Thursday, April 04, 2019
Poets Gone––poem by Dorothy
In recent weeks, three of our major poets have left. Each leaves a blank space where their own radiant lines once appeared.
Poets Gone
Linda Gregg
And here the announcement,
another one gone,
she was among my very favorites,
a great star
hung in the sky
outshining all the lesser lights,
"lines like chiseled marble"
speaking to all who would listen,
now another blank space on the page.
W. S. Merwin
That time in Wichita,
he speaking to our university students,
reading his polished verses,
his face changing before our eyes
from the delicate elfin features
of a pixie
to the rough visage of
an ancient shaman,
his headdress a buffalo head,
dancer and speaker of oracles,
and then he: "When I was a child
and we played cowboys and Indians
I always wanted to be
the Indian."
And then the incomparable
Mary Oliver
everyone's delight,
transformed nature
into transcendence,
that house with her lines
scrawled across the floor,
the framed poem Ken
gave me,
her enigmatic face,
her wry wit,
her fearless embrace
of transfiguration through
union with the sublime,
almost a transgression
to praise,
darling of the soul,
mistress of holy fragments
of the all.
These were my lovelies,
my comforters,
my language masters,
pillars sustaining me
in this world
and portals into the next.
I must bow down,
I must kneel,
I must thank them
and pray.
Dorothy Walters
March 29, 2019
Poets Gone
Linda Gregg
And here the announcement,
another one gone,
she was among my very favorites,
a great star
hung in the sky
outshining all the lesser lights,
"lines like chiseled marble"
speaking to all who would listen,
now another blank space on the page.
W. S. Merwin
That time in Wichita,
he speaking to our university students,
reading his polished verses,
his face changing before our eyes
from the delicate elfin features
of a pixie
to the rough visage of
an ancient shaman,
his headdress a buffalo head,
dancer and speaker of oracles,
and then he: "When I was a child
and we played cowboys and Indians
I always wanted to be
the Indian."
And then the incomparable
Mary Oliver
everyone's delight,
transformed nature
into transcendence,
that house with her lines
scrawled across the floor,
the framed poem Ken
gave me,
her enigmatic face,
her wry wit,
her fearless embrace
of transfiguration through
union with the sublime,
almost a transgression
to praise,
darling of the soul,
mistress of holy fragments
of the all.
These were my lovelies,
my comforters,
my language masters,
pillars sustaining me
in this world
and portals into the next.
I must bow down,
I must kneel,
I must thank them
and pray.
Dorothy Walters
March 29, 2019
