Continuing our coverage of the question how many poets it takes to change a light bulb. This week: T.S. Eliot (with the help of Ezra Pound) gives you a bit of Ash Wednesday on Holy Tuesday..
ELIOT: Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn…
Seriously, my wrist is cramping.
POUND: Maybe drop that last line, Tom.
This month we will be addressing the question of how many poets it takes to change a light bulb. This week: Robert Frost.
FROST: My little horse must harbor doubt.
HORSE: Why change a light that isn’t out?
FROST: But if I wait for it to die
Then I can’t find a bulb–that’s why.
The art of changing isn’t hard to master
unless you lose the bulb, it ends up smashed, or
some other problem leads to light disaster.
Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Seamus Heaney:
Husbandry says “Stay safe
on this side of the street.”
But once in a while
a chicken will rise to her feet
(if she’s not met defeat)
and see that the other side
is reachable from here.
Now she comes near.
[Click here to read an excerpt from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney]
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright,
Wouldst thou be a hallway light?
Wert thou in a chandelier,
I would scramble out of there!
Why, I wonder, do you reckon that this bird would come here pecking?
What strange sound incited her to pick the henhouse lock?
Did she cross for country, hip-hop, bluegrass, jazz, or rock?
Quoth the chicken: “Bach.”
LEONARD COHEN:
I saw you on the other side
And crossed the road—it wasn’t wide,
But I’d’ve crossed a 6-lane highway to ya.
Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo-yeah
Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doooo, yeah.
Happy birthday to Leonard Cohen, who would have been 86 today.
Maya Angelou:
You can put me in the barnyard
With your pigs and cows and ducks,
You can tell me I should stay there–
“I’ve got places to go,” I clucks.
Oddly, I can’t seem to find the musical rendition of “Still I Rise” that I’ve been hearing on the radio lately, but a search turned up this version.
Happy birthday to Theodore Roethke, who would have turned 112 on Monday, had it not been Memorial Day. Uh, I mean, had it not been for his untimely death in 1963. Except that, you know, a timely death would have caught up with him by now.
Poets answer an age-old question
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Theodore Roethke:
I cross the road, but take the crossing slow,
But don’t ask why—for now I do not know.
(I learn by going where I have to go.)
We real cool. We
Flew the coop. We
All showed. We
Crossed the road. We
Ranged wide. To
The other side.