Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert

The Milltown Union Bar

You could love here, not the lovely goat

in plexiglass nor the elk shot

in the middle of a joke, but honest drunks,

crossed swords above the bar, three men hung

in the bad painting, others riding off

on the phony green horizon. The owner,

fresh from orphan wars, loves too

but bad as you. He keeps improving things

but can’t cut the bodies down.

You need never leave. Money or a story

brings you booze. The elk is grinning

and the goat says go so tenderly

you hear him through the glass. If you weep

deer heads weep. Sing and the orphanage

announces plans for your release. A train

goes by and ditches jump. You were nothing

going in and now you kiss your hand.

When mills shut down, when the worst drunk

says finally I’m stone, three men still hang

painted badly from a leafless tree, you

one of them, brains tied behind your back

swinging for your sin. Or you swing

with goats and elk. Doors of orphanages

finally swing out and here you open in.

Richard Hugo

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke