Poems for Life (4 page)

G
ERALDINE
F
ERRARO

Dear Clare,

I thank you for your letter regarding the work Class V is doing to raise money for the International Rescue Committee.

My favorite poem as a child was Rudyard Kipling's
“If.”
The reason I liked it is because it told me how best to approach life.

Good luck with your project.

Cordially,

A
LLEN
G
INSBERG

Dear Nightingale-Bamford School:

Percy B. Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind” is my favorite poem tonite — because following the phrasings & breaths indicated by punctuation, you can get a high buzz reciting it aloud, & it comes to ecstatic expression of abandon to truth at the end —

O
DE
T
O
T
HE
W
EST
W
IND

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystálline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade by thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

R
UDOLPH
G
IULIANI

Dear Elaine:

I applaud your efforts on behalf of the International Rescue Committee in order to benefit refugee children, and I am pleased to provide a poem of my choosing. Here, then, is the poem I have chosen.

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in Vain.

— Emily Dickinson

I love this poem because of its simplicity and for what it reveals about the author's value system. Emily Dickinson valued service to others as a central purpose in living. In a world that is frequently ruled by selfishness, Emily Dickinson shines like a heavenly star.

Sincerely,

R
ICHARD
F. G
REIN

Dear Antoinette,

I am writing to you in response to your letter of April 27 in which you ask me to share with you a favorite poem and some explanation of why it is my favorite.

Rather than select a whole poem I have selected four lines from T. S. Eliot's
Four Quartets.
These lines come from the last of the
Four Quartets
called “Little Gidding.” A copy is enclosed. I like these four lines because they express for me, as a religious person, our going from God and our return to God. Therefore, they are lines which hold a promise. They also express what we could call the innate curiosity of human beings always wanting to explore. But, at the same time, hidden there is our true home.

I hope this arrives on time.

Faithfully,

F
ROM
“L
ITTLE
C
IDDING
” (
F
OUR
Q
UARTETS
)

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

—T. S. Eliot

D
AVID
H
ALBERSTAM

Dear Rebecca,

Please excuse my delay in answering your lovely letter —

Your project sounds like an estimable one — anything that gets people interested in poetry at an early age is a wonderful idea. I'm sending along the fragments of two poems (done from memory). The first, from “The Passing of Arthur,” I like very much because it reflects the idea of the world as a changing place where people have to adapt constantly to changing truths; it seems a good answer to those who believe that everything done in their childhood is better than anything that has happened since. For me as a reporter who covered the Civil Rights Revolution in the South in the late fifties and early sixties it has particular meaning.

The other — we'd need more of the poem — is from Robert Frost — “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — which John Kennedy quoted at about every appearance in his 1960 campaign — and about which I feel considerable nostalgia.

“And I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep.”

Best of luck with your project and I hope I get to meet you someday,

“T
HE
P
ASSING
O
F
A
RTHUR
” (
FROM
I
DYLLS OF THE
K
ING
)

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills himself in many ways,