102. Thank Youse VII

Thank you James Schevill
"How he rolled down night streets
Like a barrel heaved from side to side;
How his heavy, high forehead,
Great chunk of a headstone,
Loomed over the polished bars
In a frenzy of glass-shaking laughter."

Thank you Carol Rumens
"Oh smiling children, dangerously gifted ones,
take care that you learn to ask why,
for the room you are in is also history.
Consider your sweet compliance
in the light of that day when the book
is torn from your hand;
when, to answer correctly the teacher's command,
you must speak for this ice, this dark."

Thank you Thomas Merton
"How slowly this bell tolls in a monastery tower for a
whole age, and for the quick death of an unready
dynasty, and for that brave illusion: the adventurous
self!"

Thank you Diane Ackerman
"The big picture: as a nuanced listener
and ecologist of the psyche,
you do see the forest for the trees,
but not many of my quirky tastes,
only a scattering of oases
where my curiosity dines,
just a peek at the closet meditations
where I store my moods,
rarely a health update, precious
few of my raving passions."

Thank you Charles Bukowski
"when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was."

Thank you Eavan Boland
"The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree
and burns in the rain. This is its home,
its last frail shelter. All of it—
Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before—
falters into cadence before he sleeps:
He shuts his eyes. Darkness falls on it."

Thank you Elizabeth Bishop
"The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies' ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow?"

Thank you F.T. Prince
"For we know nothing but that, long ago,
We learnt to love God whom we cannot know.
I touch your eyelids that one day must close,
Your lips as perishable as a rose:
And say that all must face, before we know
The thing we know of but we do not know."