October Poems And Quotes

I am too pure for you or anyone. From the poem "Fever 103°", 20 October 1962

I am myself. That is not enough. --from "The Jailer", written 17 October 1962

They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. --From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

AUTUMNAL Pale amber sunlight falls across The reddening October trees, That hardly sway before a breeze As soft as summer: summer's loss Seems little, dear! on days like these. Let misty autumn be our part! The twilight of the year is sweet: Where shadow and the darkness meet Our love, a twilight of the heart Eludes a little time's deceit. Are we not better and at home In dreamful Autumn, we who deem No harvest joy is worth a dream? A little while and night shall come, A little while, then, let us dream. Beyond the pearled horizons lie Winter and night: awaiting these We garner this poor hour of ease, Until love turn from us and die Beneath the drear November trees.

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out of control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us kinship where all is represented as separation." (Defy the Space That Separates, The Nation, October 7, 1996)

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep

My birthday began with the water - Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.

Autumn is a poem - while you fall for everything, you remember that there is something worth dying for.

Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, My busy heart who shudders as she talks Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

O my Homunculus, I am ill. I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling. From the poem "Cut", 24 October 1962

This is the legend of Cassius Clay, The most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal, and brags indeed-y, of a muscular punch that's incredibly speed-y. The fistic world was dull and weary, But with a champ like Liston, things had to be dreary. Then someone with color and someone with dash, Brought fight fans are runnin' with Cash. This brash young boxer is something to see And the heavyweight championship is his des-tin-y. This kid fights great; he’s got speed and endurance, But if you sign to fight him, increase your insurance. This kid's got a left; this kid's got a right, If he hit you once, you're asleep for the night. And as you lie on the floor while the ref counts ten, You’ll pray that you won’t have to fight me again. For I am the man this poem’s about, The next champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt. This I predict and I know the score, I’ll be champ of the world in ’64. When I say three, they’ll go in the third, 10 months ago So don’t bet against me, I’m a man of my word. He is the greatest! Yes! I am the man this poem’s about, I’ll be champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt. Here I predict Mr. Liston’s dismemberment, I’ll hit him so hard; he’ll wonder where October and November went. When I say two, there’s never a third, Standin against me is completely absurd. When Cassius says a mouse can outrun a horse, Don’t ask how; put your money where your mouse is! I AM THE GREATEST!

October Fullness” Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and from twilight. Perhaps it was my punishment. Perhaps I was condemned to be happy. Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being. I plunged up to the neck into adversities that were not mine, into all the sufferings of others. It wasn’t a question of applause or profit. Much less. It was not being able to live or breathe in this shadow, the shadow of others like towers, like bitter trees that bury you, like cobblestones on the knees. Our own wounds heal with weeping, our own wounds heal with singing, but in our own doorway lie bleeding widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen. The miner’s child doesn’t know his father amidst all that suffering. So be it, but my business was the fullness of the spirit: a cry of pleasure choking you, a sigh from an uprooted plant, the sum of all action. It pleased me to grow with the morning, to bathe in the sun, in the great joy of sun, salt, sea-light and wave, and in that unwinding of the foam my heart began to move, growing in that essential spasm, and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

We were letting go of October, relinquishing color, readying ourselves for streets lacquered with ice, the town closed like a walnut, locked inside the cold.

i hold on to the way the air feels in october it brings out the best in me

i dont care about reading a poem who do you think i am, robert frost? i have never been in the woods and i hate walking

This October like November, That August like a hundred thousand hours, And that September, A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years...

Carefully the leaves of autumn sprinkle down the tinny sound of little dyings and skies sated of ruddy sunsets of roseate dawns roil ceaselessly in cobweb grey and turn to black for comfort.

NOVEMBER Now chill & grey November Come slowly o'er the plain, Drearily the winter wind Sings songs of future pain. Wrapped closely in deep grey, She scarcely will let pass A little ray of sun To cheer the sodden grass. She scatters with her hand The leaves dried up and brown, The few that yet remain From gay October's crown. Her eyes and dark and sad, Sad for the dying year, And often in the mist There falls a silent tear. Beneath a cheerless sky The trees are standing bare, The fog has risen thick And she is no more there.

