RIP Mark Strand

[Angeline]

Mark Strand, the former U.S. Poet Laureate has died. If you haven't yet discovered him, give him a read. His poems are wonderful.

Lines For Winter
Mark Strand

__Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going.
__And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Links to poems

Here are links to a large selection of poems by Mark Strand:

Poems by Mark Strand
​

RIP

 

[playcatch]

“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
There was to it.”

Beautiful.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Mark Strand, the former U.S. Poet Laureate has died. If you haven't yet discovered him, give him a read. His poems are wonderful.

Lines For Winter
Mark Strand

__Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going.
__And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Certainly makes me want to get pen and paper and write again!

 

[Angeline]

Certainly makes me want to get pen and paper and write again!

You will. I know it.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A footnote to this thread about Mark Strand whose poetry I've enjoyed:

Galway Kinnell pre-edeceased him by a few weeks. Kinnell taught at NYU, summered in the "Northeast Kingdom" of Vermont, not far from where I live. He retired there and periodically gave poetry readings for free at the town hall in the hamlet where he lived. I regret that circumstances didn't allow me to attend one of his readings.

Here's a favorite of mine (among others):

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.