We’ll to the Woods no more
Text by Alfred Edward Housman
We'll to the Woods no more
The laurels all are cut,
The bowers are bare of bay
That once the Muses wore.
The year draws in the day
And soon will evening shut:
The laurels all are cut
We'll to the woods no more.
Oh, we'll no more, no more
To the leafy woods away,
To the high wild woods of laurel
And the bowers of bay no more.
Along the Field
Along the field as we came by
A year ago, my love and I,
The aspen over stile and stone
Was talking to itself alone.
"Oh who are these that kiss and pass?
A country lover and his lass;
Two lovers looking to be wed;
And time shall put them both to bed,
But she shall lie with earth above,
And he beside another love."
And sure enough beneath the tree
There walks another love with me,
And overhead the aspen heaves
Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
And I spell nothing in their stir,
But now perhaps they speak to her,
And plain for her to understand
They talk about a time at hand
When I shall sleep with clover clad,
And she beside another lad.
It is what it is
Text by Annika K. Socolofsky
It is what it is
It just is what it is
It is just what it is if you let it be
It’s only what it is if you refuse to see
It’s only what it is if you refuse to see what it could be
It’s only what it is if you refuse to be what you can see
Sticks and Stones
Sticks and stones may break my bones but
What is a name but how we are known,
Stand on our own,
Choose to be poems,
Sticks and stones may break by bones but
Names are souls in poems.
Who am I to say?
Who should I marry?
Who am I to say?
Who am I?
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor?
Who should I have?
Who should?
What if my husband is a wife?
Who am I to say?
Tinker, tailor, soldier, failure.
Why?
Who am I to say who I should marry?
The half-moon westers low
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart we lie, my love,
And seas between the twain.
I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love.
You know no more than I.
In the morning, in the morning
In the morning, in the morning,
In the happy field of hay,
Oh they looked at one another
By the light of day.
In the blue and silver morning
On the haycock as they lay,
Oh they looked at one another
And they looked away.
Koans
Texts by Erica Hunt
34
Dream falls face down canvas side down stripped of their letters
19
waiting to be worded careful
41
Exactly my size the version in the mirror appears closer
2
the sun sprints across the year and who has time for sleep
Asunder
Text by Sappho. Translated by A.S. Kline Copyright 2005. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. (Bracketed insertions are added, and not in the translation.)
Fragments, on the Muses
III
And I say to you someone will remember us
In [a] time to come…[in a distant time]...
Fragments, on Love and Desire
VIII
…but you have forgotten me…
XIII
Of all the stars, the loveliest…
The Moon is down
The Moon is down,
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I live, alone.
With rue my heart is laden
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