Rudyard Kipling, in his famous poetic description of what makes for mature and effective adulthood, wrote in part: If you can keep your head When all about you Are losing theirs And blaming it on you... If you can trust yourself When all men doubt you... This famous 1909 poem “If” was inspired in Kipling after observing one military leader’s actions during the Boer Wars (Lt. Colonel Eduardo Jany, personal communication, October, 2007).

Why is it, if the same ingredients, the exact same recipe, are used by several different people, they all come up with something slightly different?

Life beginning, one seed sprouting, life on planet germinating.

Bless something small but infinite and quiet. — Robert Creeley, from “A Prayer,” The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1975. (University of California Press; 2nd ed. edition October 23, 2006)

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, and died in his adopted home of Baltimore, Maryland on October 7th, 1849, making him the first American writer in this series.

The poet Osip Mandelstam, in a poem that goes by various names, a celebrated first-anniversary commemoration of the start of 1917, speaks of 'liberty's dim light'. The word he uses, 'sumerki', usually portends twilight, but it may also refer to the darkness before dawn. Does he honour, his translator Boris Dralyuk wonders, 'liberty's fading light, or its first faint glimmer?' Perhaps the glow at the horizon is neither of longer sunsets nor less sudden dawns, but is rather a protracted, constitutive ambiguity. Such crepuscularity we have all known, and will all know again. Such strange light is not only Russia's.

Newspaper letters review the deserted cities & drowse at the windows in pale sun & the evening breeze’s rales. The train has stopped. ("Anna Karenina / October 18, 1910," Translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould )

Who" The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won’t notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. They rattle like hydrangea bushes. Mouldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: Inmates who don’t hibernate. Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as porkfat. O the beauty of usage! The orange pumpkins have no eyes. These halls are full of women who think they are birds. This is a dull school. I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet, Without dreams of any sort. Mother, you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. Now they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

I haven’t had an acceptance since October 1st. And I have piles of poems and stories out. Not to mention my book of poems. Even Ted’s letter about winning the contest, with its award details, hasn’t come, so even vicarious pleasure is shorn from me. Bills come.

Poem in October" It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to set foot That second In the still sleeping town and set forth. My birthday began with the water- Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name Above the farms and the white horses And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days. High tide and the heron dived when I took the road Over the border And the gates Of the town closed as the town awoke. A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder, Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly Come in the morning where I wandered and listened To the rain wringing Wind blow cold In the wood faraway under me. Pale rain over the dwindling harbour And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls But all the gardens Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. There could I marvel My birthday Away but the weather turned around. It turned away from the blithe country And down the other air and the blue altered sky Streamed again a wonder of summer With apples Pears and red currants And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother Through the parables Of sun light And the legends of the green chapels And the twice told fields of infancy That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine. These were the woods the river and sea Where a boy In the listening Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide. And the mystery Sang alive Still in the water and singingbirds. And there could I marvel my birthday Away but the weather turned around. And the true Joy of the long dead child sang burning In the sun. It was my thirtieth Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon Though the town below lay leaved with October blood. O may my heart's truth Still be sung On this high hill in a year's turning.

Always to live among words, whether one wants to or not, always to be alive, full of words about life, as if words were alive, as if life meant words. But it’s otherwise, believe me. Between a word and a thing you only encounter yourself, lying between each as if next to someone ill, never able to get to either, tasting a sound and a body, and relishing both. It tastes of death. —Ingeborg Bachmann, from “Always to live among words,” Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems . Translated by Peter Filkins. Forward by Charles Simic. (Zephyr Press; Bilingual edition October 1, 2005)

As far apart from you as one eye from the other, out of this affliction I’ve taken on will be born the gaze that deserves you at last. — Julio Cortazar, “If I’m To Live,” Save Twilight: Selected Poems. (City Lights Publishers; 2nd Printing edition January 1, 2001) Originally published October 12th 1980.

