hard, then soft, as I sat beneath the tamarind tree
I gazed, transfixed, at an emerald leaf, awestruck at how it had come to be
A sad little spruce grew, leaning to one side, hidden by the shade of a knoll.
It cast its seeds in shadow, springing hopelessness there instead of progeny.
A pair of Grasshoppers chirped; a finch swooped down; a bubbly, bright cloud coasted by.
The quicker of the two hide low in the grass; the other fed the birds in the tree.
The Ancients said that at first was the Dao and from thence sprang the ten thousand things.
It was Darwin who found that a rule, over time, had caused each species to be.
Randomly, things change, a bit here and there, but knowing not for better or worse.
Nature selects the best, discards the rest, and flows like a river to the sea.
Some people say that "those who must know" have stolen the mysteries of life, but
The grandest mystery, I feel, is to know that through evolution comes me.
I sleep but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
Like joys denied, your sober sighs ascend as from a loon beneath a new
and missing moon.
Your face you hide for somber secrets like a scared raccoon beneath a
new and missing moon.
My bedroom sleeps (my heart yet stirs) and craves our carnal union;
listen — my beloved knocks!
Unanswered evening of the soul: my heart my loves impugn beneath a new
and missing moon.
I chased my secret lover on a foxy hunt for poontang through the
woods and seas and sands.
We laughed between our naked arms, laid hidden by a dune beneath a new
and missing moon.
Your timbre tickles candor more than talent, but you croon a
tenderness I've envied long.
Your songs embroider my obscurest night with flames; I swoon beneath a
new and missing moon.
There's never been a ghost as threatening — no ghoul, no goon — as
that named holy out of faith.
My comfort was recalled: I caught a night-lost wan balloon beneath a
new and missing moon.
The garden of the winter roses: broken, bare where pruning shears
consumed the aphids' crumbs.
The blossom waits — its patience imitates a silk cocoon beneath a new
and missing moon.
He said it was completed; and the rock was hollow hewn that held him
in Shabbat Shalom.
His lovers found it empty, vacant like the darkness strewn beneath a
new and missing moon.
They come with ease, these melodies I offer you; though tunes come
quickly, lyrics trouble me.
Though gone's its greater glory, I imbibe the starry boon beneath a
new and missing moon.
Beneath my honest lover have I lain like earth at noon: illuminated,
bright and seen.
The thinnest grin approached like crescent laughter coming soon
beneath a new and missing moon.
I tell you often how I love you like a candid lunatic — if senseless,
still sincere.
You're hidden, but I trust you hear me howling — a buffoon beneath a new
and missing moon.
O Love, now open up to me; my head is wet, bestrewn with dew — my locks,
with drops of moon!
Obscurest evening of the soul: to love is none immune beneath a new
and missing moon.
Is there a balance in life or are the extremes the fundamentals? Are "love and work" extremes? Fundamentals? Most of us do weave our lives shuttling between the poles of love and work, what or whom we love, what we find to be work. Or should we aspire to be like the plants of the field, "which toil not, neither do they spin"? Kate Benedict's ghazal poses the poles, two sets of them — love and work, a polar pair; and then that pair posed against neither loving nor working but merely "being." The ghazal raises questions and leaves them unanswered.
Here's another polarity, actually, another pair of polarities: inside and outside. and "you" and "I." "Inside" correlates with "I"; "outside" with "you." Hope, pain, laughter, shame are products of these tensions. Among the images in this ghazal, "the round stone of laughter" is especially striking, both simple and mysterious. In the last line, the poet advises her self to "Paint [her sorrows] gold and fold them inside." The gold/fold rhyme is especially happy as it shifts part of speech from adjective ("gold" to verb ("fold.")
Using a ghazal to answer a sonnet is especially appropriate, since the ghazal is often compared with the sonnet. In Edgar Allen Poe's "Sonnet – to Science," the polarity is between dry, deadly, rational knowledge and juicy, fructive poetic imagination: part of Poe's juvenalia, this poem draws a crude contrast between reality and fantasy. In David Quentin Dauthier's "Beneath the Tamarind Tree," the polarity resolves in imaginative awe before the processes of nature that are the very object of scientific investigation: rather than deadening the imagination, science gives new reasons for awe. The hamadryads, whose disappearance Poe laments, are replaced by much more fantastic creatures: grasshoppers, finches, the tamarind tree, and the poet himself.
The Song of Solomon — Song of Songs — Canticles — as it is variously known seems an unlikely fit for either the Jewish or Christian canon of scripture, yet there it is. Traditionally, the pious have justified its inclusion with allegorical interpretations. Whatever their value, allegorical readings of nonallegorical texts occlude the poetry. The Song's poetry is intensely, richly erotic and yet pure, without a shadow of prurience. Bartleby.com hosts the whole of the King James translation of this text, a translation that captures a poetic richness. I recommend it to you; if you love or are loved, this poem speaks richly of the experience.
Perhaps it will elicit from you "the thinnest grin," "crescent laughter." Joel Neubauer improvises on the Song much as a jazz musician improvises on a well-known tune, weaving it in and out of his own notes, quoting it and other tunes while elaborating his own feeling. One nice device in his poem is the medial rhymes on "moon" in each line, rhyming sometimes the first syllable of a two syllable word, such as "UNion" or "PRUNing." The diction of this ghazal is mixed, running from slang to "poetic," from "poontang" to "imbibe the starry boon." All poetry — except for concrete and other visual forms — should be read outloud. A long-lined, free-flowing poem like this one especially asks you to use your ears: for best results, read outloud.