The Poetry Show Podcast: Break My Heart

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents:

The April 26, 2023 LIVE Broadcast of The Poetry Show

Today's show features two American poets: Jane Kenyon and Joy Harjo. Both found deep American waters and burial grounds amidst the shrapnel and debris of the Sixties. These two poets, and me, share the memory of the explosions.

Joy Harjo

Jane Kenyon

 

Poems Today:

After an Illness, Walking the Dog

Jane Kenyon

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.
A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.

 

********

 

Alone For a Week

Jane Kenyon

I washed a load of clothes

and hung them out to dry.

Then I went up to town

and busied myself all day.

The sleeve of your best shirt

rose ceremonious

when I drove in; our night-

clothes twined and untwined in

a little gust of wind.

 

For me it was getting late;

for you, where you were, not.

The harvest moon was full

but sparse clouds made its light

not quite reliable.

The bed on your side seemed

as wide and flat as Kansas;

your pillow plump, cool,

and allegorical. . . .

 

********

 

Break My Heart

 

Joy Harjo

 

there are always flowers,
love cries, or blood.

someone is always leaving
by exhile, death or heartbreak.

the heart is a fist.
it pockets prayer or holds rage.

it’s a timekeeper.
music maker or backstreet truth teller.

baby, baby, baby
you can’t say what’s been said

before, though even words
are a creature of habit.

you cannot force poetry
with a ruler, or jail it at a desk.

mystery is blind, but wills you
to untie the cloth, in eternity.

police with their guns
cannot enter here to move us off our lands.

history will always find you, and wrap you
in its thousand arms.–

someone will lift from the earth
without wings.

another will fall from the sky
through the knots of a tree.

chaos is primordial.
all words have roots here.

you will never sleep again
though you will never stop dreaming.