Crossings

[Image: “The Other Side,” by Gisela Giardino on Flickr. (Click image to enlarge.)
Used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Happiness

A state you must dare not enter
with hopes of staying,
quicksand in the marshes, and all

the roads leading to a castle
that doesn’t exist.
But there it is, as promised,

with its perfect bridge above
the crocodiles,
and its doors forever open.

(Stephen Dunn [source])

…and:

The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” over the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of today have written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an artistic atmosphere. If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning that you think is so clear, deny that deadly knowledge that you think you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture, give up the very jewel of your pride, abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here.

(G. K. Chesterton [source])

…and:

Gone

It’s that, when I’m gone,
(and right off this is tricky)
I won’t be worried
about being gone.
I won’t be here
to miss anything.
I want now, sure,
all I’ve been gathering
since I was born,
but later
when I no longer have it,
(which might be
a state everlasting, who knows?)
this moment right now
(stand closer, love,
you can’t be too close),
is not a thing I’ll know to miss.
I doubt I’ll miss it.
I can’t get over this.

(Lia Purpura [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Happiness

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

(Jane Kenyon [source])

…and:

Against Endings

On the street outside the window
someone is talking to someone else,

a baffling song, no words, only the music

of voices—low contralto of questions,
laughter’s plucked strings—voices in darkness

below stars where someone straddles a bike
up on the balls of his feet, and someone else

stands firm on a curb, her arms crossed, two

dogs. nearby listening to the human duet,
stars falling through a summer night

a sudden car passing, rap song thumping,

but the voices, unhurried, return, obligatos afloat
on the humid air, tiny votives wavering

as porch lights go out-not wanting it to stop—

and Mars rising over the flower shop, up
through the telephone wires

(Dorianne Laux [source])

…and:

He hung up his coat in the mud room and looked around the corner. She was at the stove, her back to him, stirring something in a pan. He cleared his throat. She turned. She said, “Oh thank God.” She dropped the spoon on the floor and ran to him on her old legs and said, “Oh Daddy, I was so scared. Oh Daddy, don’t ever leave me again. I’m sorry I said what I did. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to make you so angry at me. Don’t leave me again like that.”

Tears came to his eyes. To be so welcome — in his own home. He was about to tell her that he hadn’t left her, he’d forgotten her; then she said, “I love you, Daddy. You know that.” He was going to tell her, but he didn’t. It occurred to him that leaving her on account of passionate anger might be better than forgetting her because of being just plain dumb. There wasn’t time to think this through clearly. He squeezed her and whispered, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I promise you that I’ll never do a dumb thing like that again.”

She felt good at supper and put on the radio; she turned it up when she heard “The Saint Cloud Waltz.” Sometimes I dream of a mansion afar but there’s no place so lovely as right where we are, here on a planet that’s almost a star, we dance to the “Saint Cloud Waltz.” That night he lay awake, incredulous. That she thought he was capable of running away, like a John Barrymore or something. Seventy-two years old, married forty-eight years, and she thought that maybe it hadn’t worked out and he might fly the coop like people do in songs? Amazing woman. He got up at six o’clock, made scrambled eggs and sausage and toast, and felt like a new guy. She felt better too. The lump on her head felt like all the other lumps and there was no blood on her toothbrush. She said, “I wonder if I hadn’t ought to call down there about that appointment.” “Oh,” he said, “I think by now they must know you’re all right.”

(Garrison Keillor [source])

[The last quotation above comes from one of my favorite of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories. This one’s called “Truckstop,” and you can listen to the whole twenty-minute piece below. (Of course, if you’ve got a RAMH right-angle-bracket secret decoder ring, you can use that to listen to the story later.)]

[Below, click Play button to begin Truckstop. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 20:26 long.]