Anniversary on the Island

The long waves glide in through the afternoon

while we watch from the island

from the cool shadow under the trees where the

long ridge

a fold in the skirt of the mountain

runs down to the end of the headland

day after day we wake to the island

the light rises through the drops on the leaves

night after night we touch the dark island

that once we set out for

and lie still at last with the island in our arms

hearing the leaves and the breathing shore

there are no years any more

only the mountain

and on all sides the sea that brought us

W. S. Merwin, 1927

Excerpt: Love Poem

 When your hand touches mine, it is the earth

That takes me -- the deep grass,

And rocks and rivers: the green graves,

And children still unborn, and ancestors,

In love passed down from hand to hand from God.

Your love comes from the creation of the world,

From those maternal fingers, streaming through

the clouds

That break with light the surface of the sea.

Here, where I trace your body with my hand,

Love�s presence has no end;

For these, your arms that hold me, are the world�s.

In us, the continents, clouds and oceans meet

Our arbitrary selves, extensive with the night,

Lost, in the hearts worship, and the bodys sleep.

Kathleen Raine, 1908

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman

Aboard at a Ships Helm
Walt Whitman

Aboard, at a ships helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.
A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bellO a warning bell, rockd by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell�s admonition,
The bows turn,the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her gray sails,
The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away gaily and safe.

But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
O ship of the bodyship of the soulvoyaging, voyaging, voyaging.

{You shall above all things be glad and young}

you shall above all things be glad and young.

For if youre young whatever life you wear

it will become you; if you are glad

whatevers living will yourself become,

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

I can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man�s

flesh put space on ; and his mind take off time

that you should ever think, may god forbid

and (in his mercy) your true lover spare;

for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave

called progress, and negations dead undoom.

Id rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

E.E. Cummings (1935)

The Path that Leads Nowhere

There's a path that leads to Nowhere

In a meadow that I know,

Where an inland island rises

And the stream is still and slow;

There it wanders under willows,

And beneath the silver green

Of the birches' silent shadows

Where the early violets lean.

Other pathways lead to Somewhere,

But the one I love so well

Has no end and no beginning--

Just the beauty of the dell,

Just the wind-flowers and the lillies

Yellow-striped as adder's tongue,

Seem to satisfy my pathway

As it winds their scents among.

There I go to meet the Springtime,

When the meadow is aglow,

Marigolds, amid the marshes,--

And the stream is still and slow.

There I find my fair oasis,

And with care-free feet I tread

For the pathway leads to Nowhere,

And the blue is overhead.

All the ways that lead to Somewhere

Echo with the hurrying feet

Of the Struggling and the Striving,

But the way I find so sweet

Bids me dream and bids me linger,

Joy and Beauty are its goal,--

On the path that leads to Nowhere

I have sometimes found my soul.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson