Stones in the road and in poetry

Spring has arrived early and I'm also thinking forward to April being poetry month. I've been reading quite a bit of poetry and found one in which repetition seems very right. The photo herewith is not a mere stone -- more like the result of an avalanche. You can think of it as a visual pun to go with the poem.

In the Middle of the Road

In the middle of the road there was a stone

there was a stone in the middle of the road

there was a stone

in the middle of the road there was a stone.



Never should I forget this event

in the life of my fatigued retinas.

Never should I forget in the middle of the road

there was a stone

there was a stone in the middle of the road

in the middle of the road there was a stone.


by Carlos Drummond De Anrade (Portuguese)

This is from an anthology edited by Czeslaw Milosz, A Book of Luminous Things

Easter Poem

Three Lilies

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
the morning. Psalm 30

Before dawn, under a thin moon disappearing
east, the planet Mercury, the messenger
and healer, came up vanishingly
into the blue beyond the garden where
three lilies at the bottom of the yard
arrayed white trumpets on iron stalks
under a slow, slow lightning from the sun.
I stood on a rotten step myself,
and smelled them from a hundred feet away.

This poem by Brooks Haxton was the one sent yesterday by Knopf which sends a poem a day during National Poetry Week to those who have signed up to receive them -- as I did three years ago. I love having poem arrive every morning. Many are new to me, many of the poets as well are ones I don't know. I believe they have sent this poem on a previous Easter. Although I don't celebrate Easter the poem, without even mentioning the day or celebration is perfect.