Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When
Long before he was first endorsed for presidency this day in Decatur at the 1860 Illinois Republican State Convention, Abe Lincoln was penning verse in his sum book.
from Mary Szybist’s Incarnadine released in early February of this year from Greywolf Press.
Szybist is a Portland poet who reads tonight at the Brooklyn Public Library with other Greywolf poets Catherine Barnett and Dobby Gibson at 7pm on the Plaza at the Central branch.
SAFE IN THEIR ALABASTER CHAMBERS
On this day in 1862, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” was published in the Springfield Daily Republican. This was the second of only a handful of poems published in Dickinson’s lifetime, all of them anonymously and, most think, without her knowledge.
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, ——
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden, and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
- William Stafford
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