These Green-Going-to-Yellow
by Marvin Bell
This year,
I’m raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it has leaves like fans like hands,
hand-leaves, and sex. Those lovely
Chinese hands on the sidewalks
so far from delicacy
or even, perhaps, another gender of gingko–
do we see them?
No one ever treated us so gently
as these green-going-to-yellow hands
fanned out where we walk.
No one ever fell down so quietly
and lay where we would look
when we were tired or embarrassed,
or so bowed down by humanity
that we had to watch out lest our shoes stumble,
and looked down not to look up
until something looked like parts of people
where we were walking. We have no
experience to make us see the gingko
or any other tree,
and, in our admiration for whatever grows tall
and outlives us,
we look away, or look at the middles of things,
which would not be our way
if we truly thought we were gods.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Валерий Брюсов – Это матовым вечером мая
- Иван Бунин – За рекой луга зазеленели
- Юнна Мориц – Хорошо быть молодым
- Вероника Тушнова – Костер
- I’m My Own Grandpa by Shel Silverstein
- A Farewell to False Love by Sir Walter Raleigh
- Remember the Tick by RD McManes
- Four Quartets 2: East Coker by T. S. Eliot
- Владимир Маяковский – Два опиума
- In Every Direction by Ralph Angel
- Владимир Высоцкий – В куски разлетелася корона
- Contusion by Sylvia Plath
- Hurting Dive by Satish Verma
- In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams by Wendell Berry
- Distant View Of England From The Sea by William Lisle Bowles
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).