I will choose from my intimate memories what’s fitting: the scent of wrinkled sheets after making love is the scent of grass after rain. — Mahmoud Darwish, from “Dense Fog Over The Bridge,” If I Were Another: Poems. Translated by Fady Joudah. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition, October 27, 2009) Originally published 2009.

There is a monstrous garden in the sky Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs, Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high. Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height... They tend it well, these gardeners on wings! How rich these blossoms, hideously fair Sprawling above the shuddering citadel As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell? O give us back the garden that we knew Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie, The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity..... But here I sit, and watch the night roll by. There is a monstrous garden in the sky! (written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)

Not a single star will be left in the night. The night will not be left. I will die and, with me, the weight of the intolerable universe. I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, the continents and faces. I shall erase the accumulated past. I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. Now I am looking on the final sunset. I am hearing the last bird. I bequeath nothingness to no one. ― Jorge Luis Borges, “The Suicide,” Selected Poems. (Penguin Books; Reprint edition, April 1, 2000) Originally published October 1st 1971.

Beware of Strangers As children, they teach us To beware of strangers, To refrain from approaching them. As we grow older we learn That no one is stranger than those We thought we’d known all our lives. As we grow older we learn That a stranger may carry more empathy, And may understand us more deeply. Even feelings of affection from a stranger May be more sincere. And so I ask: can humanity and the strangeness be synonymous? Could we say: I am a stranger; therefore I am? Can we truly feel alive Without strange things Strange encounters without strangers reminding us that our hearts and minds are still beating? They teach us to avoid strangers, And life teaches us that human awareness can only be borne out Of the dagger of strangeness… That life is tasteless When we don’t mix it with strangers… That familiarity is opposed to life! And thus, I loudly declare: A stranger I was born. A stranger I wish to remain! And I ask that you issue my death certificate The day I become familiar. [Original poem published in Arabic on October 29 at ahewar.org]

Sometimes, When the Light" Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles and pulls you back into childhood and you are passing a crumbling mansion completely hidden behind old willows or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks and giant firs standing hip to hip, you know again that behind that wall, under the uncut hair of the willows something secret is going on, so marvelous and dangerous that if you crawled through and saw, you would die, or be happy forever. Lisel Mueller, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. (LSU Press October 1, 1996)

I have nothing to do but watch the days draw out, Now that I sit in the house from October to June, And the swallow comes too soon and the spring will be over And the cuckoo will be gone before I am out again. O Sun, that was once so warm, O Light that was taken for granted When I was young and strong, and sun and light unsought for And the night unfeared and the day expected And clocks could be trusted, tomorrow assured And time would not stop in the dark! Put on the lights. But leave the curtains undrawn. Make up the fire. Will the spring never come?

That?' asked the voice on the phone. 'Those are the voices of twelve thousand killed in a typhoon, seven thousand killed by hurricane, three thousand buried by a cyclone. Am I boring you? That's what the wind is. It's a lot of people dead. The wind killed them, took their minds to give itself intelligence. It took all their voices and made them into one voice. All those millions of people killed in the past ten thousand years, tortured and run from continent to continent on the backs and in the bellies on monsoons and whirlwinds. Oh Christ, what a poem you could write about it!

They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing 'the other', Has become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of world’s end? Or will world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 13 at ahewar.org]

The Phantastic Phantasms by Stewart Stafford Halloween Henry sitting on top of a pumpkin he made Eyes are ablaze Morbid Melissa breastfeeding strychnine to all of the babes Her smile never fades Don’t you see that darkness creeping? It’s a nightmare without sleeping Trick-or-Treat Trevor knocking on doors with no head to display It’s his headless way Emmet The Clownface Haunting the grounds of an old children’s school He’s nobody’s ghoul On a carpet of Autumn leaves They’re around every All Hallow’s Eve Sam O’Terry counting the bones of his earthly remains None of them lame Simon-Whose-Head-Hurts taking his 920th overdose Chemically verbose They will always do their worst On October the 31st ©Stewart Stafford, 2018. All rights reserved.

