857. Poem, by Henry David Thoreau

I'm thankful that my life doth not deceive
Itself with a low loftiness, half height,
And think it soars when still it dip its way
Beneath the clouds on noiseless pinion
Like the crow or owl, but it doth know
The full extent of all its trivialness,
Compared with the splendid heights above.
  See how it waits to watch the mail come in
While 'hind its back the sun goes out perchance.
And yet their lumbering cart brings me no word
Not one scrawled leaf such as my neighbors get
To cheer them with the slight events forsooth
Faint ups and downs of their far distant friends—
And now tis passed. What next? See the long train
Of teams wreathed in dust, their atmosphere;
Shall I attend until the last is passed?
Else why these ears that hear the leader's bells
Or eyes that link me in procession.
But hark! the drowsy day has done its task,
Far in yon hazy field where stands a barn
Unanxious hens improve the sultry hour
And with contented voice now brag their deed—
A new laid egg—Now let the day decline—
They'll lay another by tomorrow's sun.

Source: Thoreau: Walden, The Maine Woods, Essays, & Poems

858. The Mower, by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Source: Collected Poems

859. Pink Dog, by Elizabeth Bishop

[Rio de Janeiro]

The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.
Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue.
Naked, you trot across the avenue.

Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare!
Naked and pink, without a single hair...
Startled, the passerby draw back and stare.

Of course they're mortally afraid of rabies.
You are not mad; you have a case of scabies
but look intelligent. Where are your babies?

(A nursing mother, by those hanging teats.)
In what slum have you hidden them, poor bitch,
while you go begging, living by your wits?

Didn't you know? It's been in all the papers,
to solve this problem, how they deal with beggars?
They take and throw them in the tidal rivers.

Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites
go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights
out in the suburbs, where there are no lights.

If they do this to anyone who begs,
drugged, drunk, or sober, with or without legs,
what would they do to sick, four-legged dogs?

In the cafés and on the sidewalk corners
the joke is going round that all the beggars
who can afford them now wear life preservers.

In your condition you would not be able
even to float, much less to dog-paddle.
Now look, the practical, the sensible

solution is to wear a fantasía.
Tonight you simply can't afford to be a-
n eyesore. But no one will ever see a

dog in máscara this time of year.
Ash Wednesday'll come but Carnival is here.
What sambas can you dance? What will you wear?

They say that Carnival's degenerating
—radios, Americans, or something,
have ruined it completely. They're just talking.

Carnival is always wonderful!
A depilated dog would not look well.
Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!

Source: The Complete Poems, 1927-1979

860. The Beggar, by Victor Hugo

In the frost, in the gale, a poor man was going past.
I rapped on the window pane; he paused in front of
My door, which I opened politely.
Donkeys were coming back saddled from the marketplace
With country folk perched on them.
He lives, this old man, in some humble dog's retreat
At the foot of the hill, quite alone, hoping
For a cold sunbeam from heaven, or half a farthing from earth,
With hands spread out to man or clasped to God.
'Come and warm up', I bellowed; 'what is your name?'
He said, 'I am the
Poor.' I took his hand. 'Come in, sir', I told him.
I got him a bowl of milk.
He was shivering with cold, the old fellow; he talked and
I answered without hearing, my thoughts elsewhere.
'Your clothes are all wet', I said; 'you should hang them in front of
The fireplace.' He moved closer to the fire.
His cloak, moth-eaten, and formerly blue,
Slung right across the warm blaze,
Riddled with thousands of holes by the light of the flames,
Shrouded the hearth, and looked like a black starry sky.
Then, while he dried those wretched tatters
Dripping with rain and ditch water,
I thought how this man was utterly steeped in prayer;
Deaf to what we were saying, I
Gazed at the cloth, in which I could see constellations.

(trans E.H. and A.M. Blackmore)

Source: The Essential Victor Hugo

861. Summer and Winter, by Percy Shelley

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon—and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!

Source: Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley

862. Ask the Rose About the Rose, by Jalal al-Din Rumi

The interpretation of a sacred text is true
if it stirs you to hope, activity, and awe;
and if it makes you slacken your service,
know the real truth to be this:
it's a distortion of the sense of the saying,
not a true interpretation.
This saying has come down
to inspire you to serve—
that God may take the hands
of those who have lost hope.
Ask the meaning of the Qur'an from the Qur'an alone,
and from the one who has set fire
to his idle fancy and burned it away,
and has become a sacrifice to the Qur'an,
bowing low in humbleness,
so that the Qur'an has become the essence of his spirit.
If an essential oil that has utterly devoted itself to the rose,
you can smell either than oil or the rose, as you please.

(trans Kabir Helminsky and Camille Helminsky)

Source: The Rumi Collection

863. March Evening, by Harry Martinson

Winterspring, nightfall, thawing.
Boys have lit a candle in a snowball house.
For the man in the evening train that rattles past,
it is a red memory surrounded by gray time,
calling, calling, out of stark woods just waking up.
And the man who was traveling never got home,
his life stayed behind, held by that lantern and that hour.

(trans Robert Bly)

Source: The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations