Epilogue | Robert Lowell

                     EPILOGUE

                     Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme -
                     why are they no help to me now
                     I want to make 
                     something imagined, not recalled? 
                     I hear the noise of my own voice: 
                     The painter's vision is not a lens, 
                     it trembles to caress the light. 
                     But sometimes everything I write 
                     with the threadbare art of my eye
                     seems a snapshot, 
                     lurid, rapid, garish, grouped, 
                     heightened from life, 
                     yet paralyzed by fact. 
                     All's misalliance. 
                     Yet why not say what happened? 
                     Pray for the grace of accuracy
                     Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
                     stealing like the tide across a map
                     to his girl solid with yearning.
                     We are poor passing facts, 
                     warned by that to give 
                     each figure in the photograph 
                     his living name. 

                     Robert Lowell 

Kuan Yin | Prayer for the Abuser

                    To those who withhold refuge,

                    I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.

 

                    To those that cause a child to cry out,

                    I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.

 

                    To those that inflict terror,

                    I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.

 

                    To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,

                    I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.

 

                     To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,

                     I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.

 

                     To those who cling and grasp,

                     I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.

 

                     To those who vent their rage on small children,

                     I return to you your deepest innocence.

 

                     To those who must frighten into submission,

                     I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.

 

                     To those who cause agony to others,

                     I give the gift of free flowing tears.

 

                     To those that deny another's right to be,

                     I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your birth.

 

                     To those who see only division and separateness,

                     I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.

 

                     For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother's embrace,

                     I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.

 

                     To those who still feel somehow incomplete,

                     I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

                     Kuan Yin*

 

* Kuan Yin --- Goddess of Mercy and Compassion: 'one who regards, looks on or hears the sounds of the world.' 

_/\_ 

TUESDAY POEM - Chancellor of Shadows by Lance Larson

  

                     CHANCELLOR OF SHADOWS

                     Horses are praying the old-fashioned way, trotting
                     a fenced field at twilight under a towel of moon. 

                     Swans settle on the pond, like five-paragraph essays
                     on beauty. Yes, we all have our rituals, like the skunk

                     stitching one pulsing patch of shadow to the next
                     with the swish of its tail. Not to mention questions.

                     How many broken pies at the bakery dream
                     the forgiveness of hungry mouths? How many

                     weeks till the silverfish tunnels through Chaucer?
                     What if the other life is buried inside this one?

                     A stack of bricks, a work shirt billowing on the line:
                     epics in the making. Each set of doubts, a garden.

                     Like the owl, I want to be paid in mice and falling
                     stars, take my midnights in the middle of the day.

                     LANCE LARSON

For more of Utah-based Lance Larsen's poems, click here  

There is no editor over on the TP hub this week.

No editor on the TP hub this week? Why?

Well, it's our 3rd birthday and we're in creative, celebratory mode!

18 of our 30-strong group of international poets (we hale/hail from at least four continents) will be posting a line or a stanza each day for the coming three weeks. We've decided not to go with any specific theme and instead to play poetry like jazz, improvising with language and rhythm as prompted. . . fun to write and, we imagine, just as much fun to read.

Harvey Molloy tapped out the first two lines this morning; click on the quill for a look-see and then pop back to the Tuesday Poem site every couple of days to watch things take shape.

The completed poem will be posted on Tuesday 24 April.

* Riroriro, Korimako, fly me a line? Pastel on Paper - CB