154 Mirror I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful — The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. 23 October 1961

152 Last Words I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them when they come Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. I see them already—the pale, star-distance faces. Now they are nothing, they are not even babies. I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods. They will wonder if I was important. I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit! My mirror is clouding over — A few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all. The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet. I do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can’t stop it. One day it won’t come back. Things aren’t like that. They stay, their little particular lusters Warmed by much handling. They almost purr. When the soles of my feet grow cold, The blue eye of my turquoise will comfort me. Let me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots Bloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell. They will roll me up in bandages, they will store my heart Under my feet in a neat parcel. I shall hardly know myself It will be dark, And the shine of these small things sweeter than the face of Ishtar. 21 October 1961i

They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing ‘the other’, Have become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of the world’s end? Or will the world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on October 13, 2022]

129 Love Letter Not easy to state the change you made. If I’m alive now, then I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it, Staying put according to habit. You didn’t just toe me an inch, no— Nor leave me to set my small bald eye Skyward again, without hope, of course, Of apprehending blueness, or stars. That wasn’t it. I slept, say: a snake Masked among black rocks as a black rock In the white hiatus of winter— Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure In the million perfectly-chiseled Cheeks alighting each moment to melt My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears, Angels weeping over dull natures, But didn’t convince me. Those tears froze. Each dead head had a visor of ice. And I slept on like a bent finger. The first thing I saw was sheer air And the locked drops rising in a dew Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay Dense and expressionless round about. I didn’t know what to make of it. I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded To pour myself out like a fluid Among bird feet and the stems of plants. I wasn’t fooled. I knew you at once. Tree and stone glittered, without shadows. My finger-length grew lucent as glass. I started to bud like a March twig: An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg. From stone to cloud, so I ascended. Now I resemble a sort of god Floating through the air in my soul-shift Pure as a pane of ice. It’s a gift. 16 October 1960

198 Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it------- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?------- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth ? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. It’s the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout : ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart------- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash — You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. 23–29 October 1962

Though the question of Job’s historicity has never been the subject of specific revelation for Latter-day Saints, it has been the subject of at least one semi-official letter from a First Presidency source, as Thomas Alexander reports in Mormonism in Transition: In October 1922, while Heber J. Grant was in Washington, the First Presidency received a letter from Joseph W. McMurrin asking about the position of the Church with regard to the literality of the Bible. Charles W. Penrose, with Anthony W. Ivins, writing for the First Presidency, answered that the position of the Church was that the Bible is the word of God as far as it was translated correctly. They pointed out that there were, however, some problems with the Old Testament. . . . While they thought Jonah was a real person, they said it was possible that the story as told in the Bible was a parable common at the time. The purpose was to teach a lesson, and it “is of little significance as to whether Jonah was a real individual or one chosen by the writer of the book” to illustrate “what is set forth therein.” They took a similar position on Job.

In October, she spent three days on an official tour in Wales. This might have been a difficult tour. Unemployment in Wales was up to sixteen percent, and the economy was down. Traditionally, many Welsh had seen the British as snobs who believed that they were superior. Even the weather was against her as dark and cloudy skies scattered rain in her path. To the surprise of many, crowds lined the streets to meet this new princess as she passed by shops, trailer courts, and rundown coal mines. She smiled and waved, and people in the streets waved and smiled back. They wanted to touch her, to talk to her, and to listen to her voice. She answered their comments easily and naturally. She asked some how far they had come for the procession. She asked others if they had been waiting long for her. She expressed surprise and delight at their loyalty to her. She graciously accepted hundreds of gifts--among them flowers, poems, and a Welsh heifer. In Cardiff, she gave her first public speech as Diana, Princess of Wales. When she uttered a phrase in Welsh, the crowd roared their approval of her accent. As one spectator put it, Diana “speaks it like an angel, she does.

