Author: Ian Trimnell

Let me think by Faiz Ahmed Faiz You ask me about that country whose details now escape me, I don’t remember its geography, nothing of its history. And should I visit it in memory, It would be as I would a past lover, After years, for a night, no longer restless with passion, With no fear...

Do you have any advice for those of us just starting out? by Ron Koertge Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave your house or apartment. Go out into the world. It’s all right to carry a notebook but a cheap one is best, with pages the color of weak tea and on the front...

Evening by Raymond Carver I fished alone that languid autumn evening. Fished as darkness kept coming on. Experiencing exceptional loss and then exceptional joy when I brought a silver salmon to the boat, and dipped a net under the fish. Secret heart! When I looked into the moving water and up at the dark outline of...

Do you have any advice for those of us just starting out? by Ron Koertge Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave your house or apartment. Go out into the world. It’s all right to carry a notebook but a cheap one is best, with pages the color of weak tea and on the front...

Trauma and silence By Felicia Murrell. If you’re silent, you can hear the forest breathe, the holy hush of the tree’s limb. “Silence,” said Thomas Merton, “is God’s first language”: the way it soaks into your skin, surrounds you, blanketing you like the forest’s breath. Silence: The cadence of the land at rest, the body asleep,...

Speech to the young Speech to the Progress-towards by Gwendolyn Brooks Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, “Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.” You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song....

A piece of the storm by Mark Strand For Sharon Horvath From the shadow of domes in the city of domes, A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all...

Salutation by Ezra Pound O generation of the thoroughly smug and thoroughly uncomfortable, I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun, I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth and heard ungainly laughter. And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am; And the...

Attention by Saadi Youssef Those who come by me passing I will remember them, and those who come heavy and overbearing I will forget. This is why when air gushes between mountains we describe the wind and forget the rocks. Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer The Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and...

Music I heard by Conrad Aiken Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate, All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have seen your...

Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to...