poetry meme!

[jlh]

I have my favorite poem memorized.

This Is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

But since it's short, and I've posted it before, here's another beloved poem that I know I haven't posted before:

A Cat in an Empty Apartment
Wislawa Szymborska

Die? One does not do that to a cat.
Because what's a cat to do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls.
Caress against the furniture.
It seems that nothing has changed here,
but yet things are different.
Nothing appears to have been relocated,
yet everything has been shuffled about.
The lamp no longer burns in the evenings.

Footsteps can be heard on the stairway,
but they're not the ones.
The hand which puts the fish on the platter
is not the same one which used to do it.

Something here does not begin
at its usual time.
Something does not happen quite
as it should
Here someone was and was,
then suddenly disappeared
and now is stubbornly absent.

All the closets were peered into.
The shelves were walked through.
The rug was lifted and examined.
Even the rule about not scattering
papers was violated.

What more is to be done?
Sleep and wait.

Let him return,
at least make a token appearance.
Then he'll learn
that one shouldn't treat a cat like this.
He will be approached
as though unwillingly,
slowly,
on very offended paws.
With no spontaneous leaps or squeals at first.

tr. Walter Whipple

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I love that WCW poem. For a moment I forget that it is -4 degrees out and it was late summer and there was ripe local fruit. :/

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I like that Williams poem, too. Also, it was the favorite poem of my best friend from years ago, and I always think of her when I read it.

And the cat poem! So sad! Firstly because, a cat would totally react like that; and also because I think that's how peoples' hearts sometimes react, too. The last stanza is particularly heartbreaking.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I so love that plum poem.