A Doorway Opens October 13 AT ITS HEART, I think, religion is mystical. Moses with his flocks in Midian, Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus up to his knees in the waters of Jordan: each of them responds to something for which words like shalom, oneness, God even, are only pallid, alphabetic souvenirs. “I have seen things,” Aquinas told a friend, “that make all my writings seem like straw.” Religion as institution, as ethics, as dogma, as social action—all of this comes later and in the long run maybe counts for less. Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky. As for the man in the street, any street, wherever his own religion is a matter of more than custom, it is likely to be because, however dimly, a doorway opened in the air once to him too, a word was spoken, and, however shakily, he responded. The debris of his life continues to accumulate, the Vesuvius of the years scatters its ashes deep and much gets buried alive, but even under many layers the tell-tale heart can go on beating still. Where it beats strong, there starts pulsing out from it a kind of life that is marked by, above all things perhaps, compassion: that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another’s skin and for knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy finally for all. Where it stops beating altogether, little is left religiously speaking but a good man, not perhaps in Mark Twain’s “the worst sense of the word” but surely in the grayest and saddest: the good man whose goodness has become cheerless and finicky, a technique for working off his own guilts, a gift with no love in it which neither deceives nor benefits any for long.

Of everything I have seen, it’s you I want to go on seeing: Of everything I’ve touched, it’s your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. — Pablo Neruda, from “Amor,” Intimacies: Poems of Love.(Harper; 1st edition, October 28, 2008)

Later, much would be made of the fact that October 25 was the ninetieth anniversary of the Crimean War’s Battle of Balaklava, immortalized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Twice the poem critically asserts, “All the world wonder’d” at such a military blunder. The young ensign who encoded the message later claimed that “The world wonders” buffer was “just something that popped into my head.” But every man of Halsey’s generation knew well the reference, and the damage had been done.

Am I chasing an empty idea, Or is the empty idea chasing me? Everything that once was is gone. What’s left, can I ever see? My mind feels heavy And yet my thoughts are few. It takes up all and none of me. You are all I ever knew.

I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write — W.S. Merwin, from “Berryman,” Flower & Hand: Poems, 1977-1983 (Copper Canyon Press; English Language edition October 1, 1996)

Pomona's Feast by Stewart Stafford Home from aggressive begging on November Eve, A horror movie that won't be finished in the background, The pirate's booty or robber's swag is examined. Face in the bag, a cornucopia of scents in the nostrils: Oranges, nuts, burnt popcorn, chocolate, Toffee apples, crisps, Liquorice Allsorts, and Rice Krispie cakes. A smörgåsbord Pomona's feast begins, As a maternal voice advises frugality, To no avail. Noses in the trough, Nothing eaten bears any relation to the thing eaten before or after, Aching gums, jaws, and bellies swiftly ensue. To bed to sleep it off, The next morning, it's déjà vu, The maternal voice again advises eating breakfast first, to no avail. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

Clean the October wind. Clear the October moon. Heaped brown leaves are blowing...a black raven flies from its icy roost. I dream of you. Will I ever see you again? Ah, night of sorrowing heart!

I want you to look again and again, to recognize the tender grasses, curled like a baby’s fine hairs around your fingers, as a recurring miracle, to see that the river rocks shine like God, that the crisp voices of the orange and gold October leaves are laughing at death. — Rebecca Baggett, from “Testimony,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyliis Cole-Davis & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

Old Song” I'm feeling ok still in some small way. I've come too far to just go away. I wish 1 could stay here some way. So that what now comes wouldn't only be more of what's to be lost. What's left would still leave more to come if one didn't rush to get there. What's still to say? Your eyes, your hair, your smile, your body sweet as fresh air, your voice in the clear morning after another night, another night, we lay together, sleeping? If that has to go, it was never here. If I know still you're here, then I'm here too and love you, and love you. Robert Creeley, The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley (University of California Press; First edition, October 23, 2006)

I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.  —  May Sarton, Journal Of A Solitude. (W. W. Norton & Company October 17, 1992)

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love is a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

