I like these poet laureate poems.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Summing Up

When young I scribbled, boasting, on my wall,
NO LOVE, NO PROPERTY, NO WAGES.
In youth's good time I somehow bought them all,
And cheap, you'd think for maybe a hundred pages.

Now in my prime, disburdened of my gear,
My trophies ransomed, broken, lost,
I carve again on the lintel of the year
My sign: MOBILITY -- and damn the cost!


THE SYSTEM

That pack of scoundrels
tumbling through the gate
emerges
as the Order of the State.

                                                     Stanley Kunitz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I saw the quote below on some website and because I'm getting a little
forgetful, I don't remember where:

"Dwight Garner, an editor at the New York Times Book Review, observes,
'Collins writes like a man with a pile of those poetry refrigerator
magnet sets who happened to get pretty handy with them.' "

the funny thing is, I work occasionally for a judge who has many, many
sets of poetry magnets, and sometimes I think the stuff on her
refrigerator door is pretty good
-- but then again, nobody ever accused me of having any culture or
anything.....   ;)
-- so I went and read some Billy Collins stuff....

I like this Billy Collins poem, and another I'll have to find, called
"picnic, lightning"...


Reading an Anthology of
Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,
I Pause To Admire the Length
and Clarity of Their Titles

by Billy Collins

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>