Something Old, Something New

“Lute Music”

The earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents—
A small franchise indeed.
Right now we have lives
Corpuscles, ambitions, caresses,
Like everybody had once—
All the bright neige d’antan people,
“Blight Helen, white Iope, and the rest,”
All the uneasy, remembered dead.

Here at the year’s end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

– Kenneth Rexroth, 1905-1982

“Chopin”

I am currently wandering down the (seemingly) barren hallways of my mind
A head
Click tick clack on harsh tile
Floating out of this silly flesh and blood
Into the outer spaces
For of course there is more than one!
The keys ring on
Alas
How simply a melody can put me at ease again
The feeling is rather queer
Honestly, I can’t quite explain the
Heaving of my spirit toward the heavens
Along with
That sinking feeling that accompanies
The anchors that are my bones
Holding me down
And back
Perhaps I am as a tethered kite
Kept stationary by man
Being beckoned by the winds
Of change
Of the greater earth
And by her even greater mysteries.

-Kate Sherbo, 2012