Cancer is Everywhere I see cancer everywhere Everywhere… I see people carefully examining Food labels and ingredients, But cancer is everywhere… There are those jogging and those running, There are those spending hours at the gyms… And those increasing the amounts of veggies and fruits in their diets, But cancer is everywhere, everywhere… There are those totally cutting sugars and fats Those taking multivitamins and other supplements, But cancer is everywhere…everywhere! Many no longer have time to smile or greet others For they are occupied with eating more parsley and tomatoes Or perhaps increasing their intake of Blueberries, blackberries, or broccoli, But cancer is everywhere… You see them replace their water bottles and cookware With others made from non-cancerous materials, But cancer is everywhere… Cancer cases are almost higher than Refugees and alienation Higher than human cowardice, compromise, and conspiracies… Cancer cases are about to reach the levels Of human fear of confronting the ugliness of what’s happening in the world… I see everyone pretending That what’s going on is none of their business Just to stay afloat To avoid getting cancer, But cancer is everywhere Everywhere… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 30, 2022 at ahewar.org]

How to live (forty pieces of advice I feel to be helpful but which I don’t always follow) 1. Appreciate happiness when it is there 2. Sip, don’t gulp. 3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more. 4. There is absolutely nothing in the past that you can change. That’s basic physics. 5. Beware of Tuesdays. And Octobers. 6. Kurt Vonnegut was right. “Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.” 7. Listen more than you talk. 8. Don’t feel guilty about being idle. More harm is probably done to the world through work than idleness. But perfect your idleness. Make it mindful. 9. Be aware that you are breathing. 10. Wherever you are, at any moment, try to find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind. 11. Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you. 12. Go for a run. Then do some yoga. 13. Shower before noon. 14. Look at the sky. Remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity, in order to see the smallness of yourself. 15. Be kind. 16. Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim. 17. Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Don’t value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction. 18. Sit down. Lie down. Be still. Do nothing. Observe. Listen to your mind. Let it do what it does without judging it. Let it go, like Snow Queen in Frozen. 19. Don’t’ worry about things that probably won’t happen. 20. Look at trees. Be near trees. Plant trees. (Trees are great.) 21. Listen to that yoga instructor on YouTube, and “walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet”. 22. Live. Love. Let go. The three Ls. 23. Alcohol maths. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it is hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication. 24. Beware of the gap. The gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it. And you end up falling through. 25. Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don’t wish for it to end, or for it to never end. 26. No drug in the universe will make you feel better, at the deepest level, than being kind to other people. 27. Listen to what Hamlet – literature’s most famous depressive – told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” 28. If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no point. 29. You don’t need the world to understand you. It’s fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven’t experienced. Some will. Be grateful. 30. Jules Verne wrote of the “Living Infinite”. This is the world of love and emotion that is like a “sea”. If we can submerge ourselves in it, we find infinity in ourselves, and the space we need to survive. 31. Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life. 32. Remember that there is nothing weird about you. You are just a human, and everything you do and feel is a natural thing, because we are natural animals. You are nature. You are a hominid ape. You are in the world and the world is in you. Everything connects. 33. Don’t believe in good or bad, or winning and losing, or victory and defeat, or ups and down. At your lowest and your highest, whether you are happy or despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you that stays the same. That is the you that matters.

A Moment of Joy" The ruling global elites are holding their breath in anticipation of who may be the first to start a nuclear war! The wealthy and the stock market traders are fearfully watching the fluctuation in the stock prices… Writers, media pundits, and academics on the payroll of power and authority are worried about a potential revolution that may put an end to the powers in place, and consequently to their existence! Doctors, engineers, and other professionals are all alarmed and watching the job market in fear of losing their cushy jobs! Only the waitress at the nearby restaurant is experiencing a moment of joy for the generous tip she just received from the last customer tonight! [Original poem published in Arabic on October 30,2023 at ahewar.org]

Colors" A long time ago our national IDs had the word “wheat” next to the “skin color” category… Some people’s colors were associated with olives and chocolate… Eye colors were described as honey and pistachio colored… There was also the chestnut-colored hair – all descriptions reminding us that we are gifts from the same source: Mother Nature’s womb! As for the racist West, it insists on reducing humanity and painting it with politicized colors of which only one color matters! As for other colors, they are made to be equivalent to nobodies and nothingness… They insist on turning this world into a snow-covered wasteland Into one blank page and no more… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 31, 2023 at ahewar.org]

In October 1845—while still enjoying the popularity of “The Raven,” his Tales and his numerous public lectures—Poe was invited to read an original poem before the Boston Lyceum for a fee of fifty dollars. James Russell Lowell had secured this invitation, despite Poe’s recent attack on him. Poe had mixed feelings about Boston, which had played a significant role in his life. He had been born in poverty in Boston while his parents had been on tour; had fled there from Richmond after quarreling with John Allan; had enlisted and served his first months in the army there; had published his first volume, “By a Bostonian,” there; he had criticized the integrity of one of their most prominent authors in the “Longfellow War”; and had for many years conducted a running battle in the literary reviews with the puritanical and provincial New England Transcendentalists. Boston, for Poe, was enemy territory. But he entered it with reckless audacity.

Goodbye, goodbye! There was so much to love, I could not love it all; I could not love it enough. — Louise Bogan, from “After the Persian,” The Blue Estuaries: Poems: 1923-1968. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux October 31, 1995) Originally published November 1st 1974.

When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life, in each place and forever. — Bob Hicok from, “Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem,” Plus Shipping. (BOA Editions Ltd.; 1st ed edition October 1, 1998)

Prompts (for High School Teachers Who Write Poetry)" Dante Di Stefano Write about walking into the building as a new teacher. Write yourself hopeful. Write a row of empty desks. Write the face of a student you’ve almost forgotten; he’s worn a Derek Jeter jersey all year. Do not conjecture about the adults he goes home to, or the place he calls home. Write about how he came to you for help each October morning his sophomore year. Write about teaching Othello to him; write Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven. Write about reading his obituary five years after he graduated. Write a poem containing the words “common” “core,” “differentiate,” and “overdose.” Write the names of the ones you will never forget: “Jenna,” “Tiberious,” “Heaven,” “Megan,” “Tanya,” “Kingsley” “Ashley,” “David.” Write Mari with “Nobody’s Baby” tattooed in cursive on her neck, spitting sixteen bars in the backrow, as little white Mike beatboxed “Candy Shop” and the whole class exploded. Write about Zuly and Nely, sisters from Guatemala, upon whom a thousand strange new English words rained down on like hail each period, and who wrote the story of their long journey on la bestia through Mexico, for you, in handwriting made heavy by the aquís and ayers ached in their knuckles, hidden by their smiles. Write an ode to loose-leaf. Write elegies on the nub nose of a pink eraser. Carve your devotion from a no. 2 pencil. Write the uncounted hours you spent fretting about the ones who cursed you out for keeping order, who slammed classroom doors, who screamed “you are not my father,” whose pain unraveled and broke you, whose pain you knew. Write how all this added up to a life. -- Dante Di Stefano. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

In the end, Lewis enjoyed a long and productive period at Cambridge, until ill health finally forced him to resign his chair with effect from October 1963. By my reckoning, Lewis wrote thirteen books and forty-four articles during his Cambridge years, not to mention numerous book reviews and several poems, and he edited three collections of essays. There were controversies, of course, perhaps most significantly the 1960 debate with F. R. Leavis and his supporters over the merits of literary criticism. Nevertheless, Lewis’s Cambridge period—while not being anything like Bunyan’s “Plain called Ease”—was certainly an oasis of creativity, resulting in some of his most significant works, including Till We Have Faces (1956), Reflections on the Psalms (1958), The Four Loves (1960), An Experiment in Criticism (1961), and The Discarded Image (published posthumously in 1964). Yet Lewis’s Cambridge period was dominated by an event in his personal life, which had a significant impact on his writings during this time. Lewis found a new—but rather demanding—literary stimulus: Helen Joy Davidman.

January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow. February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. March brings breezes, loud and shrill, To stir the dancing daffodil. April brings out the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet. May brings flock of pretty lambs, Skipping by their fleecy dams, June brings tulips, lilies, roses, Fills the children's hands with posies. Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots, and gillyflowers. August brings the sheaves of corn, Then the harvest home is borne. Warm September brings the fruit; Sportsmen then begin to shoot. Fresh October brings the pheasant; Then to gather nuts is pleasant. Dull November brings the blast; Then the leaves are whirling fast. Chill December brings the sleet, Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.